Sermon from St. Paul's Albany, April 21 "Not Calm"

Psalm 23

          When I first saw that the 23^rd 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.”