A Reflection for the 4th Sunday of Easter The Church of the Holy Trinity, Hertford, NC
April 21, 2024 Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant/Preacher
Walking the 23rd Psalm
First of all I need to start with an apology. I got confused and did not show up here last week. It was pure sloth that I did not check the schedule enough. I had gone to the local church's early service in Nags Head and quietly sitting at home when your Senior Warden called me and asked me if I was on the way. I confessed that I was more than an hour and a half away from the church. He pointed out that he had indeed sent me a schedule. I apologized, but the guilt really got going when I found the note in the depths of my computer. So, what I will do now is to go through an exercise of doing as I say and not always what I do. If you want to , in the middle of my reflection, you are forgiven ahead of time if you do the old trick of putting your fist to your mouth as if you were about to cough and expel, the word: “Sinner!” In all of my years as a combination of Professional Saint and Private Sinner, I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to remind people of their failings, but you have a free shot; and you would be right.
Having said that; now what do we do? How do we live together after having exchanged disappointments with each other? Since I am not your full time Rector, you are free to discharge me and not call on me again. However, I am already signed up for five more Sundays until the end of June. Therefore, we may need to find a way to live together during that time. The lessons for today suggest that we come together as fellow sheep in the same flock with the same Shepherd; the Lord is our shepherd. And he walks with us, as we have become his body.
I am reminded of that old Baptist Hymn, with apologies to C. Austin Miles, which I have adapted:
We come to the garden together,
While
the dew is still on the roses;
And the voice we hear, falling on
our ears,
The Son of God discloses.
Refrain:
And He walks with us, and
He talks with us,
And He tells us we are His own,
And the joy
we share as we tarry there,
All others can always know.
I came across a quote by Frederick Buechner:
“The earliest reference to the Resurrection is Saint Paul’s, and he makes no mention of an empty tomb at all. But the fact of the matter is that, in a way, it hardly matters how the body of Jesus came to be missing, because in the last analysis, what convinced the people that he had risen from the dead was not the absence of his corpse but his living presence. And so, it has been ever since.”— initially published in The Faces of Jesus.
The 23rd Psalm is one of those Psalms which we learn early in our lives. When I was much younger, about 70 years ago, I went to a Vacation Bible School, between the 2nd and 3rd grade, where we all were to learn the 23rd Psalm. I learned to memorize it. Note, that I did not say I understood it; I just committed it to memory so I could parrot it on cue. My prize for this feat was a plastic, green , glow in the dark, figure of Jesus. For the next ten years the plastic, green glow in the dark, figure of Jesus was on a desk next to my bed. It was there every night I went to bed. It was glowing each night when I turned off the light and slipped under my bed covers in the dark, entering indeed the valley of the shadow. While complying with the parental rule that my light was to be off, I would take my crystal radio set that I had put together to listen to the devil's music of Rock and Roll over an ear piece. Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley were not conducive to being in still waters. When it was time to really sleep, I would turn off the set and say the 23rd Psalm before fully entering into the shadows of death.
There were some nights, especially Sunday night, when the crystal set would be tuned to the late night fire and brimstone preachers, who would remind me what a sinner in the hands of an angry God I was. On those nights I would turn off the set and and, looking at my desk, the last image I had was of the loving shepherd glowing in the dark.
When it came time to go to college, I packed up my stuff , but left the crystal radio set and the Good Shepherd statue, figuring I had to give up childish things. I no longer needed a plastic Jesus, and the new clock radio would wake me up so I would not miss class. But I never was able to get rid of the Psalm I had memorized. I would find times when it would return from the past to give me hope and comfort. When my father was dying, in his truly Valley of the Shadow, I said it over and over again, to myself. I could not really say that I really believed in God at the time, I assumed that God was a myth I could live without, but the prayers never left me.
I got married the day after college graduation and when 2 weeks later, I returned to the family home to be best man at my older brother's wedding, I cleared out all of my stuff, dumping the crystal set and glowing Jesus into my younger brother's pile.
