Sermon, Sun 11 Feb: Ps 23 - Wk2: He restores my soul

READING: Ps 23;  John 10:1-18

SERMON
Let’s pray:
May the words of my mouth, and the thoughts of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall lack nothing. 
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul...

The old house had sat there for years, gently decaying, slowly falling apart, little by little.
Back in the day, when it had been built, it was charming:
a whitewashed stone cottage looking out on the sea.
Roses were planted, with the hope that they’d climb up the walls on trellises.
A neat square of green lawn was split by a path made of pebbles collected from
those washed up on the beach.
A pretty place.
Everyone who walked by smiled and wondered what it would be like to live there.

Over the years, the family who did live there made their mark on the cottage –
the usual wear and tear –
and often, there were so many things going on,
that little jobs were overlooked and gradually became bigger jobs.
The busy family made half-hearted attempts to fix the occasional problem,
but really didn’t quite have the time needed to do the job properly.
The house, still charming, was...a little shabbier,
the once-neat garden...a little wilder.
Being in such an exposed position also took its toll on the cottage:
the salt spray and wind combined to peel the paint off;
water edged its way through the lime mortar;
the wooden shutters came loose a little too often.
It seemed as if the cottage was fraying ‘round the edges.

Eventually, the family moved away –
keeping it as a holiday home, but, hardly ever going there:
so many other things demanded their time.
They loved the idea of the cottage –
but the reality of going there ...well it was just a little overwhelming:
there were so many other, more pressing things.
A ‘for sale’ sign eventually went up in the overgrown front yard, but, it remained empty.

The years passed, and the cottage quietly deteriorated.
Instead of smiling, those who passed by frowned and wondered what it
might take to fix it up –
and remembered with sadness just how bonny it had been.
Now, truth be told, it was a bit of an eyesore.
But, one day, the ‘for sale’ sign came down.
A couple of vans appeared.
Over the following weeks, a variety of folk worked busily on the cottage:
hammering, mending, roofing, gardening,
tending to the needs of the cottage –
bringing it back from the brink of ruin.
Those who walked by on a regular basis began to feel as if, bit by bit,
the old cottage was... regaining its soul.
The great day came when a young couple moved into the cottage –
the cottage, with its newly whitewashed walls,
repaired and painted shutters,
neat square of green lawn,
and beautifully trained climbing roses.
It had been a labour of love, but now, the place was restored –
and signs of new life glimmered,
just as the lights in the cottage glimmered out from the windows as the evenings crept in.

He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul...
The Lord is our Shepherd, and he’s in the restoration business.
He takes what is broken, falling apart, run-down, or neglected,
and breathes life back into it...
breathes life back into us:
restores our souls –
maybe in such a way that, those who pass by us
see the restoration and smile –
see the light twinkling from our eyes...
see the difference,
just as those who walked by the old cottage saw – and rejoiced –
at the difference after its restoration.

The Lord is our Shepherd,
and green pastures sound nice,
as do still waters and soul restoration –
But, where do we find the time?
Life...is busy.
There’s a great list of never-ending tasks;
things jumping up and down on the ‘to do’ list that seem overwhelming.
The phone’s ringing off the hook,
the ‘ping’ of the computer announces the arrival of another batch of emails –
all needing to be answered right this minute.
There’s a bunch of looming deadlines –
invoices to sort,
or animals needing fed and tended, or scanned –
or, even just watched, for signs of new arrivals shortly on the way;
there's flowers needing bought for a poorly friend;
parts suddenly needed for machinery which has decided that today is the ideal day to breakdown.
It’s busy:
busy with a village ‘do’ that you’ve said you’d help out with...
buses needing caught to get up to town for an appointment,
or get that birthday present,
or visit that elderly aunt
or just to get to school on time.
It’s ...so...very busy.
And sometimes, it’s hard to work out what to prioritise in the midst
of all the things yelling for your attention...
Some days, some weeks, some lives, are just like that.
Times when you feel like you’re on a treadmill and you just want it to stop –
but you just can’t seem to find the ‘pause’ button.

