DOWN IN THE VALLEYRev. Karen Pidcock-LesterFirst Presbyterian Church, Pottstown, Pa.May 15, 2011

Psalm 23John 10:11-18

Introduction to Scripture Reading of Psalm 23As we prepare to hear this familiar psalm, may I ask you, what is your experience of Psalm 23? What are your associations with it?

Perhaps the psalm takes you back to a grandfather’s house, where the words were hanging on the wall, the only scripture you ever heard him mention.

Perhaps you recall the elderly person who could not remember her own name, but she remembered the words of this psalm.

Perhaps the psalm has given you comfort, or strength, or hope, as it gave the woman who put it bluntly, “This psalm saved my life…when my husband left me.”

Perhaps you think of funerals. It is often read at funerals

The words of Psalm 23 are perhaps the most familiar words in all of scripture, set to music by Mozart and Kanye West, recited in movies and t.v. shows like “Lost…

Isn’t it interesting that this psalm should mean so much to so many, when most of us have never even seen a shepherd?

Though we probably have heard it read most often at funerals, it is not a psalm about dying. It is a psalm about living. Real life. It does not necessarily convey a rosy picture of life: one woman in the Bible study this week commented that as a child, this psalm scared her . After all, it does talk of shadows and enemies and evil. Things that real people face in real life.

Every person in this sanctuary, every human being on this planet faces trouble, finds themselves in dark valleys in their life. The author of this psalm did too. Remember who wrote it.

King David was a man well-acquainted with grief and trouble. Perhaps he wrote it as a boy, in his shepherding days. But more likely, he wrote it when he was a man and king. As a man, David was acquainted with personal grief. He lost a child in infancy, and another son in battle. As a king, the mantle of leadership lay heavily upon David’s shoulders. It kept him awake at night…it made him weary…he had powerful enemies…he didn’t always know what to do, which way to go, which choice to make.

The king of Israel was called the shepherd of his people. He was responsible for their well-being and protection. We have seen the toll that this mantle of leadership takes on our own leaders. Presidents, and kings and queens, go gray quickly as they try to shepherd their people.

Such was the man who wrote the words to this psalm. The words of the NRSV translation are a little different than the ones you might have memorized as a child. That is ok. For our purposes today, different words may help us to hear this psalm anew. Read Psalm 23. Pray.

“The Lord is my shepherd. “ The shepherd needs a shepherd himself. The psalmist assumes that the path through life leads through dark valleys.The valley of the shadow of death, inevitably…and other valleys, dark, shadowed…you can name them. Loss of a loved one, loneliness, trouble in a marriage. Illness. National turmoil. Financial insecurity. Discord and disagreement, when you don’t know how you’ll hold everyone and everything together.

Sometimes we end up in the valley because we, like sheep, have gone astray. We take wrong turns, we wander off, make poor judgment calls. We ignore the shepherd and we end up on the wrong path in brambles, or a ditch. And we want to talk to God but we are afraid because we haven’t spoken in so long…

And sometimes, the truth is, we have tried to follow the shepherd, we have tried to hear his voice and obey it, we have prayed, we have tried to stick with the flock and stay on the right path. Even when we are doing our best to follow the shepherd, the path upon which he leads us takes us into a valley of shadows. Apparently, the right path, the shepherd’s path, doesn’t always avoid the valley with its dangers, confusion, discord and pain. Being in a valley does not necessarily mean you are on the wrong path. Sometimes the path to a better place runs through a valley of shadows.

What then?Of the many things the Good Shepherd tells us, let us hear three things today.

First, in the valley, even the darkest valley, you and I need not be afraid. No matter how you got into the valley, you are not alone.

That doesn’t just mean that you have friends who stand by you. Though they are a blessing, we will need more than friendship to get us through. Friends can keep us company, encourage and support us. But to get through the valley of death, or discord, or deprivation, we need more than friends: we need someone to protect us from evils, of both body and spirit – our own doubt, or pride, our anger, others’ anger. We need someone to correct us if we have lost our way, to prod us to keep moving through—someone to use the corrective rod on us if need be, to use the protective rod on our enemies, someone to harness us with a crook and yank us out of the ditch in which we wallow or drag us in the right direction…

How comforting is a rod and a staff to someone who is ‘in over their head!’ In the darkest valleys, we need more than friends, we need a shepherd who will go after the lost ones – a good shepherd, heaven knows there are plenty of bad shepherds around. Jesus says, “No matter how you got into the valley, I am the good shepherd. You’ve got me.”

The second thing we can count on when we find ourselves in a valley of shadows: the shepherd is on our side, working for our good.

A shepherd works hard. Shepherds sweat, they pant and grunt and groan in their labor. The image of a shepherd lazing on a rock playing the flute is misleading. If a shepherd is good, he or she clears and plants the pasture to make it green for grazing, pulls poisonous weeds, clears rocks that might trip up the sheep, builds sheepfolds to protect them, dams up running water to make still pools – sheep cannot drink from flowing streams. The shepherd does this in not only one pasture, but in several, so the flock can rotate among fields. In summer, the shepherd leads the flock to higher ground, to a ‘table,’ a mesa, where it is cool so the sheep are comfortable …

The shepherd fends off wolves and snakes and predators with the rod tends to wounds, covers the sheep’s head with a mixture of oil and ointment to keep flies and pests at bay – if the shepherd does not do this, the flies make the sheep frantic, and they can hurt themselves…the shepherd separates sheep which are fighting and keeps them at peace.All this must the shepherd do to provide for his sheep, and keep them healthy, strong and safe. The good shepherd does this every day. A good shepherd works very hard.

