Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
April 13, 2008
Psalm 23
A minister shares this story: "Years ago, I invited a guest speaker to a church where I was the pastor. I invited him to come and do a weekend workshop on prayer. As he spoke, I heard him saying many of the very same things that for years I had been saying, in my sermons and classes, about the spiritual life. He quoted many of the same people that I had quoted. He cited many of the same books that I had cited. He suggested and explained many of the same spiritual disciplines that I had suggested and explained. When he was finished, I thought to myself that while he had not told the people anything they had not heard from me before, nevertheless he had done a pretty good job of reviewing with them what they already knew about the importance of prayer in the life and ministry of the church. This, after all, was something that I had been emphasizing with them throughout all the years of my ministry."
He continues, "Later, after the workshop was over and our guest speaker was long gone, as we were cleaning up, I deliberately eavesdropped on what was being said by those who had attended the seminar and were still around helping. I was stunned. I heard, 'He had such wonderful ideas.' And I heard, 'His suggestions were so fresh and exciting. I can hardly wait to try them.' And, perhaps most perplexing of all, I heard, 'Why hasn't our minister talked about any of these things with us before?'"
Concludes this pastor, "You've heard the old saying 'Familiarity breeds contempt?' Well, I've got a corollary when it comes to ideas - 'Familiarity breeds inattention!' The more we hear the same idea, the more familiar it becomes and the easier it is to ignore."
Which brings me to the 23rd Psalm. Is there any more familiar text in the Bible? Is there any text that more people can recite by heart, with the possible exception of "Jesus Wept"? My favorite confirmation verse! This Psalm moves us still. It can still stir deep emotion, but it doesn't really surprise us. So, as I sat this week staring at a blank computer screen, perhaps mirroring an equally blank mind, it was as if the computer was looking back at me and saying, "Okay, Gene, I dare you to find something new to say about this one." So here we go.
"The Lord is my Shepherd..." I suspect you've heard that one before, but did it ever occur to you that when you say these oh-so-familiar words you're actually making a rather significant political statement? Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, who has really helped me to read this familiar Psalm with a new awareness, says, "The word, 'shepherd' does not suggest an idyllic pastoral scene. In fact, the term, shepherd is political in the Bible. It means king, sovereign, Lord, Authority, the one who directs, to whom I am answerable, whom I trust and serve. In the simple opening line, the Psalm is clear about the goal and focus, the purpose and center of life: it is God and no other"
There can be no competing claim - not economic or political, not liberal or conservative, not even racial or ethnic or blood loyalty. The Psalmist strips life down to one compelling loyalty - God and God alone. And so, these first five, familiar words of this familiar Psalm, invite us to pause for a moment and reflect..."Just who or what really is the shepherd in my life...And how much of my life am I going to trust to this shepherd?"
"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want..." After affirming that the Lord is his shepherd, the Psalmist comes to a rather stunning conclusion. It sounds like he's saying. "If the Lord is my shepherd, then I shall not lack for anything. I shall not have any yearnings or desires that fall outside the grace of God. What God gives will be enough. I will be satisfied, I will not want." So, suddenly this comforting Psalm begins to sound like a bit of a threat to our entire economic system. I shall not want? What about consumption and always wanting more? What about never being satisfied? What about all those things in the catalogue that I have to have but don't need? I shall not want? Wanting is the very basis of our consumer economy.
"He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his namesake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil." Again, the Psalm expresses an enormous confidence in the care and generosity of God. But it doesn't come easy. I think the context is important. Presbyterian pastor, Craig Barnes, reminds us that for the ancient Israelites life was often more struggle than blessing, indeed the word, Israel, means "those who have struggled with God." Says Barnes, "They struggled for a home that they were always trying to get into, hold onto or get back to. They struggled for peace, for food and for a future. More important, they struggled for their faith in God. They longed to live with God as sheep live with a shepherd, but their life was hard. And they were too afraid to keep believing that this Shepherd was leading them to green pastures. So they frequently rushed down more promising paths toward more manageable gods, which always led them into unmanageable trouble. Then they would return to worship where the story was told and retold."
