Not a Sheep

I need to share this with you. It's written by a Jewish scholar and I'm not a Jew. But it's good and rings true. It's about relationship between us and God. It may just transcend faith. For many, this season is about relationships. Really, isn't every season?

Rabbi Harold Kushner’s entire essay unpacks the beautiful poem that is the Twenty-Third Psalm. That’s the one that begins, “The Lord is my shepherd …”. I’ve excerpted the last section, “And I Shall Dwell in the House of the Lord Forever.”

Shepherds play a significant role in the pageantry of Christmas. They were the simplest of men, but the most in touch with their natural surroundings. Many discounted them because they were rough and not the sort to mix well in polite society.

If you had to choose, though, wouldn’t you rather be a shepherd than a sheep? Kushner encourages us to give the psalm a thorough reading. You’ll find you’re neither a shepherd nor a sheep, you’re much more.

And I Shall Dwell in the House of the Lord Forever

Of the thousands of people I’ve spoken to about my book since it was published, I’ve run across three people who did not like the twenty-third psalm and all for the same reason. 

They all said the same thing—“I don’t like this psalm because it says, ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ And if the Lord is my shepherd, that means I’m a sheep, and I don’t like being told I’m a sheep.” 

The first time I heard this, I didn’t know what to say. By the second time, I had an answer ready. I said, “First of all, this is a poem. Give me a break. You don’t take a poem literally. It’s images, it’s metaphors. 

More than that though, the psalmist’s first line is ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ That is, I am scared and vulnerable, and God is there to take care of me. But that’s only the beginning, the first line. 

Look at the last line: ‘I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’ All his life experiences, all the times he’s found himself in ‘the valley of the shadow’ and was able to find his way out have taught him something about God and about his relationship to God. 

It’s no longer an abstract relationship, a theological matter of speculation. It’s no longer this passive, childlike dependence on God. It a reciprocal relationship: God does things for me, and I do things for God. And I am welcome in the house of the Lord. 

I’m not the sheep. I am the house guest. I am friends with God. He reaches out to me. I respond to him.”

*****

Through the Valley of the Shadow, by Harold Kushner, an essay in “The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World” by Bob Abernathy and William Bole

© 2007 by Educational Broadcasting Company