Every year around the month of March, Penny and I will be driving somewhere during one of those first warm and sunny days, and I will exclaim with joy, “everything looks so green!”
I always look forward to that day when I become overwhelmed with the signs of spring and new life all around us, especially after the winter season.
Today is what has become known as “Shepherd’s Sunday.” It’s around this time every year that the shepherd’s psalm, Psalm 23 is paired with the Good Shepherd scripture reading from John, chapter ten.
This Good Shepherd Sunday and my “everything looks so green day” always lifts my spirit and restores my soul.
In a bible commentary that I was reading about our Gospel reading for today where Jesus refers to himself as the “Good Shepherd,” it said that a more fitting word would be “beautiful.” Jesus is our “beautiful” shepherd. By the word, “beautiful” this bible scholar was not referring to the shepherd’s physical appearance but to what this shepherd offers his sheep.
We are drawn to the shepherd’s unconditional love, mercy, forgiveness, wisdom, protection, hope, strength, companionship, and of course, the shepherd’s saving grace. This is what makes Jesus so beautiful and why people are so drawn to Jesus.
Thinking of Jesus as our Beautiful Shepherd in this way helps us understand why Jesus says in our Gospel reading, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”
Where does Jesus as our beautiful shepherd lead us? Think of Psalm 23. “He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters.”
Green pastures! Our shepherd invites us to “go green” which refers to that place where our souls can be renewed and replenished.
When Jesus calls our names, he calls us to “go green,” and to find that space where our souls can find peace. Where is your green space that Jesus is calling you to follow him so that you can find that sense of peace, security, and protection?
I served a church near Dayton, Ohio and while we were there, they built an outdoor shopping area like and it’s called, “The Greene.”
Everybody couldn’t wait to go to “The Greene” to go shopping and we did on a number of occasions while we lived in that area. During our time there, I came across a young pastor who felt called by God to begin a new church start in the middle of that new outdoor shopping center.
He explained that he wanted to provide a church presence in that shopping area for store managers, retail workers, groundskeepers, and shoppers and to provide a sense of community and spiritual support for the people of that retail community.
For this young pastor, to “go green,” meant to go to “The Greene” and to be a blessing to the people in that retail community. If going green can lead us to a shopping center, what about a hotel room?
Fifteen years ago, in a church I was serving, I officiated for the funeral of an elderly church member. She didn’t have a lot of surviving family members, but her brother who drove up from South Carolina met me at the church to help me prepare for the funeral service.
He was very nice and told me a lot about his sister. And then I asked him if there was any particular scripture that he wanted me to read during the service.
And he said to me, “Yes, my favorite scripture is Psalm 23. I’d like you to read that during the service. It has special meaning for me.” And so, I asked him what he liked about this psalm, and he told me the most amazing story.
He said that he was in a hotel room in Philadelphia many, many years ago. He said that he couldn’t get to sleep because he was feeling very nervous and anxious that night.
He said that he opened the nightstand drawer in his hotel room and found a bible. He opened it to Psalm 23 and after he read it, it really helped him to feel at peace and he was able to get some needed sleep that night so that he would be rested for the next day.
But he wasn’t done with his story. He said that the reason he was so nervous that night was because he was going to be the starting pitcher for a baseball game the next day.
And he said that he ended up pitching one of his best games he ever pitched. He said that they beat the Philadelphia Phillies that day and that he was able to strike out Richie Ashburn to help win the game.
And it was at that point when I said, “Excuse me? What did you say? Were you a major league pitcher?”
To make a long story short, I discovered that I was talking to Jim Waugh who was a starting pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1950’s. He grew up in the town where I was serving as pastor.
He told me that he had the record for being the youngest pitcher to win a game for the Pittsburgh Pirates when he was just 18 years old. Joe Garagiola was the catcher for that game.
And he said that’s why Psalm 23 has so much meaning for him. It helped him to know that the Lord was his shepherd, and he didn’t have anything to fear. For this young Major League Baseball pitcher, a bible in his hotel room was the green space that he needed to calm his nerves and place his trust in his loving shepherd.
My family has a cottage in the mountains of central Pennsylvania. My mom and dad bought this as a vacation home back in the 1970s. They would take us there during the summer. It was about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from where we lived.
The cottage is located along a mountain range that’s very secluded and near a beautiful state park. Even though mom and dad are no longer with us, I feel their presence whenever I visit there which is about once a year.
My mother’s bible is still there in the cottage near one of the windows where she would enjoy looking out at the beautiful green trees surrounding her. I can still picture her reading that bible with a cup of coffee next to it.
Sometimes when I’m there visiting, I’ll open her bible and see where she highlighted some verses and scribbled some notes in the margin. That was where my mom and dad “went green,” in that little escape to the mountains of Central Pennsylvania.
Our shepherd has many green spaces where we our souls can be restored.
When one of my uncles died several years ago, my family asked me to read Psalm 23 during the funeral service which was held in northern Maryland near where he lived. My uncle was a farmer all his life and that small country church was packed with other farmers and their families.
I began reading this Psalm like I usually do, using the King James Version which is the common way this psalm is read and the way most of us have learned it. It’s the version we read together earlier in our worship service.
And so, I started reading Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…”
I stopped reading it after that first line of the Psalm because I realized in that moment that Uncle Bill’s whole life was about spending time in green pastures on his farm. I think people at that funeral were wondering if I was OK because I just stood there for a few moments of silence thinking about that line from Uncle Bill’s perspective. He literally spent his whole life living out Psalm 23 by working on his farm.
My green space is in the study of our house. Every Monday, I have an all-day appointment with Jesus and I spend that time in prayer, listening for the shepherd’s voice, and writing sermons. I refer to this as my “Mondays with Jesus” time. I’ve been doing this for the past 27 years.
I have other green spaces as well, but those Mondays in my study are a time for me to not only work on sermons, but to invite God to restoreth my soul. And depending on how it went on Monday, sometimes, I also need to have Tuesdays with Jesus, and Wednesdays with Jesus and maybe even Thursdays with Jesus in order to finish the sermon.
Actually, Jesus calls us to go green every day, to find those green pastures and still waters where our souls can be renewed.
This sanctuary is a green space for us. Sanctuary. It’s a word that means a place of refuge and safety. It’s also interesting that it’s used to describe a nature reserve like when we refer to a bird sanctuary. That’s what this place is meant to be.
This is holy space for us where we worship, fellowship and encourage one another as we listen for the shepherd’s voice calling our names. Going green means going to those places where we allow ourselves to hear the voice of our beautiful shepherd.
What would lead a young pastor to begin a new church in an outdoor shopping center? What would lead an anxious young man to open a bible in a hotel room because he can’t sleep? What would lead a mother to always have a bible next to a window looking out toward the trees along a mountain range? What would lead a farmer to spend his whole life taking care of green pastures? What would lead a pastor to escape from the world for a day each week to see what God might want to say through him? And what would lead some people every Sunday morning to meet in this place to have their souls restored?
I know what would lead us to do such a thing. The voice of a good shepherd, a beautiful shepherd who calls each one of us by name, who leads us to green pastures, and who restoreth our souls.
Go green!
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