The Twenty-Third Psalm for Today

A sermon based upon Psalm 23

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

4^th Sunday of Easter, April 25, 2010

After the pastor had preached his morning message, one of his listeners came and said, “Pastor, I didn’t understand your sermon, today.”

            The pastor replied, “Good!”   You got my point.

            “What do you mean? I didn’t get it at all,” the man responded with a puzzled look.

            “Well,” said the pastor, “When we are really talking about God we don’t always immediately understand.  Sometimes we have to work at it.”    

GOD DOES NOT HAVE AN “EASY” BUTTON

That preacher has a point, but few think this way.  Our human tendency is to desire instant access to everything God has without much effort, even though finding the truth is not always easy.   Staples might have an “easy button”, but with the cross at the center of our faith, there are no easy buttons.

In our day people like their “truth” in easy-to-consume, bite size, and manageable packages.   We want our gospel, like so many want their food; fast, quick, and in an instant.  The problem is that a “Happy Meal” style, flash-in-the –pan faith brings little lasting, healthy nourishment to our souls.   The gospel of God which can meet our deepest human need will also challenge us with what God’s wants and requires from us?  As the prophet Micah once asked and answered: “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God?  (Micah 6.8).  

I bring this up today, because the most wonderful Psalm we all know puts this issue before us in black and white: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want?”   It does not say, “When the Lord is my Shepherd I get what I want…. but It says, when the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want? (KJV, NRS).  Other translations help us understand what is being said here by translating: “I shall not be in want” (NIV)  or  “I shall have all that I need” (NLT)  or “I lack nothing (TNIV).   The Spanish is even clearer: “El Senor es mi pastor, nada me falta.”   But while these translations are clearer in actual meaning, can’t we also see the spiritual growth of discovering we sometimes we find what we really need in life by losing some of our wants?

THE SAVING SHEPHERD DOESN’T ALWAYS GIVE US OUR “WANTS”

Just this past week, more news came out about the young 15 year old female student who had just moved from Ireland to Massachusetts and on January 14 of this year, tragically committed suicide because she was “relentlessly” bullied by certain ‘mean girls’ in her school.   The “mean girls” were a real problem and 9 have been charged with helping cause her suicide, but now news is surfacing that these bullies were not the whole problem.  Most people get bullied at sometime or other in life and have some enemies, but this does not always lead to suicide nor to the kind the violence we are seeing today among teens and “tweens”. 

What came out is that this Irish girl was already reading books about “cutting” and “mutilating” her own body.  The Psychologist rightly says that people who cut and mark their bodies reflect a deep unmet need deep in the soul.  Phoebe Prince must have had had a lot of emotional pain in her life, due to her parent’s divorce, leaving her father in Ireland, and having to move to a new country but this need not lead to suicide.  There are also other allegations for the cause of the bullying, like boyfriend stealing. 

But another part of her tragic “soul confusion”, which you’ll probably never read about, deals with the most basic issue in all our lives.  Because Phoebe did not get what she really needed in life, (stability and unconditional love), her pain ended up getting stuck and even magnified in what she wanted and thought she had to have (some very inappropriate behavior which caused her to be greatly disliked).  Instead of solving life’s problems by uncovering her greatest needs and dealing with them, she demoted or lowered need to the level of her lower desires and wants.  You might call this living a life by the “lowest common denominator”.  The result of such a life, lowered merely to desires and wants was tragic for Phoebe, but it is happening more these days and not just with teens.  Many people, especially those who inwardly and often  unconsciously feel short-changed in life, end up lowering the standard of their lives by trying to meet their needs through developing more and more wants.  More often than not, a life lived for demanding what we want, most always ends in outlandish, inappropriate, unfulfilling behavior which takes more out of your soul than it ever gives.   

Many people these days seem to be confusing what they want out of life, others, with what they really need.  This young girl’s not so quiet “desperation” may reflect one of the greatest desperations of our age:  People who have become so demanding for what they want and are demanding from others, that society as a whole is getting less and less of what we all really need in life and from God. 

