Easter 4A
Text: Psalm 23
Sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
May 3, 2020
Psalm 23
It’s our go-to psalm: Psalm 23. A hundred-fifty psalms in the Bible, but this is the one you know. If there’s a Scripture that you can recite from memory, this is probably it. The last time I saw Sven Johnson of our congregation, just a couple of days before he died in March, at the end of our visit Psalm 23 was his prayer. The 23rd Psalm has led us in the paths of comfort all the days of our lives.
But sometimes you have trouble hearing – I mean, *really* hearing – the things that are closest to you. And sometimes the circumstances in which you hear something you’ve heard a thousand times before – circumstances like corona lockdown, say – make something that is old and familiar come alive in a new way. Let’s see if that isn’t true with this old and familiar Scripture. Let’s talk about Psalm 23.
The first thing we always have to say is that the 23rd Psalm is not about Jesus. Oh, there’s lots of references in the Gospels to Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and we’ve loaded into this worship service so many songs and pictures about that, that by the end of it all, all you’ll have to say is “Baa! Ram! Ewe!” But not Psalm 23; it’s not about Jesus.
No; Psalm 23 was a hymn of the ancient people of God, the Hebrew people, so when we read and recite and sing Psalm 23 as Christians we are walking in Jewish territory. That means you’ve got to remember the history of our forebears in the faith, the ancient Jewish people of God.
God had given them the name Israel, which means “those who have struggled with God.” And that history of our ancient forebears was indeed a struggle. They struggled for a home that they were always trying to get into, or hold onto, or get back to. They struggled for peace, they struggled for food, and they struggled for a future they could trust and believe in. Those ancient people of God, then: Do they sound like any people you know? Most important of all, they struggled for their faith in God.
Our ancient forebears in the faith, they yearned to live with God as sheep live with a shepherd … but life was hard. And they were afraid. They were too afraid, to keep believing that the Shepherd was leading them to green pastures, or that goodness and mercy would follow them always and every day of their lives. So all too often they ran like sheep down paths of their own devising where they expected more of their own brand of success. Down paths that looked easier and perhaps more pleasurable. Down paths toward other gods who were false but who somehow seemed more manageable than the real God, which of course always led them into unmanageable trouble, and then into long and heart-rent laments for the salvation of the one true God. Again I ask you: does that sound like any sheep-y people you know? It was then the people of God would return to true worship, where the story of Psalm 23 and the other stories like it were told again, and retold.
So what’s behind Psalm 23 is the experience of being lost and found, judged and forgiven, sent away and brought back. It’s all a part of the churning, disruptive experience of how we get scared and lose our way, and it’s all a part of the saving story of a God who searches again and again to find those lost sheep.
That’s what Psalm 23 is about, and that’s why I submit that the last thing we ought to be doing right now is rushing to the 23rd Psalm to be reminded that everything is okay. We’re drawn to the images of green pastures, still waters, and an overflowing cup because we yearn for equilibrium, for security, and for abundance. We don’t really want to engage with such as the highs, and the lows!, of Israel’s history, the desperate thirst of the people of God when we are on such a long, long desert journey, or the maddening, on-again-off-again truth about our love affair with God.
Like the ancient people of God we are scared, and I say to you that we need to let the deep meaning of Psalm 23 help us to take our fear very seriously. About fear I’ve always thought it funny that we talk of being scared stiff, or paralyzed with fear, because in my work as a pastor I’ve always thought that most people react to fear, not with stiffness or paralysis at all, but by running like crazy. Almost as if it doesn’t matter where they’re running; just gotta keep moving! I mean, that’s the way I do, and I’ve seen enough to know that that’s how you do, too! There’s this line that I’ve always loved from the psychology writer Rollo May, who says, “Humans are the strangest of all of God’s creatures, because they run fastest when they have lost their way.” How about it? Just like sheep, indeed!
But that is of course the way we get into real trouble, by running when we are lost. It’s then that we’ll make the worst mistakes with relationships, with family, with work. You can say the same thing about churches: it’s when a church becomes fearful and runs away from its called purpose that a church community gets into trouble. Not living in the faith that the Lord is leading us to green pastures, we veer off course, try some selfish short cut; we run like terrified sheep.
We need to let the deep meaning of Psalm 23 help us to take our fear very seriously. Why am I pounding on that point? Because the reason both the psalmist, and Jesus himself, too!, spent so much time describing us as lost … was not to judge us, but to help us find our salvation. Confessing that we are frightened and lost, is the first step.
It is the first step, because that is the step that can take us to the key of salvation, which is to discover in all humility and see that “Thou art with me,” as the psalm says in the old King James translation. Thou art with me. That is how the psalmist David survived the valley of the shadow of death when he was on the run from the murderous King Saul. That was the faith of the earliest Christians as they died at the hands of the imperial authorities: Thou art with me. And that is the hope that rises out of shattered national economies, and the hope that rises out of living under virus threat. Thou art with me, is how medical workers make it through another day of caring for those who suffer.
Thou art with me. For it is the Lord who is my shepherd, I shall not want.
It is he who makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;
he who restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil;
for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Word of God. It is the Word of life.