A Transcendent Shepherd
October 18, 2009
Marilyn Zehr
Isaiah 40 is the text for today. It has a very familiar beginning for us: In the King James version and the words of the Messiah it sounds like this…Comfort ye, comfort ye, My people…
Thus says your God….
This overall theme of comfort marks such a radical departure from much that has gone before it in Isaiah that for a long time scholars called this text Deutero-Isaiah, or Second Isaiah,
But that view might be changing somewhat as we once again want to take into account the literary integrity of the whole of Isaiah as we have received it.
So …. another presentation of Isaiah that makes good sense is a Dramatic one that views this text as the opening of the next Act – with many more Acts and scenes in this Play – yet to come.
If chapters 1-39 were the first six Acts of the Play and chapters 40-66 are the next six Acts of the Play, as one commentator suggests, then the opening lines of Isaiah 40 are the opening lines of the play just after the Intermission.
God: “Comfort my people,”
Narrator: This is what God tells the heavenly court that has gathered,
God: “and speak to Jerusalem’s heart. Tell her that her warfare is ended and that she has repaid double for all her sins.”
Narrator: A voice then cries out,
Voice 1: “Prepare a way in the wilderness. Yahweh’s glory will be revealed and all flesh will see it.”
Narrator: And then a counter voice, a realist’s voice, an agnostic voice says,
Voice 2: “A voice is saying, Cry!
But I say: What shall I cry?
All flesh is grass, and all its loyalty like a wild flower.
Grass withers,
A flower fades
When the Spirit of Yahweh blows against it.
Surely the people are grass.
Voice 1: Grass does wither,
A flower does fade.
But the word of our God stands firm for its term.
Here is your God!
Voice 2: YHWH, O Sovereign One,
You come with power,
And rule with a strong arm!
You bring your reward with you,
And your reparation comes before you.
Like a shepherd you feed your flock,
Gathering the lambs and holding them close,
And leading mother ewes with gentleness:
And away we go with the rest of the Play… the rest of Isaiah, the rest of the post-exilic period, the coming of Jesus, the continued unfolding of Christianity and Judaism through the ages – this play is a long one.
God’s connection to and unfolding acts throughout history could be viewed as one long Play or story.
In this sermon, I’d like to compare the God of that story and that episode in the long play, who is also our God of course, to how we understand the God of our story in our own episode.
Beginning with that story – our texts from Michele’s sermon a few weeks ago and Aldred’s sermon two weeks ago are following a certain period in Israel’s history. Michele made reference to the Davidic Covenant and the legitimacy of filing a complaint against God when things are not unfolding in the way that one had hoped.
The Davidic Kingdom collapsed and many of the people were carted off into exile in Babylon.
In Aldred’s sermon we heard a comforting word in Jeremiah to these people in exile – and this word from God expressed a desire for a renewed relationship – a New Covenant that would be written on hearts and in minds – one that did not necessarily depend on the reality of having a kingdom and could be lived out and followed and experienced even in exile.
As the Play continues in Isaiah 40 our text for today, historically speaking the exile is about to end. This word of comfort from God here in Isaiah 40 and beyond is announcing a new thing and this text claims for God the Right and Power and Strength to enact something new – not only a new covenant – as deep and powerful as that is – but a new way of being and acting in history. King Cyrus of Persia is about to change the balance of power in that part of the world and God will use King Cyrus as a player who will act out God’s purpose in history. And the role of this particular scene played out for us in the voices in Isaiah 40 sets the stage by describing the kind of God that can and will act in this way.
The kind of God that we hear about in Isaiah 40, I call a transcendent shepherd.
This is an oxymoron, I believe.
A transcendent God is one that cannot necessarily be seen or fully comprehended – one whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts (we hear later in Isaiah)
In this chapter 40 we hear verses like –
To Whom or what will we compare God?
Who else holds the waters of the seas and the waters of the heavens in his hands
or before whom the nations are like dust
or who knows the name of every star.
This everlasting God, creator of heaven and earth, this vast and remarkable God we are told, in this passage, is also like a Shepherd.
This vast and powerful and seemingly distant God is not so distant.
This God is also like a shepherd who is willing to feed the flock,
Gather the lambs and hold them close
And lead mother ewes with gentleness.
Now, the image of the shepherd can be complex. I know a woman from New Zealand whose experiences on a sheep farm led her to caution me about romanticizing the image of a shepherd.
Real life shepherds are not like pictures of little Bo Peep with a nice dress and parasol from the famous nursery rhyme.
The real men and women who care for sheep are bronzed, brawny and strong. It can be hard, hot and dirty work – shearing the sheep, protecting them, being available to help when they are lambing.
I actually brought some different images of a shepherd or shepherdess with me.
First – the one that for me most closely depicts the verse in Isaiah 40 – God feeds the flock carries the lambs and leads the mother ewes with gentleness. This one is probably the most romanticized picture I have.
Second, I have a picture of a strong female shepherdess – a little bit less romanticized. Check out her forearms – I don’t think you’d want to get in her way,
Third, maybe shepherds could also look like this – like a weather beaten farmer – but however you might envision a Shepherd
I’d like to suggest that the strong and powerful God also imaged as a Shepherd isn’t quite an oxymoron after all.
This strong God, powerful God, and yes, transcendent God, also cares for the people – not only cares – loves the people. In Isaiah 40, God cares about the story of the people who are about to have their exile brought to an end.
There is a relational point of contact between the transcendence of God and us, and that point of contact is Love. God loves the people of Israel. God loves us. God loves God’s people enough to
give strength to the weary
And power to the powerless – and to be involved in the history of people.
“But aren’t people like grass before this powerful and transcendent God?” asks the realist’s voice. Our stories come and our stories go. The voice in this Drama answers, “yes, but the promise of God will stand forever. And for those who wait for this God, they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not faint.”
And now, I want to consider our current Act in the great Drama of history. The story continues to unfold.
But naming our story is the challenging part.
There are as many stories in this room as there are people and yet the fact th
at we gather in this room today has at least for this moment brought our multiple stories together.
First, let me name some of the separate strands of the stories that have met in this church today.
There is Geisa and Nino’s story that we celebrated today in the Parent/child dedication. It is a precious story of struggle and faith and today – joy.
There are stories of each of you, young and old and in between of making your way as faithfully as you can as you navigate the demands and pressures and pleasures of living in our fast-paced urban society.
There are individual stories of newcomers that we have yet to learn.
There some larger corporate stories. For example there is the broader story of this church having recently said good-bye to an intentional interim minister and in the midst of welcoming a new pastor.
And there is the corporate story of some in our midst who have recently and sadly made the difficult decision to close their much loved church – the Warden Woods Mennonite church, and as the individuals of that church move into new places they will carry with them that story and let it inform, influence and enrich the places where their individual stories carry on.
Our story strands may be difficult to summarize at this time, and our individual stories may be somewhat like grass – but beautiful ornamental grass, I like to think.
How does the Transcendent shepherd link to all the different strands of our stories?
At the point of contact called love. Where each of the individual stories are somehow intimately part of the bigger story, the larger drama called the story of the people of God – people who dare to wait and hope for contact and maybe a word of comfort from a God so vast and remarkable and yet so close and so intimate as to make promises be with us like a shepherd – a real shepherd;
one that’s not afraid to do the hard work of getting “up close and personal” to our individual stories in order to draw us into that larger story of God.
And so Take Comfort My People.
Amen