Right in Front of My Enemies (Psalm 23, July 29, 2012)

Right in Front of My Enemies

Psalm 23
9^th Sunday after Pentecost
July 29, 2012

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

It takes a lot of chutzpah to preach the twenty-third psalm.  I’m not the first one to notice the difficulty.  One author says,

Deep familiarity with any text--including and perhaps especially this one--can insulate us from being touched by its eloquent message.  To preach on such a foundational text is to run the risk of either trivializing the sublime, of turning the sermon into an autopsy on a beloved passage, or of trying to do too much to wring some new profundity from the text.[1]

This psalm is familiar and beloved.  If there is one extended passage of the Bible that we can quote from memory, it is this one.  Even in a congregation that has had little to do with the Bible or with the church—and this happens sometimes at funerals or memorial services—all I have to do is to give people permission to join in and launch off with “The Lord is my shepherd,” and they will join in.

If only for its role in sustaining us through death and grief, Psalm 23 would have a special place in our hearts.  The measured cadences of the King James Version translation connect us to a deep tradition of piety at one of the few times in our lives when we actively seek to be sustained by that tradition.  

Artists have painted this psalm.  Preachers through the centuries have preached it.  Expositors have expounded it.  Poets have poeticized it.  What could I possibly say that would render this psalm in any way new and fresh?  What could I say, that is, that would not “trivialize the sublime” or try too hard to wring something new from these old words?

Maybe nothing at all.  Maybe that’s the better option.  After all, the psalm has done a pretty good job of speaking to our hearts all on its own, as I suspect any text so long used and so well-loved would do.

On the other hand, just because this is a well-loved text does not mean that is a well-known one.  The psalms in general are under-known in the Christian community and this one is no exception.  Perhaps we can appreciate it a little more when we come to know it better.  I hope so, since Psalm 23 is a remarkable achievement that will not be any less so for our understanding a little better how it achieves what it does.

I can at least share a few things that I have learned as I have prepared for this sermon.  The psalm is just six verses long, but it manages to move quite a distance.  It begins in a pasture and ends in the Temple and moves by way of a banqueting table.  Along the way it takes us through the “valley of deepest darkness” and right under the nose of an unnamed enemy.  At the beginning we are being led along by a shepherding God.  By the end we are being hunted and pursued by that God’s goodness and mercy, like deer being chased by a pack of hounds.

It covers this distance using two metaphors for God.  God is named as a shepherd and as a host.  One struggle we have is that neither of these metaphors is very familiar.  Even if we know something about sheep we are not likely to know much about shepherds, at least not the kind of shepherd the psalm knows.  This sort of shepherd lives with the sheep twenty-four seven, through fair weather and foul.  This sort of shepherd leads from behind the flock where he can keep an eye on it and direct the dogs who do most of the actual work.

If God is shepherd then the psalmist is a sheep that trusts the shepherd to do this well, leading where there is rich fodder and fresh water by paths that are true.  Are these “paths of righteousness” as the King James Version has it or simply “right paths”?  The word could be translated either way, depending on the context.  Does the context her require the moral overtones of “righteousness”?  Probably not, so “right paths” is probably a better translation.  On the other hand, justice (the other way to translate tsedek) is a sort of path, and a good one at that, even if it doesn’t really fit the shepherd/sheep metaphor.

These true or right paths might lead through some really dark places, even the darkest valley.  Here is another translation question, since the King James has “shadow of death” where most modern translations have “darkest.” I prefer the modern translation. The “darkest valley” covers a lot of spiritual and emotional real estate, not just those times when we or the people we love are in danger of dying, though it certainly covers that.  

But whether it is in the “darkest valley” or in the “valley of the shadow of death,” it is precisely there that the turning point of the psalm is reached.  Up until that point the psalmist has been talking about God:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 

² He makes me lie down in green pastures;

he leads me beside still waters; 

³ he restores my soul.

He leads me in right paths for his name's sake.

But in the darkest valley—the valley where those right paths have led—the psalmist stops talking about God and, for the first time in the psalm, speaks to God:

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,

I fear no evil;

for you are with me.

“You are with me!” In Hebrew it’s just two words: ’attah ‘immadi, “you, with me.”  Here is the moment that changes everything.  Up until now, the psalm has been very fine theology, done poetically.  Everything that has been said up until now is perfectly true, but it’s all outside the speaker; it’s objective; it’s at arm’s length.  With these words what has been true but exterior to the speaker is now internalized.  The psalmist has left speaking about God and now speaks from inside her relationship with God.  The psalm has moved from theology to prayer and this is what transforms her situation.

