Neighborhood Interfaith Thanksgiving Service
at Chicago Sinai Congregation,
November 25, 2014 | 7:30 p.m.

Sermon

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 23

I have to begin by being completely honest with you about how I walk into this sacred space tonight. I come with more fear and trembling than normal. Last night, I sat at home and watched the announcement of the grand jury’s decision in Ferguson and some of the coverage of the protests that followed. And when my young son asked me what was going on, I gave him bits and pieces of the story but told it with broad brush strokes and not much detail. As a white mother, I can do that. But not all parents have the privilege of leaving out details.

Now I fully realize some of us might agree with the decision. Others of us cannot comprehend it. Some might not know quite how to feel about it. But regardless of what we might feel, regardless if we agree or disagree with each other about it, regardless if we understand the anger and the fury unleashed last night in response or not, the reality is that on this night, many people, God’s children just like us, are deeply heartbroken. Many of God’s children feel invisible and overlooked. I heard some of their voices mid-afternoon as a protest march made its way down Michigan Avenue. The truth is that in 2014, many parents still do not have the choice I had and must tell their young sons too many details.

And truly, I don’t have any great wisdom or any brilliant plan for how we, as an interfaith family gathered here for Thanksgiving, should respond. Yet this kind of sacred space demands honesty. It demands we speak all of this out loud. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “We worship God through our questions.” Furthermore, one of the gifts of the Psalter, from which we receive out primary text for tonight, is it teaches us that part of our job as people of faith is to lift up the laments of God’s children. So we come here tonight in a spirit of gratitude during this Thanksgiving week, perhaps in a space of pain after last night, and maybe in a space of confusion over what now.

It is a drastically different context and space than the one I usually occupy with this beloved psalm. In my Christian tradition, this psalm is typically read at memorial services. As a matter of fact, in my past fifteen years of ministry, I have officiated at 140 memorial services, and I promise you that only one or two of them did not include Psalm 23 as a part of its liturgy. This psalm is so familiar and powerful for so many people, even those who do not claim a religious affiliation, that my Hebrew Bible professor, Walter Brueggemann, writes it is almost presumptuous to even try and comment on it. But I am willing to take that risk with you, for this psalm might have something to say to us in the space we occupy tonight.

And truthfully, if the only time we really consider this psalm is in the midst of death, then we are missing its power to shape us in the midst of our lives. For Psalm 23 is not only a comforting psalm. It is not only a psalm of trust. It is not only a conversation partner with Psalm 22. It is also a subversive psalm. Psalm 23 is a psalm of rebellion.

“The Lord is my Shepherd.” Now some of you might be thinking, “Shannon, how on earth is claiming that the Lord is my Shepherd subversive in any way whatsoever?” When many of us think “shepherd,” we think about idyllic pastoral scenes, or we think about the fact it is not a very glamorous job. But probably we do not say “shepherd” and think “rebellious.” Yet in scripture, the title “shepherd” is not simply a job description. The title “shepherd” is political. In the ancient world, kings were known as the shepherds of their people. A king was supposed to provide for and protect the people under his reign, like a shepherd was charged to do for a flock.

But we know from prophets like Ezekiel that kings often failed to do what they were called to do. Ezekiel denounced the actions of the kings he encountered, saying, “Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? . . . You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them” (Ezekiel 34:2–4). In the ancient world, in the world in which this psalm formed, the title “shepherd” was political.

That fact makes this psalm subversive right off the bat, for when the psalmist states unequivocally “the Lord is my Shepherd,” he is stating just as strongly, “And the rest of you are not.” In this simple opening line, the psalmist is metaphorically drawing the line in the sand. By claiming the Holy One as Shepherd, the psalmist is claiming that the Lord is King, Sovereign, the one who directs, to whom he is answerable, whom alone he trusts and serves (Walter Brueggemann, The Treat of Life: Sermons on Pain, Power, and Weakness). Are you getting a taste of the rebellion yet? When we say “The Lord is my Shepherd,” we are saying there is no rival loyalty, no competing claim for our allegiance. When we say “The Lord is my Shepherd,” we are saying our ultimate allegiance is to our creator—not to country or to faith tradition or to military or to capitalism or even to our family. When we claim “the Lord is my Shepherd,” we are claiming our ultimate allegiance belongs first and foremost to the Holy One, to our God. “The Lord is my Shepherd” is a subversive and political claim.

Frankly, that claim feels even more charged today. And yet that claim is subversive on all days, not just on days of upheaval. Because on all days, there are many, many voices out in the marketplace, out in the land of social media, out in the world of celebrity worship, who clamor for our ultimate allegiance. Yet in all those moments, we can breathe in the voice of Psalm 23 and let it fill us with courage: “The Lord, the Holy One, is my Shepherd.” No one and nothing else.

