Fear no Evil
Fear No Evil (Psalm 22:1, 12-18; Psalm 23; optional also John 10:1-18)
It's "good shepherd Sunday." For churches which follow the common lectionary cycle -- which, for the most part, we do -- this means that the four bible passages chosen for the week focus on the image of Jesus the good shepherd, and we who with the Lord's help claim him and try to follow him as his sheep.
Four passages to choose from, mind you -- if I choose to restrict myself to lectionary, still four distinct passages -- and so I feel a bit audacious in having chosen to preach on the most familiar psalm in the Bible, perhaps the best known Bible passage there is, right up there with John 3:16. I'll bet most of you can recite the King James version by heart. The twenty-third psalm is so well-known and so powerful and has been so deeply meaningful to millions of people over thousands of years that even the experts shy away from it -- a glance through the index of one my source books by highly respected Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman referenced some of the most obscure Bible passages you've never read, but skipped this psalm entirely -- jumped right from 22 to 24.
So I feel bold preaching on the 23rd psalm. I feel even more audacious preaching about a psalm which begins the Lord is my shepherd, because, frankly, I know almost nothing about sheep!
[I had a run-in with one once while horseback riding... [...]
Otherwise, my personal experience with sheep is pretty much non-existent.]
I've heard some sermons about sheep, and I've sung some very pretty hymns which mention sheep, but I was born and raised in Attleboro, and I've lived in Charlottesville, Virginia and suburban Maryland and even briefly in suburban France, and there is nothing in my forty-years span of existence which has ever made me emotionally or mentally or even spiritually feel connected to sheep.
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his names sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me....
I may not know much about sheep, but praise the Lord I know something about green pastures and still waters and God's all-encompassing loving kindness; but I also know something about evil; and I know something of fear..
The psalmist doesn't deny the existence of evil. Frederick Buechner -- one of my favourite Christian writers -- and one of the few who does broach the 23rd psalm -- writes
- The psalm does not pretend that evil and death do not exist. Terrible things happen, and they happen to good people as well as to bad people. Even the paths of righteousness lead through the valley of the shadow. Death lies ahead for all of us, saints and sinners alike, and for all the ones we love. The psalmist doesn't try to explain evil. He doesn't try to minimize evil. For all the power that evil has, it doesn't have the power to make him afraid.
The psalmist recognizes the presence of evil; he just refuses to let it lead him.
The psalmist also recognizes the presence of enemies.
But wait, enemies?
Important people have enemies. Heads of state have enemies; great leaders have enemies. Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King had enemies, and Jesus most certainly did. In psalm 22, which Jesus quoted on the cross -- Eloi eloi -- My God, my God, why have you forsaken me -- the psalmist paints them for us: dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me. It's the folks who threaten to change the world on a large scale who have enemies stalking and plotting and encircling them like hungry wolves-- and so they shot Saint Martin and they shot Gandhi and they hung our own Lord on a cross in the vain hope that they could snuff out the light and the love and the spirit that radiated from them and through them.
For our great leaders enemies are devestatingly real, but even on my worst days I've never imagined a company of evildoers encircling me, or really much of anyone expending very much energy trying to harm me. I imagine like most of us on any given day I come into contact with some people who are thoughtful and some who are mean and a vast majority who are so caught up in their own lives that they barely spare me a thought.
I'm about as connected to the idea of enemies in my own life as I am to the idea of sheep: larger-than-life people have enemies; I have a life that I negotiate on a seemingly smaller sort of day-to-day scale. Like everyone else I'm blessed with moments of deep joy -- sunshine on a spring morning, a hymn of praise, the promise of life in the eyes of a happy child, a deep breath of ocean carried on the Cape Cod air. If you breathe deeply and reach out, you might be able to connect with your own version of green pastures and still waters, those places and moments in which you have known yourself fed by God, and nurtured, and loved.
But think of your finances, or you taxes coming due, or your trouble at work; think of the people you love who might be sick in ways you can't help; think of the dreams you had for what your life would look like at this moment and look at the actuality of it and listen again to the psalm: My heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast.... Many Bulls encircle me, strong bulls of Bahsan surround me; they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion. I pray that you *don't* know the feeling the psalmist is describing, but the reality of it is that for thousands of years generations of people have found their breath cut up short and their hearts melted in their breasts and have sensed their own personal enemies -- anxiety or depression or sickness or doubt -- weighing on them and pressing in on them and surrounding them with hungry wide-open mouths. And I think we are better off naming our enemies and acknowledging them then we are ignoring them, because only in recognizing them can we give them up to God -- to God who in Jesus knows exactly what it means to be surrounded by enemies ravening and roaring and hungry.
And not in denial of our enemies' existence but in the presence of [our] enemies... with anxiety or fear or doubt or sickness sitting there looking on, God feeds us and annoints us and actively pursues us with loving-kindness our whole life long.
Despite a world in which evil seems at home; in the middle and in the muddle of a world rife with shadows which impinge and encircle and seem to threaten us, God holds out to us a promise.
............
The psalm is framed by God's name. The Lord is my shepherd, it begins; I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever is how it closes. [The Hebrew really uses God's name: JeHoVaH is my shepherd; I shall dwell in the house of JeHoVaH.)
As the psalm is encased in God, so are we are surrounded by God, not only in joy,
but also -- and maybe especially -- in the midst of our enemies, when we feel surrounded and attacked or anxious and burdened.
We put so many obstacles in the way of hearing God's voice and following where He leads -- the anxiety and doubt I've spoken of, but also perhaps our own need for control, or our own desires for what society tells us we need to survive. And the way to health, the way to relationship with God, is not to suppress these things or deny them or pretend that they aren't real, but rather to name them and see them for what they are and where they come from. Because without an honest perception of who we are and how we act and why we act that way we can't begin to address the disjunction between who we are and who God calls us to be.
[This week I came very close to making a decision, one that people would have congratulated me on, but I almost made this decision in fear -- because I need an ordainable position, because I need money, because I am terrified. But God calls us in love, not in fear: the voice of fear is not God's voice. Only because I could name my fear for what it was could I even begin to hear God's call.]
This week I challenge you to listen to your own motivations
and name your own enemies
and rob them of their power over you
and give them over to God
so that you might hear His voice clearly and follow Him surely to the glory of His name.
amen.