28th Sunday in Ordinary Time October 11, 2026
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
When emails, phone calls, and meetings start to weigh on me, I like to just walk into the cafeteria or playground at VC. Yeah, the hugs and high fives and excited shouts – “Fr. Albert!” – are awesome, but it’s also the questions. They’re often silly, but sometimes they are truly profound – the kind that explains why Jesus tells us to become like children… willing to ask and to trust Our Father with what matters most.
One question I got recently from a 5-year-old girl was: “Fr. Albert, why did God have to die?” Great question! Lots of wonderful theology to explain, stuff I can hash out for an hour or more over dinner and a drink. But how do you explain any of that to a 5-year-old? God is good and, this time at least, he popped an answer into my head right away.
“Well, death is like a door. It’s a scary door that’s locked. But on the other side is heaven. Until Jesus died, no one could get in. But when Jesus died, he unlocked the door and showed us how to go through it.” She seemed to accept that answer and it was back to random questions from the group about ice cream and laser tag.
But you know what? I don’t think that answer was just for that little girl. I think we all need that reminder: that God died so he could show us, so he could lead us through the scary door of death into eternal life. But the door is still scary and we still do have to actually follow him. “I shall live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” So we just sang in our responsorial psalm, but is that true? Will we live in his house forever? We’ve got to get into the house first.
“The Lord is my shepherd.” That’s the opening line for the psalm and the verse we said is the end. If we are going to pray the words at the end of the psalm we have to also pray the words at the beginning of the psalm. Don’t forget that that’s what the psalms are – prayers! Who ever heard of only praying the second half of a prayer? When Jesus cries out on the cross “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me,” we are quick – and correct! – to point out that that is the first line of a psalm and that that psalm ends with a promise of resurrection and hope. By the way, that is psalm twenty-two, the one right before today’s.
So, if we’re going to pray the end of a psalm and get the victory, we’ve got to mean it when we pray the beginning about how we get that victory. “The Lord is my shepherd,” meaning, I will follow the Lord. And that Lord-shepherd leads us through the door of death. It’s quite literally why he became human in the first place, to lead us through death. We know this – it’s like the whole Christian thing and everyone points it out at funerals: death leads to eternal life.
But, I hope you know that’s not automatic. God is a shepherd, not a butcher. He does not process us, does not use force to turn us into a product. He leads us – we have to follow him. That’s why the very next phrase in Psalm 23 might be the most difficult in all the psalms… if not all of scripture: “I shall not want.”
I. Shall. Not. Want. Do you believe that? This does not mean you do not have desires. It’s like when we say “they were found wanting.” It means “shall not lack, shall not go without.” In other words, because the Lord is your shepherd, you know you will have what you need. It’s a promise of what our Lord-Shepherd will do. That’s why the rest of the psalm talks about food and drink and rest – all the stuff God will provide if we follow him.
Will he, though? How many of us can honestly say we’ve never lacked something since we started following Jesus? “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” Then how come I got all these unpaid bills? How come I can’t afford a decent meal anymore? How come I’m depressed or alone or sick or losing someone I love? You call that ‘not wanting?’ Feels like a whole lot of wanting and lacking to me!”
Y’all, if that’s how feel, if that’s what you’ve thought… then you really need to say that to Jesus. You’ve really got lay it honestly before the Lord in prayer. Don’t go broadcasting, don’t curse God, but don’t bottle it up and pretend it ain’t there either. He’s your shepherd, your Lord, your savior, your friend, and a teacher who has explicitly told us to pray boldly and persistently. Tell him.
Only, when you do, remember that he is God and you are not. He’s a big God and he can handle all your brutally honest thoughts and feelings, but never forget that he’s not on trial. We are not on a quid-pro-quo contract with God. He’s the shepherd, we’re the sheep. He’s the king, we are the invited guests.
Indeed, that comparison of king and guests, this parable is one way you might be able to accept the answer to your question. You still might not understand it, but this metaphor does offer a way to accept how God keeps his promise that you “shall not want” even while it certainly feels like you’ve got a whole lot of wanting going on.
It comes back to that door of death that I told the little girl about. The king invites us to come to his banquet, but to get into his great hall, you’ve got to enter that door, follow the shepherd through it. By that, I do not mean wait until the end of your life and then get into heaven. That process of entering the door starts now just as the feast in the parable starts with the invitation and the announcement.
These people who refuse to come don’t realize what they’re saying no to. The messenger shows up and says “come to the banquet,” but they don’t hear it that way. What they hear is “stop doing what you’re doing.” They hear “put that stuff down, give up those plans, don’t worry about those deals, forget about the money.” They’re so caught up in trying to satisfy their needs for themselves that all they see is a distraction, an annoyance, an obstacle. “I’m trying to get what I want! I don’t have time for your stupid party, I’ve got stuff to do!”
Some are so attached, so focused on their own plans that they get enraged enough to kill the messengers who bothered to remind them of the party they had already agreed to attend. The problem doesn’t start with the violence, though, it starts with the lack of trust. They’ve never believed the line “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Like Eve in the garden, like every person who has ever sinned, it starts with doubt that God really is good. Doubt causes us to rely on ourselves; we don’t trust God to keep his promise. The more we get into the habit of self-reliance, the more annoyed we are when God’s commands, when even his invitations get in the way of our efforts. Eventually, we get to the point that we don’t even want to go to heaven; we no longer see it as heaven. We see only the interruption to our plans to get what we want.
The door of death our shepherd goes through is not death at the end of life. It is the death right now to anything and everything that causes us to disregard or even attack the messengers of God who remind us that the king’s invitation is more important than everything else.
“The Lord is my shepherd.” Do you mean that? Then trust that he really is good! Demonstrate that trust and follow him! Follow through the death of “wasting” time at prayer. Through the death of losing money and friends when you refuse to compromise with evil. Refuse to set your heart on the fleeting pleasures of this world and follow him through the death of obedience to a plan you don’t fully understand.
You don’t need to understand, you just need to trust the king who invited you who sent his own son to lead you through the doors of death to self and death to the world. Follow him through those doors and one day you’ll know what it means to say “I shall not want.”