Theme: Quit calling me Shirley
Psalm
23
A
new responsive reading
One: The psalmist tells a friend in distress
what
he … (or she?) …
is glad for in times of fear or upset.
All: The
Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He
makes me lie down in green pastures;
he
leads me beside still waters;
he
restores my soul.
He
leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
One: While the psalmist’s friend mulls this over,
and lets it sink in,
the psalmist is inspired
to offer a word of thanks straight to God.
All: Even
though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil;
for
you are with me;
your
rod and your staff – they comfort me.
One: And the psalmist goes on;
sometimes when he … (or she?) …
starts talking to God, there seems no
end.
All: You
prepare a table before me
in
the presence of my enemies;
you
anoint my head with oil;
my
cup overflows…
One: Until the psalmist remembers
his … (or her?) … friend, and says: Shirley …
All: Shirley?
One: Yes, Shirley.
All: Shirley,
goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life
and
I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my
whole life long.
It must be nice
to be Shirley. Shirley Edwards, Shirley
Durfey, Shirley Davidson…
As long as you’re
a Shirley, you know at some point that the Bible – or at least, the psalmist,
is speaking to you. And you alone.
Isn’t that how it
seems sometimes to the rest of us? That
the Bible – especially in its words of promise and good news, is really meant
for someone else?
We get to listen
in. And we know all about the bad stuff the
Bible talks about -- – the hard stuff of life – the sorrow and sickness, loss
and grief, struggles and trials that this psalm and the rest of the Bible
assume to be the common stuff of life, the background to everything.
But when it comes
to the happy ending – the last few lines that somehow turn it all to some good conclusion,
we find out maybe it’s not really meant for us – that when it comes to the
concluding, redeeming words of hope, healing, and help we aren’t included in
quite the same way. Those things are meant
for, and come to someone else. To
Shirley. But not to us. Not to me.
Have you ever
felt that way? Do you maybe feel this
way right now in your life? That no matter
how hard we try, we are not and maybe never will be Shirley?
At
this point, a voice from the wings:
Excuse me … you may not be reading that psalm quite right … I think what
you think what one of the words means isn’t really what you think it means …
try having another look at it. Instead
of …
One: Until the psalmist remembers
his … (or her?) … friend, and says: Shirley …
All: Shirley?
One: Yes, Shirley.
All: Shirley,
goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life
and
I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my
whole life long.
One: Until the psalmist remembers
his … (or her?) … friend, and says: Shirley …
All: No. Surely!
One: Ohh… SURELY??! Are you sure, “surely”?
All: Yes,
surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life
and
I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my
whole life long.
Instead of telling
just Shirley that goodness and mercy are always there for her, the psalmist
tells us all that for sure goodness and mercy really are there all the time, for
all of us – and because of it, we can all be sure – if we have eyes to see and
heart to feel, that no matter what happens, we are living in the house of God
and in God’s care all our life long.
There’s one word
– besides “surely,” that the psalmist uses in these last two lines that really
brings the point home. It’s the word
“follow” – the English translation of the Hebrew radaph. Radaph means
“follow” in the sense of chasing, pursuing, overtaking, capturing and
overpowering – the way an enemy would follow you to catch you up and take you
prisoner – the way evil, heartbreak, sickness, bad news and loss can seem to
follow us, dog our steps, wait in ambush for us at every corner, thoroughly
overwhelm us and beat us down.
What the psalmist
is saying is that goodness and mercy come after us in just the same way – that
no matter how dark the night, the light of a new day will come – no matter how
lonely we feel, we are not alone – no matter how hard life is, life is still a
great gift with more good things in it that we can ever number or imagine – no
matter how downward our spiral may be, when we come to hit bottom God is there
waiting for us with a map to a way up and out, a lamp to light our steps on the
way, and provisions to nourish us for the journey.
But I
wonder. When the psalmist says this, and
even now that we know it’s addressed to us as well as Shirley, do the words
really make a difference? Do they change
what we feel? Or what we experience?
Sometimes yes,
for sure. But always? And for everyone?
I read recently “there’s
nothing worse for a depressed person than to be confronted by someone who can’t
find fault in anything and who wants nothing more than to be grateful for being
born into God’s world.” (Daniel Goodwin,
Sons and Fathers, 80-81) And sometimes that’s how a believer’s
affirmations of life’s ultimate goodness and the absolute loving care of God can
come across to someone who just doesn’t feel it, or experience life that way at
that moment.
So how to bridge
the gap? How to help the relentless
pursuit of goodness and mercy come true, and be recognizable for someone who
really is on a downward path into a valley of deep and only darkening shadow?
I want to suggest
something – which may not be literally true to the text, but may be absolutely
true to life and how God’s goodness and mercy are known.
In the verses just before the
last two, where the psalmist says:
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff – they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my
enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows…
we imagine the
psalmist is talking to God – that he has shifted from talking to
Shirley – or all of us, about God, to talking to God
instead and letting us listen in, and then at the end switches back to us, to
tell us what a difference it makes in the trials of life to be able to be sure
of God’s goodness and mercy.
But what if … in
these middle verses the psalmist is still talking to us and is saying that
although the Lord is his shepherd who ultimately guides him to green pastures
and places to rest and be restored, it is through the presence of others – the Shirleys
in his life who
·
have
quietly sat with him in a hospital waiting room,
·
have
been a shoulder to cry on or an arm to lean on,
·
have
listened to his first reaction to things and offered and been brave enough to
ask a few critical and challenging questions about it,
·
have
left a casserole on the front step or shared a meal,
·
have
swabbed his lips or soothed his hot brow or massaged his feet,
·
have
raised funds or given money from their pockets to help him pay for an
operation, a wedding, a child’s trip home, or a fresh start of any kind?
Might it be these
kinds of people in his life that the psalmist is speaking to the most – the
ones through whom he comes to know and really feel the goodness and mercy of God
in life, so that he is able to end with as peaceful an awareness of God’s
lifelong grace as he does?
It that’s the
case, I think there are at least two questions to consider.
One is: in the dark times of life that I feel, when I
feel alone or overwhelmed or depressed, how do I allow other people to be with
me in the darkness, to share the walk with me, to feed me, soothe me, and fill
my cup for me? I am sure they are there;
do I recognize them, and let them in?
And the other
question is: when others around me are
caught in dark times, when they feel alone or overwhelmed or depressed, how do
I allow myself to be with them in the darkness, to share their walk (and not
just my words or God’s words) with them, to set a table for them, provide food for
them, anoint them and soothe them in some way?
Just knowing about God’s goodness and mercy is not the point; the
question is do I let myself put it into practice, to quietly fill someone
else’s cup, that at least right now might seem to them, pretty empty?
If the Lord is my
shepherd, how can I not allow myself to be caught up in the life-long gift and
the day-by-day practice of his goodness and mercy?
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