“Tell Me What You Really, Really Want”

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, October 10, 2021, the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost. “Prepare the Table with Justice and Joy” series. 

  Texts: Psalm 23:1, Mark 10:17-31

A story is told of a minister who sat at the hospice bedside of a woman near death and, failing to find his own words, began to recite the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” The woman stirred and summoned the energy to whisper, “But pastor, I do want!”

I imagine there are many for whom this will resonate. The woman in the story wanted to be made well, to get to experience more of the life and love and relationship that she would be leaving behind. Does Psalm 23 teach that we aren’t supposed to want like that? What does “I shall not want” actually mean?

Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book on the 23rd Psalm entitled The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-Third Psalm is one of my companions for our journey over the coming weeks. Rabbi Kushner points out that the familiar Elizabethan English used in the King James Version doesn’t mean “I shall not desire anything.” Kushner says “the intent of the Hebrew is more accurately captured by more recent translations, with words like ‘I shall lack for nothing’…[or] ‘The Lord is my shepherd, what more do I need?’ The issue of whether I desire things beyond that is beside the point.”

Last week, I noted that the image of God as a good shepherd lives deep within the spiritual imagination of our religious ancestors. And the memory of God leading the Hebrew people out of slavery and providing manna in the wilderness folds into that image of a faithful, ever-present God who guides us through and provides for our needs. When you read the story of that wilderness time, you see that the people struggled to appreciate manna. They remembered all the food back in Egypt, the land of their captivity and, well, they wanted that. But the thing is, God led the people out of slavery and into freedom and made sure they had what they needed to survive. It is understandable to want spiced meat and vegetables and not a mystery substance likely scraped off a tree. They didn’t get what they wanted but they did not want for sustenance. 

Let’s be clear: God is not a genie in a bottle; God is not an ATM; God does not exist to give us our way right away, but rather to guide us in God’s way that is discovered in an unfolding kind of way over time. God doesn’t just give us what we want, but works all day long to help us receive and share the good we need.

Also, it is common and perfectly OK to get angry at God about the way things are—in our lives or in the world around us. We can have feelings about how creation is created, how humans have free will and choices, how everything experiences cycles of birth, growth, diminishment, and death. We can shake our fists at the heavens because of suffering and strife. We can cry out saying, “If the Lord is our good shepherd, why do we want for peace, for justice? Why do we want for an end to poverty, pandemics, and environmental degradation?

Perhaps you’ve heard the one about a human who asks God, “Why do you allow poverty, suffering, and injustice when you could do something about it?” And God replies, “I was about to ask you the same question.”

We can have feelings about what we have or how things are, but God has in fact given us all we need. We have been given this beautiful planet, created in ways that are intricately interconnected and interdependent. The planet, well-tended and respected, provides all we need to thrive. We have also been given one another—a wonderfully diverse human family—each one with unique talents, skills, gifts, and insight. We are made to live in community, to care for one another and to share with one another and, in so doing, assure that all have what they need.

Perhaps it helps to think about it this way, when the Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want…