TOO BLESSED TO COMPLAIN

Scriptures:

I Peter 2:19-25

John 10:1-10

Kirk Jones tells this story about an experience he had which sets the theme for our sermon this morning. He relates: “I was walking towards Ebenezer Baptist Church in Boston, where I served as pastor, to perform a funeral. In my peripheral vision, I could tell that my path was going to intersect with someone walking in the same direction. I looked up and saw a rather stately, well-attired African American woman. I slowed, allowed her to pass, and in the process greeted her: ‘Good morning, how are you?’ I asked. Her response to me was immediate and forthright. She stated; no, she proclaimed, ‘I’m too blessed to complain.’”

Jones goes on to describe the effect that this moment had on him: “Ralph Waldo Emerson is reported to have said once, ‘Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.’ When this stranger said what she said to me, it was as if she had done something: turned a light on, started an engine, lit a fire. Her words put a smile on my face and a new perspective on living that I want to hold on to forever.”

Sometimes a turn of phrase will have just that kind of effect on us. We hear and experience how someone’s take on their own life lifts us out of the doldrums our life has been mired in. These are what we call kairos moments – times that have a meaning for us far beyond the simple length or endurance of that moment. They show us where our real blessings lie.

Hearing the 23^rd Psalm read is that kind of a moment. It’s always somewhat daunting for a preacher to seek to elaborate on a piece of scripture that is so familiar, and yet that very familiarity helps us to see how this Psalm evokes a sense of blessedness in us.

Have you ever wondered why the 23^rd Psalm is arguably the most loved of all pieces of scripture? Quite possibly it’s because it starts out with such a litany of blessings:

“The Lord.”

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; of Sarah, Hagar, and Ruth; of Joseph, Mary and Paul; of Sojourner, Rosa, Medgar, and Martin; yes, of Jeremiah Wright and those who would denigrate him – “The Lord” of us all.

“Is my Shepherd.”

My guide, my caretaker, and my protector. My way-maker, my heart-fixer, and my mind-regulator.

“He makes me lie down in green pastures.”

God calms me to a pace and place of peace and contentment. In a slap-dash, dog-eat-dog world, God is my peaceful calm and my calming peace.

“He leads me beside still waters.”

God is the source of refreshment which satisfies my deepest yearnings for acceptance, and love, and home.

“He restores my soul.”

God revives me from the inside out. Again, and again, and again – especially when I’m down and can’t seem to get up, or I’m too scared to get up, or I just don’t want to get up, or I’ve been down so long, I’ve forgotten what it means to get up.

This psalm begins as a litany of God’s blessings to David in his everyday living. In the 23rd Psalm, blessings come first. And so this psalm teaches us what it takes for us to become a “blessings-first” people.

Now, it’s easy to be a “blessings-first” person when we’re riding high or life is going along fairly smoothly without too many ups or downs. But when disaster strikes or continues over a long period of time – when, as we just said, “been down so long, I’ve forgotten what it means to get up” – then experiencing God’s blessings is tough sledding. The classic Biblical character who expresses this for us is, of course, Job. When his book begins he is definitely riding high, and he praises God for his good fortune; as it says near the beginning of the first chapter, “And when the feast days had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all…..” (1:5a)

But once the disasters pile on Job curses the day he was born and rails against God, saying at one point, “Why is light given to one who cannot see the way, whom God has fenced in?”(3:23) Job’s friends don’t help much, attributing his afflictions to sin as they do – never an accurate understanding of how God treats human behavior. Finally, Job comes to an understanding and acceptance of God’s purposes for his life and is enabled to say, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you…..”(42:5) Job is no longer afflicted by spiritual blindness. We’ll meet this condition again when we talk about the Pharisees.

There is a problem, though, with the end of Job. In a coda to chapter 42 it is said that “the Lord restored the fortunes of Job…and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.”(42:10) We’ve heard a lot in recent years about the “prosperity gospel” – about how a life devoted to God and filled with offering praise and prayer will result in the kind of riches and blessings Job started out with and then was given again. You and I know that in God’s providence it just doesn’t work that way; nothing is guaranteed to us except the love of God and God’s grace forever. To my mind the “prosperity gospel” is one of the worst heresies to come down the pike in quite awhile, because if riches and blessings do not follow praise and prayer then the tendency – as with Job – is to turn away from and curse God – and that is a powerful impulse.

What the Job of the first part of chapter 42 and the Psalmist and the writer of the letter called I Peter all know is that our blessings flow out of our sufferings. The Psalmist has known what Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader would call “the dark side”: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…..” Other translations of the 23^rd Psalm refer to this as the “valley of dark shadows” or “darkest valley.” It is a valley of broken hopes and dashed dreams, of doubts and fears and questions that tease and taunt, hunt and haunt us.

But even in this most dread circumstance the Psalmist can leap to the affirmation: “I fear no evil”. Note the verb tense. That’s a very important part of this affirmation. No qualifying helping verb – no “will” or “might” or “hopefully at some point in the future”. No. Right here, right now: “I fear no evil”. We have no reason to be afraid, as we said at the end of the sermon last week.

To be a “blessings-first” person is not to overlook those circumstances and conditions that don’t look or feel much like blessings. Our situations that are caught up in the imagery of “the valley of the shadow of death” are real enough, and often we have to work at resolving them with all of the resources that we can muster, both human and divine. But being a “blessings-first” person does mean that we can look at the sufferings we are finding there in that valley and discover the blessings that flow out of them. Why? Because God has already been there before us.

