Thursday, March 8, 2007
Lent Reading Day 14
The Shepherd Psalm
Psalm 23

This just might be the best-known scripture among those that have read, or heard the Bible read. I find it's the passage that is most request at memorial services - either by the family, or by people who tell me that when they die that want that read. Why is it so popular and well loved? I mean who of us has really ever worked as a shepherd? or can really identify with the life, work, and world-view of a shepherd? Granted the city of Oakland moves sheep around the Oakland hills in the Summer months in order to help keep the wild grasses under control in terms of another potential urban fire - but other than that connection....few and far between are the experiences we've had of shepherding.

As I surfed the internet look for some sort of photo to visualize my thoughts about psalm 23 I realized that what grabs us maybe is the image of green pastures, of a God that wants good for and with us; a God who blesses us so that we might bless others in return and start some sort of pay-it-forward, upward-sprial of blessings in our all-too-often parched and burnt-up world. More often than not we tend to hear more about Faith as a battlefield (see the great article in today's SF Chronicle linked here) then about Faith as what me most experience it to be: some sort of life-transforming oasis of strength, hope, grace, rest, and sanctuary, a mission much more of regegenerative and empowering resurrection than a militaristic battlecry to purge the darkness we see all around us. Maybe what's so powerful about this faith poem is the imagery of the valley of the shadow of death? I mean it's just there, well-known, not taken for granted. Oftentimes it has something to do with who we are, or related to consequences of our own actions, worldviews, or broken relationships. We've all been there, traveled through it, can name what it has been for us and our communities. Whereas so often in our more militaristic churches today we blame everyone else for the darkness: our culture, this or that group, rock music, sex in advertising, materialistic consumerism, or the fact that we need to return to the golden years of morality and family values (whenever that was). Maybe the power we experience in these words comes from the pictures it paints in our memories - beginning with the affirmation that the Lord is the one that cares for us, wants good for us, desires to see us grow both individually and corporately as we live together in a community. It then continues asserting that we all WILL walk through the valley of the shadow of death - and that God is with us in a solidarity - not a hallmark-gift-card - way, transforming our fear into something else, in the midst of our darkness and despair.