How We Can Walk With the Good Shepherd During the Pandemic (and Always)

‘Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow’

One of the things that has held me together as someone in the ordained ministry is colleagues, both formal and informal relationships that allow me to check in and who check in with me: “How are you doing? How can I be praying for you?” as well as very formal situations. And one of those was a clergy support group that I was in for easily over 10 years. It was led by a local psychotherapist who himself was an ordained minister. 

Four of us clergy met together with him monthly for two hours; we paid him, and it was in many ways a lifeline. I cannot commend relationships like that with fellow Christians any more highly, because those are ways the Good Shepherd manifests his care.

One day, we were laughing and talking with each other after one of our meeting. And I was telling a story about how when I was a kid, we lived in a suburban area of Richmond, Virginia, that had a sewer system. There were manhole covers in front of various homes, including ours, and there wasn’t a lot of traffic, so we could go out on the street and put an ear to the manhole cover and hear the water running underneath. And we would make up all kinds of mostly scary stories about what was going on under there. 

I was telling that story and laughing about it, and one of the group members looked at me and said, “Well, Greg, I hope that one day you’ll have the courage to go down that manhole cover and see what’s really there.” 

And I knew that when he said that, that I was being invited by the Good Shepherd to look at some parts of my life that I have not paid any particular attention to. And one day the opportunity arose. I was with two very trusted people to whom I had gone for counsel and for prayer ministry. And I felt strongly prompted to tell that story. And when I did, one of the prayer ministers said, “Well, let’s just pray together and see what happens. Maybe the Lord will invite you down there.” And so the three of us went into prayer.

I was immediately in that time of prayer, transported back to 8 or 9 years old, and I’m with my friends, and we’re laughing and telling stories. And in the midst of all of that, I saw in my mind the manhole cover lift off. And I noticed that there was a ladder, and it began at street level and it went straight down, and you couldn’t see bottom. And I was being invited to go down the ladder. 

Well, I knew that was why I was there, with these two people praying for me. And so I swung my leg over the side, stood on the ladder at the top and sort of looked around and began to descend. As I went down, my eyes got adjusted to the darkness, and although I could see mostly shadows, I knew I was in a room. I went down finally to where my feet touched bottom. And as I looked off, I could see was another doorway not terribly far away, and a light on the other side, and I had no idea what the light was. But since that was the only place I could see, that’s where I began to go. I made my way in the darkness over to that particular door, and I peered around the side to see where the light was coming from. 

‘I Will Fear No Evil: For Thou Art With Me’

Well, the light was coming from Jesus. He was there. You could tell he’d been waiting for me to come down those stairs and be there with him. And now he began to take me from room to room. 

Now I want to tell you, we didn’t go visit a meadow. It really was more like a garbage heap. Jesus showed me places in my life where I was broken, places where he, in fact, wanted to write a new story. Create a new place of healing. Places where I would discover not the darkness of a garbage heap, but his companionship in the midst of the garbage. And to see him begin over the years to transform those places of garbage into places where I knew his presence. 

That for me describes in a better way than I could ever express what it means for Jesus to be the Good Shepherd, to be the one who invites us in to places in our lives that we wouldn’t normally want to go. But you know, these places don’t frighten him at all. They may be scary to us. But as the scripture says, “Even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day” (Ps. 139:12a).

And I knew that I could trust Jesus as my Good Shepherd to lead men as the 23rd Psalm says, into paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me” (Ps. 23:4a, KJV). 

I already had that confidence that God was good and that he was powerful and that in the cross, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, sin is not just forgiven, it is remitted, it is cleansed, it is wiped away. And because I already knew that, I knew I could trust the Good Shepherd to go into those places where there was that kind of garbage. 

‘He Leadeth Me in the Paths of Righteousness for His Name’s Sake’

I tell that story today because a part of what happens, at least to some of us, when we are sheltering in place, is that the garbage that we wish weren’t can get really very insistent. We feel afraid. We have cabin fever; we want to get out and do something. We don’t want to feel what it is we’re feeling on the inside. And then of course, the temptation in the midst of that kind of circumstance is indulgence, to give in to the cravings we wish weren’t there as a way to satisfy the ache we’re feeling inside. 

It can be anything. It can be food, it can be alcohol, it can be compulsive buying, it can be pornography. It could even be going from project after project just to keep from thinking about what’s in here, down underneath a manhole cover we wish weren’t there. Because all of us are in process. None of us is in a place where all the garbage is gone, and it’s just meadow. That’s not going to happen until Jesus returns and we are received into his presence. Then, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12b, “Then I shall know even as also I am known.” 

And so for now, I need to be reminded that there is an alternative to the cravings. There is a Good Shepherd who desires to lead us into places that the Scripture describes as “green pastures.” Because no matter how many times we click the “buy” button on the computer, the hole inside, the garbage, only increases. It doesn’t decrease. We add to the refuse rather than being cleansed.

 I would urge you in this time to ask God to help you discover in new ways who Jesus is as Good Shepherd and that there really is an alternative to the kind of inner anesthesia we apply to ourselves as a way to dull the ache. There is an opportunity in this season, in fact, to quote Seth Haynes’ book, to “wake up.” It’s my friend Seth’s story of how he came out of chronic alcoholism and began to face the addictions in his life, and the wonderful work that God did in his life to bring him into deeper places of healing. 

It’s possible for any of us. We don’t have to live with the inner application of regular doses of anesthesia. We can in fact, discover Jesus is a Good Shepherd, who is powerful, who is wise, who is deeply kind and who is committed even more than we are to bring us into places of genuine solace and real healing. 

It seems to me that as we continue to wrestle with sheltering, and we want more than ever to break out of the confines of that sheltering to get our own needs met because we’re running away, that instead perhaps before that happens, we might find new ways to run to this Good Shepherd who will lead us along paths of righteousness for his name’s sake, no matter how unworthy we might feel. And in so doing, to have eyes to see how good he truly is. This can be a season of genuine and wondrous discovery.

May you discover even in this dark time, new light from that light who is just around the corner, inviting you to draw close. 

During the pandemic, how has Jesus revealed Himself as the Good Shepherd? Share this blog and your response on Twitter. Please include my username, @revgregbrewer. 

(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on May 3, 2020, in the chapel of the Diocese of Central Florida in Orlando.) 

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.