A Fourth Church Sermon by Deborah Kapp

May 23, 2004 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

The Promise of Faith

Deborah Kapp
Associate Professor, McCormick Theological Seminary

Psalm 23
Hebrews 11:1–3, 32–12:3
Isaiah 40:25–31

Beyond all mystery is the mercy of God.
It is a love, a mercy that transcends the world, its value and merit.
To live by such a love, to reflect it, however humbly,
is the text of religious existence.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

A book I sometimes use in my classes at McCormick is The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. This is not the meatiest book on the market. It is an enjoyable read that explores social epidemics—why some things like The Da Vinci Code really take off when other, equally good or better, products might not. One of the things Gladwell discusses is a factor he calls “stickiness.” Some ideas or products are simply stickier than others, and once we come in contact with them, they adhere.

In the whole Bible, there are few passages with a higher stickiness factor than the 23rd Psalm. I went on the Internet the other day and Googled the 23rd Psalm, only to find 103,000 sites! I skimmed the first ten or twelve pages, 120 sites or so, and then pondered how many more there were; 103,000 seemed like a lot of sites, so I Googled a few more psalms, just out of curiosity. Most of them only had around 30,000 possible sites, although Psalm 139 did come in with around 65,000. Clearly the 23rd Psalm is Google’s most popular. The psalm’s Internet popularity is due, in part, to its commercial stickiness. It adorns all kinds of things we can buy, including Psalm 23 bracelets, prayer beads, painted prayers, screensavers, afghans, bookmarks, coconut collectibles, and a World Trade Center 23rd Psalm poster. We can arrange to be interred in the Psalm 23 Cemetery in Winkler, Texas. We can purchase from Jossey-Bass/Wiley Publications, which is a very reputable firm, a new book about leadership based on Psalm 23.

But we can also do something else with the 23rd Psalm, and many of us already have, which is what gives Psalm 23 its commercial stickiness. We can make this psalm our own. We can let it into our hearts and hear in its phrases echoes of our deepest convictions about God’s steady and faithful love for each one of us.

“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” Like many of you, I’ve said this psalm hundreds of times. I’ve said it as I received communion here at Fourth. I’ve repeated it in hospital rooms and read it at almost every funeral at which I’ve officiated. I’ve repeated it silently at difficult times in my life. And I’ve sung it to some of the eight versions of the 23rd Psalm that are in our hymnal and also to the tune of “Amazing Grace,” which is a great combination of text and tune. I treasure this psalm and know it well. But in the last few weeks, as I tried to live more closely to this text, I heard a few ideas about God come with more clarity than ever before.

I’m going to work from the outside in this morning, so let me begin toward the end of the psalm: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” That’s actually not a very good translation, I discovered. “Stalk” might be a better translation than “follow,” or maybe “pursue.” Goodness and mercy are not trailing along behind us in this text, like Mary’s little lamb. Quite the contrary. They are coming after us! God is coming after you and me, armed with goodness and mercy, with steadfast love. God wants nothing more than to fill your life and mine with goodness.

Such a generous heart. It is not so hard to imagine. Think about what fun it is to buy someone you love the perfect Christmas gift and then to watch them open it. Think about what a delight it is to have enough to be able to share it with other people. Magnify that joy. Multiply it. Increase it exponentially, and you get a glimpse of how the psalmist understands God’s good and joyful heart. God has such an abundance of goodness, a limitless depth of merciful love, and God is coming after you and me to bestow it. Claims of God’s abundance frame this psalm. From the psalmist’s opening claim that he wants nothing through the grateful realization that God’s goodness and mercy pursue him daily, the psalmist sings of God’s abundant grace. In between these claims of abundance, he unpacks his understanding of God’s lavish love:

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul.
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff, they lead me.(1)

That’s what it really says here. “Thy rod and thy staff, they lead me.” There is a rich mix of ideas in these three verses. But in each verse, the psalmist repeats the idea that God leads us and, in leading, makes possible our daily sustenance, spiritual renewal, faithful action, and security. How do we understand a leadership that accomplishes all this?

Last week, when she spoke to us about her sense of call as our new Associate Pastor for Congregational Life, Ali Trowbridge remembered being in Nepal following her time in the Peace Corps. She said she was lying awake one night, with the heights of the Himalayas rising around her, looking at the stars that dazzled in the darkness, and suddenly she felt an overwhelming sense of God’s presence. At the same time, she said, she felt prodded to pursue a career in ministry.

As I listened to Ali, I thought, “That’s it!” The psalmist is singing about God who leads us by both presence and prodding—at the same time, twinned together, presence and prodding. (2) The psalmist claims that God is with us everyday, giving us what we need and walking with us through times of struggle and yet, all the while, pointing a path for us to follow now. The God of the 23rd Psalm always carries a shepherd’s crook. With that crook God pulls us back from whatever precipice we approach, herds us in healthy directions, and keeps us together as a people. Presence and prodding.

