“He Restoreth My Soul”
Psalm 23:2-3

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
Lent Service IV—March 22, 2017

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”

We continue our sermon series, “A Lenten Look at Psalm 23”: “He restoreth my soul.”

In the summer of 1984, I was an archaeologist on an excavation in northern Jordan, about 40 miles from the Sea of Galilee.  Because my fair skin couldn’t take the desert sun, I was chosen to work underground, on tomb excavations.  There are tens of thousands of tombs at the site, most of them artificial caves carved into the hillsides surrounding the ancient city we were investigating.

The Arabic word for “crazy” is “mazhnun” and the local people called us “those ‘mazhnun’ Americans” because we put such painstaking effort into unearthing fallen buildings and shards of pottery and piles of bones.  It would make sense to them if there was some treasure; what they couldn’t understand is that to an archaeologist, fallen buildings and shards of pottery, and piles of bones IS treasure.  For the most part, the locals considered us harmless eccentrics.  But, they did have a legitimate beef about our tomb excavation crew.

The entrance to these tombs was usually a large pit or a shaft cut into the limestone.  Over the centuries these shafts had filled in with rubble, so that before we got there the surface the hillside was smooth.  We would locate these shafts by differences in the surface vegetation and simply guessing where a desirable place for a tomb might have been.  We’d pound down steel rods to confirm the existence of a shaft in the limestone shelf, and then start digging.  The tomb itself would be a cave-like room off the shaft.  Because we didn’t have the manpower or time to fill it back in, when we were done with a tomb we left a huge pile of rubble beside a big, open pit, maybe ten feet wide, ten feet long and 15 feet deep.  It looked like a bomb had been dropped.  Our crew had a very productive season that year, and at the end of the summer the hillsides around the ancient city were pockmarked with these holes.  The local people had a legitimate complaint about this, which you can appreciate if you’ve ever worked livestock, because they used those hillsides to graze their sheep.

Early one morning, about the middle of the summer, a very angry man showed up at the tomb we were in the process of excavating, cursing us profusely in Arabic.  He was a local shepherd and one of his prize sheep had wandered off and fallen into one of these pits.  It was our fault for digging all these crazy holes, he said, and it was up to US to get his sheep out.

It was a particularly deep, narrow shaft.  At the bottom was a very large, and very frightened, confused, and helpless sheep.  It took the rest of the day, but the shepherd finally managed somehow to sling two of our ropes under the sheep’s belly and we hoisted it to freedom.

Isaiah says, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.”  In the Old Testament, falling into a “pit” is often used to symbolize falling into sin.  Like that sheep that wandered off and fell into a pit, each of us has wandered from God’s ways and fallen into the pit of sin.  Perhaps it was because their tombs had these entrance shafts that in the Old Testament the phrase “go down to the pit” is also symbolic of death, and damnation.  That is what we each deserve because of our sin, to “go down to the pit” of death and damnation.

But, Jesus said, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit . . . will you not take hold of it and lift it out?  How much more valuable is a man than a sheep!”  The Good Shepherd dearly loves every sheep in his flock.  St. Peter says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross . . . by his wounds you have been healed.  For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” 

The Good Shepherd dearly loves every sheep in his flock, so much that he laid down his life for us, that through his own sacrificial death we are forgiven when we stray.  The Good Shepherd dearly loves every sheep in his flock, and he lifts us up out of the pit of sin, death, and damnation.

Jesus once told the Parable of the Lost Sheep: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?  And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’  I tell you that in the same way there will be . . . rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents . . .”

In the Old Testament a “pit” is also used to symbolize woes and troubles.  The writer of Psalm 88 says, “my soul is full of trouble . . . [I am] in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.”  Is that how you feel sometimes, in the lowest pit, in the darkest depth, like that sheep trapped at the bottom of a shaft, frightened, confused, and helpless?  “The Lord is my shepherd . . . He restoreth my soul.” 

Your Good Shepherd does not leave you trapped in the pit of sin; your Good Shepherd does not leave you trapped in the pit of death and damnation; and your Good Shepherd does not leave you trapped in the pit of woe and trouble.  As Psalm 103 says, “He redeems your life from the pit, and crowns you with love and compassion.”

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul.”