Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 29, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

It’s everyone’s favorite Psalm, Psalm 23. Many of us memorized it as kids, probably in its King James version. It’s beautiful. It’s familiar. It’s comforting. Yet it struck me when I read it again this past week that I’ve never preached on the 23rd Psalm before. I’ve never written anything about it. Indeed, I’ve never given very much thought to what it actually means. So I thought I’d take the occasion of its appearance in the lectionary for this week to spend some time with it, to consider more deeply than I ever have before just precisely what it has to say to us today. So come along with me as we enter into this beloved Psalm and see what we can discover about its message for us this morning.

The Psalm begins with a theme statement: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” This theme statement sets up all of the rest of the Psalm. Indeed, all the rest of the Psalm is an elaboration of what it means for the Lord to be our shepherd. We should note in passing that “the Lord” here is a translation of the Hebrew name of God Yahweh, and we will take it to mean God. It does not of course mean Jesus, since although it may be unclear just when Psalm 23 was written is was written at least several hundred years before Jesus came along. After this first line the Psalm refers to God as “he” and as “you.” When you hear those pronouns, just think “God.”

The image of God as a shepherd of God’s people, and of God’s people therefore as sheep, is a very common one in both the Hebrew Scriptures and in the New Testament. We heard one of the New Testament’s uses of the metaphor in our reading from the Gospel of John just now. Most of us today have no first-hand experience of just what a shepherd is or what a shepherd does. I’m no shepherd, and I don’t think I’ve very known a shepherd (although I do know Kayleen and Hans, both of whom own sheep). Still, the function of the symbol in the Bible is clear enough. The primary function of a shepherd is to keep the sheep safe. The shepherd makes sure the sheep get to the pasture to graze, makes sure they get enough water, keeps them from wandering off and getting lost, and protects them from predators. Eventually the shepherd delivers the sheep to be shorn or even slaughtered, but the Biblical image of the shepherd never seems to mention that part of the shepherd’s job. When the Bible calls God our shepherd it means that God is the one who keeps us safe, who protects us, defends us, and provides for us.

So when Psalm 23 begins with the theme statement “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” it tells us that the Psalm is about what it means that God keeps us safe. This Psalm breaks naturally into three parts characterized by the use of different pronouns. Verses two and three all use the pronoun “He,” and the use of that pronoun in those three verses suggests that they have a common theme. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul, he leads me in right paths. The suggestion here is that God provides for both our physical and our spiritual needs. In green pastures and still waters sheep have what they need to live on. With God, we have what we need to live on. Most of the time we have enough food and water (although that isn’t always true for all of God’s sheep, a thorny issue that I’ll sidestep for now). God leads us to wholeness of spiritual life too, with souls restored and lives led rightly. These verses of Psalm 23 tell us that with God we can have all we need to live. It does not promise worldly riches. God makes us lie down in green pastures, not in luxurious mansions. God gives us still waters not bottles of Dom Perignon. Life with God, the Psalm tells us, is abundant and peaceful. It isn’t necessarily rich. The freedom from want that God promises is just that, freedom from true want. It isn’t excessive worldly wealth.

The Psalm then switches pronouns. In verse four the Psalmist speaks of how he experiences the shepherding of God: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me.” NRSV There’s a real important point here in verse 4. The darkest valley is an image of danger. We all learned this verse as “the valley of the shadow of death,” and the NRSV that we’re using here gives that as an alternative translation. The image is of a danger so severe that it may even take our lives. Or maybe it’s an image of human mortality. After all, in a sense we all walk in the valley of the shadow of death every day of our lives. The Psalm gives us an image of danger and even death, and what does it say God does for us there? God “comforts” us. God allows us to live in that place of mortal danger without fear: “I fear no evil,” the Psalmist says. Why? Because “your [that is, God’s] rod and your staff—they comfort me.” Notice: They comfort me, not they protect me. There is no promise here that we will not face danger. There is no promise here that we will not die. Rather, God’s promise is that we can face danger, evil, and even death without fear because God is there to comfort us in whatever befalls us.

The next section of the Psalm, verse 5, continues this theme. The Psalmist now addresses God directly using the pronoun “you”: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” God provides for us (prepares a table before us), makes us God’s chosen ones (anoints our heads with oil), and provides that abundant life that the Psalm promises in its opening verses (my cup overflows), and where does God do all of these things? “In the presence of [our] enemies.” Notice the assumption here, We have enemies. We have people who wish to do us harm. Maybe those enemies are the ones who turn our valleys into valleys of darkness and of the shadow of death. We have enemies, but notice what the Psalm does not say here. It does not say that God smites those enemies, or destroys those enemies, or even protects us from those enemies. It assumes that our enemies, those things in this life that wish us harm and that do us harm, are very real and very present. Enemies here doesn’t have to mean people who are trying to kill us, or people with whom we are at war. I take it to mean anything that threatens that peaceful, abundant life that the Psalm has God giving us in its opening lines. Enemies here can mean, I think, any hardships that we face in our lives. Enemies in that sense are a very real part of every human life; and it is precisely there, in the presence of our enemies human or otherwise, that God is with us, providing for us and comforting us. God does not get rid of the enemies for us, God enables us to be in peace in their presence.

The Psalm ends with verse six, in which the Psalmist switches back to the first person. Here, he speaks of what God’s providing for him means for him: “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.” What can he possibly mean by saying that goodness and mercy shall follow him all the days of his life? The Psalm, as we have noted, does not say he won’t walk through the darkest valley. It does not say that he won’t have enemies. The goodness and mercy of which he speaks has got to mean precisely that God is present with him in those dark valleys and in the face of those enemies. We see this meaning in how this last verse is structured. It’s a couplet, two parallel statements. The first statement is: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” The second statement is: “And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.” In Hebrew poetry, and that’s what Psalm 23 is, couplets like that are used to make a statement in the first part, then repeat, explain, or amplify it in the second part. When we understand that feature of Hebrew poetry, we can see what this last verse is really saying. Goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life precisely because we shall dwell in the house of the Lord our whole life long. Whatever it may have meant to the Psalmist, that last image of dwelling always in the house of the Lord, is, for us, an image of the constant presence of God with us in whatever comes our way in life. That is why and how goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives, because we dwell always in the presence of God.

So what have we learned about what Psalm 23 means for us in our own lives? We have learned that God is our shepherd. God is the one who provides for us, protects us, and comforts us. And we have learned what that means. It doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen to us and to our loved ones. It doesn’t mean we won’t die. Psalm 23 doesn’t promise us any of those things. Rather, Psalm 23 promises us something much more important. It promises that we can live our lives in peace, lying down in green pastures and beside still waters, without fear and with peace in our souls, not because bad things won’t happen to us or our loved ones but because God is with us in all of those bad things, comforting us, calling us God’s own, giving us the calmness of a courageous spirit. The comfort of God’s presence empowers us to live our lives fully, freely, and fearlessly. With God as our shepherd we can overcome any hardship. We can confront and overcome any evil. With God as our shepherd our enemies have no power over us because we know that no harm they can inflict can separate us from the love of God our shepherd. The Lord is our shepherd indeed; and with the Lord as our shepherd, we shall truly never want. Amen.