Andy James

wandering the web since 1997

Presbyterian minister in Atlanta.
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Found beer in seminary.

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Archives for 2014

Be Careful What You Pray For

By

a sermon on Acts 2:1-21
preached on Pentecost, June 8, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As I mentioned last Sunday, I spent three days last month with about 500 Lutherans from all across downstate New York, serving as the parliamentarian for their Synod Assembly. The theme for the three-day gathering was “Come Holy Spirit,” which seemed quite appropriate at so many levels. It was only a week before Pentecost, after all, and some of the business was also the sort of thing when you might want the Holy Spirit to be present. At the assembly, they were continuing to live into their Strategic Plan that was adopted last year, and this year they were electing a bishop for a six-year term.

In many ways, the Spirit cooperated perfectly, as the basic business of ministry and operations went off without a hitch, and the strategic plan presentation was great, but when it got to the election of a bishop, the Holy Spirit’s work started to get a little weird. Thankfully they had invested in an electronic voting system to make votes go more quickly, but the first ballot had to be done on paper, and the counters reported that there were 425 ballots cast—when the report from registration showed only 420 voting members! In the end, after an evening of rethinking voting processes and recounting registration sheets, the repeat of the ballot the next morning went off without a hitch, but it was very clear that their prayers of “Come Holy Spirit” were being answered in ways that they didn’t quite expect, and they learned one of the most important lessons about the Holy Spirit: be careful what you pray for!

The first Pentecost as told in our reading this morning from Acts had its own surprising and unexpected turns, too. The disciples had been spending time together in Jerusalem after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, waiting and watching for whatever would come next, praying for the Holy Spirit to come as Jesus had promised them. However, I doubt that they expected the Spirit to show up quite like it did, with a rush of wind blowing through the room, divided tongues of fire settling on each of them, and the strange gift of speaking and being understood in the languages of the world coming up the disciples just in time to speak to faithful Jews from around the world who had gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the festival now known as Shavuot.

Once again, the Spirit had shown up, and things got weird. Everyone in the city was astonished, for they could tell that the people who were speaking in these languages were ordinary folks from Galilee—a region that everyone considered to be the backwater of the backwaters of the Roman empire. But it wasn’t just that—the message was strange and surprising too, describing the good news of God’s deeds of power and mercy in this man named Jesus.

Everyone was trying to figure out what was going on. Some were genuinely curious, others a touch perplexed, and still others completely dismissive, fully convinced that the only thing special going on here was an abundant serving of wine with breakfast! But the Spirit had shown up in ways beyond their expectations, offering an amazing and surprising appearance of power on that first day of Pentecost and inspiring the first disciples to expand their community as they welcomed the first group of newcomers to join their circle after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. But the Spirit’s surprising power made it clear that they had to be careful what they prayed for.

The Holy Spirit whose coming we celebrate today is a strange and unexpected presence in our lives and our world, and as these stories show, we too have to be careful what we pray for when we pray “Come Holy Spirit.” This Spirit comes in unexpected times and places, challenging our assumptions about what God is up to in our world, insisting that we think again about the plans we have laid out for ourselves, demanding that we open our hearts to something other than the status quo or the easiest and most comfortable and familiar option. This Spirit comes and challenges our assumptions, popping into our lives with surprising displays of power and presence that often raise as many questions as answers, suggesting that we might need to look for God at work in new and different ways, and defeating all our attempts at controlling its power in our world. And this Spirit comes with a presence that sometimes looks nothing less than weird, upsetting our our attempts at good process, surprising us with unexpected outcomes, and guiding us into a new and different way. Yet through it all, the Holy Spirit is among us, coming into our lives in amazing and wonderful ways to show us the presence of God each and every day.