The psalmist’s rebellion, however, does not stop with that opening line. It continues. “The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want.” The closer translation to the Hebrew is “I shall lack nothing.” I don’t know how much television you watch or how many magazines you read or how often you stroll over on Michigan Avenue, but I know from my overexposure to those things that there seems to always be something that I lack. There is always something else that I think I need, that my children need, that we assume we must have in order to be satisfied and full. Thomas Merton puts it this way: “Even though there’s a certain freedom in our society, it’s largely illusory. . . . It’s the freedom to choose your product, but not the freedom to do without it.” Psalm 23 acts as counter-testimony to that message we get every day.

“The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want.” With those nine words, the psalmist makes two powerful claims, claims that have the potential to change us if we let them. First, when he pronounces “I shall not want,” the psalmist is shouting out that God’s generosity will provide all he needs to live abundantly. The second claim the psalmist is making, however, is that he, himself, will also choose not to want. The Psalmist is choosing not to get caught up and defined by the idolatry of accumulation and consumerism. And when Black Friday is right around the corner followed by Cyber Monday, this claim and his choice are powerful. “The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want.”

The psalmist then goes on to show us images of how the Lord, our Shepherd, provides for our lives. “The Lord makes me lie down in green pastures; the Lord leads me beside still waters, the Lord restores my soul. The Lord leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.” While many of us might have heard these verses as being about peace and tranquility, they are also about much more. As scholar Kenneth Bailey has written, “In the Holy Land, pastures are green each year for a maximum of two-and-a-half months in the middle of winter. The rest of the year the fields are brown. [And,] sheep are afraid to drink from a moving stream lest it hide deep water into which they could fall and drown. [So] still waters and green pastures are, for a sheep, the best of all worlds” (Kenneth E. Bailey, “Psalm 23 and Jesus,” Presbyterian Outlook, 18 February 2008, p. 15).

These verses are the psalmist’s way of illustrating for us that the Lord, our Shepherd, will keep us alive. The Lord, our Shepherd, will give us all we need. We, the sheep, will lack nothing that we need for life. Furthermore, notice all the action is on the part of the Shepherd. We, the sheep, do nothing. We simply receive and enjoy. “No hunger, no thirst, no fear, no anxiety, no danger. ‘All is well’ because there is one shepherd who is trusted” (Walter Brueggemann, The Treat of Life).

And if for some reason we wander off, the Shepherd will find us and carry us back to the right path. But the Shepherd does not do this because of who we are. The Shepherd does it because of who the Shepherd is, for his own name’s sake, for the sake of God’s own integrity. Again, we hear echoes of the prophet Ezekiel and others.

We now reach the theological center of the psalm: “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.” In the original Hebrew, there are exactly twenty-six words before the statement “You are with me” and twenty-six words after it.

Clearly this claim at the center of the psalm, this promise that no matter what, the Shepherd, the only One in whom we trust, will never abandon us, not even in the most dangerous places—this is to be the promise in which we ground our lives. But not only does the Shepherd lead us through dangerous places, but when God is present in the shadow of death, in the dark valley, things change. The valley is transformed.

I see in this psalm the promise that in the darkest of valleys, the Shepherd becomes gracious Host, transforming the barrenness of fear and anxiety into a feast of celebration and joy. And the good Shepherd turned gracious Host invites us to that feast as honored guests. But—and this is the question that has tugged at me since last night—could it also be that the good Shepherd turned gracious Host does not only invite us to the feast but also those who we previously called enemy? What if “in the presence of my enemies” does not mean the enemy is excluded and we feast in defiance of them as they watch? What if “in the presence of my enemies” means they are invited too? What if the good Shepherd turned gracious Host, the One who holds nothing back from the sheep, also holds no one back from the feast, not even those we know as enemy? Can you imagine it? Take a moment and picture those whom you name “enemy” today. What happens if they, too, are at the table? I certainly would not put it past our God, our Shepherd, our Host, to do something so full of grace and mercy, so out of the ordinary, so countercultural and subversive.

The psalm ends with two affirmations. The first: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” Again, the Hebrew is more illustrative. “Pursue” is a better translation than “follow.” “Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life.” We are being chased by the Shepherd’s love our whole lives long. It makes you wonder if there will come a day when we stop running from it. And the second affirmation: “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Because of who our Shepherd is, we, the sheep, the guests, are a part of God’s household, God’s family, God’s community, from now until forever—a promise we all hold onto, as we hold onto each other.

This psalm has the power to reshape our lives, to bind us closer together. It has the power to help us live into the kind of world God is dreaming into being—a world in which only God gets to tell us who we are; where there is more than enough for all who need; where dangerous places are transformed into party rooms; where enemies and friends are at table together, and goodness and mercy finally catch us and hold us tight, and we finally stop running.

So yes, we come to this service tonight, some feeling angry, others feeling justified, all holding up pieces of the lament and pain of this world, but perhaps, as we stand in the light of this psalm, we can also be deeply grateful for each other, for our partnerships, for the opportunity to say thanks, and, most of all, for our Shepherd, our Host, who will not rest until All is finally made well.