Joel D. Kline
May 2, 2004
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
The Fourth Sunday of Easter
Louis Armstrong, the great jazz musician, was once asked what makes the music of Frank Sinatra so special. Answered Armstrong, “If you don’t hear it, you ain’t got ears.” There are some things, Armstrong seems to be suggesting, that defy explanation; you either get it or you don’t! Seems to me something similar might well be said about the gift of God’s grace and goodness, about the wonder of Christ’s resurrection, and about the promise that we too might be raised to new life with Christ. These are gifts that cannot be rationally proven, certainly not by intellectual debate over fine points of doctrine. Rather, they are something we experience as true as we put on spiritual eyes and ears and hearts. In a very real sense, we either get it or we don’t!
There’s something daunting about preaching on a text as familiar as the 23rd psalm, no doubt the most-quoted and best-loved of all 150 psalms, if not of all scripture. In nearly thirty years of preaching, I have seldom based sermons on this psalm, wondering what new I might add to such deeply appreciated words. But perhaps the very familiarity of this psalm keeps us from really hearing its message that contains a radical flair. I recall some years ago encountering an author who asserted that the 23rd psalm has become “an American secular icon,” words we have come to anticipate at memorial services or funerals, words shared in difficult times to make us feel better. That’s not all bad; but along the way we forget that the psalm has a great deal more to say about the challenges of living here and now, with God at the center of life, than it does about comfort at the time of death.
Truth is, there’s something almost subversive about this psalm, with its central affirmation that all of life finds its meaning and value in relationship with God. In contrast, the culture around us, a culture awash with materialism, preaches a very different message—that life’s meaning and value are to be found just one more purchase away. Problem is, of course, once we attain that one more purchase, another appears on the horizon, and then another, and soon we become caught in a web from which there seems no escape. Along the way we become convinced that joy and purposeful living are elusive, always just beyond our grasp.
Leonard Sweet, dean of the Theological School at Drew University, asserts in his book Soul Tsunami that two opposing gospels are fighting for our souls, for the soul of our culture and of much of the world in which we live—the gospel of consumption, on the one hand, and, on the other, the gospel of peace. The 23rd psalm comes down squarely on the side of the gospel of peace. It begins with the simple affirmation, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” “I don’t need a thing,” Eugene Peterson paraphrases in The Message—a similar claim to that made by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear…. But strive first for the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all these things will be given you as well” (Matthew 6:25, 33).
In his novel The Robe Lloyd Douglas reminds us:
Like a navigator needs a north star,
like a builder needs a plumb line,
like a mathematician needs a square root,
like a musician needs a fixed note,
so we who live in a sometimes hectic
and overwhelming world need a sanctuary,
and One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
In the ancient world kings were frequently identified as shepherds of their people, for they had the responsibility of providing for and protecting the people. But all too often those rulers were self-serving. In contrast, asserts the psalmist, ours is a God who knows us and loves us, a God who restores our souls, a God who anoints us with the oil of healing and grace and fills our cups with overflowing love. Ours is a God who is our north star, our plumb line, our fixed note, our anchor in the midst of trying times, our loving shepherd.
The psalmist asserts not only that God is a trustworthy shepherd, providing lush pastures and still waters, but also that God is a loving host, preparing a banquet table for us, anointing our heads with oil, providing an overflowing cup of mercy and grace. And both images underscore the central promise, that God is with us. “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you, O God, are with me.”
Philip Yancey tells a modern rendition of the prodigal son story that speaks of God with us, God as a shepherd and host ever ready to welcome and restore us to full relationship. It’s the story of a young woman who, because of conflict with her family, leaves home in the company of a young man, and together they head for Montana. But by the time they get to Montana, the young man abandons her, and she soon finds herself in desperate straits, reduced to a life of prostitution in order to survive. During the fierce winter, she becomes so ill that she can no longer support herself, and eventually finds herself rummaging through garbage cans in search of something to eat.
One day, while eating a bite retrieved from the garbage, she recalls the way her parents would sometimes throw scraps to their family dog, and she says to herself, “Even our dog at home eats better than I do.” Humiliated at the comparison, the desperate young woman decides to make her way back home. She writes a letter to her parents saying, “I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. I’m coming home on the bus,” and then she shares her expected time of arrival. “I’ll get off at the bus station,” she writes. “If there is no one there to meet me, I will understand and will get back on the bus, returning west.”
After a long trip, the tired and broken young woman arrived, hoping to see her parents. At first she does not see them, for the bus station is crowded, with a couple hundred people. But suddenly she realizes what is happening. The crowd is filled with extended family members and friends, and she notices a huge banner stretching across the station, announcing, “Welcome home!”
When she encounters her parents the young woman begins to say, “It’s all my fault…” But they do not let her finish, saying instead, “This is no time for speeches. Come, a great feast has been prepared.”
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 all my life long.
Brennan Manning has written a book entitled Ruthless Trust in which he asserts that it is this quality of ruthless trust, of uncompromising trust in the love of our God, that is our greatest challenge—and our greatest need in our spiritual journeys. And Manning reminds us that while “our culture says that ruthless competition is the key to success, Jesus says that ruthless compassion is the purpose of our journey.”
In his book Desire of the Everlasting Hills, written a few years back, Thomas Cahill writes,
As we stand now at the entrance to the third millennium since Jesus, we can look back over the horrors of Christian history, never doubting for an instant that if Christians had put kindness ahead of devotion to good order, theological correctness, and our own justifications … the world we inhabit would be a very different one.
A world in which compassion and kindness and trust are the order of the day, a world in which the gospel of peace supercedes the gospel of consumption, a world in which people of faith take the risk of embracing life with God at the center—this is the kind of world envisioned by the Scriptures. Do you see it? Are you able to experience it, even now, even in the midst of life’s struggles and divisions and warfare and confusion and pain?
To paraphrase Louis Armstrong, “If you don’t see it and hear it, if you don’t feel it and experience it, you ain’t decided to put on spiritual eyes and ears and heart.” In a few moments, you are invited to come for anointing. May it be a time when we seek eyes that are able to see the incredible gift of God’s love, ears that hear the cries of our neighbors in need, and hearts eager to live for the glory of God and the good of our neighbors.