The author of I Peter reflects this reality back to us in terms of the suffering of Christ in relation to the oppression of being slaves. None of us, I think I’m safe in saying, has ever been a slave, but many of us have undoubtedly been enslaved by any number of things: addictions, financial woes, troubled relationships, the bitterness of held grudges – all those things we meet down there in that “valley of the shadow of death”. This author lifts up the example of Jesus on the cross: “When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.” The author then goes on to say, “by his wounds you have been healed”. Out of the suffering that Jesus endured flow the blessings that we know today. When we experience ourselves to be there in that “valley of the shadow of death”, we know that Jesus has been there before us, and it is for this reason that we can confidently affirm, “I fear no evil”.

The author of I Peter ends with a slightly admonishing word to his readers and listeners: “For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” I rather imagine that it’s because of this verse that the lectionary pairs this text with the gospel story in John of Jesus the Good Shepherd. In Jesus’ time, as in ours, sheep are rather docile things, prone to lose their focus and wander away, needing to be cared for until it’s time for the shearing. In fact, if you come to think about it, it’s really not very flattering to be compared to sheep. Oh, we may wander off a bit, especially when circumstances are being tough for us, and we may think that our shepherd isn’t really taking very good care of us. But for the most part we like to feel that we do have our “eye on the prize” – that our faith in the shepherd will ultimately sustain us.

The point for I Peter and John and the Psalmist isn’t so much to focus on us as sheep as it is to focus on the shepherd – who he is and why he cares for us. In I Peter it is the gentle caring of the shepherd, standing in harsh contrast to the abuse and suffering which he sustains on the cross, that allows us to feel his ministrations despite our own abuse and suffering. For the Psalmist the same gentle caring enables the shepherd to lead us “beside still waters” but most importantly “in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake”. The implements of the shepherd – the rod and the staff – are both a prod and a comfort, providing the kind of gentle yet firm caring that keep us focused on being “blessings-first” people.

Now we come to this rather strange story of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. I wouldn’t be surprised if while I was reading these 10 verses your eyes kind of glazed over. Just exactly what is Jesus talking about here? Chapter 10 follows the events in the preceding chapter, which we talked about during Lent, when Jesus heals the man born blind. But that healing had some unexpected consequences. The Pharisees investigate the incident, and they want to challenge this man as to the authenticity of his experience. Jesus uses their probe as a way to expand the imagery and talk about spiritual blindness (even as with the woman at the well he talked about “living water”). The Pharisees, though sighted, are spiritually blind, and in both senses of the word they just do not see – they just don’t get it. (This attitude of the Pharisees reminded me a bit of the quote attributed to Stevie Wonder who, when asked if there was anything worse than being blind, responded, “Yes, being able to see and still being blind.” We are often blind to our blessings, Stevie Wonder is reminding us, and the Pharisees are experiencing that kind of blindness here.)

The story of the Good Shepherd, then, is told initially to hearten and encourage this man whom Jesus had healed and who was now coming under attack by those in authority. He really was in a threatening situation. Now, in order to see how Jesus sought to encourage him, you have to picture an ancient Eastern sheepfold. It’s not like the open meadows and rolling hillsides that we usually see in our mind’s eye when we think of a shepherd and his flock. No, as Arthur John Gossip describes it, it is “surrounded by high and strong stone walls, and with a formidable door, no mere flimsy hurdle, but a much more massive thing, designed for protection….. (T)he relationship between an Eastern shepherd and his flock is much more intimate and affectionate and personal. And that of course was what was in the mind of Christ when he used the figure.”

Jesus was using the image of the sheepfold as a way of demonstrating his protectiveness – the fact that he will be there for the man born blind, just as he will be there for each one of us. And this, of course, resonates with all the images of who a shepherd is in the 23^rd Psalm. But since he is speaking to the disciples, they, as usual, just don’t get it – the text says, “Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.” So, he shifts the image and talks about himself as the door to the sheepfold. Again, this is done initially to comfort the newly sighted man who had been thrown out by the authorities – there is a way in to the true flock of God and it is through Jesus. He is the door that both protects us and through which we enter. And the final verse of our text – one of the most powerful in the whole Bible – is our greatest promise and the answer to the “prosperity gospel”: “’I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.’” With a promise like this is it any wonder that we can ever and always be a “blessings-first” people!

On the drive back from the Eastern Association meeting last Saturday Jim and I were reminiscing about the old TV show “Your Hit Parade”, which came on every Saturday night. That got me to remembering a very simple song that was actually #1 on the Hit Parade for many weeks (I don’t recall how many) back in the early 50’s. The best known recording was by Bing Crosby. You’ll remember it; it went like this:

When I'm worried and I can't sleep
I count my blessings instead of sheep;
And I fall asleep counting my blessings.

When my bankroll is getting small
I think of when I had none at all;
And I fall asleep counting my blessings

I think about a nursery and I picture curly heads
And one by one I count them as they slumber in their beds.

If you're worried and you can't sleep
Just count your blessings instead of sheep;
And you'll fall asleep counting your blessings.

How are you? Are you “too blessed to complain”? Jesus will take care of the sheep for us. It’s up to us to count our blessings.

Amen

Dave Pomeroy

First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ

Las Vegas, NV

April 13, 2008