Rhythm

Rhythm

Psalm 23:2-3a

March 17, 2019 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I’ve always been a musical sort of person. As a kid, we had one of those big turntable consoles, and I would stand there for long periods of time, staring over into the console at the records spinning around and listening to the music. Because I’ve always been around and loved music, rhythm is something that has always come naturally to me, but I also know it’s true that rhythm does not come naturally to everyone. When we were practicing for our high school graduation, we were told to step on the beat of the “Pomp and Circumstance” song. Right foot, left foot, and so on. You know how it goes. You follow the rhythm. And my friend Brian really tried. He wanted to step on the beat, but he just couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, his feet would not cooperate. All through practice, he struggled, and it did not get any better on the day of graduation. Yes, he made it to the platform for the ceremony, but it wasn’t easy nor was it pretty. I was left thinking, “How can someone’s rhythm be so off that they step wrong every single time?”

And then this part of Psalm 23 hits me in the face. These three lines in this shepherd psalm describe a rhythm to life, a rhythm designed by God for the flourishing of his creation, a rhythm that we often miss or find it hard to follow. This rhythm is actually another piece of the puzzle that is the good life. That’s what we’re looking at during this Lenten season—the good life. What is it? What does it look like? And, perhaps most importantly, how can we find it? To answer those questions, we’re walking very slowly through the 23rd psalm, a song written centuries ago by David, the shepherd boy who became Israel’s greatest king. Out of his early experiences of being a shepherd, tending a flock, David wrote this song using the imagery of shepherding to talk about his relationship with God. God is his shepherd, David sings. And God is our shepherd. We are his sheep; we belong to him. If he is our shepherd, then he is our owner, our master, and he knows best how life is to be lived. That’s what David begins to describe in the verses we read this morning.

These verses contain some of the most comforting and beloved images in the whole whole psalm. “He makes me lie down in green pastures,” David says, “he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul” (23:2-3a). Don’t those words just sort of fill you with peace? These are the words, like I said last week, most people want to hear at a funeral. There is a rustic comfort in these simple phrases. But if God does these things for us, his sheep, a David says, then why do we live so comfort-less? Why do we live so frantically? Well, there are many answers to that question, but at least part of the answer, Biblically speaking, is that we’ve got the rhythm wrong. How does your day usually go? You get up, get ready, go to work or get involved in activities, then come home, eat dinner, maybe watch some TV and then go to bed, and that’s the end of the day, right? While that is our normal rhythm, that’s not the Biblical rhythm. From creation, evening was meant to be the start of the day. First, you rest. First, you sleep. First, you trust God to take care of things, and then you get up and do your work. Evening to morning, Genesis says. It’s why the Jewish sabbath observance begins at sundown, not at sunrise. I know it sounds crazy to think of the day like that, it’s all backwards. We’re used to running all day, wearing ourselves out, then collapsing into bed exhausted with little thought of God. The Biblical rhythm instead calls us to trust God first, rest, then to head into the day surrounded by his presence. And that’s the rhythm that comes through in David’s description of the shepherd’s day.

First beat: “He makes me lie down in green pastures” (23:2a). He calls me to rest. This was, after all, the point of the Sabbath, one day out of seven where we do nothing. It’s the most-broken command in our culture today, even though it’s one of the “top ten.” How often do you take a whole day to rest, to do nothing productive, to focus on God? I know I don’t do it very often. My Sabbath is supposed to be Friday, but I often fill that day with chores and errands, no matter how much my beautiful wife tells me to rest. And, here’s a secret I probably shouldn’t tell: she’s not any better at Sabbath-ing than I am! Years ago, she was given a book with the title When I Relax, I Feel Guilty. When she opened it to the first chapter, skipping the introduction, the author had written this: “If you just skipped the introduction, this book is for you.” We’re not good at Sabbath-ing, and yet God calls us to rest because he knows if we don’t, we won’t be any good for anything or anyone else (cf. Williams, Communicator’s Commentary: Psalms 1-72, pg. 184). “He makes me lie down in green pastures.” The word there for “green pastures” means “fresh shoots.” It’s a picture of a lush meadow, a place with soft grass, a place of comfort and peace. The week before last, I was gone a lot. I had meetings in Indianapolis that required me to stay there two nights, and then two other nights that week I was in Merom working at the Chrysalis Flight. I don’t sleep well when I’m not at home; I like my own bed. At Merom in particular I found myself not sleeping well. The beds there, let’s just say, leave something to be desired. The first night at Merom, I couldn’t get comfortable and fall asleep. The second night, the heat turned off so I was cold and couldn’t sleep. Let’s just say, I was not sad to have to come home on Saturday night and sleep in my own bed! But that’s the image I get when I think about lush meadows and soft grass: my own bed. My own comfy bed. God leads us to rest and to rest well. “He makes me lie down in green pastures.”

