Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 3, 2009

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.

We all know it. We all love it. Many of us can recite it from memory, probably in the King James Version. So I was surprised recently to learn something I didn’t know about the twenty-third Psalm. Some scholars, it seems, say something about the image of the shepherd that I hadn’t heard before. When we hear Psalm 23, I suspect that most of see an image of Jesus in a white robe with a shepherd’s crook in a lush green meadow surrounded by contented, well-fed, wooly sheep. Psalm 23 isn’t about Jesus, of course. It was written hundreds of years before Jesus lived, and the word translated as Lord is the Hebrew name of God, but never mind. That doesn’t stop us from seeing Jesus the Good Shepherd every time we hear this Psalm. But those scholars I mentioned say that that image isn’t what the Psalmist intended at all, and not just because the Psalm isn’t about Jesus. They say that shepherd is a common Biblical image for a king and that what the Psalmist intended isn’t a literal shepherd with sheep but rather an image of God as a good king who brings the people peace.

And that got me thinking: Is God a king? Does that image work for us? Certainly king is a traditional image for God. One of my favorite hymns from the old red hymnal is “Lead On, O King Eternal.” Other old hymns use the image of God as a king too, and the phrase “the kingdom of God” is central to Christian teaching. In the Calvinist variety of Protestantism, out of which most of the forerunners of the UCC come, God is seen above all else as “sovereign,” that is, as king. Yet for all that, I have to say that the image of God as king really doesn’t work for me, and I doubt that it works very well for many of you. First of all, we don’t have kings in this country. The concept king is anti-democratic, or so it seems to us Americans. We don’t have a king, and we don’t want a king. Beyond that, I just don’t see God acting like an earthly king, not even one with cosmic powers. I mean, in the terms of the 23rd Psalm, we don’t always lie down in green pastures. We don’t always walk beside still waters. We don’t always feast in the presence of our enemies. The things that Psalm 23 says that God the King does for us don’t in fact always happen. A lot of people live with a great deal of want. Sometimes, metaphorically speaking, we lie down among the rocks. Sometimes our waters are stormy. Sometimes our enemies are victorious. So I don’t think the image of God as the good king really works. I know it doesn’t work for me.

So if shepherd means king, and the image of God as a king doesn’t work, does that mean that Psalm 23 doesn’t have anything to say to us? Certainly not. Psalm 23 has a lot to say to us, but we need to look to some of its images other than those I just mentioned to see just what it means for us. Here are the ones that work for me. The Psalm says God “restores my soul.” Indeed, God does restore our souls if we will just open them up to God and let God in. Psalm 23 says that God leads us in right paths. Indeed, God will lead us in the ways that make for peace and for wholeness of life for all people if we will just give up relying on the ways of the world and follow the ways of God that Jesus taught us.

The Psalm says that God “anoints my head with oil,” and it may not be very clear just what that means. It means that God claims us as God’s very own. Anointing with oil was the ancient equivalent of coronation, a rite in which a king was proclaimed to be God’s “anointed one,” one whom God has chosen to be God’s own representative on earth, the one to do God’s will. And indeed, God claims each and every one of us as God’s own. God chooses us, all of us, all people, to be God’s representatives on earth, to be the ones to do God’s will. So Psalm 23 has a lot to say about God and how God cares for us, even if the idea that God is a king really doesn’t work. God claims us as God’s own people. God seeks to teach us God’s ways. God claims us as God’s very own, beloved people. In all that the 23rd Psalm speaks divine truth, and of course does it more beautifully than just about any other passage in the Bible.

And here’s where I think it all leads. The lines from this Psalm that speak most powerfully to me are these: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; you rod and your staff—they comfort me.” Friends, we all walk through dark valleys. To use the more traditional translation of this line, we all walk through the valley of the shadow of death. There is much evil in the world to fear. Unscrupulous politicians among us try to exploit our fear all the time for their own political gain, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things to fear. We all know what they are: disease, poverty, violence, death. Psalm 23 tells us how God deals with those things. Not as a king who prevents them, but as a God who is with us in them. “I fear no evil; for you are with me.” That’s the lesson of Psalm 23. In the darkest valley, in the presence of evil, we are safe, not because bad things won’t happen to us and our loved ones but because God is with us in whatever happens. God’s rod and staff are always there for us to grab hold of for strength and comfort. Though evil befalls us, and though we die, we are safe with God our good shepherd. Safe precisely because God is with us. Safe because God never forsakes us. Safe because God claims us and comforts us. So indeed we can say: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Let all the people say, Amen.