If I were to ask you what you think is the most comforting image for God in the Bible, what would it be? Shepherd, right. And if I were to ask you the most comforting scripture? Psalm 23, sure. I seldom do a funeral that we don’t use the Shepherd Psalm, and always from the King James Version, don’t you know?!

Consider the image for a moment. Throughout the Psalms we often get what one scholar has called “homeland security language.” God is our shield, our fortress, our rock, our stronghold. If David would have started this psalm with The Lord is my king, we might have looked to God for a kind of political security. If he had said The Lord is my commander, we might have looked to God for a kind of military security. But the man who was himself a king and a commander goes back to his boyhood and says The Lord is my shepherd.

It’s a metaphor full of toughness and tenderness both. God is a good shepherd who looks after the welfare of the sheep. And notice, not all of them but each of them. David doesn’t speak in generalities about how all the sheep feel about the shepherd; he tells us how he feels. The Lord is MY shepherd, I shall not want. And when Jesus tells us the Parable of the Lost Sheep in Luke 15, he says that if one wanders away from the flock, the good shepherd leaves behind the ninety-nine and brings the wandering one home.

The late Andrew Roy was a missionary to China who opted to remain after the Communist takeover in 1950. He was eventually arrested, and his interrogators attacked his religion by noting that Jesus told of a shepherd who left “the flock” and went after the one that was lost. The communists called that foolish and irresponsible. The collective mass was all that mattered. Roy defended Jesus by pointing out that when the good shepherd in the parable goes after the lost sheep he gives ultimate security to the rest of the flock. Each sheep thereby knows, If I get lost, he will come after me. On the other hand, if the shepherd cares only for the herd and does not put himself out for the lost sheep, each sheep is left insecure, thinking, If I fall one step behind, he will leave me to die.[1]

(Any Marine will tell you the same thing about not leaving behind a comrade-in-arms on the battlefield.)

God the Good Shepherd does not leave us to die. In fact, even when we walk right to the brink of death, we need not fear, for God is with us. With the shepherd’s rod, God will fight off our foes and will discipline us to bring us back into safety. And with the shepherd’s staff, God will nudge us and herd us in the right direction. Like a good shepherd, God leads us to what is good for us—green pastures, not brown grass or weeds. Like a good shepherd, God will lead us to still waters, where we can drink without fear of falling in and drowning. Like a good shepherd, God will restore us to life and see to it that we are well cared for in every way.

It shouldn’t surprise us then that when Jesus cast about for an image to describe his relationship to us, he chose the good shepherd for himself. Of course, we might not pick up on just what a big move that was on his part, given that only God was thought of that way. Jesus had the gumption to pick up on this well-ingrained notion in the Jewish consciousness that the Lord is our shepherd, and he applied it to himself as if he and the Lord are one. Which is partly the point, isn’t it?

Jesus wants us to know that the way he treats us is the same as the way God treats us. Jesus and his Father form a united front in caring for the sheep as the Good Shepherd. Jesus has, in effect, gone to school on Psalm 23. He no doubt knew it by heart, from the King David Version, I’m sure. From it, he learned what kind of savior he would be. He would be a Shepherd Savior: he would lay down his life for the sheep; he would seek and save those that are lost; he would guide us in right paths; he would stand in the way of all that threatens us; and he would walk alongside us in times of trial. Jesus put meat on the metaphor. We can count on him to be our Good Shepherd throughout this life and until we dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

It would be enough for us to stop there now and give thanks. But let me ask you to make an imaginative leap. In the course of natural life a sheep cannot become a shepherd; but, in the world of the spiritual imagination, where we live just as much of the time, we already know that a shepherd can become a sheep. The same Bible that calls Jesus the Good Shepherd calls him the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, and the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. So if mixing metaphors is possible for Jesus, why not for us? Let me ask you, do you really want to be a sheep all your life when you can become a shepherd?

Before you answer, understand it will cost you. My married daughter, Cameron, e-mailed the other day that she hates North Carolina and wants to move back to Texas. Seems they have a state income tax there and the new grownups actually owed tax to the state and federal governments! Can you imagine? They didn’t get the refunds they had become accustomed to as children. Go figure.

Sheep don’t pay taxes; shepherds do. Sheep live by their appetites, wandering with heads down at the smell of green grass or the sight of still water. They are pure consumers, never satisfied, always wanting more. They look out only for themselves. Shepherds’ lives are not their own; they are tied to the sheep. They live to keep the sheep safe and sound. They stay alert to anything that threatens the flock. They show no mercy to those who would hurt the helpless in their care. And they care for their animals with both rod and staff.