Now, there are four things sheep need to rest well. If these four conditions are not met, sheep will not lie down and they will not rest. Sheep must be free from fear, free from friction with others in the flock, free from pests like flies and parasites, and free from hunger (Keller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, pg. 23). And in every one of those situations, the presence of the shepherd is often enough to let the sheep know that all is well. The same thing is true for us. We, too, rest better and find “green pastures” more satisfying if we can live free from fear, free from friction, free from pests and free from hunger. Let’s think about these four just briefly and how our good shepherd provides for us in those situations. First of all, it’s no secret that there is much to be fearful of in our world. Wars, an uncertain economy, robbery, murders, violence in the schools and in our neighborhoods—even the political landscape causes people fear. When I was a kid, I struggled with a lot of fear silently, and I don’t know why because my home life was stable and my parents were supportive. I had a great childhood, but there was this undeniable quiet fear that something bad was going to happen. One day, though, while skimming my parents’ bookshelf, I came across a copy of Billy Graham’s book Peace With God. Now, I already was a Christian, but as I read Graham’s book, the truth that Christ was with me finally penetrated my stubborn shell. I can’t say the fear entirely left that moment, but something began that ended in me being more free from fear than I had ever been. I was reminded of the truth that Paul wrote to his young friend Timothy: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment” (2 Timothy 1:7, CSB). I can’t say I don’t still fear at times, but I do so far less than I once did. To find God’s full rest, sheep must be free from fear.

Sheep also need freedom from friction. You’ve all known the restlessness that comes when there is a broken relationship between you and someone else, especially if that someone is a family member or a close friend. In every flock, sheep have what is called a “butting order,” sort of like a pecking order but with less pecking. If the dominant sheep in the flock finds another sheep in her place, she will head-butt the other sheep out of the way (sort of like Sheldon and his “spot”). When this happens, the sheep in the flock will not lie down because they want to be able to defend themselves and their place in the flock. The conflict becomes detrimental to the flock. Now, I don’t know how you deal with a stubborn sheep, but in the case of our “flock,” Jesus has given us clear direction. When there is conflict, when there is brokenness, we’re supposed to work at resolving it. We’re going to focus on conflict or how Christians fight in a few weeks, but you can read about the process Jesus prescribes in Matthew 18. For this morning, it’s enough to say that it’s our calling to heal brokenness, to be “repairers of the breach” (Isaiah 58:12, KJV); Paul puts it this way: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18).

Then there is the need for freedom from parasites and pests. For sheep, this comes from nature, but for us, the parasites and pests in our lives look like addictions, bad habits, or even people who lead us down wrong paths. Freedom from those things may require joining a group like Celebrate Recovery, or it may require us to break away from certain destructive relationships. It might require us to hit “unfriend” on that Facebook post. I don’t do that very often, but there have been a couple of times where what someone was posting was not helpful to my soul. I found myself getting frustrated or even angry when I would see what they were saying, and to be able to find the “green pastures” that my shepherd wanted to lead me to, I needed to distance myself from all of that. You might also, because rest requires freedom from parasites.

And it requires freedom from hunger. Now, I’m not just talking about the late-night snack, though I do enjoy those. For the sheep, of course, it’s about physical food, but Jesus prescribed a different kind of hunger for his sheep: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). Of course, that kind of hunger is bound to go unmet, but the follower of Jesus is called to pursue righteousness in whatever place you find yourself. Maybe you won’t find yourself completely satisfied, but can you say, as you go to rest, that you are seeking to do everything you can, everything in your power, to spread righteousness, to do the right thing, to live the way Jesus would have you live? If not, you will try to sleep while still being hungry; you will not be satisfied if you truly want to follow Jesus. He came to bring righteousness to the world. So—freedom from fear, freedom from friction, freedom from parasites and freedom from hunger. When these four requirements are met, sheep can lay down and rest in peace, and that’s what God desires for us as well. “He makes me lie down in green pastures.” That’s the first beat of the shepherd’s rhythm.

