The Good Cowboy?

John 10:11-18 and Psalm 23

Sunday, May 11, 2003

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

What happens when you have a thirty-five year old pastor is that there are some experiences in life that I have not had. A friend of mine and I were talking about the lectionary passages for this morning. We were comparing our ideas of what Jesus must have been like. He asked me, “Have you watched westerns on Saturday afternoons?” I said, “No.” When I was growing up, western movies were not on television. I have seen a good John Wayne movie or two. In fact, my voice is so slow that I can do a good John Wayne imitation. I won’t do it from the pulpit this morning, but I can imitate the Duke. I have seen many episodes of Gunsmoke and Bonanza. I have watched Hoss and Chester. I know that I have watched Tonto and the Lone Ranger ride off into the sunset dozens of times. By and large, I have not seen many western movies. It is not the genre of movies that is popular these days. If you want to watch movies on Saturday afternoons, you will have to turn on the Lifetime Network to do that.

I know a little bit about cowboys. I want to paint a picture of a cowboy for us this morning, but I am going to clean it up a bit since we are in church. I won’t talk about any shoot outs or saloon scenes. The cowboys of the old west led cattle all of their days. Cowboys pull the reigns of their horse right before he reaches the canyon’s edge. With one of his fingers, he lifts his hat and wipes away the sweat from his face. His face is sun dried and looks like an old piece of leather. He is the hero of the old west. He is a powerful man. In front of him are thousands of miles of trails. Behind him are thousands of heads of cattle. My guess is that he is honest with his poker playing. I do not know that for sure. He is quick with his gun, hard riding, and slow talking. His best friend is his horse. A hundred women would like to be with him. He does not need anyone. Can you see him? He is the hero of the old west.

Now I want to paint a picture of another hero that lived longer ago than the cowboy. Though, you may have seen this hero in another part of the world. You probably have not seen him in our neighborhood. This hero is the shepherd. Did you hear that? Did you understand that I said that a shepherd was a hero? Pay attention to me for a minute. Shepherds, too, are rough and rugged. They, too, live under the stars. They, too, are afraid of no one. Wolves can come and that does not matter. Shepherds will stand up to the wolves. There are a lot of similarities between cowboys and shepherds. Bear with me. I know that this is a stretch. Shepherds are on duty twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year. But there is a difference. This is where the similarities end. The differences between cowboys and shepherds are many. Cowboys do not love his cows. It is not that the cowboy does not appreciate the cow. He does. Have you ever seen a picture of a cowboy caressing a cow? Probably not. I want to give you a quick little story. While Susie and I lived in Harmony Grove, we experienced cows. Can I tell this story? Susie and I were visiting Margaree Garner, a member of our church. Margaree rented part of her land to a man who bred cows. Susie wanted to see a cow up close. She walked up to the fence, and whistled like one would for a dog, in hopes that one of the cows would come close to her. I am sure that the cows looked up and they snickered among themselves. A cowboy does not caress a cow, but have you seen a picture of a shepherd holding a lamb? Sure you have; pictures like that are all over the place. The shepherd leads the sheep to green pastures and still waters. The worst case scenario is that the shepherd leads a sheep to get a hair cut. The cowboy loves the meat of the cow; that is how he is paid. A cowboy leads a cow to the slaughter house. Now which would you have had Jesus say, “I am the good cowboy who leads you to slaughter?” Or “I am the good shepherd” who leads you to green pastures, still waters, and to get a hair cut, which is not the worse possible thing in the world.

Actually the idea of shepherding is in the Bible over and over again. I looked it up. I have a computer program that will tell me how many times a word appears in the Bible. The word shepherding appears in the New Revised Standard Version sixty times. The word sheep appears two hundred and eight times. It is an important image. I am glad that Jesus said that he was the good shepherd.