Whatever personal security you feel or do not feel as you sit in this room today is likely related to the way you were shepherded as a child, good or bad. Parents are shepherds. Their duty is to care for their children. But to do so, they must grow up and accept their role. When parents act like children themselves, thinking mostly of themselves, or wanting to be their children’s friends more than their parents, they make their children insecure. Kids need a rod and a staff to be comforted. They need models to help them know how to make their own transition from childhood to adulthood, from being sheep to being shepherds. If you hope your children will grow up to be responsible adults, then be that now yourself. Never expect your kids to be better adults than you—or better parents or better Christians. You can hope for that, but the only way to plan for that is to be the best you can be for them now.

We have many good shepherds here in this church: parents, deacons, Sunday school directors and teachers, music and missions leaders, children’s ministers and youth ministers, ushers and greeters even. When you show up prepared week by week to welcome those weaker in the faith than you, you are good shepherds to those in the flock of God. This church, and any church, would be as dysfunctional as a family of nothing but children if it weren’t for those of you who have grow up and grown into the role of good shepherds, loving and guiding the little lambs of God to spiritual safety and satisfaction.

Our pastoral residency program is a kind of Good Shepherd School. And you are mentoring a new generation of ministers by your shepherding work. We have an example in our service today of how this happens. Carrie Owens sang in Doug Haney’s youth choir in Meridian, Mississippi, for six years. And today she conducts this visiting high school choir that is helping us to worship. Good work, Good Shepherd, Doug.

Unfortunately, some of you, who ought to be taking your place in the fields of the Lord with rod and staff in hand, seem content to be sheep rather than shepherds. You would rather have someone else sacrifice for you than to sacrifice for someone else. Some of you need to enter Good Shepherd School and matriculate as an apprentice to a good shepherd. You need to say yes to service, say yes to stewardship, say yes to sacrifice.

My father was a pilot in New York Harbor. He used to tell me about coming home from jobs on Friday night and seeing longshoremen and dock workers, with their weekly paychecks in hand, running straight to the gin mills for a few drinks and a card game. With the money burning a hole in their pockets after a hard week’s work and with their wives and kids waiting at home for rent and food money, they figured they deserved a little fun for themselves. And in doing so, they deprived their families of what they needed them most to be. Would you call those men good shepherds—or thieves and bandits who would steal from their flock for their own benefit?

Some of you deprive the house of the Lord just that way. We miss your presence, your leadership, your tithes and offerings. You leave those who need you most to find their own way. Time to step up. Good shepherds care for the sheep.

And one way to do that is to show up week by week. I especially want young adults with children in our church to hear this sermon. Some of you are here today. Thank you. But alas, many are not. Their kids are not singing in a choir, and an extra hour is a lot to give. After all, it’s a beautiful day. It’s spring. They will have left after Sunday school or not made it to church at all this week because of a kid’s soccer game or some other activity that took priority over leading the sheep in paths of righteousness of God’s namesake. Will children have faith? Will they care about the church that cared for them? What kind of church will we have some day if the commitment of tomorrow’s shepherds is no greater than that of today’s?

Listen, shepherds don’t wake up in the fields and ask themselves what they feel like doing that day. They take up their rod and staff every day and guide the sheep to green pastures and still waters. They restore their souls.

The women’s singing group Sweet Honey in the Rock has a song called “No Mirrors in My Nana’s House.” One of the singers explained how this song was created. One of her friends was telling her about growing up in a very poor neighborhood. She grew up in her grandmother’s house. “You know,” she said, “in my nana’s house there were no mirrors.” Her friend asked her, “Well, how did you know what you looked like?” “Well,” she said, “my nana told me. Every morning I would get up and get dressed and comb my hair, and then I would go to nana and I would say, How do I look? And she would tell me. She would tell me I was beautiful. She said my skin was smooth and golden brown, kissed by the sun, and she said my eyes shone like silver moonbeams. In my nana’s house, there were no mirrors, so I saw myself through my nana’s eyes who loved me, and the beauty of everything was in her eyes.”[2]

Would that all children had adults who mirrored love and beauty to them like that nana. Would that all the sheep of this Wilshire fold had good shepherds to lead them into green pastures and unto abundant life.

Ring the bell. School is in session.