Two weeks ago my mother underwent an operation at the University Hospital in Rochester, New York. I went up there to make myself available and to stand by during the course of the procedure and its immediate aftermath. My father used to serve as the clinical professor of Orthopedics at the hospital and I recall frequent trips with him during my much younger days, when I sat in the drab and gloomy hospital waiting room. The hospital has, of course, changed spectacularly. The current waiting room-in a distant new wing-now contains bookshelves packed with the latest adventure paperbacks, a self-help coffee operation, a friendly service-oriented volunteer host, bright light, direct telephone connections to doctors and the like. The front door of my youth lies now at the back of the building, the hospital completely turned around; the campus, once squeezed into one block, now stretches five city blocks with towers embracing every conceivable biological, anatomical, and biochemical nuance. Indeed, the New York Times yesterday carried an article implying the University of Rochester may gain billions in royalties from a patent for a painkiller as a consequence of research in those biomedical research towers.

During my tertiary exploration of this vast complex, I followed a sign pointing to the Interfaith Chapel. I must have walked half a mile through a glistening, white, well-polished, labyrinth designed by someone purporting to be an architect but more likely an agent of the evil genius who just brought the world to its knees with that e-mail monster, “The Love Bug.” Nonetheless, I finally reached the chapel and discovered a beautiful room: high ceilings, bright windows, warm colors, inviting accommodations. And there, behind the chancel: a vertical mosaic, some twenty-five feet high, inscribed with radiant stones against a golden background, the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want . . .”

Of course! An interfaith confession, bearing consolation and courage, a nearly universal metaphor inspiring trust and confidence in a world where one of the constants amid fleeting and overwhelming change is the fragile and precarious quality of human life, something even a university hospital, trying to keep up with and alleviate the risks of existence, for all of its technological success, cannot quite overcome: that psalm provides an age-old hope, an immovable rock anchoring us in a fast-paced world.

I

“The Lord is my shepherd. . .” I suppose for some of us who live in urban areas these rural allusions fall on muffled ears. Sunday school curricula devised for urban churches struggle to recast the images of a nomadic Middle Eastern people into modern urban equivalents. And so we ask: what metaphor might we use for God as shepherd, these days? What analogy for a flock?

Well, friends, as we gather this morning, there is a Million Mom March in Washington pressing to close loopholes in our gun laws, one mother there saying, “I just felt I had to do something so that there were not more shootings in schools. I want my children to be safe.” And yes, as I wandered around the block on Friday, a tee-shirt in a store window caught my attention. There, emblazoned across the front of the shirt I found, I think, the crystallization of a shepherd analogy. The tee-shirt read, “God couldn’t be everywhere. So she created mothers.” Of course! Thus, I hope you will excuse me if I use on this Good Shepherd Sunday-this Mother’s Day-one of those touching reflections by Erma Bombeck describing in her own special way, the intricacies of motherhood, the very human components, it seems to me, of good shepherdhood. As many of you know, I love this reference. Remember? She calls it, “Favorite Child.”

Every mother has a favorite child.
She cannot help it. She is only human.
I have mine.
That child for whom I felt a special closeness. The one I reach out to in a rare moment, to share a love that no one else could possibly understand.
My favorite child is the one who was too sick to eat the ice cream at his birthday party, had measles at Christmas and wore leg braces to bed because he toed in.
She was the fever the middle of the night, the asthma attack, the child in my arms at the emergency ward.
My favorite child spent Christmas alone away from the family, was stranded after the game with a gas tank on E, lost the money for his class ring.
My favorite child is the one who screwed up the piano recital, misspelled committee in a spelling bee, ran the wrong way with the football and had his bike stolen because he was careless.
My favorite child is the one who fell asleep over an assignment on China that the teacher never bothered to grade, flunked her drivers license test five times and told us she could hardly wait to get out of the house.
My favorite child is the one I punished for lying, grounded for insensitivity to other people’s feelings and informed he was a royal pain to the entire family.
My favorite child slammed doors in frustration, cried when she didn’t think I saw her, withdrew and said she could not talk to me.
My favorite child always needed a haircut, had hair that wouldn’t curl, had no date for Saturday night and a car that cost $1000 to fix.
My favorite child said dumb things for which there were no excuses. He was selfish, immature, bad tempered and self-centered. He was vulnerable, lonely, unsure of what he was doing in this world . . . and quite wonderful.
The one I loved the most is the one whom I have watched struggle and-because the struggle was his-done nothing.
All mothers have their favorite child. It is always the same one, the one who needs you at the moment for whatever reason-to cling to, to shout at, to hurt, to hug, to flatter, to reverse charges to, to unload on, to use-but mostly to be there.

Empathy. Urgency. Compassion. A long reach. A sure, indomitable hope. A love that will not give up. The God we serve; the God overseeing these young people we confirm this morning; the God in Rochester’s University Hospital and in whom we, this morning, in the Old South Church in Boston, can rest our confidence-this God broods over us, encourages, supports, nurtures, nourishes us as a mother her children; like a shepherd her flock.

II

Another of the references in this beautiful Psalm mentions the setting of a table in the presence of enemies. Do you know what that means? It draws a picture of courage in the face of trouble. It infers a host, inviting his antagonists to dine. It demonstrates an initiative at reconciliation amid confusion, hatred, communal brokenness.

What does such an occasion look like, this setting a table in the presence of enemies? Well, instead of Erma Bombeck, I am going to let that wise, discerning, Mississippi prophet of human rights, Will Campbell, tell us another story.

He begins with an observation: “I don’t think much of the way greatness is gauged and history is taught,” he writes. “It seems to center around a few of the rich and famous. Those we call ‘little people’ seem not to exist. Wars are the generals. Big industries, the CEOs. The body politic, the famed.”

Campbell goes on:

My phone rang at the time the networks were trying to decide whether to carry the State of the Union address of Bill Clinton or the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial. My caller said, “Mrs. Booker passed away a while ago.” Two famous people were then on TV. I would call my caller back? No, no!

Mrs. Fannye Booker. Ever hear that name? Well, she was a ninety-year old black lady in Mississippi. She never played football, but she ran a little camp school for rural black children during the Depression, when the state wouldn’t educate them. They brought butter, eggs, peas and cornmeal as tuition. She was never president, but while running a quilting bee she taught black people how to register to vote. She was never a CEO, but she gave hope to hundreds of poor children.

Few came to her funeral. The papers didn’t mention her passing. So let’s speak her name now with awe, for she was the stuff of authentic history, the essence of true greatness. Fannye Thomas Booker. And be grateful.

That is setting your table among your enemies. Courage, patience, vision, grace, endurance, steadfast through the worst to the end.

In a moment, we will bond in a new way eight young people to our family in the faith here at Old South. Their baptism already ties them to us as sisters and brothers, nephews and nieces, children or grandchildren in Christ. Today they confirm the vows made in their behalf at baptism. Today, on this Good Shepherd Sunday, amid astounding change as represented by that University Hospital, they confess before you and the One who loves us as a shepherd loves a flock-as a mother her children-they confess their own confidence, as old as the ages, their own confidence in this One who bears us through the wonder and beauty, the obstacles and reversals of life. Today they confirm their commitment to One enabling us-enabling them-with courage, aplomb, grace and compassion to set table for adversaries amid the most threatening of circumstances. Today, along with the saints of the ages, they-with us-confess with confidence and trust, “The Lord is my shepherd, from the very beginning, yea, from this day forth and for evermore.”