Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 23 - The Lord's my Shepherd

Psalm 23[1]

1    The Lord is my shepherd; 

therefore can I lack nothing.

2    He makes me lie down in green pastures 

and leads me beside still waters.

3    He shall refresh my soul

and guide me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

4    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 spread a table before me

in the presence of those who trouble me;  

you have anointed my head with oil

and my cup shall be full.

6    Surely goodness and loving mercy shall follow me

all the days of my life,  

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.



There were witnesses to the crucifixion of Christ. There were those who laid him in the tomb. But no-one witnessed the Resurrection. Only its after-effects. Earthquakes and soldiers mortified like dead men and angels and stones rolled aside (Matthew’s Gospel); or linen grave clothes neatly piled on a shelf in the hewn tomb (John); or men in dazzling clothes asking the women:  ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen’ (Luke).



Easter Sunday rose early with a  warm red sun, a clear sky and bright bird song, singing praises. I woke just after 5am to witness the first glimmers of dawn.  And as that light-giving newly-born day star ascended the horizon over the city, it eclipsed the glass cross hanging on my study window. It did not obliterate the cross, but illuminated it. A sign of death reinterpreted with light.



In these strange days of quiet fear, unexpected beauty can surprise. Like the sound a of confident human voice singing from a neighbour’s back garden. Hope sprang as she sang: ‘Thine be the glory, risen conquering Son’. Her clear solo voice intertwined with blackbird’s joy and robin’s impertinence. Why had I never hear that hymn sung in a garden before? Well, because we normally only sing within the walls and shelter of grand church with a jubilant choir accompanied by a well-played pipe organ and trumpet. The glory of the verses in such a domestic fenced space spoke in a new way of that first garden meeting of the liberated risen Lord and Mary, who confused him for a gardener, until, that is, he called her by name.  



Today we reach Psalm 23. How fitting. A poem of utter simplicity which, when read through the lens of this day, takes us to new heights of trust and depths of dependence. Jesus, in John 10.11, says he is the good shepherd who knows his sheep by name. All Jesus had to say to the grief-stricken Mary in that garden by the tomb was her name and she immediately recognised him not as a gardener but as the Lord of all creation. I have a sneaking suspicion that all Jesus’ teaching recorded uniquely in John 10 will have sprung from an extended meditation on this psalm. And this psalm, like Psalm 22, would have also shaped his understanding of his calling to lay down his life (John 10.18) for ‘his sheep’ as well as having the power ‘to take it up again’. We do not know what happened at the moment of resurrection. But Psalm 23 and John 10 both help us to understand that this was the act of a divine shepherd with horizons far broader than a garden or a city or a particular era. This was to fulfil the eternal saving purposes of God. 



This is a psalm which encompasses life and death and life beyond death. It is a true resurrection psalm!



It starts with the counter-cultural affirmation that with the Lord as our shepherd, we can lack nothing. It begins by placing us, who sing this psalm at funerals and football matches[2] and church services, in a place of child-like trust. The  psalms, as we have been discovering, have a theological starting point that human flourishing springs not from grasping greed but humble need. Psalm 23 is no exception. It continues (vs2-3) with a trio of promises: that with the Lord there is safety (the provision of food and drink in green pastures and quiet waters) and refreshment (that brings life) and a sure path of life (a guide to just living). And, even when this path  takes the pilgrim through dark days, the shepherd sticks close by(vs4) . This shepherd holds a symbol of sovereignty – a staff or sceptre. What ultimately brings comfort is the assurance that God is sovereign, not me.



In these days of social isolation, or at least household isolation, the final part of the psalm is especially poignant. For it points to a much larger communal dimension. It features the provision of a banquet hosted by the Lord for all God’s people. Easter Sunday’s gathering for a communal celebration would normally be that foretaste. Even after a few weeks of exile and confine, I have found fellow believers already talking longingly about Easter 2021. We find ourselves talking about how next year we will really appreciate so much the anthems and hymns sung with gusto, the liturgy and the gospel readings participated in with common joy, the sharing of bread and wine and the common shelter of a more crowded than normal church buildings. For these, this year at least, we have mourned. We feel a keen sense of exile in our domestic confines. (I am reminded of the perpetual cry of faithful Jews exiled from Israel by their personal circumstances who would say ‘Next year in Jerusalem!’ Or perhaps, a little more prosaically, when Delboy would say to Rodney, in only Fools and Horses, ‘Next year, my son, we will be millionaires!’)



This Easter day, the four of us sat in our kitchen for lunch with the bifold doors flung open so the garden and the song of the birds came in to us. Sheltered and safe, provided with food and drink, we quietly celebrated Easter’s gentle arrival. Earlier, in equally domestic circumstances, the Archbishop of Canterbury led an Easter morning service of Holy Communion from his kitchen table, with a dresser behind him, a family calendar hanging haphazardly from  one of the doors, and large chunky candles on the table. There is something of the domestic, of small comforts, of simple trust, of intimate daily living, which runs through this psalm, nonetheless. There is a sense of completeness, too; a completeness which has not yet arrived and will not arrive until God’s goodness and mercy have pursued us all the way the welcome doors of our eternal home.



A final word on that extraordinary image of a banquet table spread ‘in the presence of my enemies’. The psalmist is ever aware of his or her enemies. There was a profound sense in Psalm 22 of the poet feeling utterly encircled and surrounded by them. Here in Psalm 23, we reach a new level of understanding of the eternal character of God. This is a God who promises courage, not fear; good companionship not evil; presence not absence; leadership not abandonment. And above all, here is a God who provides goodness and mercy and plentiful redemption. ‘Surely goodness and loving mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,’ says vs5. As earlier alluded to in other psalms, the word here translated rather weakly as  ‘follow me’, is the Hebrew word radap. This verb has a more active sense of ‘pursue’. God is active in pursuit of the psalmist! While we may yet feel we are hunted down by those (including a virus) that would wish to do us harm, in this extraordinary picture, the pursuit of God’s lovingkindness has overtaken us in a banquet table where the enemies have been rendered harmless. Christ, the good shepherd, has rendered them harmless by his death and resurrection and awaits us at the banqueting table where we will eat and drink and find kindly shelter all the days of our life.



Amen to that!



O God, our sovereign and shepherd,

who brought again your Son Jesus Christ

    from the valley of death,

comfort us with your protecting presence

and your angels of goodness and love,

that we also may come home

and dwell with him in your house for ever. 

 

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[1] Common Worship: Daily Prayer, material from which is included here,

is copyright © The Archbishops' Council 2005 and published by Church House Publishing.
[2] At West Bromwich Albion'sground, The Hawthorns, the words of the first verse of this psalm encircle the inside of the statium and the faithful fans sing that verse raucously whenever the Baggies score a goal!