I find that comforting, that these timeless words of comfort and focused trust in God can come out of a history with so much pain and uncertainty and fear and struggle. There's a wonderful honesty in the Psalms. That is helpful for me. Is there anyone here this morning who has not spent time in the valley of the shadow...in a relationship that has offered more hurt than love, in a job that leaves you depleted and spent, in guilt for never quite measuring up in the eyes of someone whose judgment runs deep, in paralyzing fear, in declining health, caught in a grief that won't let you go? We know the dark valley, the churning disruptive struggle to keep our faith.
So we look to the Psalmist, one who shares that struggle, and what do we hear? We hear there is an abundance, a safety, a caring and compassion far greater than we had dared to imagine. We hear that there is one who knows what we need and who gives well beyond all that we ask. We know that we need not fear - a radical concept in what has already been a fear-filled 21st century - we need not fear in even the darkest and ominous places, because "you are with me."
"Your rod and your staff - they comfort me." We are not on our own, but are guided by God's presence, safe from all that would rob us of true life.
"You prepare a table before me. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows." There is an abundance, in the very presence of need and fear and hunger. We seem to need so much less, fear so much less, when we are clear about the wonder and goodness and generosity of God.
Says Brueggemann, "The journey with the power and purpose of God, changes the circumstances in which we live. Wilderness becomes home, isolation becomes companionship, scarcity becomes generosity. The Psalm is the voice of a reorganized, refocused, reoriented life. Such a refocus means to see differently, to trust differently, to obey differently."
A colleague chaplain tells this story: "The young man returned from our annual spring break mission trip to Honduras as a different person. There, with the poor, worshipping in a little village with these pious, deeply religious people, he was changed. He returned to the university, dropped out of the R.O.T.C. program, saying he's now a pacifist. He then shocked his parents by telling them he no longer wanted to go to graduate school. He wanted to go back to Honduras and continue working with the poor. Well, there was much discussion of this move. Many of his friends were puzzled and surprised. What had gotten into him? But my associate, whom I passed in the hall the day after the young man's announcement, said to me, 'Well, I hear that God got another one.'" Amazing what can happen when we step back from the world's demands and desires and begin to refocus on this Good Shepherd, this God who always promises to be with us.
"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long." I've read that "follow" is really not a very good word here. A better word might be "pursue". As the Psalmist sees it we are pursued by mercy, hunted down by goodness. Says Brueggemann, "God's friendliness and kindness will run after me and chase me down and grab me and hold me. We are being chased by God's powerful love...Our life is not willed by God to be an endless anxiety. It is, rather, meant to be an embrace." I suppose we have to decide if we want to get caught. Whenever in this life we find ourselves forced into some dry desert or find ourselves sailing, tossed and turned in some raging torrent. When we wander lost and alone down some crooked path to nowhere, when the night is dark and we are far from home, God meets us there, always pursuing, always pursuing, never giving up.
So don't you give up.
There was no sugar-coating it - he was just a mean old man, bitter, resentful. Some said his attitude was justified. His beloved wife had died in childbirth, and then the child died shortly thereafter from complications. "He has reason to be bitter," they said in town. He never went to church. Never had anything to do with anyone. When, in his late sixties, they carried him out of his apartment, over to the hospital to die, no one visited, no flowers were sent. He would die as he had lived - alone - and that's how he wanted it.
But there was this nurse. She wasn't an official nurse really, still a student nurse. She befriended the old man. It had been a long time since he's had a friend, he didn't know how to act. "Go away!" he told her. "Leave me alone!" But she would just smile and coax him to eat a little more Jello. At night she'd come by and tuck him in. "Don't need nobody to help me!" he growled.
Soon he grew so weak that he no longer had the strength to resist her kindness. Late at night, after her shift was over, she would sit with him, hold his hand, sing him songs. He looked up at her in the dim light and wondered if he saw the face of a little one whom he never got to see as an adult. One night, when she kissed him good night, a tear formed in his eye. He said something he hadn't said in over fifty years: "God bless you."
She left the room, but two others remained, unseen, breathless, whispering softly in the old man's ear the last word he would hear before slipping away from this earth. The word? "Gotcha!" It was whispered in unison by Goodness and Mercy.
"The Lord is my Shepherd." It's good to return to these familiar words once in a while, let them work on us and in us. For they invite us to see past our anxiety, our fear, our need to consume and control. They invite us to see ourselves as the sheep of this good shepherd, as travelers in God's good valley, as citizens at home in God's good house - free and joyous and generous, unencumbered and grateful, and always, always with goodness and mercy never far behind.