Psalms of Trust

Psalm 23

            Last week we began our study of the psalms by looking at psalms of salvation history.  Today we continue our study of the psalms by looking at psalms of trust.  Some theologians do not consider there to be psalms specifically of trust, because psalms of trust tend to have other qualities as well that might make them more easily categorized into other genres.  Additionally, every psalm indicates some kind of trust in God.  Trust in God is the single dominant theme of the entire book of psalms, and truly of the entire Bible.  Even when there are laments or words of doubt in a psalm, the fact that the psalmist is talking to and about God indicates some level of trust.  Still, some psalms express trust more than others.  They express trust that God is the one who defends, protects, saves and provides refuge.  While lament (the type of psalm we will look at next week) is a temporary state within the psalms, trust is ongoing and permanent.  While we generally understand scripture as speaking to us about God, psalms of trust (as with all psalms) are prayers as well – our words back up to God.  The ones that are most powerful use beautiful metaphors such as a mother holding her child, a tent, a fortress, a rock, an eagle, a shepherd.  These psalms of trust bring comfort, even when we are in despair and pain because they remind us that beyond the sorrow we will always return to the God whom we can trust, who saves, helps, loves, shelters, guides and holds us.  And while we will go through difficult times, psalms of trust remind us that even in those hard times God is with us and God is ultimately powerful as well as compassionate.  Additionally, while nothing else can be fully trusted, not wealth, not health, not idols, not even the people we love, God can be relied upon to stay with us, to care for us.  God is the one we must depend on because there is nothing else on which we can completely depend.

            Psalm 23, a psalm of trust, is undoubtedly the most loved, most repeated, most often translated and interpreted psalm that we have.  It speaks deeply to our hearts, not only because of the beauty of its words, the deep trust in God that it expresses, and the comfort that it offers, but also because, in being the most familiar psalm, it recalls memories for each of us, it brings connections for each of us to other times, other people, other experiences.  It once again, as with the history psalms, connects us with tradition, with history, with other people of faith throughout our Christian (and frankly Jewish and Muslim) traditions.  At the same time, because it is so familiar, it can be hard to really hear it, or to hear the new word that God has for you today within the psalm. 

            So there are some things I’d like to share with you about Psalm 23 and then we will engage in an exercise together concerning the psalm.

            There are two primary metaphors in this psalm.  The first is God as shepherd, caring for all of us as sheep; the other is God as host, preparing a table for us, anointing our heads with oil, filling our cups to overflowing.  Bernard Anderson puts it this way, “According to the Bedouin law of hospitality, once a traveler is received into the shepherd’s tent, and especially once his host has spread food before him, he is guaranteed immunity from enemies who may be attempting to overtake him. … so the psalmist expresses trust in the good Shepherd by saying that in Yahweh’s tent one finds a protecting and gracious welcome.  This divine hospitality is not just a temporary reprieve but a limitless protection from the powers that threaten one’s existence.”

            According to theologian Jeff Paschal, we are invited then to imagine entering a room filled with our enemies. In that place, God says to us, "Right this way. I have prepared a banquet table for you. Please be seated." So we take a seat and begin to eat the feast God has prepared—and we eat right in front of our enemies. If that is not enough, then God anoints our head with oil and fills our cup until it overflows, showering us with honor, with respect, with love …Then the psalm ends. "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". The Hebrew here may be translated, "Surely goodness and kindness shall dog me all my life."  Imagine that.  Every moment of life God is pursuing us, hounding us with goodness and kindness. What kind of God is this? The psalmist

says this God is our shepherd, who fulfills our needs, causes us to rest and be restored, leads us in the right way of living, protects us from evil, honors and blesses us, and never stops pursuing us with goodness and kindness. 

It can be very hard to hear, in our consumer society, that God will provide our every need.  Especially when we are told repeatedly that we have “needs” for things that aren’t actually needs.  We don’t actually need the nicest, most beautiful car on the lot or a 3000 square foot home.  We don’t need to eat out at nice restaurants or pay expensive hair stylists.  Those are wants.  Some have taken the psalm to mean that God will just provide the bare minimum –again, simply those things that really are needs.  But that, too, is not the image that is given to us.  We are given an image of an overflowing cup.  We are given an image of God’s grace in extreme abundance.  Still, that overflowing cup is not usually about giving us more and more material stuff, but riches of a different and much deeper kind.  God will provide us with overflowing care, overflowing love, overflowing gratitude for the blessings that surround us in every moment.  God will bring us joy - true joy, and hope and love and faith.

Sometimes we take these for granted, we fail to remember how blessed we are in each moment and by each breath we take.  Sometimes our vision focuses so much more on the things with which we struggle, the challenges in our lives that we simply can’t see, easily forget, or take for granted such as God’s presence and God’s care in every moment.  I think about my own life.  I think about the many, many challenges that have occurred to me through that life.  You know of many of those challenges.  But now, each time I am faced with extreme difficulties I am aware that I have a choice each time as I walk through whatever is occurring in my life.  I can choose to focus on the tragedy or I can look at the incredible blessings of fellowship, of care for myself and my children, the resources I’ve always had to get through the time emotionally, financially, mentally; my health.  As I’ve mentioned once more, there was a time when we were in the process of buying a new home when the buyer of our original home pulled out.  We could not sell our house for six months and had to pay double mortgages on two homes in the San Francisco Bay Area, until all of our savings were gone.  But the truth is that we had the savings to get us through.  We managed to sell our house before we had to go into debt.  Yes, we spent all our savings, but we always had enough, and once that time was over, we could begin to save again.  Other times were difficult, but I came through them with increased compassion, with a deeper understanding of the choices I want to make in my life,  with a strength to endure and a strong commitment to be the person I choose to be, not the person who is simply reactive to life, but a person who chooses a path and moves through it with intention.  I want to tell you one other personal story, and Jonah hesitantly gave me permission to share this with you.  Jonah is my miracle child.  Five times Jonah has been in situations that could have ended his life.  When he was two he came down with croup.  His croup was so bad that he awakened us in the middle of the night completely unable to breath.  We had to call 911 and when the paramedics arrived and tested his oxygen level, he was at 50%, low enough that they packed him into an ambulance and rushed him to the hospital.  When he was 3, he got hold of a tube of toothpaste and ate the entire thing.  This turned out not to be quite the catastrophe that I thought it might have been, but because it was a tube of fluoridated toothpaste it certainly scared us until we were able to talk to poison control.  When he was four, he got a piece of hotdog stuck in his throat.  Thanks be to God that I noticed he couldn’t breathe and knew the Heimlich maneuver.  He was in the almost fatal car accident with the car coming directly at us in the wrong lane on the freeway two years ago: positioned in exactly the place where he would have been the first to die.  These are the stories he’d let me tell you, but frankly there are others.    

All of these situations (except the toothpaste incident) were potentially fatal.  And while every day I thank God for my son, I don’t every day remember that he was watched over and cared for in these scary, threatening situations.  There are times when I focus on the challenges instead, sometimes the smallest challenges, like of a disagreement or not doing what I think he should be doing to the degree I want it done, rather than on the amazing gifts that I have been given every single day by the continued presence of three beautiful and miraculous children. 

My own life, too, has been saved miraculously on several occasions, mostly involving cars.  The scariest of these occurred when I was 22 and was a mission volunteer in North Carolina for a little over a half year.  One day I was travelling up an old logging road in an old truck with one of the leaders of the mission experience when suddenly the engine of the truck we were driving died, and the breaks went out at the same time.  The logging road was extremely steep and on the left side of the road was a sheer wall rising up, on the other, a sheer cliff going down.  As the truck began to roll backwards down this winding, steep road, the driver of the car calmly said, “I’m going to turn the truck into the wall.  Hold on.”  He did that, and the truck stopped finally at an angle – a steep enough angle that he yelled at me to scoot next to him and get out ASAP before the truck rolled over and off the cliff.  We got out, but just barely.  Another time I was driving behind one of those car-carrying trucks where we were both driving 70 mph on the freeway when suddenly one of the cars rolled off the back, and almost straight into me.  The car’s tires caught at the last minute and it swerved off the road, but I probably missed it by at most a foot.  A third time I ended up behind a drunk driver, also driving 70 mph on the freeway, who crossed the line a little too close to a wall and flipped his car right in front of me.  Fortunately, there were no cars in the lane next to me as I swerved to avoid crashing.  And again I was driving two years ago when we were almost in a head-on collision that would have killed all of us.

My continued life, too, is a miracle, for which I sometimes forget to be thankful.  But when I hear psalm 23, these are the stories that cross my mind.  When I hear the phrase, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil” I think of the times God has been right with me through the frightening times, through the hard times, through the real dangers of life and has seen me through.  I don’t expect to live forever.  I do expect that one of these times something will take my mortal life, whether that be an accident or a disease or something else.  But I remember that that will be in God’s time and that even in that transition, God will lead me beside quiet waters, and refresh my soul.  That is the promise of the psalm.  Those memories calling me into deep gratitude for my life, for my son’s life, for all the lives of the wonderful people around me are renewed and are brought about by this psalm, calling me to trust, and calling me into gratitude.

I would like to end today with a shortened exercise of lectio divina.  I invite you to close your eyes and listen again to psalm 23.  As we do so, I want to invite you to listen for a phrase or word that is speaking to you especially today.  I will ask you to say it out loud if you are comfortable, and then I will read the psalm one more time.  I invite you then to listen for the Holy Spirit, hear what memories or thoughts She would speak to you today.  I invite you to listen for a new word from God spoken in old language, in the words of such a familiar psalm of trust and comfort.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

 He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
 he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.

 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.

 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
             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.

Thanks be to God that we can trust in God’s love, God’s presence, God’s salvation, God’s comfort at all times and in all places.  Amen.