Scripture
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“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
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Last week, we heard the people’s request for a king. Their current leader was getting old, and they saw no good alternatives on the horizon.
So they asked for a change. A new kind of government, and a new kind of governor.
But they only wanted so much change. They still wanted a charismatic leader. Someone they felt could command the masses, keep them safe, fight as one of them. I promise I’m still just talking about Israel.
But power changes people, God warns. Your king will end up caring more for himself than for his people. He will give your wealth to his courtiers and make it seem like a win. He will send you to war while he stays safe on the sidelines.
You’ll end up afraid of your king. You wanted him to save you, and instead you’ll have to be saved from him. You will pray for help, and you will feel trapped.
It’s a picture full of doom.
But God is still their Deliverer, rejected kingship or no. And God will still save them.
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Now, the kingship of Saul is a sermon on its own, but here’s the short version:
He is a capable, if constantly uncertain, military leader. He wins often, but he is constantly trying to confirm his strategy by using prayer and sacrifice as an oracle.
On the face of it, the story says his problem is that he sacrifices wrong. But many think it’s that he sacrifices for the wrong reasons. He seeks God’s wisdom—that’s all well and good—and yet, he wants a guarantee. (Don’t we all sometimes?) After one too many missteps, God decides to trade the king who cannot trust without proof for a new man “after God’s own heart.”
Here’s the thing about David. He isn’t special because he will be perfect.
Most of the times that God saves us, it is through imperfect human beings who falter and fail. And David will, often. Yet there is something about him that is close to God’s heart anyway. And that, God can work with.
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“God makes me lie down in green pastures, leads me beside the still waters, restores my soul.”
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We talk a lot in church about sheep and shepherds. You’ll hear how sheep are helpless and need a protector. Or how they’re smelly and need someone to love them without judgment. You’ll hear how easily they wander away, how quickly they follow the masses, how much they need someone to guide them in the right direction.
We don’t often talk about shepherds in the same way.
But the truth is, shepherds were just as vulnerable. See, one might have to leave the group to chase down a wayward sheep alone. A few teenagers might have to face down a wolf or a lion with a makeshift weapon and a hope for the best. There is a reason that Joseph’s brothers’ story was plausible—shepherding was a dangerous profession.
And at the same time, it could be quite a peaceful one. You had hours to just be. You could sit outside and watch the seasons change. Feel the grass and the breeze and the rain on your skin. Slow down and think and pray. It’s probably no accident it was with the flocks that Moses was first feels open enough to see the presence of God.
A shepherd was the kind of king God could work with. Someone who had a chance to defy the odds of human error, to truly let God “lead him in paths of righteousness for his Name’s sake.”
God needed someone who was unassuming, yet confident in God. A leader who was still willing to do the work. A youngest son who wasn’t even invited to the sacrifice by his own family—but who nevertheless becomes the guest of honor for God.
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This is the strange dichotomy of Christian ministry. We are both honored and ordinary, servant and leader, sheep and shepherd. We are the dust of this earth and the breath of God in one body.
We need God desperately. We need peace and guidance and something worth putting our trust in. We need to be challenged to sit at God’s feast even with our enemies. Even with the kind of king that God warned the people about, the kind they wanted to be rid of.
We won’t be perfect. We will falter, and we will fail, as we try to be the body of Christ. But, thanks be to God, we don’t have to be perfect for God to work through us.
We just have to be willing to sit by the still waters and listen for God’s voice.
May it be so.
Amen.