I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Septebmer 8 and 9, 2013, as a part our our exploration of the Psalms. The text is Psalm 23; you can read it here.
There are very few texts that I have committed to memory.
Titania’s monologue from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
was mine to recite in a high school production;
now I can’t even remember the first line.
How many repetitions does it take for a text
to sink into the recesses and wrinkles of our cerebral cortex?
It must be about a million,
because all I’ve got memorized
are those scraps of poetry
I repeated every Sunday in church:
the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles Creed,
a few well-worn hymns,
and this,
The Psalm 23.
The Psalm has never left me in the lurch.
I am lucky enough to never have experienced a full-blown panic attack,
But I’ve edged up close enough to them
to just scrape the reality of what a real one must feel like.
And there,
at the frayed edge of keeping it together,
I’ve often met the this Psalm.
The contours of the phrases
seem to pull me back
from whatever dark place it was that I was headed;
and plant my feet back on the ground
and bring my breathing back in line.
It’s a Psalm that has a way of making me feel
like everything’s going to be okay.
Which is funny,
because if the Psalm reminds us of anything,
perhaps it’s that everything won’t be.
I’m speaking of that funny snag in the Psalm,
that line that catches us by surprise
and causes our brow to furrow,
before we quickly move on to the next phrase.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
What does that mean?
When I was a child I used to imagine that God was setting a table
for the Psalmist and his or her enemies.
Sort of a “lion shall lie down with the lamb” thing.
That in God’s world, we would sit down and eat with our enemies.
And certainly we can find that sort of imagery in the Bible.
But that’s not exactly what’s happening here.
God is preparing a table, setting out a feast,
according to the Hebrew,
in the presence of the Psalmist’s enemies --
or, a better translation would be “adversaries.”
Not setting a table for the enemies,
but setting a table for the Psalmist, in their presence.
The Hebrew is nehged or “in front of.”
God lays a table for you
and invites you to sit down and eat,
as your adversaries stand around
and watch.
What a strange image.
It seems to me to be something of study in contrast.
A lavish table filled with food,
and you, with a napkin tucked in the front of your shirt,
utensils in each fist,
ready to have your fill,
when all around you stand those people
who make you most nervous and uncomfortable --
who frighten you and throw your off your guard.
There’s something strange about it -- a little off.
It reminds me of the story about the band aboard the Titanic,
who played Orpheus in the Underworld as the ship slowly tipped
and then sank.
It’s a discordant image -- one that doesn’t make sense.
Those musicians should have been rushing to save their lives,
and instead, as the tables and chairs slide across the floors
and the chandeliers tip,
they’re calming playing Offenbach.
*
We find a similar image just a bit earlier in the Psalm.
In verse 4 we read,
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil.
And again we see the Psalmist in a gravely dangerous
or adversarial situation,
acting contrary to the ways we might expect him too --
acting as if he is not in danger at all.
Refusing to be afraid, when being afraid is just what he should be doing.
*
Psalm 23 follows Psalm 22,
which was quoted by Christ as he died on the cross.
My God, my God,
it begins,
Why have you forsaken me?
The Psalm goes on to speak of an experience
of desperate abandonment and loneliness.
Packs of dogs close me in,
a band of evildoers circles round me...
I can count all my bones
while they stare at me and gloat.
Psalm 23 is thought of by scholars to be an answer
to the narrative of Psalm 22:
a prayer of gratitude to God
for bringing the Psalmist through that unspeakable experience.
Maybe after facing such a trial,
the Psalmist’s sense of danger and safety has been realigned.
Maybe the valley of the shadow of death
no longer has much of a hold on him
after what he’s seen and been through.
As all the passengers are scrambling into the lifeboats,
he just goes on playing with the rest of the band,
because he knows that rescue will not be found on a lifeboat,
but through the one who walked by his side
through the valley.
*
I am not like the Psalmist.
I have not come through tribulations anything like
what is described in the twenty second Psalm.
And so I need, instead, to be reminded
that, in those moments when I find myself surrounded by adversaries,
when it seems that all is lost or broken,
and everything is stuck,
and there’s nowhere to turn,
there is a table set right in front of me
with the most lavish feast.
I need to be reminded -- and perhaps you do too --
that in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death,
I have nothing to fear.
The psalm does not tell us that everything is going to be okay.
Rather, it tells us that everything will not be.
We will find ourselves in the valley,
we will walk through the shadow of death,
we will be surrounded by adversaries.
And when those moments come,
we have all that we need.
*
Sometimes I feel that the earth is moving toward its demise
with the slow but inevitable pace of the Titanic,
taking on water
as we pump pollutants into the air,
and carry out violence
against one another,
in our homes,
in our country,
half way around the world.
With every news report I read
I feel our ship tilt more steeply.
This is the valley of the shadow of death.
We are right in the middle of it.
Right in the middle of a crumbling creation,
crying out for our sin.
And yet we walk without fear,
and feast without fear,
for God has a way of opening death up
and revealing the life that is nascent inside.
*
If there’s something problematic about the image
of the band playing aboard the titanic,
perhaps it’s that the metaphor implies
that we aren’t responsible to try and rescue the ship that is sinking.
Some Christians even take that stance --
since God is the only one who can rescue us,
we don’t need to work for justice or peace or healing.
I think that’s a highly irresponsible theology
that allows us to disinvest ourselves from our role
as co-creators with a God who works in and through us.
Psalm 23, however seems to focus less on the work we must do,
and more on the foundation on which that work is built.
It’s focused on the state our our souls
from which work of justice and healing might extend.
There’s a story of Isaac Stern,
a Polish-born violinist,
playing a concert in Israel in the midst of the Gulf War.
Half way through the concert,
the air raid sirens began to sound.
The story goes,
that, though the orchestra evacuated behind him,
Stern began to play an unaccompanied Bach saraband,
and the audience put on their gas masks and listened.
Together they stood in the valley
of the shadow of death,
and they feared no evil.
*
Perhaps the resistance of fear
offers more than we think at first glance.
For what is non-violent resistance other than the rejection of fear:
a refusal to continue to live in a state
where fear has become an agent of control and oppression.
I think of SNCC students staging sit ins at lunch counters
during the Civil Rights movement.
They refused to submit to fear,
and from that place of fearlessness,
brought justice and healing to the world.
It was as if each of them could see that feast that God had laid out
up and down those lunch counters --
a feast they knew belonged to them.
And their enemies could do them no harm.
*
How differently would you approach each hour and each day
if you lived in a realm where fear had no hold on you?
If you lived in the sure and certain knowledge
of God’s feast, spread before you,
in the presence of your enemies.
It is a cliche to say that in order to change the world
we must first change ourselves,
but just because it’s a cliche doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
*
We could stop reading after the first two lines of this Psalm --
they tell us everything we need to know:
The Lord is my shepherd.
I have all I need.
We have recited them so many times,
we will never forget them,
and yet we forget them constantly.
I need to be reminded -- and perhaps you do too,
and so we rehearse them,
recite them again,
and learn to taste the feast that is laid before us.
Learn to walk without fear.
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