Pronoun Trouble

Psalm 23

At Bible study this past Thursday morning we were having a discussion about the kingdom of God, and more specifically where and how we experience God’s kingdom in this world.  As we were talking, some of those gathered began telling stories about friends, neighbors, and family members and the way in which they experienced God and God’s kingdom in the world.  They were stories very similar, I’ll bet, to ones that you have heard.  Stories that begin with the words, “I don’t go to church because I can find God… and then they fill in the blank with phrases like: on the golf course, in the garden, on a hike, in the woods, on the boat, or gazing at a beautiful sunset.

Essentially, what they are saying is that they can find God just about anywhere that involves not having to go to church.  But that’s a problem.  It is a problem because this insistence that some folks have on claiming that they can find a full expression of God’s presence outside of community is the same thing that I have found troubling about this morning’s scripture lesson for years.

What in the world, you might think, could I ever find troubling about The 23rd Psalm?  It is by far the most familiar, revered, and beloved scripture in the entire Bible.  “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”  The very mention of those words sends a warm wave of familiarity through the heart and mind as we remember funerals and Sunday School lessons, and sermons from years gone by that focused on the beautifully poetic image of God the Good shepherd taking care of me, the lonely little sheep.  And therein lies the problem.  Like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duckas they argued over whether  it was rabbit season or duck season in the classic Looney Tunes cartoon leading Daffy to scream at Elmer Fudd, “shoot me, shoot me!”,the 23rd Psalm suffers from a case of pronoun trouble.

It reads, “The Lord is MY shepherd, I shall not want; he leads ME beside still waters; he restores MY soul.”  The entire Psalm is loaded from beginning to end with I….I….I….me….me….me….my…my…my.  Forget rabbit season versus duck season, the trouble with this Psalm is that the only sort of pronoun that it contains is an endless list of first person singular personal pronouns like I, me, and my.  Think about it.  No one other than me or Godare even mentioned until the very end of the Psalm.  And even then, it’s my enemies that show up before this banquet table that God has set up to apparently show them how much more he loves me than them.

The 23rdPsalm is a poem that teaches us about the way in which a loving shepherd takes care of his sheep.  And that, of course, is a good thing.  That’s why the Psalm is so beloved.  Who doesn’t like to be reminded about how very much God loves them?  But the problem with this Psalm and its idyllic image of God and his one precious little sheep wandering through life alonetogether is the fact that you don’t have to be a shepherd to know that sheep don’t travel alone.  Sheep are communal creatures that, like birds of a feather tend to flock together.It’s part of God’s design.  And so the idea of us really knowing God outside of the flock is absurd.

The problem with our common interpretation of the 23rd Psalm is the dangerously self-centered way that we have chosen to read and experience this Psalm down through the years.  We hear these words as if it were just me and God walking together through the pastures of life hoof in hand as if we were the only two creatures in all of creation.  One God and his one beloved little sheep on whom he lavishes all of the love, care and concern in the universe.  But the truth is that God created us to be in relationship with one another.  And any attempt to be a lone sheep is dangerous, and any attempt to experience God in isolation from the rest of the flock is doomed to be incomplete. 

Being a lone sheep is dangerous because the truth is that lone sheep end up being eaten by lone wolves.  And trying to experience the fullness of God in isolation from other people is doomed to be incomplete because as our Heavenly Shepherd has created each and every one of us according to his Holy design, there is a little bit of the essence of that creator living on inside of every one of his creatures. 

Life is hard.  I don’t kneed to tell you that.  If fact, quite often the pains and problems of life seem to be more than we can carry.  And sometimes they are, at least as long as we are trying to carry them alone.  In the Psalm, we read,“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.”

And it’s true.  God does provide for our needs and God does restore our souls.  But another important truth is this, more often than not, when God provides for our wants and restores our souls, he does it through the love and kindness of others. I saw this first hand over the past few weeks during my mother’s hospitalization as her face brightened every single time that the mail arrived bringing her another of the dozens of beautiful and thoughtful cards that so many of you sent to make her feel better.  And they did make her feel better, and the nurses remarked that they had never seen so many cards bringing to much joy and healing into any one persons’ room.   God met her need through you.   And again, right here each Sunday morning, the hugs in the narthex, the names listed on the prayer sheet, and your offerings given to our Deacon’s fund all stand as just a few small examples of all the many ways in which God cares for all the members of his flock in and through the important relationships that we establish with others. 

And that is why I say that those who try to experience God in isolation from other people are doomed to an incomplete experience.  Because when the scriptures tell us that we are created in God’ image, it means that we all carry within us some unique expression of who God is.   And so while people who seek God on the golf course might indeed find some expression of Gods’ wonder and glory on the 1st tee on a beautiful Sunday morning, they won’t find all of God’s presence because there is a part of God living inside of you and me that God is waiting to share with that guy or gal on the golf course that he or she will never discover until they come here and get to know us. In order to really get to know God, you have to get to know all of God’s sheep, even the black sheep.

And this reality is one that can sometimes strike a little too close to home even for those among us truly dedicated to discovering God in community.  As I said at the beginning of the sermon, there are only two people mentioned throughout the first two thirds of the Psalm.  Up until the last two verses it’s just me and God in this happy little paradise.  But then in verse 5 we read, “thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies; thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over.”

In our traditional selfish reading of the Psalm these verses read like a sort of God sanctioned nannananna boo boo to all the people that we don’t like.  In our minds’ eye we each see our self sitting down to a banquet table set before us by our loving caring God.  The table is laden from one end to the other with all the food and drink that we most desire.  While standing over there are our enemies.  In our version of the Psalm we sit and feast on the goodness of God while all of the people that have disagreed with us, hurt our feelings, made us angry, or just seem a little strange stand somewhere over there starving to death and wishing that they had a God that loved them as much as he loves us.

And therein lies the real problem with our traditional interpretation of the 23rd Psalm.  Those people, as we like to call them, those people that we have designated as the black sheep of the flock, do indeed have a God that loves them as much as our God loves us.  Their God is in fact the same as our own.  And that God’s love is the same for every one of his beloved sheep.    In fact, when we read the Psalm with Jesus commandment to love our enemies in mind, we might well come to realize that the very fact that our cup overflows suggests that rather than sitting smugly gloating at our enemy, God’s real design might be that we invite them to sit down at the table with us, and share in the abundant blessing that God has set before us.

You see, Daffy Duck isn’t the only one who has pronoun trouble as he shouts to Elmer Fudd“Shoot me, shoot me!!”So do we have trouble with our pronouns when read all of the references to I, me, and my in the 23rd Psalm thinking that they in any way discount God’s love for all of our neighbors.  Perhaps from now on when we read it, we should say, “The Lord is OUR shepherd.  WE shall not want; he makes US lie down in green pastures, he leads US beside still waters, he restores OUR soul.” We, all the people of the earth created by God’s mighty hand are the flock of our heavenly shepherd.  And when we begin to think, and to live in this way, then we will start to really understand the truth of the words, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow US all the days of our lives; and We shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Amen.