The fourth Sunday of Easter, Year C, 2016 – Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
David’s uncle, Tom, died recently and so we were in Guelph yesterday for his funeral and burial. His wife Marg asked for Psalm 23, and as we said it together, standing in the sunshine at his grave, I found myself thinking about how often people ask for this psalm at a funeral. It is by far the most commonly requested psalm: everyone knows it and everyone loves it. In one sense it is obvious why—the promise in its beautiful cadences that God is with us even here: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me.
But I think it goes beyond this, and although perhaps they don’t articulate it, people know that there is more.
There is in this psalm more than comfort, more than a fond hope that we are leaving the one we love in God’s hands in death, as they have been always in God’s hands in life.
There is in this psalm also a note of triumph; a shout of triumph that rings down through the ages, from the time of David to the time of Revelation. And it is reading it together with Revelation, and our Gospel from John, that makes this clear. For our Lord who is our Shepherd, in whose care we always rest, is also the lamb. The Lord is my shepherd, we say, standing at the grave. He leadeth me beside the still waters… He leadeth me in paths of righteousness, for his name’s sake. He leads me. This is the promise David hears, in the ancient days of Israel. And it is the promise John the seer hears, in his vision of the end of all things. The lamb in the midst of the throne will shepherd them, and he will lead them to springs of living waters. The Greek word “lead” is the same in Revelation as in Psalm 23.
The shepherd who leads me into my hope, into my life, into the righteousness of God, this Lord of my life is also the lamb.
This is comfort indeed, but it is not comfort of the ordinary sort. It is not hand-holding or fond remembrance; not a Kleenex at the graveside. It is C.S. Lewis’ kind of comfort, the comfort the children discover in Narnia as the long winter thaws into spring. This is the comfort of Aslan’s roar, the roar of Aslan risen from the stone.
The children in Narnia have been walking for hours with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver through the snow, looking for Aslan. As they go they notice here and there the first signs of spring. “Long ago they had left their coats behind them. And by now they had even stopped saying to one another, ‘Look! There’s a kingfisher,” or “I say, bluebells!” or “What was that lovely smell?’” There is a problem, however, in the midst of the rising spring, and it is this problem that drives the action of the story. They are only three. Only Lucy, Peter and Susan walk with the Beavers through the melting snow toward Aslan and the spring. Edmund has left them. “He has tried to betray them,” Mr. Beaver says to Aslan when they find him. “He has joined the white witch.” “Please—Aslan,” Lucy says, “can anything be done to save Edmund?”
Lucy of the large heart asks the question that matters. The children have found the lion. Spring is breaking forth all around them; the castle of Cair Paravel, their castle, stands just over the hill. But what good is all this if Edmund is lost? What is the good of this spring, if her brother is imprisoned in winter? What is the good of this new life, if the witch has Edmund and is binding him to a tree; if Edmund for his own betrayal is about to die? In the midst of life, the BCP funeral service says, we are in death. Please, Aslan, can anything be done to save Edmund? Can anything be done to save us, we who stand at the edge of the grave.
If you were a shepherd and you had 100 sheep, and one of them—just one—was lost, what would you do? Would you not, Jesus says, leave everything you have and go out into the night to find that one lost sheep? Well, maybe not, actually. I’m not at all sure that is what we might decide to do. We might decide to cut our losses. That is, however, the question on Lucy’s heart—and on all of ours, when we look over our lives. Jesus gives the answer that is our hope. For he is, he tells us in John’s Gospel, the shepherd who will not be separated from his sheep. Those who follow me are my sheep, Jesus says, and nothing and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.