The second beat, then, is found in the next phrase: “He leads me beside quiet waters” (23:2b). The body of an animal like a sheep is about seventy percent water; the sheep needs water to survive, just as we do. It’s not an option; it’s an essential. But not just any water; the sheep needs clean, good water. Often that comes from streams and pools that the shepherd knows; other times it comes primarily from the dew that is on the grass in the morning. If the weather is not too hot, sheep can go for months on just the water found on the grass in the mornings. Their normal habit is to get up and begin eating, begin nourishing themselves (cf. Keller 39-42). When we translate this to our life with God, we’re of course not talking about physical water, though we certainly need a lot of that since our bodies are about sixty percent water. But that image is used throughout Scripture to describe the nourishment that we get from God, the nourishment we need for our souls. And that we find by reading the Scriptures and by praying, communicating with God. The second beat in our rhythm is spending time with God through spiritual disciplines.

I was in college before I really learned or remember hearing about spiritual disciplines. I read the Bible before, but never with any intentionality. It was while I was in InterVarsity and part of a growing church that I began to hear about daily reading and studying the Bible and praying more than just once in a while. Honestly, I have to say here that I’m so thankful for our children’s and youth ministries here who are teaching our kids at an early age all about that and helping them learn how. That has made and will continue to make a real difference in the lives and faith of our kids and youth. Hats off to Ginger and Jess for that. I’ve not always done the same things in my devotional life, and I think as our needs change we find our practices changing. What works in this season of life may not feed you in another, but right now I’ve settled into a routine that is working for this point in my life. I find that for my personality it’s best to spend time with God in the morning. When I first wake up, before I even get out of bed, I spend some time in prayer, offering my life to God and lifting up my concerns. Some days I do a lot of talking and on other days I remember I need to shut up so God can speak to me. Then, once I get out of bed, I have a couple of devotionals I read and then I engage the Scriptures by reading and writing in a journal—a journal, by the way, with a Stormtrooper from Star Wars on the cover. (Yeah, that fact is not relevant, but it had been a while since I had worked in a Star Wars reference.) In those practices, I find God leading me beside quiet waters. And when I don’t get to engage in those practices, I find my day more than a little bit off.

Those are not the only practices we can engage in to be led by quiet waters. Especially during the season of Lent, some folks like to take on or try a new discipline. Richard Foster really wrote the classic book on spiritual disciplines, called appropriately Celebration of Discipline, and he goes through sixteen different practices, things like solitude, simplicity, confession, worship, celebration and fasting. The point is to find a practice that causes you to be spiritually prepared for each day. But we won’t do that until we long for God. There is an old story about a man who climbed a mountain because he wanted to talk to a spiritual guru. When he arrived at the guru’s house, he asked the wise man, “How do I find God?” The wise man got up without saying a word and walked down the path; the inquiring man followed him. When they arrived at a pool of water, the guru grabbed the man’s head and forced it under the water. He held it there as the man struggled and finally, when it seemed like he was going to die, the guru let him go and brought him up out of the water. As the man sat on the shore gasping in lungfuls of air, the wise man told him, “When you want God as much as you just wanted air, you will find him.” St. Augustine put it this way: “Thou hast made us for Thyself and our souls are restless, searching, ’til they find their rest in Thee” (qtd. in Keller 41). When we desire God, when we long for God, he will lead us beside quiet waters.

The third beat of our rhythm, then, is this: “He refreshes my soul” (23:3a). The word for “soul” there is nephesh, and while “soul” is a good translation, it doesn’t refer to just some “spiritual” part of us. “Soul” is not just some eternal, ghostly part of us that exists apart from the body after death. God made us as a whole, physical and spiritual, and does not separate or differentiate between the two. Or, as a seminary classmate of mine put it, “We don’t have a soul; we are a soul” (Russell, The Psalms, Part I, pg. 103). As we put ourselves in the rhythm of the good life, God refreshes all of us, our whole self, what we might call our body, mind and spirit. I think that’s at least part of what is behind the Old Testament command (that Jesus affirmed) to love God with our heart, soul and strength (cf. Deuteronomy 6:5; Luke 10:27-28). When we connect with God with our whole being, we find ourselves renewed, refreshed to use the language of the psalm, and able to live the life he calls us to live.

