4th Easter –
Mother’s Day
Psalm 23
11 May 2014
Elizabeth M.
Deibert
My week was filled with interesting conversations about how we see God at
work in the significant problems of this world – poverty and homelessness,
child abuse and neglect, and mental illness.
What does compassion look like and what is God’s justice in such
situations? Where do we see God’s
love at work and how do we hang on to hope in such circumstances? How can we make a difference? How can we inspire hope in those who seem to
have no hope? Psalm 23 is one answer to
those questions.
Harold Kushner is the rabbi who in 1981 wrote the very popular book “When
Bad Things Happen to Good People” when his three year-old son was diagnosed
with a degenerative disease that would end his life in his teens. Kushner wrote another book, “The Lord is My
Shepherd,” just after 9/11 when he was struggling again with the unfairness of
life and how God doesn’t promise us an easy path, but a loving and restoring
presence with us on the path of life. I
recommend it to you, even as I recommend that you meditate on two phrases of
this psalm each day for the next week.
All through this week, as Mother’s Day was approaching, I could not help
but think of Bobby McFerrin’s version of this psalm, in which he sings all the
parts, layering his recording. Bobby
had two parents who were professional singers and grew up in church. He says, “The 23rd Psalm is dedicated to my
mother. She was the driving force in my religious and spiritual education, and
I have so many memories of her singing in church. But I wrote it because I'd
been reading the Bible one morning, and I was thinking about God's
unconditional love, about how we crave it but have so much trouble believing we
can trust it, and how we can't fully understand it. And then I left my reading
and spent time with my wife and our children. Watching her with them, the way
she loved them, I realized one of the ways we're shown a glimpse of how God
loves us is through our mothers. They cherish our spirits, they demand that we
become our best selves, and they take care of us.” (Bobby McFerrin)
Listen to McFerrin’s Psalm 23, on this Mother’s Day, as he takes the
Psalm in a decidedly feminine direction.
As you hear it, give thanks for the women in your life who helped you to
appreciate the shepherding care of God.
Now please recite with me the Psalm.
Psalm
23
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me to lie down in green
pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
3 He restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;
For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me in the
presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup runs over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow
me
All the days of my life;
And I will dwell in the house of the LORD Forever.
(New King James Version)
Why do we love
this psalm more than the others? Why do
so many people turn to it in difficult times?
Why did Mickey and Emily Miller
write their own psalm to get themselves through the pain of watching their own
young son face his mortality? This
psalm is hopeful without being triumphalistic.
It reminds us that God is present and providing for us, even though we
have to face enemies and grief. It teaches us to look to God for this presence
and provision, to trust that God’s goodness and mercy will follow us, even
though we live in an imperfect world.
It gives us not just reassuring words, but comforting images of
protection and provision – of green pastures and still waters, of overflowing
cups and soothing oils. It speaks of
getting us to the right places and in the right spirit of contentment with what
we need, trusting in God, knowing that we belong to God.
There is a sense
in which proclaiming the Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want becomes
faith-building more than faith-declaring because even though a person may have
much to long for, physically, emotionally, spiritually, the expression of
gratitude that God gives us everything we need leads us to be more content,
coveting less the things that others have.
So even if I am struggling to be content with my life/my relationship
with family or friends/my job/my health,
I become more content when I teach myself to believe that I shall never lack
what I need. It’s what’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy in psychology.
So whether you live
in the wealthier global north or poorer global south, whether you live in a
happy family life or you are lonely or recovering from a painful broken relationship,
whether you are the picture of perfect health or whether you have a disability
that severely limits choices – you have everything you need. But we can only speak for ourselves. Notice
the psalm does not teach us to tell others to be content, but to be content
ourselves. I do not recommend telling a
poor person or a grieving person that they should just be content with their
situation.
Now one of the
most overlooked but meaningful phrases in this psalm is this: He restores my soul. There is a Jewish prayer of thanksgiving in
the morning that gives thanks to God for restoring our souls within us. Through sleep, God restores our souls. When someone dies, we say, “God rest her
soul.” For all of us, no matter what
grief or loss or burden of family life, or busyness at work depletes us, God
promises to restore our souls. There were some people on Safari in Africa who
had been traveling, and their guides insisted on the third day that they must
stop and rest. The young travelers,
eager to see more, said, “Why must we stop?
We are not tired.” The guides
said, “We have traveled far and fast.
We must wait for our souls to catch up.” (story found in Kushner’s book) Sometimes we
lose our souls in traveling too far or at too fast a pace in life. Sometimes we do harmful things to others
when we have lost our souls. But God
promises to restore our souls, and that is very good news for us and for others. God’s restoration of our souls is what
brings us back to life, when either our sin and its consequences or the valley
of the shadow of death or their enemies have taken the life out of us.
God gives us green
pastures and still waters. For sheep and
those in arid lands, that means food and drink, precious commodities. Green pastures and blue, still waters. Did you know that blues and greens are the
most soothing colors? Still waters, not
chaotic waters. Jesus calmed the storm
on the sea and walked on water. In the
creation, God gave the chaotic waters boundaries, and when those boundaries
break, when there are floods or tsunamis, we know better than ever, the value
of still waters on the earth and still waters in our souls.
I would venture to
say that the most important thing this psalm does is pay attention to the
valley of the shadow of death and the very present enemies. Think of how different it would feel, if the
psalmist said, “Because you carry me into life, I fear no evil.” Or if it said, “Because God prepares a table
for me, I have no enemies or my enemies disappear.” No, that would not be real. There is still death, and there are still enemies. There is depression and there is disease and
and there is disability. We do not get
to avoid them. We walk through them with
God, which appears to be where we learn that goodness and mercy are chasing
us. Often times, it is not in the
valley or in the presence of enemies that we have the perspective of being
surrounded by goodness and mercy. It is
in retrospect that we see those. It was
William Barclay who said that he imagined goodness and mercy to be the Good
Shepherd’s dogs who are running back and forth, constantly pursuing the flock.
The psalm beautifully
divides itself into the three scenes of our lives. Most of us begin in youthful trust, needing
to affirm that God will provide everything we need. In the middle of the psalm and the middle of
life, we have experiences that threaten to undo us, but we learn to trust God,
even in the valley and in the presence of enemies. Lastly we come into an enduring and tested
relationship in God’s house, surrounded by the goodness and mercy that we can
see better in retrospect, as we learn to dwell with God forever, knowing that
the Lord our Loving Shepherd is the only One who will never leave us.
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