My friends, there are two places where I think we need to be on the lookout for this strange and amazing Spirit in the coming days, especially praying “Come Holy Spirit” in our lives and our world. First, I hope that you will join me in praying for the Spirit’s presence at our Presbyterian General Assembly that begins next Saturday in Detroit. There, about 700 ruling and teaching elders from across the country will gather to discern the call of the Holy Spirit in the life of our national church. I’ll be going myself in my role as Stated Clerk of the Presbytery of New York City, though I’m there to support and advise our four commissioners and won’t be able to speak or vote. This 221st gathering of our national church will be working to discern the Spirit’s call among us on issues ranging from procedural changes in our Book of Order to divestment from companies that profit from the use of fossil fuels or non-peaceful pursuits in Israeli-occupied territories to same-gender marriage in our church and everything in between.

While I suspect a lot of the voting commissioners will go to Detroit with ideas and thoughts about the issues before the assembly, our common understanding as Presbyterians is that they gather with that prayer of “Come Holy Spirit,” not representing the view of the people in the pews or the pulpits but coming together by the power of the Spirit for this one week to discern God’s call to the church in these days. While this simple prayer of “Come Holy Spirit” may not embody our clear expectations and wishes for particular outcomes in these deliberations, I believe that this simple prayer is the best thing we can offer this important gathering as we trust that God’s presence will inspire these faithful women and men as they find and seek the will of God together, even if it makes us wish we had been more careful about what we prayed for!

The second place where today we will pray “Come Holy Spirit” is a little closer to home. Today as we welcome our confirmation class into membership of this congregation and two of them receive the sacrament of baptism, this my prayer for each of them, that the Holy Spirit might be present with Nicholas, Avayana, Chris, and Christine as they continue to grow in their faith in this place and beyond. Again, we don’t know exactly what that prayer will bring them, but we offer it anyway, trusting that the gift of the Holy Spirit—even if it ends up being a bit weird!—will be enough to sustain them as they walk the road ahead and join us in the journey of following Jesus each and every day.

So while we may wish that we had been more careful about what we prayed for when we pray “Come Holy Spirit,” may we always trust that the Spirit will come and surprise us and astonish us and challenge us whether we want it or not, inspiring us to pray with all the more confidence and hope, “Come Holy Spirit,” so that we all might be filled with the power and wonder of this amazing gift on this day of Pentecost and every day of this journey of faith together. Thanks be to God! Amen.

The Adventurous Ascension

By

a sermon on Luke 24:44-53
preached on June 1, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

I have a strange love affair with Pixar animated movies. It’s not really about the cartoons for me—it’s more about the wonderful way these folks can tell stories. One of my favorites, Wall-E, manages to begin the story and give us a pretty complete picture of the title character, a robotic trash compactor, without using a single word of dialogue in the first twenty minutes.

And then there’s Up, the story of an ornery and obstinate old man, a retired balloon salesman, facing the twilight of his life as everything changes around him. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so early in a movie in my life—after only ten minutes I was in tears as the brilliant storytellers at Pixar showed a photo album of the man’s life, as he finds and marries the love of his life, they grow in love and age together, and finally she dies before they can truly enjoy the adventurous life of travel that they dreamed of and saved up for throughout their life together. In that beautiful montage, we once again hear an incredible story without a single word being spoken, and its power and simplicity moved me to tears.

But the film’s title comes from the craziest conceit of the story. The city has built up around this old man’s house, but developers can’t convince him to sell until they trick him into being forcibly removed, supposedly for his own safety. Just as they come to take him away, a huge bundle of balloons pops out of the roof and lifts the house off its foundation into the sky, beginning a new journey for this man who had always sought but never found adventure before.

The Ascension of Christ

The Ascension of Christ
Hans Süss von Kulmbach

In a strange way, that’s much of what we find here in the story of the ascension—Jesus suddenly, surprisingly, unexpectedly rising up into heaven, floating away to begin a new adventure back where he had come from before coming to earth. But that’s where these stories diverge. While in the movie Up we rise up into the sky with the old man as his adventure begins, here in the story of the ascension we are the ones trapped on the ground, only looking up, wondering what is going on, staring at Jesus’ feet as he disappears into the clouds like the men depicted in the painting on our bulletin cover, challenged to sort out what to do now that Jesus has moved on and ascended into heaven.

