It’s time for an update, sorry for the public service announcement quality of this bible study. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming in just a moment. But I needed to let you know of what’s ahead for me and for the Late Night Bible Study group, and why you may not see these weekly emails with any regularity for the next month or so. First, next weekend is Maddie’s graduation from Wittenberg University. I’m not exactly sure of the schedule, I’ll be preaching here on the 14th, but may be traveling late, so I can’t promise a bible study.
The following week, I am heading to San Antonio for the Festival of Homiletics, my favorite continuing education event of the year. I’m am feeling guilty about leaving, with all that needs to be done here, but La Donna is insistent. Besides I’ve bought tickets and registration and hotel. So, I’m going. I hope to send updates from time to time from there, to let you in on some of the insights I’m gaining, but it won’t be the usual Bible Study. Plus, that Sunday, which would be May 21st, our Director of New Generations Ministry, the newly minted Dr. Lakeya Stewart will be in charge of worship, with youth and graduate recognition. So, while I’ll be assisting in the service, I won’t be preaching.
Then there should be a couple of weeks of sort of normalcy. Sort of. We will be in the last weeks of packing and preparation, there is the small matter of closing and possession of the house (which is anxiety producing to a surprising extreme), and other transitional issues I can’t even imagine at this moment of relative calm. Then June 7 through 10 will be Annual Conference, ending with a affirming of the appointments, and then home for a final farewell and final Sunday on June 11 and then, last minute packing, trucks arriving and loading, and shutting everything down. And ending. And starting. All over again. And learning to live with the grief of ending, of dreams that didn’t come to fruition, and the weight of failure. And grasping hope and possibility in a place unknown at present. A foreign place that will be home. One day. Like this place was. Not exactly, but sort of, kind of. Like so many other places.
I want to go home. To be home. To stay home. I want what happened to not have happened. I want what happened to be for the good of us all. I want to hope, though hoping seems hard some days. I want to see God in the midst of the mess, in the broken hearts and confused minds. I want to believe in the irresistible will of God, but I’m afraid we’re too good at resisting. I’m too good at resisting. I want to stop resisting. I want ...
Perhaps the most familiar six verses of the whole Bible. Variously translated, written into songs of a variety of genres, parodied in more ways than even Google can catalog; the 23rd Psalm holds a place in the canon of scripture that is unparalleled. And yet, do we listen to it? Do we examine it’s depths, live into it’s promises? Or do we simply slip into it like a warm bath, soothing and comforting, but hidden beneath the frothy bubbles of the comfort we seek?
Comfort is important. Being soothed when we ache, when we are unsettled. We long for those arms to wrap around us and protect us, to shelter us, to love us when it seems no one else will. But David was hoping for more, wanting more than simply balm to soothe our troubled souls. Psalm 23 is about equipping, about building up so that we can walk, so we can live. Not just exist, but to live. The shepherd doesn’t just protect us, doesn’t just feed us, but makes us alive. “He restores my soul.” A soul, living being, life, self, desire, passion, appetite, emotion - that’s the definition of the Hebrew word that is there: nephesh. It’s not simply a breathing being, it’s not simply an entity that is content, upright, taking in nourishment. But one that is enjoying the meal. One that is alive to the greenness of the grass and depth of the still water teeming with life itself. He makes me alive again. Again, like I was created to be. Like I have been in moments, fleeting experiences that make my heart pound and my eyes tear up and the laughter burst from my lips. I want that again. I want to walk in the right paths. Not the paths of self destruction, self satisfaction, self-centered preference driven gluttony; but your paths. Because only those paths will keep me alive when the darkness comes, when death surrounds, when despair grips so tightly hope slips from our fingers. Restore my soul.
And then, typical of attention deficit David, we leap from pastures to dining rooms. Without a warning or commercial break we find ourselves ushered into a luxurious ballroom, convention center, like we’ve stumbled into a wedding reception we aren’t sure we’re invited to. The table is groaning under the weight of all of our favorites, so we lunge to our seat and dig in before we notice that the guest list includes many we would have left off. Those we hoped to avoid. But the waiter keeps filling our cup, we thought to grab and go, but we’re stuck. We’re there, with them. Them. And we’re blessed by it.
I’ve often wondered what David had in mind with that “in the presence of my enemies” line. Probably thought about thumbing his nose at them, behind the velvet rope, kept at bay by the same servers who keep the cup overflowing. He probably thought it was an in your face kind of taunt, a bit of I’ll show them that they don’t know who they’re messing with. I wonder if that’s what he thought as he wrote it with a cruel grin on his face, not realizing that the inspiration for that verse was taking him farther than he intended to go. Than he hoped to go. Than he wanted to go.
Those right paths, those tables in the presence, they’re not so frothy and bubbly when you think about it. Not so comforting, not so warm bath-like. The Lord as shepherd isn’t the walk in the park we might have imagined. It has an edge, a demand hidden inside. He gives us a hint. Gives himself one too, I suspect. In the word choice at the end of the psalm. Our translators hid it from us, uncertain how we would respond to it, perhaps, afraid we would be confused by the real message. We make it a passive, because comfort and ease sounds passive to us. But there’s nothing passive about the job of a shepherd. That’s why he’s got a rod and a staff. The staff was the crook, used to keep sheep on the path, hooking the end around the neck of the wandering sheep and lifting them bodily back into a new, safer direction. The rod was a weapon, a ninja bo staff or bokken, used to fight off the enemies that would make a meal of the poor unsuspecting and defenseless sheep. The shepherd’s life was at risk all the time. Not a very passive profession. So why a passive ending. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me. Like a puppy, a lost lamb, ready for me to turn and take it when I wanted it, and to leave it when it is inconvenient for me, but I’m in charge. It follows me. I’ll acknowledge it when there’s time. When I’m in the mood. When nothing better comes my way. Surely it’ll be there. Waiting. For me.
Except it isn’t waiting. The verb is an active verb. A better translation would be surely goodness and mercy shall purse me, shall chase after me, all the days of my life. That’s what I want. Isn’t it? A love that will not let me go. That will chase after me, even when I try to run. Even when I think I’m not worth chasing. Even when I don’t know what I want.
I have a friend who struggled with the opening verse. I shall not want. Doesn’t that say we shouldn’t want? Anything? That wanting is bad? Or anti-faith somehow? We are made to want. It is a part of who we are. Part of the human condition. A life of faith doesn’t remove the wanting, in some ways it drives it. We need to long for the Kingdom, to want justice, to work for peace. And to not settle for anything less. We need to want to be alive and to rid ourselves of anything that makes us less than all God created us to be. And want to stop letting anyone tell us we are less than we are in God.
What David meant was that when he stopped to think about it, he had everything he needed to be alive. Maybe what should have said The Lord is my Shepherd, I’m going to stop whining when I don’t get my way! Or better, not my will, but thine be done. Amen.
Shalom,
Derek
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