Sometimes a sheep becomes what is called “cast” or sometimes it’s called being “cast down.” Basically, it’s when a sheep gets turned upside down, laying on its back with its feet in the air. When that happens, a sheep cannot right itself on its own; it will lay there on its back, perhaps bleating a little bit but mostly just thrashing around in “frightened frustration.” A cast sheep is particularly vulnerable to attack and, if left in that position for even a short amount of time in hot weather, can die because the blood supply gets cut off to its extremities. Most often, a sheep ends up cast because it has wandered off from the flock. It’s gone off on its own and gotten in trouble.

A good shepherd keeps his eye on the flock to make sure that none of the sheep have gone missing, and if he discovers that one has wandered off, he will hurry to find it because of the danger of it becoming cast. So perhaps you remember a parable Jesus told; it’s reported in Matthew 18 and goes like this: “If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish” (18:12-14). Why does the shepherd leave behind ninety-nine sheep just to look for one? Some would call the loss of one sheep an “acceptable loss.” But not to a good shepherd. A good shepherd has a monetary investment in each sheep, to be sure, but more than that, a good shepherd cares about the welfare of the sheep. He knows a wandered off sheep has likely become cast and could be near death if he doesn’t go and put the sheep back right-side up (cf. Keller 50-54).

That’s why Jesus compares it to God caring whether or not one of his “little ones” perishes. God, the good shepherd, knows that we wander off from our faith from time to time. The old hymn says, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.” We get “cast,” upside down, headed the wrong way and sometimes even into situations that could lead to at least spiritual death if not physical death. We need our good shepherd to come alongside and put us right-side up. The author of Hebrews said we get tripped up by sin because it so “easily entangles” (12:1). Sin is a trap that gets between our feet and trips us up and before we know it, we are a cast sheep.

I love the Olympics, and some of the best stories come out of those games. I thought of this story when I thought about the way we stumble and fall, the ways we become cast sheep, and how God intervenes. Take a listen.

That is a parable, an image of what God does for us. We fall, we stumble, and God refreshes our soul. He picks us up. No matter how we have come to be a cast sheep, God comes alongside us and helps us up, enables us to walk, maybe even run, again. God is the good shepherd, watching out for his sheep, enabling us to get back in the race, in the rhythm, where he calls us to be. God sends friends to pick us up, he sends special moments in life to right our soul. He refreshes our soul. There have been many times in my life when I have been a cast sheep, but one in particular came to my mind this week. My first appointment was as an associate pastor, and then after four years I was appointed to a church where I was on my own. Literally on my own. No staff other than someone who came in and cleaned the church once a week. I have to tell you, I didn’t have the best work habits in those days, and I got to the point, not too long into the appointment, where I was tired, worn out, just weary. I had signed up some time before to go to a retreat that the Annual Conference was putting on, and I honestly did not want to go. I had too much to do, I was tired, and on and on the excuses went. But I had paid the money and I couldn’t get it back, so I went. I was gone for two days, and when I got home, nearly as soon as I got out of the car, I was approached by someone in the church wanting this or that. The busy-ness and the cares had not gone away while I was gone, but I commented to Cathy later that it didn’t wear me out me like before. In the two days I was gone, God had taken this cast sheep and turned me right side up again. He had refreshed my soul—even at a Conference retreat!

God renews our soul in many ways. Sometimes it happens as we read a good book. Or it happens over coffee with a good friend. It happens as we reconnect with nature on a hike or a camping trip. It can even happen as we sit in traffic and turn our thoughts toward God. (Keep your eyes open, though, if you do that!) But getting in step with the rhythm this psalm describes is what will lead us there: get good rest, spend time in God’s presence, and be refreshed so that you can live the life God intends for you to live.

So, as we prepare to pray this morning, let me ask you: in what way have you found yourself upside down, maybe today, maybe this week, maybe this life? Are you a cast sheep? Do you need for your good shepherd to come, pick you up and restore the rhythm of life? Or maybe you’ve never been in the midst of this rhythm and you long to know what that’s like. He is waiting, he is here, and he is willing to give you all that is promised in this psalm. He is willing and waiting to lead you into the good life. Hear these promises again as we go to prayer: “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul” (23:1-3a). Thanks be to God, the good shepherd. Let’s pray.