Psalm 23: Shepherd and Host I

[*These two essays are taken from my 1993 book, with Glandion Carney, Longing for God: Prayer and the Rhythms of Life (InterVarsity Presss), pp. 159-164).]

The NSRV of this most famous Psalm is here:

A Psalm of David.
1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
3 he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I 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 overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long."

Approaching Psalm 23

I approach Psalm 23 with conflicting feelings. I feel that its meaning is so clear, so self-evident, that any attempt to clarify it is like using a flashlight to illumine the sun. I approach Psalm 23 with some fear and hesitation because I don't want my words to mar its stately beauty or detract from its enduring power. However, Psalm 23 is alluring. It is like a tall and beckoning peak for a mountain climber or a bracing, clear stream for a fisherman or a track for a distance runner. I approach it with awe and trepidation, and also with the excitement of a child opening long-expected Christmas present.

Few Psalms touch us as deeply as Psalm 23. A pastor friend told of a visit he made to the hospital room of a dying man. The man lay comatose. Tubes were runing in and out of his body; his vital signs were weak. The doctors let the pastor in to visit the man but cautioned him, "Don't try to communicate with him. his condition is irreversible. He's gone."

Not really knowing what to do, my friend held the man's limp hand and began to recite the Twenty-third Psalm. "The Lord is my shepherd," he intoned. Nothing. "I shall not be in want." No reaction. But as the pastor continued, he noticed that the man moved slightly. By the middle of the psalm the man's lips began to move. At the last triumphant words, "and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever," the man was speaking the words with my friend. Soon after, he stopped speaking, lapsing deep into the coma, never to recover.

The Psalm was imprinted so deeply on the man's heart that it was deeper even than the coma into which he had sunk. Spirit communed with spirit and touched chords that exist at the very foundation of our souls.

The words of Psalm 23 are also memorable because the psalm has been set to music so many times over the years. We sing, to various tunes, "The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want, He makes me down to lie. In pastures green he leadeth me, the quiet waters by." Or, "The King of love my shepherd is, whose goodness faileth never. I nothing lack if I am his and he is mine forever." Or, finally, "My shepherd will supply my need, Jehovah is his name." The tunes range from the slow and meditative to the quick and sprightly. They reinforce the power of the psalm's leading metaphors and they unite the psalm to our souls, much like a skin graft soon becomes our skin.

In this and the next essay I will focus on some powerful phrases that bring the psalm to life. I urge you to repeat these phrases and apply their meaning to yourself. My prayer is that you, too, will discover that this simple psalm continues to possess overwhelming power.

Sheep and Shadows

Let's start at the beginning:

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."

One way to study this sentence is to focus on what it means when it says that God is our shepherd. I will begin, however, with what that statement implies--that we are God's sheep. We are like sheep in three ways: we are prone to wander, we don't look ahead, and we often are oblivious to the dangers that threaten us.

We are prone to wander. In Handel's great oratorio, Messiah, the choir sings, "All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every man to his own way." When the choir sings, "We have turned," it takes on a carefree, giddy tone, as if in our careless turning from God we become blithely unaware of our wandering. We also don't look ahead. We life for today, whether it is as a nation that cannot address terrible budget deficits or as a people who do not realize the corrosive effect of our personal actions. We are, finally, oblivious to danger. Like the sheep, our heads are down and focused on whatever we can get into our mouths, unaware if others are plotting against us or if we are wandering close to the deadly cliff.

This is our life. This is my life. I need a shepherd who supplies all my needs, who leads me all the journey through, whose rod keeps me on the path and whose staff keeps me moving forward.

I need this kind of shepherd because I face the valley of the shadow of death. Read verse 4:

"Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil; for you are with me;
your rod and your staff—they comfort me."

When I was a child, I think that I feared the shadows even more than the darkness. I remember lying awake at night with the faint radiance of a streetlight casting an eerie glimmer of light into my bedroom. I saw the outline of the lamp in my room. The shadow it cast on the wall was immense. As I stared at the shadow, I thought I saw it move. Imagined or not, it was scary.

Fearing the shadows is not just a childhood experience. The valley of the shadow of death comes across our lives as adults. Sometimes physical illnesses literally make us want to die. The shadow of death falls on us when we have been defeated in our battles in life and feel there is no reason to continue to live. When all that we have worked for, saved for, planned for, prepared for is taken away, whether through the whoosh of a mighty wind or the blow of injury, we go through the shadow of death. If the shadow is near, we think that death cannot be far away. Yet, the psalmist mentions that even in this situation, "You are with me." The darkness is not dark to God. It is bright as the day. Death has been swallowed up in life through the Lord Jesus Christ. If death has lost its sting and the grave its power, what claim can the shadows have? If the reality is gone, how can the shadow continue to exist? God has overcome death and with it has dispelled the shadows of death that dance on the screens of our minds or the walls of our bedrooms.

Our spirits rise further as we recognize that God's presence is with us day and night. God leads us to sleep in green pastures, and he wakens us to walk beside quiet waters. Lest we miss the rhythmic pattern of God's lordship over the days and nights of our lives, the psalmist repeats the sentiment in verse 3: "He restores my soul" (resting); "he leads me in right paths" (waking). The feeling is captured neatly in Psalm 3: 5,

"I lay down and sleep;
I wake again, because the Lord sustains me."

The point is that God is the one who restores our rhythms by leading us into sleep and into waking. In "Be Thou My Vision," we sing, "Thou my best thought by day or by night, waking or sleeping thy presence, my light," affirming the same thing. Our trust in God restores our natural rhythms of sleep and work. We begin to experience and celebrate the sense of deep calm and a strong center that flows directly from the heart of Psalm 23.

The next essay completes my thoughts.

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Easter IV--April 29, 2007 Easter IV--April 13, 2008

Easter IV--April 29, 2007
Easter IV--April 13, 2008