Psalm 23
“Counted Sheep”
May 12, 2019
All it probably took was a glance at the bulletin and you were transported. This psalm for some of you was one that was memorized in Sunday school or at home as a child. For others, your introduction to it was most likely at a funeral that would come to be remembered more and more often as you grew older. When words become so familiar and so tied to a particular event, especially an emotion-laden one, they take on a very personal meaning. It can be hard to get through them without choking up. And still there is a comfort to them. And that comfort for many is found in the traditional language of the King James Version. Listen now to this well-known translation, as read by Karen….
Psalms have been for many, a book of prayer, providing words that speak of the range of human emotions as they relate to God with gushing praise for and pointed questions and doubt on the part of the pray-ers. When people through the ages have stumbled to find the words to be in conversation with God, the Psalms were the way they could express their deepest feelings. They give voice to the notion of “Help” or “Thanks” in a relatable way. The thing about the Psalms that make them so useful is they are written by flawed humans plural – as there’s almost universal agreement that they were composed by multiple writers. Some Psalms are written from a place of deep anger. Others are an outlet for jealousy or fear. In English, the Psalms can sound quite polished and carefully crafted while in Hebrew they are more down to earth and rough around the edges as they express the responses to messy, complicated, hurting lives as well as the notions of awe and wonder and gratitude and curiosity that can be found in you and me, on any given day.
Psalm 23 starts out with talking of God as the great provider of every need and then the next five verses explain how God does that. This psalm has a power that few other sets of verses from literature or poetry have. The theologian Karl Barth said that this Psalm alone provides a summary of the whole Psalter what with its thanksgiving and vulnerability and strength and above all this most well-known of all Psalms offers us the picture of God as totally trustworthy and totally on our side which may be why we lean into it at our most painful and vulnerable times.
We hear of a countercultural image of God in these words – one who because of all that God is we will not want. This can be more accurately translated from Hebrew as “I shall not need” or “I shall not lack.” Regardless, this God is the only person, place or thing that can totally fill us up. We certainly try throughout our lives to find other ways of filling that space inside of us that yearns for more – more prestige, more acknowledgment, more things, more experiences, more work, more gratitude, more peace, more love. When we go looking for them outside of ourselves, the place where God dwells, we inevitably come up short. One of the more beautiful modern translations of this Psalm can be found in The Message where Eugene Peterson has captured it this way…
1-3 God, my shepherd!
I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.
4 Even when the way goes through
Death Valley,
I’m not afraid
when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd’s crook
makes me feel secure.
5 You serve me a six-course dinner
right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
my cup brims with blessing.
6 Your beauty and love chase after me
every day of my life.
I’m back home in the house of God
for the rest of my life.
In days of old, kings were known to be the shepherd of their people. What shepherds do is guide and protect – or at least they’re supposed to. We’ve learned that did not always happen. In Jeremiah, for example, the Lord issues a warning about those leaders who were scattering and destroying sheep by not attending to their needs. In Ezekiel the Shepherd God states: “I myself will search for my flock and seek them out.”(Ezekiel 34:11) The message is one of a God that can be counted on to lead with love and that with confidence in such a God we don’t have to be afraid of anything – even of evil.
At the center of this psalm are the words about God that ties it together – “You are with me.” This is the place where the language shifts from talking about God to talking to God. And that is what prayer is after all. It is a conversation where we both listen for God’s voice within and share with God that which is on our hearts. In this Psalm we are given some words that attempt to describe the God that none of us knows completely but all of us seek to know intimately.
The Psalms are sung prayers in poetic form and were often accompanied on a stringed instrument throughout history, sometimes as part of temple worship. It also took quite a while for all 150 of them to be composed – most likely over the course of about 500 years so they reflect many generations and still all these centuries later they give voice to our praise and lament, just as they did for our ancient ancestors. Let us now listen then to this cherished psalm of great meaning that has been set to music and lifted up by the composer and performer Bobby McFerrin:
When words fail us, the Psalms are there. May we lean into them and know the strength and love of God. Amen.