April 13, 2008                                                                                             Vance L. Toivonen

READING                   Psalm 23

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;

he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff-- they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.

READING                   Walter Brueggemann, The Threat of Life

To think “shepherd” might suggest an idyllic pastoral scene. In fact, however, the term shepherd is political in the Bible. It means king, sovereign, lord, authority, the one who directs, to whom I am answerable, whom I trust and serve. In this simple opening line, the psalm is clear about the goal and focus, the center and purpose of life: Yahweh and no other. There is no rival loyalty, no compelling claim - not economic or political, not liberal or conservative, not sexist or racist, nor any of the other petty loyalties that seduce us. It is a mark of discernment and maturity to strip life down to one compelling loyalty, to be freed of all the others that turn out to be idolatrous.

SERMON

Shortly after I was ordained in June of 1985, I attended the ordination of a classmate who was soon to be serving in a nearby town in North Dakota. The ordination was in Minnesota, the state home of our alma mater, Luther Seminary. The classmate asked a seminary professor to preach at her ordination, and he agreed. And to this day, I still struggle with his sermon.

In general I would say it was the conventional way he approached ordained ministry in his sermon. He was a very traditional teacher, an old-school Lutheran. Long story short, he used a biblical metaphor (which I think he took out of context) for the relationship between pastor and congregation, the metaphor of shepherd and flock. We’ve grown up with that one. It seems benign on the surface, idyllic and pastoral, as Brueggemann suggests. But when we peel away the layers and look a little more closely at the setup that ensues, we come to discover there may be a potential malignancy lurking underneath.

As children we are shepherded by parents who look after us, nudging us in the directions we need to be going. They clothe us and feed us; tell us when to go to bed and when to get up; haul us around to school and various extra-curricular activities; and give us stuff. As children we get used to having a parent around to guide us through our young lives. But as we grow older, we seem less and less interested in being shepherded by our parents.

Which brings us to adulthood. When we are 18 years old, adulthood seems like a big accomplishment, like a mountaintop summit we have crested and now stand upon with our hands on our hips surveying the world below us. But as we grow older adulthood becomes more and more fraught with responsibilities that weigh upon us. Our “to do” lists get bigger and bigger until we are overwhelmed by them. Our lives become more complicated by relationships and entanglements, both welcome and unwelcome. As adults we find that we have no one to blame but ourselves when things work out in less than ideal ways. And we quickly discover that adulthood may not be so great after all.

There is an anonymous piece floating around on the Internet that eschews adulthood, titled “Adult Resignation.” It reads as follows:

Adult Resignation

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult.

I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an 8 year old again.

I want to go to McDonald's and think that it's a four star restaurant.

I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make ripples with rocks.

I want to think M&Ms are better than money because you can eat them.

I want to lie under a big oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer's day.

I want to return to a time when life was simple. When all you knew were colors, multiplication tables, and nursery rhymes, but that didn't bother you, because you didn't know what you didn't know and you didn't care. All you knew was to be happy because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset.

I want to think the world is fair. That everyone is honest and good.

I want to believe that anything is possible. I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again.

I want to live simple again.

I don't want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness, and loss of loved ones.

I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow.

So....here's my checkbook and my car-keys, my credit card bills and my 401K statements.

I am officially resigning from adulthood. And if you want to discuss this further, you'll have to catch me first, cause, "Tag! You're it."

-- Anonymous

I’m sure that many of us in this room resonate to these humorous thoughts. No doubt, the spiritual invitation of Jesus himself was to become again like little children, and to embrace the wonder of the world; which is absolutely essential to our process of spiritual growth. The trick is to become like little children without becoming little children. The goal is to be adults with the hearts of children, not children with the hearts of adults. We need to get up every day, look ourselves in the eye (with a mirror, of course), and remind ourselves that the only one responsible for our health and well-being, the only one responsible for the successes we hope to have, the only one responsible for our happiness, and the only one responsible for the meeting of our needs is the one staring back at us (from the mirror, of course).

I believe that the projection of our adult responsibilities upon other adults is one of the strongest contributing factors to the dissolution of society. It effects our spiritual, political, and social health. Pastors, teachers, law enforcement officials, and politicians all receive our projections. We cry out to them, “Take care of us! Solve our problems! Make us feel safe! Make us feel okay!” The truth is, we are the only ones who can address and possibly solve our problems. It will take each adult in our congregations, each adult in our communities, each adult in our states, and ultimately each adult on our planet to take seriously their personal responsibility, their personal contribution to the messiness of life, if we are to improve anything at all – together.

This also means relating to one another as adults. This means communicating what we need when we need it. This means putting away our passive aggression, that little hook we use to hoodwink those around us into taking care of us without asking for help. We will all be healthier, and our communities and families will be healthier, when we can all manage our problems without having to also manage the problems of others. We can attend to others when they come to us for help, for advice, for whatever it is they are asking of us. That’s okay. But if we expect in any way, shape, or form that someone else is responsible for our well-being, that someone else is to play the role of shepherd in our lives, then we have moved from healthy to unhealthy adulthood, and our lives need adjustment.

The morning I was laying  in bed a few months ago with a 104 degree fever, my spouse left me and flew out to San Diego to be with her sisters and her father for some fun in the sun. It was not her responsibility to make me well, or to stay and care for me, so I told her I loved her and said good-bye. It was a very adult situation. She was not to feel guilty for leaving, and I understood that my recovery was very much in my hands.

This is why one of the crucial steps of any recovery movement is to take responsibility for one’s choices and behavior. And the first step of any recovery movement is to admit that the one shepherd that one needs in one’s life in order to be healthy is a higher power, which for most people is referred to as God with a capital “G.” The Psalmist says, “The Lord is my shepherd.” That greater wisdom in the universe, that cosmic Christ, that Buddha-mind, and that Allah all represent the goodness in us that we are invited to tap into when we need to recover in some way, that energy that is at our disposal to get us on the right track in our lives. Along the way this might indeed mean asking for help, but not without first taking full responsibility for ourselves, for our growth, for our health and well-being.

I can only speak for myself here this morning by echoing the words of Walter Brueggemann, one of the voices in our Saving Jesus course, who writes in the second reading today, “It is a mark of discernment and maturity to strip life down to one compelling loyalty, to be freed of all the others that turn out to be idolatrous.”

When any human being, any leader, any other adult is made to be our shepherd, it becomes an idolatrous relationship, placing the expectations that rightfully belong only to God on another human being. This will ultimately result in disaster and disappointment time and time again. So, I say with confidence that when the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want indeed.