The Rev. Kristin Krantz
St. James’, Mt. airy
April 25, 2021 – Easter 4B
Acts 4:5-12, Psalm 23, 1 John 3:16-24, John 10:11-18
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. It always falls on the fourth Sunday of Eastertide when we pair up Psalm 23 and one of the shepherd stories from John’s gospel.
The Good Shepherd is an abiding image from scripture, one that evokes care and safety. The gospel stories portraying Jesus as a shepherd have inspired many children’s books, my favorite of which has a fuzzy cardboard sheep and little flaps on each page so that the sheep travels through the story as you tell it.
But all things considered, Psalm 23 is probably the most abiding scripture passage people think of when it comes to this image for God.
It is pastoral in its setting, portraying a God who takes care of our needs, offers us comfort, and protects us, ending with this poetic flourish: Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
The whole psalm is a statement of trust in the promise of God’s love and mercy. But I want to bring our attention to one word in that final stanza: follow. Because once again, how the scripture is translated makes a difference.
Radaph is a verb variously defined as: to pursue, to chase, to persecute. In counting all the times radaph is used in the Old Testament, it is translated into English in the following ways, the following number of times:
Follow/follows – 5 times
Chase/chases/chased – 12 times
Persecute/persecuted/persecutors – 15 times
Pursue/pursues/pursued/pursuer/etc. – 107 times
When the Psalm writer originally wrote this scripture and used the word radaph, they were trying to convey nothing so domesticated as God’s love and mercy following us like meek little sheep, but instead the wildness and inescapability of God’s love and mercy as it pursues us, as it chases us, hot on our heels.
After all, God is the shepherd, not the sheep – the sheep follow, but the shepherd seeks and herds and hems in the sheep, until they are all accounted for and enfolded in the shepherd’s care.
It is a comforting image, to be gathered close to God, when the spinning of the world around us leaves us dizzy and disoriented. When we are grieving. When we are angered by the brokenness we see in the world around us.
This has been a hard week.
As you hopefully read in the email sent out last Sunday night, we had a fire in the lower level bathroom at church early that evening.
Thankfully, between the use of a fire extinguisher and the sprinkler being activated, the fire was quickly put out. We owe a debt of gratitude to Carolyn from our cleaning company and her husband who happened to be there to pick her up, who acted quickly and grabbed a fire extinguisher. We are also grateful to the Mount Airy Volunteer Fire Company who arrived rapidly, made sure the fire was out and the building was safe, and then helped us begin to deal with the flood of water released by the sprinkler.
We’ve spent the last week in mitigation mode, the first stage of cleaning up the significant mess caused by fire, smoke, and mostly water. We now turn our eyes toward the hard work of rebuilding and getting our Nursery School up and running again.
It has felt at times overwhelming, trying to chase down details and make sure we’re doing all the things that need to be done, and yet I have felt a very palpable sense of God’s presence in our midst – actively shepherding us towards safety and wholeness.
It has been a hard week.
Even as more and more of us get vaccinated I have seen stark reminders that we are not yet out of the woods. Not only are families in our community still getting sick, but I personally have four friends this week who are mourning the death of a friend or family member from Covid. We are grieving sickness and death and so much more.
It is hard at this stage of the pandemic to gauge danger and safety. Some folks are ready to throw caution to the wind and do anything and everything – it’s been a long year and they’re tired. Others are finding it hard to lower the barriers they’ve built up over the last year, mulling over endless “what ifs” as they cautiously step out. The equation for calculated risks is a very personal thing, and let me tell you that it is a hard thing to balance when you’re trying to lead a community with diverse wants and needs.
And yet the Good Shepherd is with us, leading and guiding us and reviving our souls, and I trust that God’s love for us and our love for one another will continue to see us through this pandemic.
This has been a hard week.
On Tuesday Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all charges related to the murder of George Floyd last year. His death set off a summer of protests and civil unrest and upped our national conversation about racism and judicial reform. Yet for as much forward momentum as was ignited, there has been just as much backlash to maintain the status quo. Racism is America’s original sin, after all, and we have not yet collectively done the work of repentance.
Since last Sunday there have been eight mass shootings in the United States. There have been 40 so far this month.[1] The pandemic may be receding, but our national epidemic of gun violence is in full swing.
It is hard to look at the violent brokenness of the world and not lose hope. And yet, God promises to walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death, pursuing us with comfort and bringing us to safety.
Psalm 23, with its image of a God set on chasing after us time and again as we wander from God’s commandment to love one another, is timeless – meeting people of faith over the millennia with a powerful reminder that we are not alone.
This is what I hope you will take away from Psalm 23. That no matter what’s going on in your life – good, bad, or ugly – that God’s love and mercy are pursing you. That there is nothing you can do that will stop God’s love and mercy from chasing after you all your days. That you will not be left out in the wilderness to fend on your own – indeed scripture tells us that the shepherd will leave the 99 to find the 1 that is missing.
God’s love and mercy is always hot on our heels, herding us back to the house of God where we will dwell for ever. It doesn’t erase the hard things, but it is a powerful promise that the worst thing isn’t the last thing, and for that we give thanks and praise – alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Amen.
[1] https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting