First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Ezekiel 34

“Back In The Day”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

November 23, 2008

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Lo though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil; you are with me; your rod and staff comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

The lord is my shepherd. David’s poem, the images of a shepherd boy now king “composing” his hallelujah to the Lord, is a comfort, a kind of trusted friend. You can follow it. Even though you may never walk the desert canyon, the wadi David has in mind or the tramp the rolling brush covered hills outside of Bethlehem, they are somehow a part of us. We have all walked them with him at some point.

When David came to Saul to say if no one will face the Philistine than I will, take me, when he came to slay Goliath he was just a boy, but already a seasoned warrior. I slew the lion and the bear; the Lord who saved from the paw of the bear and the paw of the lion will keep me from this Philistine. In other words what is this one if the Lord is with me? If you grew up in Sunday School this image is there; this moment of courage and faith.

And when he is saved by Jonathan, when his friend shoots the arrows to say you must flee from my father, your king, and become an outlaw, live in exile, there is a strange comfort echoing in our own lives. You can feel them, hear them in the moments we face where we are on the outside, when we are not wanted or, worse, when someone conspires to do us harm. When life becomes treacherous or dicey David’s poem about a cup overflowing and dwelling in the house of the lord and tables prepared before enemies is where the steely eyes of hope see ahead.

The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. You comfort me. You guide me. You will not forsake me. And yet in a strange way I take more comfort from the brokenness of David than anything else. From his sin and penance; from the wrath of God that burned but didn’t consume him; from his humbled plea, restore to me the joy of my salvation. I take great comfort in this.

But the image I always carry of David, an image that is a kind of weight upon the soul, is his tears over Absalom. When the runner reaches him with the news that his son who deposed him and brought shame to him and led an army against him was slain in battle, he wept, saying, O Absalom, Absalom, that it was me instead of you.

From Goliath brought low and the great day of victory to the hollow victory with Absalom, there is a thread binding all the stories together. I see it more as a voice saying this is one after my own heart. This is one I love, this is a lamb of my flock. There is a kind of delight and joy in David and the stories of his life intimate this, they seem to have this as a deep refrain: this one I love. Even at his worst, there is God loving him in the midst. On some level I believe this is why we read the twenty third psalm at funerals. We want God rushing out like the father of the prodigal to meet the ones we lose; we want them gathered home with words, ah the one I love. You were lost but now you are found; you were dead but now alive.

Five hundred years after David the tribes of Judah were broken and put to the sword by the Babylonians. The living, the remnant were forced to leave Palestine forever, to be slaves in a strange land. The prophet Ezekiel describes this devastation and then he records God telling him what we read today. It is as if God is walking with the exiles, walking in the midst of their brokenness, and he panics. He sees their hurt and he remembers David and it is too much. No matter the sin, the foolishness and the misdeeds, all of sudden there is a moment of regret. He remembers the one he loves. It is as if David is walking as an exile and he God wants it all to stop.

He says to Ezekiel, tell them, tell them wherever they are taken I will find them; I will search for my sheep; tell them they are not lost. I will bring them back. I will seek the lost, I will bind their wounds; I will make them lie down. The mountain heights of Israel will be their pasture. Tell them I will bring them home.

Seventy years later the Jews would return to Judah. But something was lost and it would not return. They had no king. Four hundred years later Herod was a king for the Jews. The Romans made him a puppet king. When the magi saw the star in the east telling them the king of the Jews was born, they asked Herod where was this child could be found? Herod didn’t know at first but finding the place he put to death all the boys under two years of age.

Herod would die before Jesus was a man, but before he died he rebuilt the temple to rival Solomon’s. This was the temple Jesus walked around and said, it can be destroyed and rebuilt in three days. It was the temple where he prayed as a boy and said, where else would you expect to find me but in my father’s house. And then as if the words of panic Ezekiel heard were not spoken in hope but in fact; and it was as if the exile’s long walk to Babylon had finally come to end, as if all things had finally come back to where they began, as if they were born again, Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And then he did.

On the cross of Jesus Pilate wrote, the king of the Jews. The Pharisees grumbled at this and asked him to change the sign to read, he said he was the king of the Jews. What Pilate should have written was here is your shepherd king, here is the one of whom the voice said, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. Here is the one who knows that to be the shepherd, to be king of the people you must be in the midst of the people, suffering as they suffer, struggling as they struggle, dying as they die. For so he did. Here was David’s lord, his shepherd.

We didn’t name our youngest son, David, after David in the Bible. His name is David Emerson Garry. We took David from Henry Thoreau and Emerson from Ralph Waldo. Thanks be to God Kathy said Waldo was not an option. We named him after two American transcedentalists. I don’t regret this as I still admire them greatly. Their voices are still just as beautiful and ponderous as they were 150 years ago when America was still just a dream. But this is not something I share often.