Another case in point on a much lighter, but just as serious is what happened recently with  Basketball at a local ACC team and the firing of a decent head coach.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to get political or even become critical of the people at this school, because I really don’t know all the details.  I’m just a outsider observer like you, but what I see happening in Sports and Athletics over all, symptomatic of a greater problem in our culture.  When a coach, a player, a team, a program does not give a school exactly what it wants when and how it wants it, then it has become so easy for that school, president, the fans, or whoever it is, to make drastic, demeaning and demanding changes so everyone keeps thinking they are, at sometime or other, going to get what they want.   Gone are the days when sports were not about building character and about “how you play the game”, but it has become the constant demand of “whether you win or lose”, or in one schools’ case, it’s not just “whether you win or lose” (they were a winning team), but it was a case of “when” they won and lost (they were not winning when it counted most.  Aren’t the demands of our “wants” getting so high these days that the result is not just losing a “game” or having a “winning season”, but our demands are so high society is getting less and less of what we really need? 

The same kind of thing is happening in politics today where you can’t have a discussion that catches anybody’s attention or gains any ratings, unless you force the issue of one side being totally right and the absolute good guy, while the other side must be totally wrong and the absolute devil.  (Ironic in this world, where there are said to be no absolutes, that people are becoming more and more absolute about what they have to have).   The same kind of demand for getting what we want has not only taken over the world of politics, but also it has gone where the money is.  The high demand for people, even rich people to have more of what they want ( but don’t really need), which is based on wants and greed, not need or necessity and maybe not even real desire (who needs that much money), now means that rest of the people in this nation and in this world, are going to have less and less of what they need, even need to thrive or survive. No nation on earth, except America, has more people who have everything, but also has the most people who have nothing.  We are both morally and economically schizophrenic and most of it is because of excessive dreams and wants. 

Worst of all, we can see “demanding” spirit of want even filtering down to churches in both pulpit and pew.   If church members don’t get what they want out of each other, out of the pastor, or out of the church, there is little room for talk, discussion or negotiation.  When people don’t see or get what they want they either walk off without sharing their needs or they start a fight over things that are only for themselves and not for others.   Sometimes it even works the same way when a pastor doesn’t get what he wants out of a church.  In this day of excessive wants, there is less and less room for openness, talk, discussion, or negotiation and there are more and more excessive demands being made of each other and our real human needs met less and less and more and more, they are overlooked. 

In this kind of social and spiritual climate, any of us, can end up demanding so much of what we want and think we have to have, that we end of sacrificing the very things we really need the most from each other; like sharing, teamwork, caring, openness, and being made stronger and more loving by working through the challenges and the problems together.   By demanding so much, we end up with less, and often with very little that nourishes our souls.  In the demanding what we want, and we settling for less of what we really need we can even lose more of ourselves in the process.

What I’m trying to say here, is something I think Psalmist also says to us, right up front, in the very first line, but it has repercussions throughout the whole of Psalm 23.  When the Lord is present in your life and guiding you, and when you live with and in the fullness of his continual presence, it is not just amazing, but it is also saving, redemptive and what we might call “priceless,” (as the Master Card commercial says) to realize what you do don’t have to have and don’t have to want in order to have a life that is abundant and full.  When you learn “I shall not want”, you become the kind of person who can live fully, whether you live in a day of “plenty or scarcity”.   As the apostle Paul once said, “I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty, but I have found the secret in any and every situation….the secret of being content.” Phil. 4:12).  It is the “presence” of the good Shepherd, the Christ that makes all the difference, as Paul wholeheartedly agrees, when in the very next verse he exclaims what only a person without many wants or needs can say: “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4.13).

THE SHEPHERD GIVES US WHAT WE NEED MOST

Perhaps the greatest gift from God is that when we have God’s presence, we discover how little, how basic, how simple, our greatest needs are in life, and also how much we can have, even when don’t have everything we want.

