Hearing the words of the Psalm, and perhaps speaking them in the beautiful rhythm of a responsive reading, what drew you in? Hearing the story of the blind man and Jesus, and perhaps reading along, where did you want to linger? The story begins with a question: Who sinned? That’s where I said to myself, “Wait a minute, what’s going on here?” The question is asked rather casually, “Was it him or his parents?” Like it’s got to be somebody’s fault that he was born blind. The assumption on the part of the disciples in the story is that illness and ill fortune are occasioned by sin, and that sin is about wrongdoing.
The assumption is persistent. You’ve probably been in a conversation where somebody tells you and some friends or co-workers about a friend who just learned that they have lung cancer. And everybody comments how sad that is, and then there’s that brief silence before somebody asks, “Did she smoke?” Because lung cancer for a non-smoker is just terribly unfair. And for a smoker? “Well, she shouldn’t have smoked, right? It’s like she asked for it, isn’t it?”
I find it curious how quickly we jump from empathy to blame. Like it’s got to be somebody’s fault. Friends of mine of Taiwanese and Korean descent told me how people over the past few weeks started looking at them with suspicion or yelled at them across the street, “Go back where you came from!” And then I saw pictures of people who had been physically attacked, solely because of their facial features—as though a virus had a nationality or ethnicity. Our desire to find causality runs deep, and it can lead to great research, but apparently also to great foolishness.
I notice that Jesus shows no interest in a conversation about sin and causality. His focus is entirely and solely on doing the works of the one who sent him, eye-opening work, life-restoring, community-healing work. Michael Lindvall writes,
Blindness is not just not seeing; it is also not seeing everything, the whole of truth, all the nuances of reality that can be seen only from perspectives outside the familiarity of our comfort zone.[1]
Jesus’ eye-opening, vision-restoring, community-healing work is for all of us who struggle with seeing more than we can see or are comfortable looking at. I notice that Jesus doesn’t say,“I am the world’s eye doctor.” He says, “I am the light of the world.” He himself is the light by which we perceive God and world, self and other, everything, all the nuances of reality.
But as much as I was drawn to this story and how it unfolds in this and the following chapter, the Jesus I have heard calling in these days of uncertainty and fear is the Jesus who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, “saw the crowds and had compassion for them, for they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”[2]
I was drawn to the Psalm for today, or rather I was drawn not just to it, but into it: I was drawn into its world of complete trust. Rolf Jacobson calls Psalm 23 “an essential text for living the Christian life — and especially for living the Christian faith when the bridges have been washed out by a flood of troubled waters.”[3] The psalm is a poetic expression of profound trust in God, speaking to us from over 2000 years ago, bridging the great distance with the beauty of language, the power of testimony, and with the wondrous opportunity to make these words our own, and in doing so to discover this depth of trust and confidence and hope in the company of the Shepherd God.
In Israel’s imagination the shepherd is a rich and complex figure. Moses was keeping the flock when the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush, and he received God’s call to go to Pharao and to lead God’s people out of Egypt.[4] Young David was keeping the sheep when Samuel came to anoint him king.[5] The prophets accused corrupt leaders with powerful words, drawn from the world of shepherding,
Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them.[6]
The prophets knew a God who would hold Israel’s shepherds accountable for their lack of attention and just action, because they knew God to be the Shepherd of Israel and God’s people the sheep of God’s pasture.
In this psalm, the rich imagery of the divine shepherd and the long history of what the God of Israel had done (and what Israel’s leaders were supposed to do) has become a very personal affirmation of faith. And so this psalm became the prayer of rulers who desire God’s guidance, as well as the prayer of those who know that to trust in princes often means building a house on sand.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing.
You, Lord, are my shepherd, I have everything I need.
I fear no evil, for you are with me.
You are with me.
God said to Isaac, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.” When Moses asked, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” God said, “I will be with you.”[7] When Moses passed the mantle of leadership to Joshua, he said to him, “Be strong and bold, for ... it is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear ...”[8] And when Israel was in exile, the prophet Isaiah gave God’s word to an anxious people, “Do not fear, for I am with you.”[9]
Generation after generation of God’s people were given the promise, and in the shepherd psalm a response rises from the depth of human trust, “I fear no evil, for you are with me.” You are with me in the long valley of darkness. You are with me in the day-to-day confusion and loneliness. You are with me in the suffocating place of isolation, the place of dancing alone, the place of longing for touch and embrace: You are with me. You know this place and you are moving through it with me to the other side where we all fall into each others arms and laugh.
The words of the psalm invite the king, the governor, the mayor and the senator to lead from this depth of trust. The words urge the widow, the orphan and the migrant whose cry for justice might go unheard in the courts to stand firm in this depth of trust. And the words teach every child of God to live with confidence and hope, because regardless of circumstances, we are not sheep without a shepherd.
I am not alone, we learn to affirm, cheered on by generations of witnesses. I am not alone, for you are with me. Trusting that you are walking with me, I begin to walk with you. Resting in your presence, my soul is restored. And now my heart is free to imagine how I can be part of embodying your presence for others and with others, and we become for each other what you are to us, faithful shepherds.
Like yesterday, when I was preparing my notes for this morning while Nancy, my wife, was having a virtual happy hour on FaceTime with a friend who is in self-quarantine. They clearly enjoyed their time together. I heard Nancy shout ‘croissant’ a couple of times, and I thought they were talking about French baking until Nancy sent me a text from the sun room, telling me that she needed a refill.
Walking to the fridge I started to hum, My shepherd you supply my need… but she insisted on calling me ‘garçon’ – and let’s not talk about the stark contrast between her cup running over and my empty tip jar.
My point is, we can make real connections with phone calls, texts, virtual happy hours, and handwritten notes. Yes, many bridges have been washed out by a flood of troubled waters, but not all of them—and we can build new ones, bridges we barely dreamed of before the pandemic stranded us on our islands of isolation.
We are not alone. What we knew in our minds, we now know in our bones: we are each other’s shepherds, because the God we know is dependably ours.
Take good care of yourselves. Take good care of each other. You are not alone.
[1] Michael Lindvall, Connections, Year A, Vol. 2, 92.
[2] Matthew 9:36
[3] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3185
[4] Exodus 3
[5] 1 Samuel 16
[6] Ezekiel 34:2-4
[7] Genesis 26:24; Exodus 3:11-12
[8] Deuteronomy 31:7-8
[9] Isaiah 41:10; 43:5