I no longer needed a plastic Jesus. But I never was able to get rid of the Psalm I had memorized. I would find times when it would return from the past to give me hope and comfort. When this Jesus stuff started to make sense in my life as an adult; I was glad that old friend had stayed with me.
Robert Frost said, “A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-sickness or a love-sickness.” The 23rd Psalm is poetry beginning with a longing for home; using words that have different and expansive meanings. I do not know Hebrew, but I steal from the best. For today, I am stealing from “The Shepherd and the Exegetes: Hermeneutics, Through the Lens of Psalm 23.” by Richard A. Davidson, a Seventh Day Adventist at Andrews University in Michigan.
Davidson relates that in the Hebrew, the word “shepherd” is the same word that one would use for “friend”. Jesus then opens up to be more than this big guy with a couple sticks, but a friend who wants the best for me. I had an Australian friend who said whenever he heard the word “shepherd”, he always envisioned a man on horseback with a whip cracking and yelling at the dumb sheep. Over the years, Jesus became for me a friend who loved me and was there to walk with me, wherever I went.
He would be with me as we went into beautiful, pleasant places. The Hebrew word for “Pastures” is also the same world for a “pleasant place of beauty.” The “pleasant places of beauty” that I see the best is when I see that the space between people being filled with love and forgiveness. I have hopes of seeing that whenever I go to church. I don't always find it, especially when people are trying to win rather than love; but I keep looking. Hope is always there for entering a place where the waters are not stirred up for battle, but are calmed, “stilled”, for a time to refresh, to hope, to have my “nephesh”, the Hebrew word for the very being of life, the soul, restored, brought back to full life again.
My friend takes me by the paths, not the narrow dangerous rocky treacherous mountain paths of the wilderness, but the Hebrew word for “paths” usually means wide wagon roads. The shepherd is not there to test me, but to show me the right and wide, well worn paths to take. I have to pay attention of one step at a time that so many have taken before..
The “Valley of the Shadow of death” is the place of deep darkness. It is where my own small light of the crystal radio set is not strong enough. I know that there will be a time when I will die and I trust the light, that my friend is, is on this road. On this road, I have a friend who wants the best for me. It is in those dark places that my friend will feed me the nourishment I need, preparing a table. Not only nourishing me but the healing oil of his love pours over me, not just a touch on the forehead, but a gentle flow of love cascading and claiming me. I used to have red hair and when I was a child, I would stay out on the beach too long and my mother, and later when I did it when I was older, my wife, would apply the healing ointment all over my back. It was a gift of love.
I remember when my daughter was a baby and I would give her a bath, dry her softly and then add oil on her dry skin. The bath was a gift of necessity to remove the dirt of the past; but the oil was a gift of hope for the future.
The Hebrew word for “follow” the paths can also mean “pursue” the paths; it is about commitment to go into new days. I don't think that the 23rd Psalm was there for us to see that Jesus lived the 23rd Psalm, but to be for us a path that we might take as regular dog faced people in living our lives. It is not that Jesus keeps reminding us of our sins, but lovingly walks with us, one step at a time, one day at a time.
In the first of John's Epistles we hear the author say today: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us-- and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?”
To believe in Christ is not something we do in our heads or reciting doctrine, it is something we do with our whole body; one step at a time by getting involved in this complex world. We are not meant to be observers of life, or judges of the paths of others; but to be followers of the living Christ, bringing healing and wholeness into the dark places of the life of our neighbor, and to allow others to minister to us in our own dark places. We are not meant to be mere listeners of the Gospel but to be ministers of Christ's love to this broken world. Salvation is not about getting into the Big Country Club in the sky after we die, but in living fully into each moment of Christ's ministry in us to bring healing into this world.
I usually, having Frost's lump in my throat as I begin writing my reflection, try to write a poem to help me to narrow things down in that reflection , but today I depend on a poem attributed to St. Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth century mystic, nun and reformer. A handwritten copy of this poem/prayer has not been found in her collections of writings but it was attributed to her for the last 5 centuries
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but
yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on
this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do
good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the
world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the
eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No
hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which
he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on
earth but yours.
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