Our reading from Luke’s gospel tells us that Jesus had prepared the disciples for this moment. Before they went with him out to the mountain and watched him ascend, he had give them two instructions. First, they were to fully and completely learn what he had been about on earth, and then they were to wait in the city so that they could receive power from on high. Surprisingly, after he blessed them, “withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven,” they for once actually did what he told them to do. They returned to Jerusalem to wait, and while they waited they praised God for all that they had seen and heard and experienced and believed.

So what are we to do here, stuck on the ground, watching Jesus and everything else go up? How are we to respond? What are we to do in our days of waiting? We could be like a lot of folks in the movie, the construction workers and others who were taken aback by everything they saw, calling out to the man as his house rose up, telling him that he must pop all his balloons and come back down now! Or we could be like some other people who when things start to change get scared and angry and threatened by the uncertainty and loneliness that come in transition and transformation. Or we could watch Jesus ascend into heaven and then just walk away, ignoring it, assuming that it doesn’t matter for us, or saying that because we don’t completely understand it we should just pretend like it never happened.

But I think there is a much better path for us. Back in the movie, there’s actually a stowaway in the house with the old man, an extremely annoying boy scout who had been trying to make the old man a friend and so was lurking on the front porch in hopes that the old man    might finally change his mind. As they go up together, their adventures are unlike what either one of them expected—not only do they manage to get beyond their annoyances and frustrations with each other, they end up exploring the new land where the house comes to rest, making a few new friends, and defeating a troubled and disgraced explorer who tries to exploit the beautiful and exotic land for himself.

So I think their path is actually instructive for us. I believe that our best response to the ascension of Jesus is to figure out what the adventure of our faith will be for us in the days ahead. That’s very much what the disciples did. They didn’t just sit idly by and keep staring off into the sky when Jesus ascended. They didn’t give up and run away. They didn’t cower in fear. Instead, they prepared themselves for an incredible journey because they knew that Jesus himself had gone on a new adventure, and they wanted some little part of it.

And so I believe the Ascension calls us to a new way of adventurous life and living, for Jesus Christ died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and the old boring way of life just can’t cut it anymore. The things we might try to do just aren’t enough to do this work justice. We can’t simply stand still with our chins in the air and our mouths wide open, gawking in amazement and confusion or waiting patiently and doing nothing until Jesus comes back. We can’t watch in frustration and walk away fearful of what is ahead. And we certainly can’t just confess this amazing thing as we do every Sunday and move on living exactly as we did before.

If in the ascension, we see that God’s reign is real, if we recognize that the power of the resurrection reaches beyond the tomb and out into the world, if we confess that in Jesus Christ God has already won all the battles we may choose to fight, if we acknowledge that in Christ all the things that we seek are already coming into being—if all this is true, then we must step out and act. In this adventurous ascension, we are called to claim something more for all people, to deepen our cries for justice, to broaden our prayers for peace, to sustain our work for new life, and to trust that God always goes before us to make a way for all these things to take hold in our lives and in our world.

In his ascension, Jesus calls us to join him on an adventurous journey, unafraid of where we might be led and maybe even a bit unsure of  where we are going but always certain that somehow we are going to join him in going up to the place where he goes before us. So as we celebrate the ascension once again, may God strengthen us for wherever we may go as we follow on this adventurous journey before us until that day when we join Jesus in going up. Alleluia! Amen.

Two Incredible Gifts

By

a sermon on John 14:15-23
preached on May 25, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Anytime I hear our reading this morning from the gospel of John, this song immediately comes into my head. While I have sung many of the great works of choral music, I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually sung this particular one—but I do know that its simplicity and beauty inspire me to think differently about these words and the two incredible gifts that they describe.