We are going to look at three passages this morning. The first is from Ezekiel, the second from John’s gospel, and also this powerful word from the 23^rd Psalm. Our question of the twenty-third Psalm is “How can we make it powerful for us today?” I want to pull this Psalm out of funeral services. That is where you hear it the most. I want to bring it to a worship service where we need to hear it the most. Ezekiel, John, and David wrote their words at a time different from our own time. David wrote the Psalm when there were a lot of shepherds around. The first hearers understood and nodded their heads. Imagine this. It is Monday around two o’clock. The church is full. Sitting on the front row of the church is a woman. On one side of her is her daughter. On the other side of her is her son. The grandchildren are sitting on this same pew. They have been led to their seats. This is not her regular seat. She usually sits in the back. This is a funeral service, her husband’s funeral service, and so she sits where families are supposed to sit. The pastor is there and he reads the words of the twenty-third Psalm. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside still waters.” The pastor has memorized these words. He can say them without looking down. Instead he looks at the widow. He sees that the woman is mouthing the words. On the other side of the church is this widow’s best friend. She wipes the tears away from her eyes as she witnesses this. She knows the power of the 23^rd Psalm. Or imagine the pastor who goes to the hospital to see one of his church members. He is there to see a woman who has been hospitalized for some time. They chit-chat for a few minutes. They talk about how things are going, what the doctors have said, what the nurses think, and then he prays with her. At the end of the prayer, he recites the words of the 23^rd Psalm. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” She repeats the words with him. The two of them say all six of the verses together. The 23^rd Psalm becomes important again. Do you see how this Psalm comes to life?

Shepherding and sheep are so important in the Bible. The images are everywhere in words of scripture. The thirty-fourth chapter of Ezekiel has the image of shepherding in it. In the chapter, God talks about the shepherds. In those days shepherds not only were ones who took care of the sheep, the word was also used as a metaphor for the leaders of the day. David was called the Shepherd King. Through Ezekiel, God said, “You are not taking care of my sheep. Because you are not taking care of my sheep, one day I am going to come down there to shepherd my own people.” It is a powerful passage that leads us to John’s gospel. John has Jesus saying, “I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me.” What Jesus is saying here is that he is the one that Ezekiel talked about. God said, “I will shepherd my people.” I have come down here to shepherd my people through the person of Jesus Christ. “I know my sheep, and my sheep know me.” He says that the reason that he came down was because he loved his sheep so much. It is a powerful word, “I have come down to shepherd.” Jesus says that the hired hands, when they see the wolves, run away. What do we know about Jesus and the cross? Did he run? No, he stayed right there. This is a powerful word. Jesus says that even though you reject me, I love you. I am the good shepherd. My sheep know me. These two passages are revolutionary, really. They say powerful things about God. They talk about a God who is going to come down and take care of his children. Then John talks about a God who is already here, one who refuses to run away when there is trouble. Here is the cross as the greatest symbol of love.

The two passages are revolutionary and they lead to the 23^rd Psalm. If you believe that God really is my shepherd, then this is how you will live. That is what the 23^rd Psalm is all about. The Lord is my shepherd, I have all that I need. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. Even though I walk through dark valleys, I will fear nothing, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff comfort me. You prepare a table in front of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all of my days and I will live in the house of the Lord my whole life long. You could have said that with me, couldn’t you? You memorize those words, early, in Sunday School classes and it is on the lips of our loved ones when they die. The words are powerful.

Now, I know preachers who preach series of sermons. You have heard series of sermons, no doubt. Let us say that it is a six week series. On the first Sunday, you get the sermon. The second week you get the sermon and another sermon. The third week, you get three sermons. You see how this happens. For this reason, I do not like to preach sermon series. There is enough in the 23^rd Psalm to keep a preacher preaching for several weeks. I won’t do that this morning, either. You probably will be glad to hear that, too. There’s nothing worse that a preacher who tries to preach more than one sermon during the sermon time.

I could say a lot about the psalm, but I want to say just two things. I want you to go home with these two things and really understand them. There was a man who wrote about shepherding. He was a shepherd himself and he wrote from that perspective. His name was Philip Keller. He wrote that David must have poked out his chest in pride when he wrote, “The Lord is MY shepherd.” Does it help you to know that you have your own personal shepherd? I like it when our Lay Leader, Dee Sadler calls to talk to me. She always asks me how the shepherd is doing. That makes me feel pretty important and wonderful. The Lord is my shepherd. Not me, but the Lord is our shepherd. That means that no matter what I go through and no matter what I do, God is there beside me. We are in the season of Easter and in the Sundays of Easter, we think about where God is once the cross has happened. A couple of Sundays ago, we looked at what happened to Thomas and his faith when he saw Jesus. He called out, “My Lord and my God.” Last week, Diane preached to us about what happened when Cleopas and another disciple realized that they had been talking with Jesus. And now this week, the lessons point to us and they say to us that it is God who guides us and it is God who leads us. I do not know about you, but for me that makes living a whole lot easier than trying to guide myself. In our life, there is no substitute for knowing that the shepherd is nearby. There is nothing like Christ’s presence to scatter our fears. The shepherd comes quietly and quickly to our dilemmas, to be deeply involved in our lives.

