Based on a transcript of John Bell, BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship, Sunday 20 Jun 2021
The Fourth Sunday of Easter, 21 April 2024, Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth
Throughout the centuries Christians have sang what Jesus sang – the psalms, those reflections on the deepest human experience. And so today let us celebrate what is almost certainly the world's favourite psalm.
When it is sung, as it most often is, to a tune from Aberdeenshire called Crimond, The Lord’s My Shepherd is an export from Scotland almost as ubiquitous as whisky.
We might pause to wonder why it is that from the rich variety of the psalms which have for so long been the mainstay of our worship, it is Psalm 23 that is arguably the world's favourite, even in countries where there are no sheep.
It might have something to do with the wide range of images in six short verses. When you listen out for them you can picture this psalm:
You can picture a shepherd and his crook.
You can picture green pastures and still waters.
You can picture a darkened valley.
You can picture a table set for a feast, and a cup that's filled to the brim.
You can picture a house in which you would want to live forever.
Today we consider the pastoral image of shepherd. Of all the professions, this is the one which has little menace. The shepherd represents a strength which is put to good purposes - birthing lambs, mending fences, warding off predators, putting sheep back on their feet who are stuck on their backs. And, as I’ve witnessed this week, letting the lame pet lamb sit by the hearth in the farmhouse living room to keep warm.
Jesus takes this image for himself and extends it. In John's Gospel he tells his friends, ‘I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me, and I lay down my life for the sheep.’
The exceptional thing about Jesus is that he inverts the relationship between shepherd and sheep. The normal pattern is that the sheep lay down their lives for the shepherd – lambs end up being killed for meat. But Jesus speaks of the opposite.
After green pastures and a good Shepherd, there's a very different image:
‘Even were I to walk through a valley of deepest darkness I should fear no harm, for you are with me, your shepherd's staff and crook afford me comfort.’
These words put paid to the notion that people of faith, if they trust in God, will never experience severe human suffering…. Sadly we know that’s untrue.
Go through the Bible and identify those believers who never endured the valleys of persecution, depression, bereavement, illness, and plaster their names on the walls of your churches. It won't take long. You'll be lucky if you find one. Not Abraham, not Rebecca, not David, not Esther, not Jeremiah, not Ruth, not John the Baptist, not Mary Magdalene, not Paul, not Mary, not Jesus.
Faith is not a prophylactic, a contraceptive against the dangers involved in being human. Life involves risk, From the moment of birth, life involves risk. It's the hand we are dealt, and there's no other hand.
So either we curse God and the darkness, or we trust God present to us in and through the darkness.
The monumental pastor and martyr Oscar Romero once said these words: ‘How awful it would be to have lived in comfort, without any suffering, staying out of problems. Not needing anything, having it all.’
Romero does not see the dark valley either as a punishment from a capricious God, or a means of improving moral character, but rather an experience in which we can develop the gifts of perspective, patience and empathy. He invites the privileged to enter into solidarity with those who suffer. Because perhaps only then can we sense the solidarity of Jesus, who did not avoid the darkness.
He is a good shepherd who not only leads us to pleasant places but stays with us in troubled times.
And he is a good shepherd who ‘spreads a table for us.’ He prepares a table for us and offers us the gift of a cup which overflows.
This is a notion which appears all through the Bible of heaven as a place of belonging: a place – according to Isaiah - of fine wine and great food; a place - according to Revelation - where there is a wedding feast; a place - according to Jesus - which has been prepared so that we might be gathered around his table in the company of him and the saints, where there is that kind of unadulterated joy of which we, from time to time, are given a foretaste even as we gather around tables on earth. [Even as we gather around this communion table this morning].
Maybe that is why the Psalm ends with the joyous statement that ' Goodness and love unfailing will follow me.’
Why 'follow me'? Why not 'surround me' or even ' be ahead of me'? It's as if – like a wake behind a boat - goodness and love unfailing are behind, not in front.
How can goodness and mercy follow after a person? The Gospel truth is that those who follow Jesus, who live generously and gratefully, selflessly and sacrificially leave in their wake a harvest of goodness and mercy.
So this morning, helped by the wonderful words of the world’s favourite psalm, let us remember and thank God for all those who have left a legacy of goodness.... those who have shepherded us and blessed and strengthened our lives, the famous ones and the less famous, and those known only to ourselves whose lives have touched us for good and for God.
Note
This talk is edited by John Davies from a transcript of John Bell, BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship: The World's Favourite Psalm, Sunday 20 June 2021.
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