Jesus’ words to his disciples from this reading in the fourteenth chapter of John point us to two incredible gifts that Jesus left with us. First, they remind us of the gift of his commandments. Now Jesus never gave his disciples an explicit list of his commandments in the gospel of John. Unlike what our bulletin cover suggests this morning, Jesus did not come down from a mountain like Moses, carrying two stone tablets inscribed with ten explicit instructions from God. Instead, Jesus gave his disciples a single new commandment just a few moments before these words:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

So when he tells his disciples that if they love him they should keep his commandments, he is telling them to show the kind of love that he showed them. Jesus gifts them with love so that they might gift others with love too.

But what does this love look like? How are the disciples—and by extension us—to live out the gift of this love in their lives and their world? It’s easy to make this love some sort of abstraction, as a generic feeling of goodwill focused on humanity in general, with no application in present and real circumstances. Instead, as Nancy Ramsay reflects,

this love is the lived reality revealed in the life, relationships and actions of a simple Nazarene who looks and talks like them and lives simply among them. He feeds the hungry, touches lepers, heals the sick, and speaks and acts toward women with care and regard. Love is seen in his life as service and compassion. It is also seen in his fierce protests against those who abuse this vision of the value of each person and the importance of an ethic of mutual regard and care. Instead of power as domination, Jesus invites those who meet him to imagine power that has as its goal the well-being of all persons regardless of social status. (Nancy J. Ramsay, “Pastoral Perspective on John 14:15-21,” Feasting on the Word: Year A , Volume 2, p. 492.)

This love of Jesus, then, demands a new and different way of life that sets aside power for presence, that steps outside of our comfort zones to meet others in their places of need, and that upholds the fullness of life that God grants to each and every one of us.

As difficult as it may be at times to live out, Jesus’ gift of the commandment to love is good news. But the second gift of Jesus in these words is probably even better, for he does not leave us to live out this gift on our ability alone, as he knows that that will just make things worse. Instead, he brings us a second gift, “another Advocate, to be with [us] forever.” Now ultimately this is a little preview of the story that will come before us in two weeks, where that Advocate named the Holy Spirit shows up on the day of Pentecost and surprises the disciples with all sorts of unexpected gifts, but even the promise of this gift here is important. This gift makes it clear that the disciples—and us too—do not face the challenges of living out this commandment to love on our own. Not only are we surrounded by others who are also challenged to love one another, we are supported by this continuing presence of God with us. This Spirit of truth may not be immediately visible—the world cannot see this Advocate, after all—but we will know that the Spirit is with us, and we will not be orphaned, wondering if anyone will journey with us or left alone to figure out the way on our own.

So Jesus also names this Spirit as “Advocate.” Now this is actually only a partial translation of the original Greek word here, “Paraclete.” That one word seems to come from a legal background, and so it implies other meanings too, like intercessor, helper, comforter, and counselor. This Paraclete will continue the work that Jesus began, embody his presence with the disciples after he is gone, continue to teach them when he can no longer do so, and bear witness to God in Christ each and every day.

So the gift of the Holy Spirit, described first by Jesus here as the Paraclete and later witnessed coming in power on the day of Pentecost, guides, directs, and supports us as we live out the gift of love we know in Christ in our world. This Spirit is so intimately involved in everything about us that we can easily miss out on all the Spirit is doing! Our Brief Statement of Faith describes the work of this Spirit very well in modern terms:

We trust in God the Holy Spirit,
everywhere the giver and renewer of life.
The Spirit justifies us by grace through faith,
sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor,
and binds us together with all believers
in the one body of Christ, the Church.
The same Spirit
who inspired the prophets and apostles
rules our faith and life in Christ through Scripture,
engages us through the Word proclaimed,
claims us in the waters of baptism,
feeds us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation,
and calls women and men to all ministries of the Church.
In a broken and fearful world
the Spirit gives us courage
to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior,
to unmask idolatries in Church and culture,
to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.
In gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit,
we strive to serve Christ in our daily tasks
and to live holy and joyful lives,
even as we watch for God’s new heaven and new earth,
praying, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’

Ultimately, these words assure us that the gift of the Spirit as Paraclete will bring us comfort and hope, not because we need to feel good but to challenge us to walk in a new and different way, to live in the kind of love that Jesus himself offered, and to bear that kind of love to one another and all the world.