Over the years I have learned to pay attention to the little words in a biblical text, the words that connect one phrase to another.  Those little words make all the difference.  Here the words “even though” are the ones I mean here.  The psalmist is led through the darkest valley.  That should be a cause for alarm; she should be afraid.  But she is not.  Why not?  Because ’attah ‘immadi, “you, with me!” It is the “You are with me!” that puts the “Even though” in front of the darkest valley and allows the psalmist to move without fear.

The valley is still there.  It’s still dark, darker, darkest.  But it causes no fear.  Because “you are with me!”

And, just in case we haven’t gotten the point, the psalmist changes metaphorical horses in the middle of the stream.  Now God becomes a host.  This metaphor, too, is mostly strange to us, because we have a weak notion of hospitality.  If we invite someone to share a meal with us, we are obligated to provide food that they can eat.  If, for example, our guests are Muslims, we won’t serve them pork.  If we know that they are lactose intolerant, we will take measures to make sure that our guests don’t have to choose between offending us by refusing our food or offending their bodies by eating what is harmful to them.  If we serve alcohol, we will make sure that they are safely sober before they leave or we will make other travel arrangements for them.  Our rules of hospitality are significant, but they are not extensive.

In the world of the psalmist, however, the notion of hospitality was much stronger.  If we invited someone to dinner we were not only obligated to feed them, but, the instant they came under our roof, we were obligated to protect them from anything or anyone who might threaten them.  In fact, there were some circumstances under which a mortal enemy could become our guest and, if that happened, we might have to defend them against their enemies who might happen to be our friends.

Hence the power of the newly introduced metaphor:

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;

you anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

The enemy is still there, but like the darkest valley, poses no threat.  There is nothing to fear: “You prepare a table before me.” You are my host.  You will defend me.  The enemy is powerless to harm me.  The situation is transformed because “’attah ‘immadi, “you, with me!” 

’Attah ‘immadi, “you, with me!” is the good news of this text.  It is the gospel of Psalm 23, but it is not the gospel proclaimed.  It is the gospel embraced and accepted.  This is evangelical religion in its finest and truest form —not that corrupted version of it that people claim for theological and political advantage.  This is truly good news.

But it doesn’t end there.  The prayed exclamation ’attah ‘immadi, “you, with me!” doesn’t end with the psalmist and God permanently locked in a mystical union or some kind of Vulcan mind-meld, impervious to the outside world, oblivious to the rest of life.  In the psalm it leads to the Temple or, more correctly, to “Yahweh’s house.” 

The metaphor of the host/guest relationship continues.  The psalmist will become Yahweh’s permanent guest.  God will act as host for as long as the psalmist lives.  And while that relationship continues, the psalmist will be—not followed, which is far too weak a translation—but pursued, chased, even hounded, by goodness and mercy.

The metaphor continues to govern the relationship, but with a difference, since the scene has shifted from an imaginary table set in an unspecified place, to an actual building in a particular place that you can point to on a map and go to in person.  Yahweh’s House is not an abstract idea.  It’s a building made of stone.  It is the place where the covenant community gathers and worships.  It’s a building that is often filled with people, not all of whom have bathed recently.  They rattle their bulletins.  They make comments during the sermon.  They have bad breath.  They sing out of tune.  And they, too, are guests of the same host and so the laws of hospitality require us to treat them as if they were our guests, too, even though we didn’t pick them.  Remember, we do not get to pick whom God invites.

So, ’attah ‘immadi, “you, with me!” leads us to God’s House.  And there it leads us to address each other in the same way: ’attah ‘immadi, “you, with me!”  So maybe the reason that we are able to eat right in front of our enemies without being afraid is that we have both been invited to the same table by the same host and our enemies are obligated not to harm us.  And maybe they feel the same way about us because they, too, have had a table set before them.

God’s hospitality transforms our enemies into dinner companions.  And without enemies, we can no longer fear the darkness.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

---

[1] Rolf A. Jacobson, “Psalm 23,” in Psalms for Preaching and Worship: A Lectionary Commentary, edited by Roger E. Van Harn and Brent A. Strawn (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 101.