Loading...How many of you, when you saw that today’s Psalm was the 23rd Psalm, took a deep breath and felt your body relax? Or perhaps you closed your eyes and felt a warm embrace.
Yes. This is that Psalm. The one that gives us a sense of comfort that almost goes beyond words. We tend to hear or read it at funerals. We reach for it when we aren’t sure what we need, only to find that it is this is the Psalm that we need right now.
Am I right?
Today, on the day that is often identified as Shepherd Sunday, we get to read Psalm 23. We hear Jesus identify himself as the Good Shepherd. We’ll sing verses of The King of Love my Shepherd is with the choir at our offertory. We’ll listen to Daniel play a piece based on the fourth verse of this beloved Psalm at the end of our service.
This is a Psalm that represents what life is when we remember that no matter what happens in our lives, God is with us. God will not abandon us.
I needed this Psalm this week when I heard my cousin’s husband was critically injured when he was being a Good Samaritan. They had stopped at the site of an accident and were trying to get the people out of the cars when Chaz was struck by an oncoming car, and violently thrown. My cousin, Holli, had only blinked. One moment he was there, and the next, he was gone.
The driver who hit him crashed into a pole.
My aunt called me on Friday to share this news from Las Vegas. It happened about two weeks ago. His injuries are many. He’s had many, many surgeries, including one to remove one of his legs at the femur, others to repair all the broken bones in his legs and arm. He has internal injuries and a collapsed lung from multiple broken ribs. This list goes on and on.
Holli has stayed by his side since the accident. All their adult kids just happen to be home right now, so she has the support of the three of them. Her oldest, Charlie, makes sure she isn’t alone at the hospital overnight.
I cannot imagine the fear and uncertainty they are all going through. Thankfully, Chaz is in and out of a coma, so he may not be aware of the depth of his injuries. He is in a lot of pain. Miraculously, he has no brain injury.
We all have stories, either our own, or of people we love, who have gone through extraordinary experiences of pain. Illnesses, accidents, trauma, diseases of mind and body, substance abuse, and harm.
I suspect that as I listed all of those you were thinking of specific people and events.
When my aunt reached me on Friday with this information, I was thankful that I had been reading about this Psalm. I was re-reading Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book "The Lord is my Shepherd" throughout the week. I was seeking his insight into this beautiful piece of poetry that gets us through so many times of trouble.
In the forward of the book, Kushner sums the Psalm up perfectly, especially when people are in the midst of fear, pain, death, and other destruction. He wrote: “… people … would ask me, ‘Where was God? How could God let this happen?’ I found myself responding, ‘God’s promise was never that life would be fair. God’s promise was that, when we had to confront the unfairness of life, we would not have to do it alone, for He would be with us.’ And I realized I had found that answer in the Twenty-third Psalm.” (p.3)
Personally, I needed that message after hearing about Chaz and Holli. I need that message when I know that so many people, people you have asked me and others to pray for, are struggling. And for those of us who believe in God, who have this Psalm embedded in our hearts and on our lips, we may “know” know what this Psalm is all about, but when push comes to shove, we KNOW that this is the most important message of our lives: God will always be with us.
The news from Las Vegas came when I was reading the chapters on verse 4: Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. I had already decided to focus on this verse after Daniel told me that he would be playing a piece specifically on this verse in our Concluding Voluntary for today.
In reading the book, I was particularly reminded about the use of the word “through.”
Kushner made a strong point about that little word. “Through.” He said we don’t have to stay in the valley. Or in the dark. Or with the evil. We walk through it. But we don’t walk through it alone. God is with us.
God may have a lot of different faces in those moments. Friends, family, emergency responders, doctors, nurses, chaplains, pharmacists, funeral directors, hospice, recovery group people, clergy, even strangers. God provides us with partners to walk through the junk. Sometimes we recognize them, sometimes we don’t, but they are there. They are always there.
Because God won’t let us stay in the valley, or in the dark, or with the evil. Not alone. Not even in our time of death.
There are two things Kushner wrote that I think put a fine point on this:
1. God’s role is not to protect us from pain and loss, but to protect us from letting pain and loss define our lives.
2. Trust God to enter into your pain and make it less painful, less frightening. … There has never been a tunnel so long that it did not ultimately emerge into daylight or a night so dark that it did not ultimately yield to the dawn. (pp. 98-99)
For those who have spent time in that valley, we may think, “that’s easy for him to say,” and know that it is harder to achieve. Yet I see the resilience of so many people who have taken this journey “through.”
Some of those people have a unique ability to see the light, to keep walking toward it, through the tunnels of thistles and muck, knowing that this too, will pass—with all the pain and suffering that comes with the journey. Their confidence in an all-loving, ever present, God amazes me.
Others need to feel the pain and suffering a little longer, or maybe have a sense of that experience that lingers within them, maybe defines a piece of who they are. They may not ever get fully through the valley, but can still recognize the helpers God placed in their paths and know that God was and still is with them.
Neither is right or wrong. We all go through these shadowy places at some point or many points in our lives. We cannot get out of this life without knowing what suffering looks like and feels like.
Trusting that God is our companion on this journey—even and especially when life is hard—will hopefully bring comfort and peace in the midst of uncertainty and fear. Even a spark of hope is worth celebrating.
I want to read the last couple of pages of this little book to you. It is a lovely way to embrace even more strongly the beauty and comfort of this Psalm.
Read pages 173-175.
Let us pray. God, we are thankful for the Psalm writer who put the words and emotions of this psalm together in such a way that it expresses the enormity and the specificity of living in the knowledge and love of you. Help us to deeply feel your presence with us whenever we recite these words in times of grief, worry, sorrow, fear, and struggle. For without you, it may be easy to remain in the valley of the shadow, but with you, we can see the light of a new day, a new time, and walk with you, to find your peace and comfort. In your life-giving, healing name we pray. Amen.
