"The Shepherd and Desire" | The Rev. Luk De Volder | April 25, 2021

The Lord is my Shepherd. Good morning. I so love the readings of today: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. Psalm 23 has been in the top of the church music charts for decades if not centuries. And for a reason.

Speaking of popular song. You may never have heard about Olivia Rodrigez and her song entitled “Driver’s License” but it has been a smash hit in the charts since January. Only 17, but a Disney star, Olivia Rodrigez is singing a solid classic ballad in the Taylor Swift tradition, about two rites of passage, a break up and getting her driver’s license. But it has been the bridge in the song, you know, a song like many hymns has verses and a refrain, but then some songs have this extra often emotional third part. Here are the mesmerizing words of the bridge in “Driver’s License”:

Red lights, stop signs

I still see your face in the white cars, front yards

Can't drive past the places we used to go to

'Cause I still…. love you, babe (ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh) 

I know, impressive poetry. Even the folks of Saturday Night Live were puzzled about its meaning or maybe lack of it, and yet the magical melody made the comedians go bonkers. It’s because this song echo’s the national sentiment that despite the tremendous sense of loss and change that is running through our lives, we feel America is still finding its drive, its engine, its path. The song “Drivers License” expresses how a young generation that has witnessed the country going through two decades filled with painful and suspenseful change and war, is sensing a renewed feeling of movement. Despite the challenges, we will be going places!

The Lord is my shepherd: despite the challenges, I might be going places. Psalm 23 and “Drivers License” are poetically very different, but the sentiment of the song connects with the guidance of the Shepherd. Yes, many people feel the multiple ways of getting stuck, that list of arrested developments, that sense that my wings seem to spread only occasionally. But this shepherd is giving us a license to drive, the liberation to claim our life’s path. 

Personally, I love to preach about the good shepherd, exactly because the Lord has been so gracious to also be my shepherd, my rock, my comfort, my guide. There is nothing else I want to share but the strength that we all can receive from having the Lord as our shepherd. If there is one message I would love to share with High School age youth, it is not to underestimate the power and the adventure of having the Lord as your shepherd in your life. Wow. Speaking of going for a drive!

But the biggest obstacle people may face in sensing the guidance of this Good Shepherd will not come from the gorgeous music settings this Psalm has received throughout the centuries. Rather the number one obstacle might well be the one mentioned by Psalm 23, that is the issue of want. The Psalm connects having the Lord as your Shepherd and not being want. But, oh, aren’t we often in want, stuck in want. And it’s our wanting that blinds us for the presence of the Shepherd. 

Please know I do realize there is a difference between want and desire. The Hebrew word for want means exactly that: to be in want. It also means the literal sense of being in want: being empty, being deprived. O boy, this pandemic has made us very familiar with running on empty, with being deprived - from so many things! We have rightfully been in want. 

Nevertheless, the wanting we often go through, does stir up all kinds of desires. And, yes, also this department has been very active during this pandemic. Mine pandemic related desire has mostly been the draw of chocolate. I shall not be in want.

The desires often blind us for what we truly want. Psalm 23 is hoping to alert us to the consuming energy that desire can occupy in our souls. We become so preoccupied, consumed even, by the sense of being empty on several levels of our being. Buddhism calls it “Dukkha”: all we do is to cry out our frustration of not being fulfilled. It is here that the wisdom of centuries is hoping to alert us to the blinding effect of our longings and the suffering of frustrations. The Greeks in particular tried to highlight the danger of desire and in becoming too successful. Wealth and the fulfillment of desire is often leads to pride, more frustration, and to blindness for one’s own ignorance. Oscar Wilde captured this danger well in his book “The Ideal Husband” when he writes: “When the Gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers and desires.” The oracle of Delphi, therefore, cautions: “Know Yourself’, not as an invite to introspection, but as a call to know your place, your limits. 

We often can’t stop aspiring, longing, yearning, usually for what we don’t have yet, for what others do have. The liberation of not being in want and in longing is what the Psalm is talking about. It is a tour de force of our soul to be able to let go of that long list of desires. Not that all of them are negative. 

The Biblical wisdom of the Shepherd is that we can let go of our preoccupation with our frustrations of emptiness or decreased power and allow the open space of not-desiring to become a space where we decrease our blindness and increase our awareness. The blessed experience of entering into an enlarged awareness is such an enriching experience, like green lush pastures, is possible because we have guidance, because we don’t face this issue alone, because we do have a shepherd for our soul. The specific Christian move is to notice the beckoning of the Shepherd’s voice, compassion, and grace. This awareness gives us the space to get to know ourselves better, it connects us with the power of God’s kingdom.

If Derek Chauvin could have let go of his desire to dominate and to take the life of a defenseless African American, if the numerous shooters, consumed by impetuous desires to pull their guns would be able to let go of the impulsiveness to shoot others. If we could let you of our reflex to scapegoating. Just these three exercises of letting go would make our society already so different. 

America may often seem lost, disempowered, a land where people have forgotten what it means to trust in God. The West has grown into a jungle land of desiring that is consuming many people and that is causing so much suffering and desire. We are indeed in want of liberation. And it is here that we need a song like “Driver’s License” or better: a Psalm like “The Lord is my Shepherd”. Because, despite the obstacles, and many of them are obstacles of the soul, with this Shepherd, we will find our engine, our energy drink, our vision, our way out.

Today I pray with you for this increased awareness: that a certain poverty of the mind is grounding, a certain simplicity of the soul avoids too much ego, a certain alertness for the grace of being helps us to find our true self, our true power. If only we could be less stuck in desiring. If only we could connect more with our true want, our true emptiness that needs filling. If only we could hear our Shepherd’s voice and follow him. We would find green pastures, find life in the valley of death, a table to deal with our enemies, the Kingdom of God. With the Lord as our shepherd we have the liberation we seek, we have the faith our nation needs. With the Lord as our shepherd, the life of each of us turns into an adventure of grace and power, working in us, and that can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. May we follow our Great Shepherd.