Psalm 23
When I first saw that the 23rd Psalm was in the
lectionary for today, I thought “I don’t want to preach on that.” It’s not that
I don’t respect and love this Psalm, it’s just that it’s such a calm and
peaceful Psalm and calm and peaceful are not the words I would use to describe
how I was feeling at the time. In his commentary on this Psalm, Walter
Brueggemann says, “ … the speaker of the Psalm is confident and serene in the
face of every threat.” Which is beautiful and lovely but not even close to an
accurate description of how I have been feeling these past few months.
It made me think back to a day, soon after we moved. It was
pouring down rain and I had to go to the post office because I realized we
still had one of the garage door openers from our old house in our car. So I
needed to mail it to the new owner with an apology. I got to the post office
and it was open but no one was there. I waited for quite a while and other people
came, waited a bit and then left in frustration. Finally, the guy working there
came. He was very kind and explained that he was working solo and had to attend
to something. Another worker arrived and started asking him about the problem
they were having there and turned to me and said “look at him, he stays so
calm, he never worries about anything … it’s because he has Jesus.” To which
the guy nodded and smiled. I paid, went back out into the rain, pulled up
Google maps because I had no idea how to get anywhere, and thought “I have
Jesus, why can’t I be like that?”
Life felt very destabilized. We had just moved across the
country, we left all of our friends, our church, our home, our community and I
was in the thick of the transition- getting license plates changed, encouraging
my sad kids when they got off the school bus with stories of getting lost or
not making friends or missing Colorado and all the fun of finding new doctors,
dentists and more. And I was not handling it with complete confidence and
serenity as the Psalmist appears to.
In fact, I feel like most people are not gently sitting by
the still waters in complete serenity and are experiencing some type of
destabilization. I have friends who are preparing to watch their children
graduate and move away to college, friends in the midst of career changes,
loss, health struggles and all kinds of unpredicted change.
Even the church, which ideally is a place of stability, is
in destabilizing times. Some suggest that in Psalm 23, when it says “you
prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies” that this is the
worshipping community, for us Christians this is the Eucharistic feast, a
beautiful banquet of abundance and love poured out by God. But what about when
that beautiful banquet feels unsteady? As I have traveled around the diocese
visiting churches with my husband, the Bishop, I have found wonderful,
welcoming communities of faithful Christians who are engaging in passionate
worship but also have concerns. Churches are declining, finances are unsteady,
there is a shortage of clergy and covid took a tool on church attendance and
religious programming that we have not yet recovered from. All in the midst of
a changing world where many no longer rely on the institutions that have held
us together for so long.
Our lives, the church, the world is not stable, it is not
ideal, it is not calm and serene. And so it makes sense that many of us feel
dizzied by the changes of life and not perfectly at peace as we walk through
the pastures.
And actually, Psalm 23 is honest about that. The setting
for this idyllic scene is the real world. The Psalmist is living in the real
world and describes it throughout the Psalm- souls that need restoration and
reviving, dark valleys, fear, evil and enemies. This is not a Psalm written by
someone who has not known trouble, someone who has never experienced the
darkness of the world, someone living in a fairytale with their eyes closed to
the pain of living. This is a Psalm written by someone who knows, life can get
hard. There are valleys, there is evil, there are enemies, there is fear and we
are souls in need of restoration. And in this way, I can relate to this Psalm.
I can also relate to being a sheep. The image of Christ as
shepherd speaks to me. Like a sheep, I can be easily confused. Like a sheep, I
can be thrown off my intended path. I get lost, I wander and sometimes lose
sight of the way back. Lost sheep can end up alone, hungry, thirsty and afraid
… hoping to hear the voice of the shepherd, calling them to restoration, to
sustenance, to nourishment. I too hope to hear that voice.
I also appreciate the way the Psalm moves from impersonal
to personal. At the beginning of the Psalm, God is referred to as “Lord” and
“he” but then in the middle God is referred to as “you” several times before
the Psalm ends with “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life
long.” What starts as a formal declaration or communal praise quickly turns to
something deeply personal and intimate. The turn from “God” and “worshipper” to
“you” and “I” is very moving and real. Because in those moments of life when we
are very aware of the darkness and the dangers and the unknowns, our formality
shifts to something that comes from deep in our hearts. The formal address is
set aside when one is crying out from the depths of their heart. And when the
Psalmist experiences the presence of God, they are touched not by a distant God
watching over from on high but rather a God who is near, near enough to anoint,
lay out a picnic and walk next to them. There in the pasture in the shadow of
death, dining in peace, it’s a you and I intimacy, a deep level of knowing God
as near, as near as our own beating heart.
It is a beautiful Psalm and one that is cherished by many,
but I still wasn’t sure if this was the scripture that I was being called to
preach today. I just wasn’t sure if my worrying, fretful mind was in the right
place for this Psalm. I was thinking about this on one of those beautiful sunny
days we had at the beginning of the week and just feeling overwhelmed with all
kinds of worries and unknowns and so I decided to take the dog for a long walk.
I had recently discovered that I could easily get to Albany Rural Cemetery from
our house and so I started walking that way. When I got to the cemetery it was
empty and quiet, only the birds were making noise. Having recently lived in
Southern Colorado, I am still in awe of the beautiful colors here, the kids and
I talk about how the bright green grass and blooming trees look like they have
been colored with a marker. We also marvel at the abundance of rivers, creeks
and ponds. And so as I walked along I was just in awe over the way the grass
sparkled under the sun and how the creek gently bounced through the trees and
the way the big pond softly held the geese. I looked at the graves as I walked,
some were new and many were old, some of the years revealed young lives and
many were elderly. And then it occurred to me … I was literally walking through
the valley of the shadow of death. I was surrounded by the dead, faced with the
harsh reality that all is fleeting and that there is so much unknown in the
world. And yet, I felt the presence of Christ so near and in such a tangible
way through the beauty of new life all around me. The woods that had laid bare
and dead for the winter were now springing forth new life, the crunchy brown
leaves being replaced with green and the life-giving stream was quenching the
thirst of new buds and chirping birds. Right there in the midst of death, in
the midst of a strange and destabilizing world … God is near.
We are Easter people, and that doesn’t mean that we will
always be calm and serene, it doesn’t mean we will always laugh in the face of
fear or shrug off the concerns of the world. It means that we know the
realities of this life. We know death, we know darkness, we know fear and yet
we still proclaim new life. We still come to God’s feast in the midst of
enemies, we still follow the voice of Christ our shepherd because resurrection
and new life are also very real. And in the darkest valleys we know goodness
and mercy still exist and our souls can be restored.
The first thing that I think of when I hear Psalm 23 is how
people love to memorize it. Something about it makes people want to hold onto
it and keep it in their brain. Time and time again I have seen people who were
struggling or in the hospital or near death say these words. Sometimes they
couldn’t remember where they were or the names of their loved ones but still
they could say these words. Something about this Psalm comes to life when we
need it, and so people say it on their death beds and we say it at funerals.
Maybe it’s because when we get to the end of our lives, we look back and we see
that all that time when we thought the darkness was creeping in, that our
enemies were at our heels and that pain was pursuing us, when we look back we
can see so clearly that surely it was goodness and mercy that were at our heels,
pursuing us … God was there in the valleys … God was the one pursuing us. And,
like that calm and serene Psalmist, we can breathe deeply knowing that … no
matter what … “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
