March 19, 2023 Sermon

Sermon title:  "The 23rd Psalm"

Scripture:  Psalm 23

(Other lectionary suggestions include I Samuel 16:1-13, Ephesians 5:8-14, and John 9:1-41.)

Psalm 23

The Divine Shepherd  A Psalm of David.

1The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 2He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; 3he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. 4Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. 5You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6Surely 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.

Without question, this Psalm is just about everybody's favorite Psalm. Even those who are not devout, want to have this Psalm read at their loved ones' funerals! People who don't know this Psalm by name, know it or part of it once you start to say it.

Before I came to this church, I did a funeral for a family who said they weren't very religious and they didn't want a really religious funeral. So, I said, "How about this?" And I started out, "The Lord is my shepherd...." and they said, "Oh, yes! Read that one!" (The same is true of the Lord's Prayer. People who say they aren't religious say they don't want that, until you start to read, "Our Father, who art in Heaven...." And then they say, "Oh, yeah. That one's okay, too.") But since this sermon is on the 23rd Psalm, back to that Scripture.

The commentator George A. F. Knight calls this Psalm "A feast of grace". And he also says that the 23rd Psalm was almost surely written by the great King David himself. There is a tradition that says David wrote ALL the Psalms, but that's impossible. David lived about a thousand or 900 years before Jesus was born, and some of the Psalms were obviously written AFTER David's lifetime. Some examples:  those written when some of the Israelites were held captive in Babylon, which happened after 586 B.C. One Psalm starts out, "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept." There was no Babylon yet when David lived. Also, this one:  "How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land", which also was written when some of the Hebrews were held captive in Babylon. So, David didn't write ALL the Psalms, but there is a very good chance that he wrote this one.

As you may recall, David had been a shepherd himself. When he was chosen king over Israel, he realized that he was now the shepherd of his people. George Knight asks, "In what way must he now care for them? {He was given} a new awareness of what God, the true Shepherd, is himself like in his relationship with his people."

Says Knight, even "the wistful agnostic" likes this Psalm! Says he, "It comes alive when used at a wedding, even more so when said or sung at a funeral. And it expresses more vividly than any other portion of Scripture the individual's private experience of God's grace."

The Psalm comes to us in three stages. In the first stage, we can all appreciate "still waters" and "green pastures". But the second stage, says commentator George Knight, is when we realize that "Life is not all a bed of roses. We can be deeply and gratefully aware of God's continuing presence with us in days when all goes well. It is just because of that, however, David declares, that we can be sure of him when all does NOT go well, even when the light fades and we find ourselves in darkness." The term the Psalmist uses is "Valley of Deep Darkness". "So the idea is that God's comfort and strength are 'with' us in all kinds of darkness, in times of depression, serious illness, rejection by one's friends,.... and so on as well as the experience of death itself. David does not argue that this is so. He TELLS us that it IS so!" And keep in mind that in Old Testament thinking, God is light, and at the same time dwells in the darkness into which each of us must go. But we are reminded that "God's loving presence....will be as real and true then as it is now when all goes well."

Beautiful, isn't it? But wait! There's MORE! God is a God of hospitality, "the Father who sets before the returned prodigal a special fatted calf." Knight here is of course using that New Testament story of the Prodigal Son as told by Jesus - but I think it fits here! And remember, the God whom David is talking about is the same God that Jesus called "Father". Knight asks, "Why does David think of himself in this light? Because of the expression, 'He restores my soul', which is really, 'He gives me back my life.' God longs to be hospitable, even to David's enemies, if only they would also come home and share in the feast."

What about the phrase, "Thou anointest my head with oil"? Knight says this refers to all the subjects of the Kingdom of God. Therefore "the sheer excitement we feel at being anointed to serve God is more than we can absorb, take in, realize, such is God's unspeakable grace that MY CUP OVERFLOWS." Beautiful, right? And there is STILL more!

Quoting one more time the commentator George A. F. Knight: "So we come to stage 3. Since God's covenant love has been the very basis of my life at stage 1, that is, when all went well, and since, when I reached stage 2, I found that God's grace was still with me in the Valley of the Shadow; then SURELY, that is, I KNOW that God's being 'good for me' (as the Hebrew means) and God's HESED, his unswerving loyal-love, will pursue me all the days of my life. As the poet, Francis Thompson, calls him, God is the Hound of Heaven. Indeed, he will never let me go. Therefore I KNOW that I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. David knew what it meant to be present continually in the sanctuary in Jerusalem (the temple had not yet been built).....Because of this he here refers to the 'heavenly sanctuary'. the 'place' of the presence of God in eternity...." Amen. Any questions?

Pastor Skip