I would like for you to hear another line in this Psalm that I really hadn’t noticed until this week. David writes. Liz Wright, in our staff meeting, asked me what the line means. Here is the line, “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.” Makes me lie down? I will admit that I don’t know a whole lot about sheep. What I do know is that they are not all that smart. I understand that they can nibble themselves lost. I have heard that they can be eating grass and walking along and look up and all of the other sheep are gone. My friends and I studied this passage this week and someone said to me that sheep stink. We have this idea of sweet, little lambs that are so precious. And they are. Do you know why David wrote about shepherds leading sheep beside still waters? He wrote that because if a sheep enters a stream that is flowing at all, the water will cause their wool to be heavy, and they will drown. You will not find sheep involved in an all animal version of the game show, Jeopardy. There is something else that I have learned about sheep. I have learned that there is a gentle restlessness with sheep. They are skittish and will not lie down in a pasture unless four conditions are met. The first is they know for sure, without a doubt, that they are safe. The second condition is that there cannot be any tension in the flock family. So if mama and daddy sheep are arguing, lying down is not an option. It will not happen. Third, they cannot be hungry. And finally, they cannot be aggravated because of flies that are flying around them. There is a general restlessness in sheep. They do not like to lie down. They like to go from this to that. None of us could be accused of having a general restlessness, could we? None of us have a short “to-do” list, do we? None of us have ever had trouble sleeping at night because we are thinking about what we have to do the next day. None of us are planning dinner when it is lunch time, are we? We don’t have general restlessness, do we? Of course not! In case you have not realized it, this is the sarcasm coming out in your pastor. None of us want to keep moving and keep doing and keep busy, do we? None of us want to lie down.

That was Charles Allen’s problem. I heard about him. You probably have heard of him. He was the pastor of a small church in Atlanta when he got the call to be the pastor of First Methodist Church in Houston, a huge church. It was the right call that came at the right time to the right man. And as he began that ministry, he found himself working harder than ever. He went to work early, stayed late, and took work home with him. He kept up the pace. It was important for him to have a great start. We don’t know any pastors like that, do we? For a while it worked great, but he could not keep up the pace. Listen to his words and how he described what happened. “One morning as I hurried to dress for a full day of meetings, I felt a pain in my back. I mentioned it to my wife and she insisted that I see a doctor, and he put me in the hospital. I was unhappy in the hospital. I had no time to waste there in bed. My calendar was full. But the doctor told me to cancel all my appointments for at least a month. How could I do that? I was the pastor of a large church. Then a minister friend of mine came to see me. He sat down beside my bed, and quietly and firmly said, ‘Charles, I have only one thing to say to you. Remember the words, He makes me lie down.’” Charles said that when his friend left, he thought about the words of the Psalm. The shepherd knew his sheep needed some rest. So he made him lie down. And somehow Charles saw the truth.

I love preaching to you, friends, but I need to preach to myself. We’re so busy. We need to lie down, to calm down, to slow down. To be by calm waters and to have our lives restored. I read this week, that this restoration, this restoring means that every aspect and every part of our lives are restored. That is what David had in mind. It is all in life that really makes it a life. Left to themselves, sheep will eat until they drop down in a faint or fall head first into a rushing stream, still chewing that last piece of grass. We couldn’t be accused of that, could we? The great bishop of the church, of a time long ago, Augustine, said this, “O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to Max Lucado for the idea of the cowboy and the shepherd. Thanks also to the writings of Charles Allen and for the personal story of his life. I am grateful that God is my personal shepherd and that sometimes, he makes me lie down when there seem as if there is so much to do. Finally, special thanks to the people of St. Paul Church for their prayers and presence).