In this world that seems so “hell bent” and misguided in demanding and getting exactly what it wants, even thinking that they should also giving everyone else (even our children) what “they” want (because we don’t really give them what they need), can we still discover what we really need, which can only come from God?  

Let me conclude by putting this question of “want” and “need” in a much more positive light.  

At the conclusion of this abiding promise of a Shepherd leading his sheep to greener pastures, to stiller waters and to having their souls restored---is a very surprising and powerful image.  Just as we are promised that the Shepherd will guide us through “the valley of the dark shadows”, what is most surprising is that the great Shepherd prepares a his most abundant, most satisfying and nourishing “table” definitely in a place none of us would want it.   God’s table is set, not only in the presence of the Shepherd alone, nor is it set in presence of our all our “friends” as might have hope and wanted, but God’s most abundant table is set, right, as the King James phrases it, right “in the presence of mine enemies?”  Who would have ever thought that God would give us what we need in the middle of what we never want? 

Why does the Shepherd set the table where all our enemies are still waiting, watching and perhaps still “gunning” for us?  Though he might seem like a “sadistic” savior, I’d rather say, our Savior is “realistic”.  The only real place we ever find what we really need is in this same world that never can give us everything we want.  

Honestly, let me confess that this image of sitting down to eat with “mine enemies” still lookin on, especially some of them I’ve had kind in life, kind of makes me sick to my stomach.  This is certainly not something I would want.   I would rather sit down at the table, in the presence of my friends, or with angels, or with at least with a cherubim or something, even if they are as ugly as homemade sin.  But God sit his sheep down “in the presence of their enemies”   The Psalmist could only imagine the table of God’s abundance in the way it really works, we only know and enjoy the “bread of life” when we are in the worse kinds of situations imaginable.     

Listen to something a US navy chaplain, Cary Cash, wrote about his duty serving Marines in Iraq. 

He writes, 

A table in the presence means even when surrounded by danger, when facing

overwhelming odds, when confronted by enemies bent on our destruction…God is with

us - providing for our every need, protecting us from evil, and empowering us to be faithful.

You see the table that David spoke about, the table that David longed for in the presence

of his enemies, was the table of God’s presence in the presence of his enemies (just as it is still the table of God’s presence even as we face our enemies right now)

…. Sometimes our companies were so on the move, (the chaplain writes) that all I had time to do was offer a brief prayer before they went off to the fight. But those were some of the most powerful moments where we experienced the presence of God. I would find an AAV full of Marines, engine running, and I’d come up to the back of the hatch and pound on it.   “Who is it?” A muffled voice would cry out. “It’s the Chaplain!” The hatch would

swing open like an ancient vault, and there, 25 Marines would be huddled together ready

to go. “Hey guys how about a prayer?” In an instant, 25 men, would grasp each other’s

arms and shoulders and bow for prayer. Never did a man refuse to pray in those

moments we shared together.

And I would touch them - lay my hands upon them. They all wanted me too,

needed me to. We all needed it, because you just didn’t know what the next hours would

bring. I’ve been told that war brings clarity to a man’s life. That’s exactly what we

experienced in those moments together - crystal clarity. Men in need seeking a God who

provides! (And what God always provides, is what we need most --- his presence.  http://www.ifca.org/home/140001498/140001502/pdf/A_Table_in_the_Presence.pdf  . 

It is right here, “in the presence of mine enemies,” that we also find the cross.   At the cross, in presence of God’s own great enemies, God himself feeds his own great need for love, by loving us, his enemies and by making his enemies his friends through the reconciling blood of the cross.  Are we ready to also come to the foot of the cross and find less of what we want, and more of what we need?   Can we follow the Shepherd in a world that can be so spiritually and emotionally empty, even with so much of what we want, but so little of what we really need? 

Only the Shepherd can lead us to what we really need.   It is only at this “table” that “goodness” and  “mercy” can follow us everywhere and anywhere we go in life,  because when our hearts already reside “in the house of the Lord, forever”, whether we get what we want or not, because we have him, we already have everything we need.  Amen.    

© 2010 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.