These are two incredible gifts in Jesus’ commandments and in the Holy Spirit. They are given with grace and mercy beyond measure, without restriction or limitation. They come in unusual and surprising ways to bring us life and for us to share with others. And they come to transform us and our world because of God’s abiding and continuing presence among us. So may we be ready to receive these two incredible gifts, to follow Jesus’ commandments to live in love with one another and to welcome the Holy Spirit each and every day, so that we might share them with anyone and everyone until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.

The Way, the Truth, and the Life

By

a sermon on John 14:1-14
preached on May 18, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

The church I was baptized in had a very formal sanctuary, with a large traditional chancel area, big, high windows with clear glass to let in lots of light, and a beautiful stained glass window in the front of the sanctuary, all matched with a very simple, maybe even bland, color scheme that was designed to keep the congregation’s focus on God. Below the stained glass window, were some words that were probably among the first words I could ever read

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

These nine simple words of Jesus stand at the center of our reading from the gospel of John this morning, but their impact has been felt well beyond these fourteen verses. For centuries, some Christians have used these words and a few other passages of scripture to support a claim that one way of religious belief is superior to all others. In our day and age, and especially in this city, we are surrounded by so many different varieties of religious practice and spiritual experience that do not line up well with the immediate appearance of these words. The standard practice for Christians in such moments has been to boldly and brashly proclaim the gospel, insisting that all other ways must be set aside so as to follow this way, this truth, and this life, and that those who do not do so stand in eternal judgment.

But nowadays, that approach doesn’t work very well. When was the last time you saw the bold and brash proclamation offered by an angry street preacher actually convince someone to take up Christianity? Does it really work in our world to attack the beliefs and practices of other religions in hopes that their followers might take up our own? Some people insist that we must maintain this kind of exclusivist proclamation, standing firm on these words of Jesus to the absolute exclusion of everyone who does not fully embrace them as their own. But it might be worth thinking about them a little differently. It might be worth wondering if God might just work in ways unknown, through other religious and spiritual paths to show God’s love—the way, the truth, and the life in Christ—to the whole world. So what is the most effective way to live out and proclaim this gospel message of the way, the truth, and the life in this time and place where we see so many different varieties of belief and practice?

I for one think our focus on these words of Jesus turns far too quickly to others. We easily give in to the temptation to use these words to sort out the salvation of others before we think carefully about what they might be saying to us. I think there may be more going on in these nine words for us than we might first expect. They might be less a statement of required belief and instead an affirmation of faith and confidence in God’s love that matters first and foremost for our own lives.

If we zoom out a little from them and put them in their immediate context, this view becomes a little clearer. Jesus didn’t start out this discussion with his disciples trying to convince them of any sort of theological point—he was simply trying to prepare them for the time when he would not be physically and personally present with them. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he says. All that follows these opening words, even those nine simple words painted on the wall of my childhood church that have so often been used to exclude people from the fullness of God’s love, is a part of Jesus trying to offer the disciples some comfort and hope for the time when he would no longer be with them. His call to belief, his promise of going to prepare a place for them, and his assurance to them that they know the way to get there are all at their core a statement of his care and concern for their life and faith when he is no longer with them.

Then, when the disciples start asking questions that show their discomfort, uncertainty, and anxiety, he keeps assuring them that they have all that they need. They have the way, the truth, and the life in him. They don’t need to worry about how to find their way to God or how they will know God, because they know God in him. They have nothing less than God’s own words offered in his life. And in their relationship with him they have a relationship with God that is beyond compare.

So maybe we have to take a different look at these words from John’s gospel. Instead of using them to condemn others, maybe we should hear them calling us to deeper confidence about how God is working among us. Instead of using them to exclude those who have different varieties of religious belief and practice, maybe we should consider them as offering us hope that God will work for the wholeness and restoration of all creation—and even us, too. And instead of using them solely to build up one way of understanding of how God works in our world, maybe we should use them as the basis for sharing the joy of how we see God working in us and through us even as we listen for how God is working in and through others, too.