When we are in a dark valley, Jesus does this for us. Every day. The good shepherd works hard on our behalf.

Do you ever think of God’s working hard? Not that God sweats and groans, but Romans says that God works in all things for our good. Hard work.

“The purpose of God for the world,” writes theologian John Macquarrie, “is not realized by some effortless decree issuing from the heavenly places, but demands ‘God’s presence and God’s very Self’ in the midst of the world. If that purpose seems to move along slowly, it is not because God is slack about God’s business, but because God too has to strive and suffer and pay the price in blood – blood ‘drawn from Emmanuel’s veins.’” (Living Pulpit, “Life,” p. 9)

“The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.”

Christ, the Good Shepherd, works on our behalf to overcome detours, delays, setbacks, enemies, that come up along the path of human life. The Good Shepherd, the sovereign God “uses bad things as raw material for fashioning good. The symbol of our faith after all is a cross,” a symbol of one of the darkest valleys a human being can traverse – the terror of an unjust execution by evil women and men.

But even in that valley, God was working, sweating blood, to bring the whole world through the valleys of sin, and evil, and death. In whatever valley you find yourself, the Good Shepherd is working to ‘harness your hardship for your redemptive good.” (Paul Tounier, quoted in Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God, p. 281)

In 1984, spinal cord cancer struck Reynolds Price, one of the South’s leading writers. Ten years later, he wrote a memoir of his illness which left him paralyzed.

So disaster then, yes, for me for a while – great chunks of four years. Catastrophe surely, a literally upended life with all parts strewn and some of the most urgent parts lost for good, within and without. But if I were called on to value honestly my present life beside my past – the years 1933 till ’84 against the years after – I’d have to say that despite an enjoyable fifty-year start, these recent years since full catastrophe have gone still better. They’ve brought more in and sent more out – more love and care, more knowledge and patience, more work in less time.

“Price credits the ‘now appalling, now astonishing grace of God.’ A relationship with God does not promise supernatural deliverance from hardship, but rather a supernatural use of it.” (Yancey, Reaching p. 282-3)

Of course, Reynolds Price had to do his own work, spiritual work, to come to this. It does not just happen. If you are suffering now in some valley of shadow, join the shepherd in his work. Stay close and follow him, for he is even now working to harness your hardship for redemptive good, and bring you through the valley to a richer life.

The third thing we can count on when our path leads through a valley of shadows: goodness and mercy are near at hand. Goodness and mercy are following us, pursuing us, the word literally means…God’s blessing and care did not leave us when we left the old pastures and entered the valley. Though your valley may be long, longer than you think you can endure, you do not have to wait until the end of it to experience the goodness and mercy of God. The psalmist says they shall follow you all the days of your life, even the days spent in dark places.

I have this funny pair of glasses – have you ever seen these? They are called ‘spy glasses,’ they help you see behind you. Which is to say, they help you to see all around, see from a different angle.

The psalmist has such vision. The ability to see goodness and mercy all around him, following him. What a gift is such vision! You and I have known people with this ability – men and women who, even amidst trouble and woe, perceive the goodness and mercy of the Lord close at hand.

Some years ago, someone shared with me an entry in her journal. Here’s the gist of it:

Lousy. that’s what it had been…a lousy summer. What was to have been a summer of vacations and get-aways to the shore, calm at work, lazy adventures with my son and evenings with my husband—had turned into a summer of canceled vacations, hospitals, bed rest, storms at work, a cranky child and no patio time.

I was miserable…feeling just plain tied down.

I had been feeling ill for several months when tests results finally indicated that [I needed surgery]…the vacations were canceled…I was tied down.

My business was flourishing…and then several top employees left so the summer work pace turned into long days and even longer nights. I was tied down.

“Yup – they’ve gotta come out!” The pediatrician was peering into my son’s throat…the tonsils had to come out. “Two weeks…he’ll be miserable for two weeks. Plan to stay at home.” I was tied down.

“What can I get you?’ my husband asked. “The heck outta here,” I thought.

I went out to the patio. The sun had just started to go down and the fire flies were dancing. It was lovely. I gazed at my flowers and breathed in the scent of my late summer garden. [It was out of control.]

I began to trim the vines…I hacked away on the overgrowth…I brought a kitchen chair and began to tether down the new growth at the top against the arbor for support…I gently tugged the vines into place and wired them to the arbor…they looked beautiful and I knew that given the extra support and protection they would weather the winter and bloom again in profusion next spring.

I was sweaty and dirty but I felt terrific! …I contemplated how I had tethered the vine. I had tethered it down – gently and lovingly – to protect it, guide its growth and give it rest from its struggle to grow on its own. “Tethered,” I thought. Much different than tied down.

Suddenly the Holy Spirit filled me with joy. The image of a lousy summer where I felt tied down changed to a fast forward review of my summer. I felt blessed as memories came …

…my husband nurturing and pampering me after surgery. …books and more books!…camaderie at work with remaining employees…I had indeed adventured with my son. To the hospital where he had stroked my hair as I lay in a “Mommy” cot cramped against his hospital bed…my husband smiling, my son smiling, and now even I am smiling, feeling joy for a summer where I was not tied down – but tethered.

She concluded, Thank you Holy Spirit for the grace of protection and rest, for the joy of a renewed spirit.

Goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life, whether we notice or not. And they shall pursue us right to the end, when, as C.S. Lewis imagined, we get to heaven, and we will all say to God, “So, it was you all along! Everyone I ever loved, it was you. Everything decent or fine that ever happened to me, everything that made me reach out and try to be better, it was you, you all along.” (quoted in Long, Testimony, p. 126)

Christ, the good shepherd, all along. All the days of our life.

Thanks be to God.