Jesus, the good shepherd, does the same thing. He comes to us bearing the fullness of God’s love, that we might have abundant life; and at the same time he invites us to share his love and life with others. Ironically, it is in the sharing that we discover his presence. Even more, it is in the sharing that we discover our own, best selves.

He restores my soul.
He leads me in the paths of righteousness.

Jesus makes the same claims as the psalmist. We find our lives by losing them. As Dr. Buchanan reminded us last week, whenever we welcome strangers or feed hungry people or visit prisoners, we meet Jesus face-to-face. Simply loving God is never enough for Jesus; he always couples love of God with love of neighbor. Jesus is the abundance of God’s love made flesh for you and me, yet his is a prodding presence, always nudging us toward the faithful life and service in which we will discover the fullness of God’s goodness.

God is a prodding presence in our lives. The psalmist celebrates this, and pushes it even further. At the absolute center of this psalm there is another truth about God of which the psalmist sings. And that is God’s absolute devotion to you and me—no matter what. The psalmist says it this way:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.

Surely, one of the things that accounts for this psalm’s stickiness is its certitude that, even in the worst of times, death included, we are not alone. God is with us, a prodding presence that holds us close.

Tradition tells us that about three thousand years ago, give or take a few hundred years, a young man named David wrote this psalm. It was a faith statement that confirmed his trust in God and reflected his own life experience. He was a shepherd, and even though he was quite young, he knew a bit about the dangers that sheep can face.

David did not yet know about the dangers he would encounter as he grew older, dangers the Bible details for us in the books of Samuel and Kings. He did not know he would risk death and face the giant, Goliath, in single-handed combat, armed only with a slingshot and a few smooth stones. He was unaware that he would spend years as a guerilla warrior, hiding from Saul’s wrath. He had no idea of the courage that would be required to build a nation and lead armies into battle. He did not know of the fortitude he would need to endure the death of two beloved children. Nor did he know of the moral strength and honesty he would need to muster, in order to stand up to God’s judgment, receive forgiveness, and start life over, after breaking at least three of the ten commandments (coveting his neighbor’s wife, adultery, and murder).

Unbeknownst to David, when he was only a boy, he wrote a faith statement that would stand him in good stead for the rest of his life. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” The Bible tells us that David walked through many dark valleys during his long life. Some were valleys into which he was forced by the action of his enemies; others were grand canyons carved by David’s own sinfulness. But God never abandoned David, just as God will never abandon you or me. Whether in the face of danger or death or in the depths of sinfulness, God is with us, a faithful, prodding presence that will never let us go. Not now. Not ever.

Early in my ministry at the last church I served, in Hartford, Connecticut, I took communion to one of our older members in a nursing home. Like many of our members, Jimmy was a first generation Scotsman. One of the first things he told me, when I arrived with my little communion set, was, “Well, I’m not much for communion.” But he was a gentleman and figured communion wouldn’t hurt him, so we shared the sacrament. And we talked. At some point in the conversation he told me how disappointed he was with the Catholic priest who was the chaplain at the nursing home, because the priest did not know the 23rd Psalm. The chaplain didn’t know “The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want. He makes me down to lie.” Said he had never heard of it. Jimmy was troubled because he, Jimmy, couldn’t remember the words he had learned as a boy, and he wanted them in his old age, as he struggled with the cancer that ate away his face and would soon end his life.

It took me a few minutes to figure out what the problem was. I do not think the issue was that the Catholic priest was unacquainted with the 23rd Psalm. The issue was that he was unfamiliar with the Scottish version of the 23rd Psalm. In this moment it helped to be a Presbyterian who had grown up singing the very hymn Jimmy wanted, and fortunately, I remembered it. So Jimmy and I said it together, and it meant far more to him than hundreds of communion services. For Jimmy, Psalm 23 was the stickiest part of his religious tradition.

It is for many people. Whether we know it in its King James Version, as we repeat it here at communion services, or in its Scottish psalter version, as we will sing it in a few moments, or in some other translation, the 23rd Psalm is sticky for many of us. Why? The 23rd Psalm is sticky because it tells us the great, good news that God is sticky. Now, that’s not very eloquent theological language, but it’s true. God sticks to us and with us. God pursues us relentlessly, eager to shower us with goodness and mercy. God’s presence prods us toward divine abundance. And God sticks with us in death. To use Elam Davies’ phrase, this “is a God in whom we can be confident,” one whose prodding presence sticks with us forever—from youth to old age, in danger and comfort, in life and in death, this day and every day, now and always. Amen.

Notes
1. The Hebrew word at issue here actually means “to lead,” but due to an unusual verb formation, it has been confused with a similar verb meaning “to comfort.”

2. For an extended discussion of the metaphors of refuge and pathway in the psalter, see William P. Brown, Seeing the Psalms: A Theology of Metaphor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002).