When we hear Jesus’ words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” we are called to deepen our relationship with God in Christ, to examine our lives for places where we have allowed something else to be the way, to commit ourselves anew to discovering the truth that comes from the one Word of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ, to look for our own life in nothing less and nothing more than the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord. And when we relate to those of other spiritual traditions—and even those of our own tradition who might disagree with us!—we are called to tell the stories of how this way, this truth, and this life has been lived out in our relationships with God, not so much so that they might change their spiritualities and practices to match ours but so that together we all might gain greater insight into how God is working to shine light into our weary world and so make it just a little brighter for everyone.

None other than Billy Graham, the greatest American evangelist of the twentieth century, offered something of this view (video here):

I think that everybody that loves or knows Christ, whether they are conscious of it or not, they are members of the body of Christ. . . .

[God] is calling people out of the world for his name, whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world or the Christian world, or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they have been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their hearts that they need something that they don’t have, and they turn to the only light they have, and I think that they are saved and they are going to be with us in heaven.

When we listen to the stories of others, whether it be the testimony of another faithful Christian, a devout Muslim who pauses to pray five times a day, a practicing Jew who finds delight in Torah observance, keeping Kosher, and pausing obediently for the Sabbath, a Buddhist spiritual teacher who has found great inner peace, a scientist who inquires into the mysteries of our created world, or even one who does not practice a particular religion but who tries to live with a moral and ethical center, in all these stories we can gain a better understanding of how God is at work in our world making all things new. In our listening and living with people in this way, we do not deny the words of Jesus so much as we honor them all the more as we recognize that God’s ways are not our ways, that our understanding of truth cannot encompass the whole of God’s truth, and that God’s promise of life cannot be restricted by our human limitations.

So may we follow this way, this truth, and this life, this man who challenged us to follow his way that led to the cross, this divine one who offered us a glimpse of God’s truth in all that he said and did, this Lord who makes it clear that all life is being made new, so that all we say and all we do show this way, this truth, and this life each and every day. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Our Divine Companion

By

a sermon on Psalm 23
preached on May 11, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

The other night at Bible study, as we were looking at the story of Paul’s dramatic encounter with Jesus in a blaze of light on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus, someone asked a really important question that I suspect has crossed many more minds before: Why doesn’t Jesus appear to us like that anymore? Why is the Bible filled with stories of God appearing so directly to people, yet so few of us experience such a gift for ourselves? It’s a really wonderful question, yet we couldn’t find a particularly satisfying answer. In this day and age, we’re left with these biblical stories of encounters with God, stories of people from the past who have felt the fullness of God’s presence, yet we ourselves so often struggle to feel it. The Bible promises us that God will be with us, no more clearly than in today’s reading of Psalm 23, yet we still reasonably wonder how God will do it, how God will be our divine companion in these days without us knowing God’s direct and real presence.

These words of Psalm 23 are quite likely the most familiar words of scripture in our world, reaching across the boundaries of time and place to strengthen the lives of people of faith everywhere. These beautiful and comforting words come upon our minds and hearts and lips in times of uncertainty, confusion, pain, hurt, and sorrow as a strange and wonderful embodiment of God’s presence in our world where God’s distance often seems so strong. While we question how God doesn’t show up in the same way anymore, these words of scripture in Psalm 23 give us a sense of the possibilities of God’s presence in our midst.

But I’m honestly a bit surprised at how meaningful these words remain for us in these days. We are city folk, not just in New York City but all around the world. In 2010, the percentage of the world’s population living in urban areas surpassed 50% for the first time, although in the United States, we’ve been over 50% urban for nearly 100 years and now over 80% of us live in urban areas. Even so, the predominant image of God’s presence for so many of us is this one so deeply rooted in the rural, agricultural image of the shepherd. On top of that, when you get down to it, shepherds are not all that personally present with the sheep. They certainly know their flocks well, but there are only a few shepherds for the entire flock of sheep, so there are most certainly moments when any particular sheep is very distant and disconnected from the shepherd. So if you start to think about it more carefully, there may be less comfort in these words than we would care to think.

