The Good Shepherd

 

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. I love the Biblical imagery of the shepherd.  Sometimes Jesus is the Good Shepherd, sometimes the lamb led to the slaughter. Ancient Palestine was a culture of sheep herding, and I am glad we still use that relationship to describe our connection to the Holy. In my tradition, the Bishop of a Diocese carries a staff with a crook as an emblem of the position and, for some reason, that has touched me deeply since childhood.  I like belonging to a church with a shepherd at the helm.  One of my favorite parts of the Nativity story is that the angels appeared first to the shepherds, not the powerful, to reveal the birth of the Savior.  That is a profound statement of who "Jesus's people" would be during His earthly ministry.

Today, instead of saying the psalm, as we usually do, we sang hymn 645, which is Psalm 23 set to music: The King of Love My Shepherd Is.  By the second verse, my tears were flowing. That was my mother's favorite hymn. She draws near as soon as the organ spells out the tune. She joined the Episcopal Church as a college student and is responsible for my lifelong affiliation.

My relationship with my mother grew rocky as I matured and moved away from her orbit. My dad died when I was 8, and she never remarried or had other children. I became her sole focus. I was a compliant child, and it was easier to 'go along' than to stand my ground and upset her. Her anger scared me, so I became adept at avoiding it. But, as children do, I grew up. When I fell in love with the man I wanted to spend my life with, it flew in the face of her mental plan for my life. There are no jobs for cellists in my small southern town! On top of that, he was a "Yankee", had a full beard, and was divorced. The rift that developed clouded our relationship until she died almost 30 years ago.

Forgiveness has been hard to come by. Her words were harsh and cut deeply. But I can feel my resentment soften when I can imagine her thriving in the next world, God's Kingdom. I hope she now dwells in Christ's close presence:

Where streams of living water flow, my ransomed soul he leadeth, and where the verdant pastures grow, with food celestial feedeth. (Hymn 645, vs. 2)

Amen