And who are those who follow Jesus in John’s Gospel? Let us take a look. There is Nicodemus, who comes to Jesus by night, secretly, not wishing to put his position at risk. There is Thomas who says in John 11, when Jesus is getting ready to go to Bethany where he will be in some danger from the temple hierarchy, “Let us go with him so that we may die with him.” But where is Thomas, when Jesus is in fact dying? Thomas is nowhere to be found. There is Peter, who follows Jesus into Pilate’s courtyard and then says three times, “Jesus? I’m not his disciple. I do not follow him.” And there is Judas, who betrays Jesus with a kiss. “My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus says, “and they follow me.” Certainly they want to follow Jesus. They intend to, and Peter weeps bitterly over his betrayal. But betray him they do. Even Peter. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. Jesus is crucified. “My sheep follow me and I give them eternal life,” Jesus says. But we do not follow. We are his sheep, and we do not follow. Where then is our hope? Shall we not put on our blackest clothes and sit at the grave in dust and ashes? Shall we not go to the funeral grimly, as to hope’s end?
“Please, Aslan,” said Lucy, “can anything be done to save Edmund?”
And Aslan said, “All shall be done.”
And then he was silent for some time, the story goes on. Up to that moment Lucy had been thinking how royal and strong and peaceful his face looked; now it suddenly came into her head that he looked sad as well.
All shall be done, Aslan says. But it may be harder than you think. For the Lord is also the lamb. The Lord is my shepherd, because he becomes for me the lamb. “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
For his friends, these followers, even these—Nicodemus who can’t quite bring himself to follow Jesus in the day; Peter who denies him; Thomas who runs away; Judas who betrays him—For these friends, Jesus lays down his life.
A howl and a gibber of dismay went up from the creatures when they first saw the great lion pacing toward them, and for a moment even the Witch herself seemed to be struck with fear. Then she recovered herself and gave a wild fierce laugh. “The fool!” she cried. “The fool has come. Bind him fast.”
There in the place of Edmund, Aslan is bound.
There in the place of Edmund, he dies.
This is my Shepherd, who has become for me the lamb.
It does not depend, after all, on us, we who love our shepherd and long to follow, and find that we do not.
It does not depend upon us. Edmund’s betrayal is not his end. There is a deeper magic at work.
“What the Father has given me is greater than all things,” Jesus says in John’s Gospel, “and no one is able to snatch it from the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” Even we, even Thomas, even Peter, even Edmund—we are in his hands, the hands of the shepherd who is the Lord and the lamb. On the cross he takes us in his arms forever; there on the cross he finds us, the sheep that is lost, and no one shall snatch us from his hand.
Yea though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil.
For thou art with me.
Even there, thou art with me. All shall be done.
Meanwhile, Aslan says to Lucy, let the feast be prepared. For this is the other side of the story. This is the spring breaking through our long winter. For if the shepherd is for our sake also the lamb, the lamb who is slain is also the Lord, and he is seated upon the throne.
After this I saw, and behold a great crowd whose number no one could count, from every nation and from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the lamb, clothed in white robes and palm branches in their hands. And they cry out with a loud voice saying,
“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated upon the throne,
and to the lamb.”
Oh lamb of God, who takest away the sin of the world. There is a reason we sing this each time we celebrate our Eucharist, the lamb’s high feast. We sing it for joy because the exchange has been made, and it is the lamb who reigns, and we have been called not to our deaths but to a feast. Thou preparest a table before me…Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
Who are these dressed in white robes who stand around God’s throne? These are they who live in the victory of the lamb. These are they whose lives have been dipped in the blood of the lamb. These are they who live by water and the Spirit, by baptism and by the Eucharist, the people of the lamb. When we say Psalm 23 standing at the grave we join our voices to a heavenly chorus. Amen. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and strength be to our God forever and ever. Amen. For the lamb who was slain is seated upon the throne, and even at the grave we make our song.
Please, Aslan, what can be done for Edmund?
All has been done, and a song rises now from the angels and from the grave and from the deep places of the earth.
We live in this song. The Alleluia sounds under and through all things: through our failures, through our fears, at this Eucharist and at our end.
“Faster! Faster!” said the Witch.
There was no trace of the fog now. The sky became bluer and bluer, and now there were white clouds hurrying across it from time to time. In the wide glades there were primroses…A bee buzzed across their path.
“This is no thaw,” said the dwarf, suddenly stopping. “This is Spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan’s doing.”
The Lord is my shepherd. AMEN.
