SPEAKER_00: May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be holy and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, O Rock and Redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: In a short story collection entitled River Teeth, the author David James Duncan tells the story about a modern-day shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: We never learn her name.
SPEAKER_00: We meet the protagonist as she begins her stint as a caretaker on a small farm just outside her hometown.
SPEAKER_00: She has idyllic visions of what it will be like to be a shepherd, that venerable vocation of nomads and psalmists, visions of calm pastoral scenes, a sense of union with nature and the whole created order, the sense of fulfillment that comes from protecting those entrusted to our care.
SPEAKER_00: These visions are altogether shattered once she actually spends time with sheep.
SPEAKER_00: It turns out that sheep are neither the smartest animals around nor the most pleasant to spend time with.
SPEAKER_00: Easily frightened, they are driven only by their desire for food and safety.
SPEAKER_00: At one point in the story, the sheep find a gap in the fence of the shepherd's garden.
SPEAKER_00: They proceed to gorge themselves on every crop, leaf, and shrub in sight.
SPEAKER_00: At another point, a dog barks on a distant ridge, well outside the sheep's well-protected enclosure, and the sheep immediately bolt into the farm's pond.
SPEAKER_00: It turns out that sheep are not the best swimmers either.
SPEAKER_00: Several of them drown.
SPEAKER_00: All because of a distant, harmless, barking dog.
SPEAKER_00: There are no pastoral illusions here, no otherworldly visions of the homesteading lifestyle.
SPEAKER_00: It is one thing to long for the simple life of a shepherd from the comfort of your temperature-controlled living room.
SPEAKER_00: It is another thing altogether to do the work, to tend to the very real needs and circumstances of sheep.
SPEAKER_00: I shall not be in want.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 23 is probably the best-known psalm among the 150 that make up the Bible's hymn book.
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrew, the name of the book of Psalms is Tehilim, which literally means praises.
SPEAKER_00: It is difficult to date these songs and poems to any particular time or place, as they were compiled over centuries, passed down through oral tradition long before they were ever written down.
SPEAKER_00: Some include context clues, however, allusions to the life setting in which they were composed.
SPEAKER_00: A perfect example of this is Psalm 137.
SPEAKER_00: By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered you, O Zion.
SPEAKER_00: This psalm clearly refers to a time after the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC.
SPEAKER_00: We do not get such context clues in the 23rd Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: Beyond its roots in a pastoral society and its belonging to the Jewish tradition, it is difficult to say when and where it was composed.
SPEAKER_00: As such, it does that thing which good poets and musicians do so well.
SPEAKER_00: It is both particular and timeless.
SPEAKER_00: It speaks about a struggle so specifically as to be universal in the old King James.
SPEAKER_00: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
SPEAKER_00: Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist proclaims God's providence in the midst of trial and tribulation.
SPEAKER_00: Note that God's involvement does not make the problem go away, however.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, God is present with the psalmist in the thick of struggle.
SPEAKER_00: God guides her through it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it is nothing, if not human, to wish we could avoid suffering.
SPEAKER_00: But that is not the way the world works.
SPEAKER_00: Often, the only way out is through.
SPEAKER_00: It is easier for us than it was for the ancients to pretend like these rules don't apply to us.
SPEAKER_00: Modern convenience makes it possible for us to live one step removed from the psalmist's reality.
SPEAKER_00: In a time before grocery stores, properly caring for livestock, and tending to once land had life and death consequences.
SPEAKER_00: In a time before modern transportation, traversing hills and valleys, each pose their own kinds of danger.
SPEAKER_00: Our modern lives are yet another illusion, another way we play pretend.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, food is readily available at the grocery store every day, but we still cannot, by force of will, make plants grow.
SPEAKER_00: Though we can take shelter from the elements with the right tools and accommodations, we are still fragile, vulnerable creatures.
SPEAKER_00: The temptation for us is to stay one step removed from the psalmist's experience, to allow our gilded cages to be the only reality we truly acknowledge.
SPEAKER_00: But soon, very soon, often sooner than we would like, we will have to face our very own valley of the shadow of death.
SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, we will have a choice.
SPEAKER_00: Will we keep playing pretend, or will we acknowledge the pain and the loss?
SPEAKER_00: Will we make space for grief and lament, or will we keep acting like nothing is amiss?
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms invite us into the reality of lament.
SPEAKER_00: They open a door to the experiences we would often rather avoid or ignore.
SPEAKER_00: We struggle as a society to make space for these feelings.
SPEAKER_00: And in the church, we're good at paying lip service to it, but it doesn't necessarily make us any better at managing it.
SPEAKER_00: The first roadblocks is our own sense of propriety.
SPEAKER_00: Many of us live and work in settings that emphasize rational consensus.
SPEAKER_00: When faced with feelings that are difficult, many of us prefer impartial, unbiased expertise over experiential wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: To show too much emotion is seen as a liability, a vulnerability.
SPEAKER_00: Even the way we Episcopalians deploy the Psalms is evidence of that.
SPEAKER_00: Let us say or chant the psalms that talk about emotions, but God forbid we make a display of them.
SPEAKER_00: The sense of propriety feeds into a second challenge.
SPEAKER_00: The way that we treat the human condition as a thing to fix rather than a set of circumstances to sit with and live through.
SPEAKER_00: When we encounter grief, we rush to respond.
SPEAKER_00: We want to do the right thing.
SPEAKER_00: We want to say the right words.
SPEAKER_00: When we rush to respond, however, we forget a simple truth.
SPEAKER_00: There are no words that can undo the pain of loss.
SPEAKER_00: And if we move toward action too quickly, we might just miss the one thing needful: the presence of mind and heart required to sit with people in pain.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the only balm we can truly provide when the world falls apart is the knowledge that we are not alone in it, that God and God's people can be with and for one another in the thick of it.
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms are an invitation to sit with these complex feelings.
SPEAKER_00: They invite us into a posture of trust.
SPEAKER_00: Trust that God will hear our cries and trust that God will not leave us abandoned in our darkest night.
SPEAKER_00: In just a couple of weeks, we will begin our journey through Holy Week, the story at the core of our Christian faith, Jesus' sacrifice on the cross on Calvary Hill.
SPEAKER_00: This is a story about pain and struggle and loss.
SPEAKER_00: And it is also a story about a loving, life-giving, liberating God.
SPEAKER_00: A God who took on human flesh and walked among us, a God who, having loved his own, loved them to the very end, in spite and in the face of their failures and betrayals.
SPEAKER_00: Let us walk together toward the foot of the cross, toward the valley of the shadow of death.
SPEAKER_00: And let us wait with hope for Easter resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.