He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores... my... soul...
The Lord is our Shepherd, and he’s in the restoration business.
Part of that restoration involves
still waters – places of peace;
green pastures - places to rest, to be.
This goes against the whole notion of what it is to be human in our
own Western culture, for, we live in a culture of relentless busyness.
We live with a focus less on us as human beings, and more on us as human ‘doings’.
So many demands on our time.
Or, so much guilt, if we’re not doing something useful with our time –
although, I often wonder just who it is that determines what is, or isn’t ‘useful’.
There’s a voice that whispers to us:
‘Don’t ‘waste’ time just sitting there: ‘do’ something.
Be ...productive'
And sometimes we listen to that voice and buy into the lie that our worth
only found in what we do, not in whose we are.

We all know that the pressure of busyness can be crushing and can come from all sides:
pressures of work,
pressures of family,
pressures of all those things taken on because...well, someone has to do it,
and nobody else was putting their hand up.
Then there are the pressures of not wanting to let people down;
the pressure of not wanting to let yourself down;
perhaps, even the pressure of not being busy – the fear of emptiness, of pointlessness.
And we sometimes listen to that voice which tells us that:
if we’re busy, it means there’s some kind of meaning, some kind of purpose, to our lives –
...well, doesn’t it?
Sometimes it feels like we’ve so many plates spinning in the air, that, if we pause,
if we stop, even for a moment,
the whole show might just come crashing down on top of us.
And anyway, we haven’t got time to pause.

But actually,
sometimes, the most productive thing that we can do is to take time...out.
Pause.
Be still.
Stop the relentless busyness.
Get ourselves a little soul restoration by listening to another voice:
the voice of the One who leads us away from the plate-spinning madness
to green pastures,
still waters:
places where we can safely rest and be restored.

Last week, we were thinking about how we viewed things:
did we see the gaps?
Where did we choose to focus?
Was it on what we didn’t have,
on what we couldn’t do?
Or, like our Psalmist, did we move our focus to what we do have:
the Lord, in whom we lack nothing?
As we move further into the Psalm, the Psalmist again invites us to do some refocusing –
reminds us that we need to move away from the temptation to relentless busyness:
because it’s quite easy to make an idol out of being busy –
as if doing all of the things in some way validates our existence.
We can easily run ourselves ragged, wear ourselves down,
through the constant business of being busy –
through the pressure of feeling we have to keep the show on the road.
It sucks our souls dry....
God’s not interested in shows:
God wants us to be real.
And God is all about grace –
it’s not our job to validate our existence –
that’s God’s job.
Constantly focusing on what we need to do takes the focus away from God:
Again, our worth, our value,
is found in the One who calls us,
who knows our very name –
whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light...
and, who ‘makes’ us lie down.
Perhaps, not to rest, is not to trust God –
the very One, who, having created the heavens and established the earth, did just that:
rested.
To listen to the call to rest is an act of trust:
trusting that it’s God, not ourselves, who’s in charge.

Restoration mattered – matters – so much to God that he told Moses
to write it down as a good rule to live by:
‘remember the Sabbath’ –
remember to rest.
Resting...is important.
To rest, is to allow ourselves to be restored.
In the midst of the relentless busyness, if we don’t pause,
we end up looking as ramshackle and rundown as that seaside cottage.
We get deafened by all the clamouring voices
demanding our time,
our energy –
life becomes lived in an ocean of noise that threatens to drown out the voice
of the One who would call us out of the cycle of busyness
and into the green pastures –
finding nourishment,
finding ourselves, as found in God –
in whose image we’re made,
and in whose image we’re restored.

He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores... my... soul...
Still waters – not raging torrents:
still waters where we can drink our fill without fear of being swept away.
Our Shepherd leads us to places where we won’t be overwhelmed.
When we feel like dried up husks because we’ve been so busy,
he calls us to come and drink,
to come and be refreshed,
to come and live life in all of its fullness – for water is life-giving stuff.

Just as taking on a house restoration,
the business of soul-restoration is a life-long work:
it’s about balance between doing and being;
it requires us to shake off the noise of all those voices
calling us to constant busyness
and listen more attentively for the voice of the Shepherd,
who invites us to pause awhile.
And, who calls us, having rested, from those places of rest to go back out into the world
to demonstrate what it is to be fully, authentically human:
and that the glory of God can be seen in a human who is fully alive:
a human...
being,
and, a human being restored by God.
This week, as you go about doing those everyday things that need done,
don’t forget to take time out –
and smell the roses, or do whatever it is that restores your soul –
For the Lord, your Shepherd, gives you permission to rest and be restored –
and, hey, you can’t argue with that.
Amen.