Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; In that society very familiar with sheep and their shepherds, these words would surely have had HUGE meaning & impact… Desperately vulnerable to predators like wolves or to thieves, and needing help to find safe pasture to eat as well as to be kept away from dangers such as crags or cliffs. They would have immediately understood how without the guidance/ protection/ nurturing of their shepherds, sheep could literally not survive. Shepherds would in fact have been responsible for their entire existence!

But I wonder why the Psalmist chose to begin by emphasizing this? What were those early worshippers tempted to believe was responsible for their entire existence? What were they being warned against embracing in the place of God?

Perhaps more relevantly, I wonder: where do we place our Hope? To what do we look mostly to govern us, to control and protect us? What is it that gives our life ultimate meaning? THAT’S A GOOD QUESTION! For some, it seems that it may be maintaining their social media presence? Or checking on how their investments are doing? The status of the bank account? Closer to home, for me, I think I’m probably tempted to believe it’s all about my family and how they are all doing: If they’re OK, I’m OK, if not, I’m not… Or how about my latest health report? While of course most of those things – and others besides – really do matter, the Psalmist begins by saying that it is their sense of Sacred Presence – God – ‘The Lord – who alone – is ultimately their shepherd!’

Most of us have at least SOME sense of God in our lives… But God as our most central guiding, controlling, protecting reality? How dare we allow anything else to denigrate that SACRED CENTRALITY to some optional place of merely marginal religiosity? As if all this God-stuff is simply some cute add-on that we may take seriously, or not, kata our whim. Do we do that? Is God and living lives formed by our spirituality essential to us? It was to the Psalmist! The Lord IS MY SHEPHERD! Nothing else! Which is the whole reason for ‘I SHALL NOT WANT!’

And then they go on to describe what they believe God actually does:

God makes me lie down in green pastures. God leads me beside still waters; God restores my soul.

THAT, the Psalmist says, IS THE POINT! Notice how it’s not so much that God creates as restores our souls! It’s for us constantly to be coming back to a renewed sense of who we actually are!…which – as Fr Richard Rohr and others have said – is the whole point of all and any religious faith worth its salt! The Psalmist is saying that there are those times when they believe stuff happens and they are FORCED to stop: …lose a job! …lose a loved one! …face a global pandemic! They are saying that wherever they are may perhaps be just about exactly where they need to be, right there where they are being FORCED to ‘…lie down in green pastures, so that some good may emerge! I wonder of that isn’t Paul’s point in Rom.8:28?

Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit movement, describes a time when, as a fiery Proselytizing Christian Inquisitionist Warrior, he suffered a major war injury and was forced to spend months convalescing in a sick bed. That, it’s understood, was when he produced the most beautiful Ignatian meditations… Sir Isaac Newton: They say that during the Great Plague of London in 1665 Cambridge University was forced to shut down and Isaac Newton was forced to stay home. It is anecdotally believed that it was during that time of enforced isolation that he invented calculus, parts of optic theory and, while sitting in his garden, saw an apple falling which inspired his understanding of gravity!

Could this Covid-19 virus be a time when we are all being forced to lie down? I wonder what global good may be coming of this? I wonder what recalibration of our lives we can allow our God to help us to be making? What re-setting of priorities? Don’t you just love seeing our Federal and Provincial leaders mov