It is quite likely, then, that what makes us feel connected to these beautiful and wonderful words is less the actual image of the shepherd and more then the description of what the shepherd does. The divine one described here as a shepherd is an amazing companion, beyond the best imaginable spouse or friend, even more than the best cat or dog. This companion on the journey first provides all that we need, wherever the journey may lead. If that weren’t already enough, like those gifted mothers and mother-figures we celebrate today, this divine companion leads us out of our confusion and into those beautiful and simple places where life makes sense again, into green pastures, still waters, and right paths where we can pause to know the fullness of God’s comfort.

This doesn’t mean that we completely avoid pain and hurt and sorrow, though. There is no promise to avoid suffering here, but the psalmist is secure nonetheless. When we “walk through the darkest valley,” there is nothing to fear. Our divine companion is there with us, guiding us and directing us, keeping all that would hurt us or harm us at bay. In fact, when we least expect it, in the presence of our enemies, our divine companion prepares a table for us, inviting us to share a feast beyond compare and to enjoy blessings so abundant that they overflow. And at the end of the day, when we look back upon our journey, our divine companion assures us that goodness and mercy will have been with us all along the way and that we will dwell secure in the presence of God each and every day.

These are the things that give us comfort from Psalm 23, the promise of a divine companion who will provide all that we need, lead us into places that make us whole, keep us safe amidst all trouble, feed us at a table of abundance, bring us through goodness and mercy, and stay with us each and every day. Even when our increasingly urban world doesn’t quite need or understand shepherds anymore, we can still appreciate the gift of one who bring us all this. But that first question still applies a bit: Since God is no longer directly among us in Christ, how does God appear to us now? In what form does God bring us all these things?

We’re not likely to find a particularly human shepherd who does all this, and God doesn’t always stand up to be identified in doing these things. Even so, we can be confident that a shepherd, our divine companion, will journey with us along the way and show us God’s presence in places and ways and people that we may not understand or expect. The presence of God is with us in those who are not afraid to walk with us along the journey, whether the pastures be green or gray, whether the waters be still or stormy, whether the path be easy or hard. The presence of God is with us in those who help us to confront the fearful moments in life, who keep evil and uncertainty at a distance, who give us perspective and offer us hope. And the presence of God is with us in those who show us mercy and grace in measures small and large, who prepare feasts of plenteous food and drink, who give us safety and comfort and love for living wherever we go.

While God may not appear to us in such a distinctive form anymore, I believe that we can see God no less clearly now in people who show us these things, in people who walk even a little way with us along the journey, in friends who are unafraid to walk through both the green pastures and the dark valleys, in sisters and brothers who sit with us in the presence of those who seem to be set against us, in companions who make us feel at home amidst anything and everything that we might face. God is our shepherd in ways beyond how God seems to have worked in days past, beyond the limitations of a rural and agricultural image of a shepherd, beyond our expectations of human friendship, acting in and through those who walk with us each and every day to show us that God’s goodness and mercy really do follow us all the days of our lives.

With this shepherd going with us, working in us and around us, what do we have to fear? How can we ignore the presence of those who walk with us even a little way on the journey? How do we deepen our trust in this God whose faithfulness is sure and whose guidance is certain? Whatever comes our way, it is our gift and our challenge to trust our divine companion to go with us, working in the people around us, known and unknown, to guide us through all that threatens to harm us, support us through the difficult and joyous moments, comfort us in every grief and sorrow, feed us amidst all uncertainty, and assure us of God’s mercy and peace and hope each and every day.

So may the Lord our shepherd, our divine companion, walk with us each and every day, guiding us through all uncertainty and fear, bringing us mercy and peace and goodness, and showing us the fullness of God’s love wherever we may dwell all our days. Thanks be to God! Amen.