Even though he is named after Henry David and Ralph Waldo, not the biblical David, I saw something of the shepherd king in his birth I will never forget. When Kathy was giving birth to David it all happened too fast. She tried to warn the nurse, but her directions were dismissed. Before we could protest David came. The nurse delivered him before the doctor could arrive. When the doctor came it was not good.

Kathy was hemorrhaging and David wasn’t breathing. The doctor and the nurse who didn’t listen worked to get her to stop bleeding. Another nurse had taken our newborn son to a table with a heat lamp and began to message his body. Looking up for just an instance she asked, what is his name? David I said. She smiled and looked back at him and teared up. King David she said gently. There you are King David. Full of glory. King David. And then I realized she was praying as she worked to bring out life from death. He was quite an ashen color of purple before he choked out his first breath. She gathered him up and put him in my arms and then stroking his head she said, once again, King David.

We are so resilient so precocious and persistent that we forget sometimes how we must appear to God. How David who slew the giant and escaped the ravaging lion was a tender slip of life ever so precarious- this we can forget. How David when he danced before the Lord and angered Michael, how slender was his hold on love that he would let Uriah fall- we forget that God sees beyond the scars and the foolishness and remembers the child in us, the lamb of his flock. We forget the Lord is the good shepherd saying, tell them, Ezekiel, tell them, I will find them. I will bring them home. They are mine and I am theirs. We forget sometimes.

Paul was in prison when wrote to the Ephesians. Prison is not a place of glory; it is not a place of great might and power; it is not a place where you should be talking about having dominion. But he did. He talked about the Lordship of Jesus, how he is, was king, how all things were under his feet. Christ the King. And his prayer for them is so simple it can be missed. He says, “I pray that you will know God and thus know hope.” There is a tone in these opening lines that is close to a kind of resolve, but also a kind of sentimental determinism. I still haven’t find one word for this. Paul wants the Ephesians to see Jesus through the lens of the humble king riding the colt on Palm Sunday, he wants them to see the boy walking around the temple, he wants them to see the cross and know he said, father forgive them for they know not what they do. He wants them to see the glory of the king who was broken for them. He wants them to know he has finally found joy knowing the one who was the messiah emptied himself of glory so he could walk with the exiles to Babylon. So he could say, I am the good shepherd.

He wants them to see these things, to see the glory of Christ the King, because it is God loving us. Not love in a ethereal kind of metaphor or a kind of sweetness, but “a cold and broken hallelujah.” Christ the King is not a “victory march” because, “love is not a victory march. It’s a cold and a broken hallelujah.” But it is hallelujah.

It is very tempting given our culture of excess and selfishness to see in Christ the King Sunday a moment to say what a disobedient people we are. God says, keep the Sabbath; we don’t. God says, honor your father and mother and we disdain what doesn’t serve us. God says make no idols, but we haven’t found a mirror yet where we don’t worship. It would be so easy to look to our faults and our failures as a moment to say, how can Christ be our king if we don’t follow him? How can we say we believe if do not live as if he is alive and in our midst bidding us to build the kingdom of God? This is an easy temptation.

But Christ the King is not about laws and rules and even our need to obey, which we do need to do. Christ the king is about the one who cried to Ezekiel, tell them I will bring them home; it’s about David being a man after God’s own heart, about a life so often out of control, but yet searching for the shepherd to lead him. It’s about the way the truth comes when we least expect it because God is patient and waits for us to believe. He waits because he loves us.

Christ the King is knowing him to be our king is to be in our brokenness before we ever know there is redemption; its about the long wait of exile and the humility of knowing the soldiers gambled for his clothes. And yet this is our God. In Jesus Christ God was reconciling the world to himself; in Jesus the immeasurable riches of God were put aside so he could abide in the poverty of our sin and finitude.

I am always ready for an order, for a direction. And the idea that there is a king who is there to direct and create a sense of order is lovely. But what ever gives me pause, what I am not ready for is the King who has made glory a gift by being broken. I am not ready for the question he asked Peter, “Do you love me?” But it is the question of the kingdom. It is the question we must answer before there is any question of obedience. For it was the question Christ answered on the cross and it is the question we are bid to ponder when he says, if you come after me, take up your cross. Do you love me?

Maybe God sees your degrees or your riches or your good deeds or your smashing personality. Maybe. Yet, I can’t help but wonder if he sees us as a newborn struggling to breath, struggling to come to life. I wonder if he sees us as David, as the one he loves and leads beside still waters.

I don’t know for sure but I do know The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. The lord is my shepherd he makes me like down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Lo though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil; you are with me; your rod and staff comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

Amen.