Church of the Good Shepherd

May 3, 2009
The Fourth Sunday of Easter (Year B)
Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24;
John 10:11-18

This past week I was serving as a chaplain at the Clergy Leadership Project in West Cornwall, CT, a program of Trinity Wall Street, and serving as chaplain is a wonderful way to get to hear fabulous speakers, for free – well, a little elbow grease, a few sermons, and lots of pastoral counseling, but this week the speakers were really worth it.  I was particularly impressed with Donna Hicks of Harvard University and her Dignity model of reconciliation.  But more about that in a minute…

While there we also prayed the 23rd Psalm as we have done this morning, but we used the version on the New Zealand Prayer Book.  It goes:

The Lord is my shepherd:
        Therefore can I lack nothing.

You Lord make me lie down in green pastures:
        And lead me beside the waters of peace.

You revive my spirit:
        And guide me in the right pathways for your name’s sake

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
        I will fear no evil:
                For you are with me,
               Your rod and staff are my comfort.

You spread a table for me in the sight of my enemies:

You have anointed my head with oil,
        And my cup is overrunning.

Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me
        All the days of my life:
                And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Like the version we used this morning, it differs from the one many of us learned as children in the King James language of the gods, or at least of Shakespeare!

But I was struck when we read the NZ version by the way the waters were described, not as still as the KJV or the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) would state, but as “waters of peace.”

Can you imagine God leading you beside the “waters of peace?  Reviving your spirit instead of soul?

It is perhaps a small distinction, “peace” and “still waters.”  But when I read it, I realized that so much of our lives is spent walking beside anything but waters of peace.  Such waters would cause our spirits to be nurtured in ways they usually aren’t. Our spirit, of course, is that core part of us that enlivens and gives empowerment to all that we do.  More likely most of us would describe our daily walk as chaotic or, even if organized, busy, and/or driven by something outside ourselves: our kids’ schedules, work demands, family demands, illness, the economy, so many things that walk beside us that are not the “waters of peace that revive our spirits.”

I have been thinking a lot about such peace since hearing Donna this week, and it seems to me the Twenty-third Psalm gives voice to a way of approaching life – and peacemaking which was the focus of her talk – in a Godly and holy way.  But few of us, myself included, have the luxury of time, education, opportunity, or inclination to be such peacemakers.  While most of us think of peacemakers as the ones who strike accords between nations or find a way to disarm the world or sign treaties that end war, the truth is peace is needed more in the day to day living than across national borders.  It seems to me this simple verse was not about political negotiations for warring nations or institutions but rather a way of calling us as people of faith into a peaceful way of living every single day.  It describes a peaceful way of approaching our life’s walk, beside, or in, or away from, whatever waters we are near or not so near.  That way is peace.

When I think of living in peace, being driven by the peaceful waters and reviving my spirit, I think of being held in, carried in perhaps, a sling that God hoists over God’s shoulder, or carries in God’s arms, and that tenderly surrounds me with all that makes for an existence that is filled with fairness, trust, safety, inclusion, acknowledgment, freedom, identity, understanding, responsiveness and righting of wrongs.  Interestingly these are the very topics that Donna spoke to us about in her model of conflict resolution which she calls “The Dignity Model.”  She maintains that each of these things is the hallmark of peaceful living, of reconciling when there cannot possibly be reconciliation.  It gives a framework for approaching all relationships and life that enables us mere humans to live into our baptismal vow to respect the dignity of every human being, including ourselves, while growing our spirits and insuring that we know peace in ever deepening ways.

To show us what she meant she told us of a conversation she had witnessed and help set up between an IRA (Irish Republic Army) terrorist and the English policeman he had brutally shot and left for dead 30 years before.  They were part of a reconciliation process similar to the one used in South Africa, and Donna was the facilitator, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the moderator.  The IRA man, Bobby, and the English policeman, Malcolm, agreed to live by the principles Donna called for: the respecting of the dignity of the other.  In the conversation that lasted eight hours (we saw it edited into forty minutes) the two men went from bitter enemies to human beings who had shared a dreadful experience.  Neither apologized to the other; neither thought what he did was wrong.  And they agreed that in the same circumstance they would likely do it again.  But they did listen to each other, and they did speak together.  Bobby had shot unarmed Malcolm in cold blood as he, Bobby, was trying to escape a police raid on a terrorist cell which he and others had set up to bring about random bombings in London.  By the end of the conversation both men agreed they might have done the same as the other given the circumstances.  Neither admitted wrong or claimed virtue.  Neither apologized.  Both saw the other’s flaws, and even in that their common humanity drew them together like polar opposite magnates.  They shook hands at the end of the day, and now, two years later, they travel together to speak of peace, of being able to live peaceably with one’s enemies.  They speak of letting the waters of peace wash over you by respecting the dignity of others, and of not letting oneself accept any behavior aimed at you that denigrates the dignity in you.  It was quite amazing to witness

It also gave me hope for the human race.  We may be slow learners.  But I think Jesus wanted us to know of peace, and I thank Donna for making it a bit clearer what we are all seeking and yearning for.

On this Good Shepherd Sunday in the fiftieth year of our existence as a parish, it seems fitting that we would be exploring how to be a better community using the two committees the vestry has created.  I am excited to hear what we can learn from the communications workshop on May 16, set up by the Reconciliation Committee.  I believe it will reinforce what Donna Hicks taught the clergy of the Clergy Leadership Project this past week, perhaps using different language but with the same intention, that we all become a people who not only memorize the twenty-third psalm, in some form or another, from one version or another, but that we all learn to live more often in the waters of peace, allowing our spirits to be calmed, guided, and found on the right path to make our lives ever more faithful and headed in the direction God would have us go.

I hope to see you at the workshop!

And if you want to know more about what Donna taught us, you can find her first lecture to us on U-Tube.  Isn’t modern communication a miracle?

Let me end this morning by saying the New Zealand Twenty-third Psalm once more…

The Lord is my shepherd
        Therefore can I lack nothing

You Lord make me lie down in green pastures:
        And lead me beside the waters of peace

You revive my spirit:
        And guide me in the right pathways for your name’s sake

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
        I will fear no evil
                For you are with me,
                Your rod and staff are my comfort.

You spread a table for me in the sight of my enemies

You have anointed my head with oil,
        And my cup is overrunning.

Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me
        All the days of my life              
          And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd