Ps 23 — Andy James

Singing About the Shepherd

April 17, 2016 By Andy James

a sermon on Psalm 23
preached on April 17, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There’s something unusual and special about Psalm 23. These incredible words that we just sang manage to touch our lives in ways that we just can’t imagine—especially for the city dwellers among us who have never even once seen a sheep or a shepherd!

There are so many wonderful settings of this psalm, both spoken and sung. My friend Michael Morgan, a collector of translations of the Bible and especially of psalters, or translations and paraphrases of the psalms, shared with me a lecture he offered recently on Psalm 23 to the good people of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, the congregation where former President Jimmy Carter worships and teaches Sunday school. In his lecture, Michael offered dozens of translations of this beloved psalm, wandering through centuries of English poetry and prose to describe in words ancient and new the wonder of our shepherding God. For centuries, great poets would offer their own translations and paraphrases of this psalm, mining these incredible lines for deeper meaning. Among all the translations and paraphrases shared by Michael in his lecture, including one that can be sung to the tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” I had a difficult time deciding which ones to share with you, but I did decide on three that seemed appropriate for this day when we consider these beloved words anew.

First comes one that Michael describes as “the worst”—and I would agree—from The Politically Correct Jargon Version:

It is an ongoing deductible fact
that your inter-relational empathetical and non-vengeance capabilities
will retain me as their target focus
for the duration of my non-death period,
and I will possess tenant rights in the housing unit of the Lord
on a permanently open-ended time basis.

I can only offer one word: yikes.

Then there is a lovely paraphrase by contemporary poet Marjorie Gray:

Divine Guardian, You care for us;
You provide all we need, and more,
taking us to serene, green places
where we are refreshed to the core.

You show us Right Ways,
trails Your Ranger blazed.
Not even death’s gloom traumatizes us
on the path to Your Lighthouse.

We are safe and strong:
with so-called enemies
You invite us to feast, carefree,
blessed with effervescent health.

Your passionate compassion
always invigorates us;
we’ll be Down Home forever
with You, Joyful Peacemaker.

Finally, there is a lovely paraphrase by 17th century poet Samuel Woodford that begins:

The mighty God, who all things does sustain,
That God, who nothing made in vain,
Who nothing that He made did e’er disdain;
The mighty God my Shepherd is,
He is my Shepherd, I His sheep,
Both He is mine and I am His;
About His flock, He constant watch does keep;
When God provides, poor man can nothing need,
And He, who hears young ravens cry,
His sheep will feed.

Yet all these wonderful poetic settings so easily miss that these words of Psalm 23, like all the psalms, were meant to be sung. We don’t know exactly how the ancient Hebrew people sang the psalms. Modern musical notation has only developed in the last six hundred years, and so the original tunes are long lost.

Modern-day composers and churches have taken several different approaches to singing the psalms. First there is the metrical paraphrase, much like our last hymn. These have a regular meter that can easily fit words to tunes that might even be familiar from other hymns. In many quarters of the church after the Reformation, including in our own parent churches of Scotland and Switzerland, the only music that was allowed was sung settings of the psalms like these—never accompanied, always as simple as possible—and some churches even keep up this practice today. As an example of these sorts of psalms, let’s sing the first verse of my friend Michael Morgan’s own paraphrase of Psalm 23 as found in your bulletin.

As faithful shepherds tend their flocks,
So God will care for me;
And from God’s store of grace my needs
Are met abundantly.
In pastures green, by waters still,
My soul new life does take;
And in the paths of righteousness
I follow, for God’s sake.

Other sung settings of the psalms use a refrain and then a chanted tone, like setting two in your bulletin. This particular setting uses a portion of a hymn tune as the refrain, but the chanted part that follows is a little different, as it has no written rhythm but rather follows the natural rhythm of the words.

(No recording of this setting seems to be available online.)

Building on these sorts of responsive, chanted psalms, some contemporary composers have offered their own settings of the psalms, with simple, repeated refrains and fully composed music for the verses. This style came into its own after Vatican II in the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s, as traditional Latin liturgical music became less important and the church sought out new ways to sing the traditional portions of the service. One of my favorites actually has made it into our hymnal at #473. Let’s turn there and sing it together.

There are hundreds more sung settings of Psalm 23, reflecting not just the deep love of this psalm in the lives of people of faith but also the incredible possibilities of interpretation found in these words. As my friend Michael Morgan put it so well,

In this broad variety of words, translators have expressed the endless season we will enjoy in God’s presence, as sheep with a faithful Shepherd, or as Isaac Watts identifies each of us, ‘No more a stranger or a guest, But like a child at home.’

As a final view of these incredible words in song, I invite you to join me in singing an incredible and relatively new setting of Psalm 23 by Presbyterian composer Hal Hopson, setting words from the 1650 Scottish Psalter to a soaring responsive tune.

(No recording of this setting seems to be available online.)

So may God inspire us all our days by the knowledge of our mighty and loving shepherd who surrounds us with faithfulness, love, and hope as all things are made new in Jesus Christ our risen Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Our Divine Companion

May 11, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Psalm 23
preached on May 11, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

The other night at Bible study, as we were looking at the story of Paul’s dramatic encounter with Jesus in a blaze of light on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus, someone asked a really important question that I suspect has crossed many more minds before: Why doesn’t Jesus appear to us like that anymore? Why is the Bible filled with stories of God appearing so directly to people, yet so few of us experience such a gift for ourselves? It’s a really wonderful question, yet we couldn’t find a particularly satisfying answer. In this day and age, we’re left with these biblical stories of encounters with God, stories of people from the past who have felt the fullness of God’s presence, yet we ourselves so often struggle to feel it. The Bible promises us that God will be with us, no more clearly than in today’s reading of Psalm 23, yet we still reasonably wonder how God will do it, how God will be our divine companion in these days without us knowing God’s direct and real presence.

These words of Psalm 23 are quite likely the most familiar words of scripture in our world, reaching across the boundaries of time and place to strengthen the lives of people of faith everywhere. These beautiful and comforting words come upon our minds and hearts and lips in times of uncertainty, confusion, pain, hurt, and sorrow as a strange and wonderful embodiment of God’s presence in our world where God’s distance often seems so strong. While we question how God doesn’t show up in the same way anymore, these words of scripture in Psalm 23 give us a sense of the possibilities of God’s presence in our midst.

But I’m honestly a bit surprised at how meaningful these words remain for us in these days. We are city folk, not just in New York City but all around the world. In 2010, the percentage of the world’s population living in urban areas surpassed 50% for the first time, although in the United States, we’ve been over 50% urban for nearly 100 years and now over 80% of us live in urban areas. Even so, the predominant image of God’s presence for so many of us is this one so deeply rooted in the rural, agricultural image of the shepherd. On top of that, when you get down to it, shepherds are not all that personally present with the sheep. They certainly know their flocks well, but there are only a few shepherds for the entire flock of sheep, so there are most certainly moments when any particular sheep is very distant and disconnected from the shepherd. So if you start to think about it more carefully, there may be less comfort in these words than we would care to think.

It is quite likely, then, that what makes us feel connected to these beautiful and wonderful words is less the actual image of the shepherd and more then the description of what the shepherd does. The divine one described here as a shepherd is an amazing companion, beyond the best imaginable spouse or friend, even more than the best cat or dog. This companion on the journey first provides all that we need, wherever the journey may lead. If that weren’t already enough, like those gifted mothers and mother-figures we celebrate today, this divine companion leads us out of our confusion and into those beautiful and simple places where life makes sense again, into green pastures, still waters, and right paths where we can pause to know the fullness of God’s comfort.

This doesn’t mean that we completely avoid pain and hurt and sorrow, though. There is no promise to avoid suffering here, but the psalmist is secure nonetheless. When we “walk through the darkest valley,” there is nothing to fear. Our divine companion is there with us, guiding us and directing us, keeping all that would hurt us or harm us at bay. In fact, when we least expect it, in the presence of our enemies, our divine companion prepares a table for us, inviting us to share a feast beyond compare and to enjoy blessings so abundant that they overflow. And at the end of the day, when we look back upon our journey, our divine companion assures us that goodness and mercy will have been with us all along the way and that we will dwell secure in the presence of God each and every day.

These are the things that give us comfort from Psalm 23, the promise of a divine companion who will provide all that we need, lead us into places that make us whole, keep us safe amidst all trouble, feed us at a table of abundance, bring us through goodness and mercy, and stay with us each and every day. Even when our increasingly urban world doesn’t quite need or understand shepherds anymore, we can still appreciate the gift of one who bring us all this. But that first question still applies a bit: Since God is no longer directly among us in Christ, how does God appear to us now? In what form does God bring us all these things?

We’re not likely to find a particularly human shepherd who does all this, and God doesn’t always stand up to be identified in doing these things. Even so, we can be confident that a shepherd, our divine companion, will journey with us along the way and show us God’s presence in places and ways and people that we may not understand or expect. The presence of God is with us in those who are not afraid to walk with us along the journey, whether the pastures be green or gray, whether the waters be still or stormy, whether the path be easy or hard. The presence of God is with us in those who help us to confront the fearful moments in life, who keep evil and uncertainty at a distance, who give us perspective and offer us hope. And the presence of God is with us in those who show us mercy and grace in measures small and large, who prepare feasts of plenteous food and drink, who give us safety and comfort and love for living wherever we go.

While God may not appear to us in such a distinctive form anymore, I believe that we can see God no less clearly now in people who show us these things, in people who walk even a little way with us along the journey, in friends who are unafraid to walk through both the green pastures and the dark valleys, in sisters and brothers who sit with us in the presence of those who seem to be set against us, in companions who make us feel at home amidst anything and everything that we might face. God is our shepherd in ways beyond how God seems to have worked in days past, beyond the limitations of a rural and agricultural image of a shepherd, beyond our expectations of human friendship, acting in and through those who walk with us each and every day to show us that God’s goodness and mercy really do follow us all the days of our lives.

With this shepherd going with us, working in us and around us, what do we have to fear? How can we ignore the presence of those who walk with us even a little way on the journey? How do we deepen our trust in this God whose faithfulness is sure and whose guidance is certain? Whatever comes our way, it is our gift and our challenge to trust our divine companion to go with us, working in the people around us, known and unknown, to guide us through all that threatens to harm us, support us through the difficult and joyous moments, comfort us in every grief and sorrow, feed us amidst all uncertainty, and assure us of God’s mercy and peace and hope each and every day.

So may the Lord our shepherd, our divine companion, walk with us each and every day, guiding us through all uncertainty and fear, bringing us mercy and peace and goodness, and showing us the fullness of God’s love wherever we may dwell all our days. Thanks be to God! Amen.

The Stories That Define Us: David

March 30, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on 1 Samuel 16:1-13 and Psalm 23
preached on March 30, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

It’s not all that unusual in this world to have friends and colleagues who share the same name. I have two good friends named Nate, and although they come from very different circles of my life, more than once some of my other friends have gotten them mixed up when I am talking about them! I’ve seen these kind of shared names in other places, too. A month or so ago, I visited the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, and met two of their staff who are working with Superstorm Sandy relief. Both are named Dora! But easily the strangest situation comes when I write an email to my friend Andy and the opening and closing names are identical!

Still, by far the most common single name in my address book is David. I looked it up last night—I have three Bettys, five Bills, five Brians (with two different spellings), four Jameses (not counting all the family who have that last name), seven Johns, four Sams—and nine Davids. This is really no surprise, since David is such an important name in the Bible and looms large in the Old Testament.

After a tumultuous start to his reign that required him to violently displace his predecessor Saul, David’s reign was remembered for being one of the more peaceful eras in the history of Israel, and it saw the beginning of substantial territorial growth than continued under his son Solomon. He was also known for his work as a poet and musician, strongly influencing the songs of the people of Israel even though we have no evidence that he actually wrote any of the psalms that are attributed to him through superscriptions in our Bible that were added much later. The memory of his reign over Israel towers over every page after his death. So often the stories of other kings and rulers and the laments of exile seem to say, “If only there were another king like David, we would be better off.” And the expectation of a Messiah to stand as a new king in the line of David is at the center of the Christian understanding of Jesus and his relationship to the people of Israel. In the end, David is a mighty figure—mightier even than the frequency of the name David in my address book!—who factors prominently into the story of Israel that defines us even today.

Yet the beginning of David’s story would not leave you expecting him to be such a major player. Our reading from 1 Samuel this morning makes it clear that nobody in his family thought that that David was all that important to them. It never even crossed their minds that he would be important enough to be a reasonable candidate to be king! When the prophet Samuel followed God’s instructions and went to select the new king from the sons of Jesse the Bethlehemite, Jesse didn’t even bring in David to meet Samuel. Now God had made it clear early on in that search that this decision should not have been based on the standards of the world, for when Eliab, the oldest, came in, Samuel had immediately figured he would be the best fit only to find God make it clear that the choice was not to be based on appearance, height, or any outward human characteristic.

But Samuel didn’t quite learn God’s lesson quickly enough here. He too did not expect David, the youngest son, the one left out in the fields to tend the flock of sheep, the one that could so easily be forgotten or overlooked, to be God’s choice. All human measures would have shown him to be the last possible son of Jesse to be the next king. But after all the other sons of Jesse had come before Samuel and none were chosen, David finally got called in to be considered by Samuel for this new position. Now the narrator seems to have missed something of what God had said earlier, for as soon as David appeared he tells us that David “was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome,” but in the end, that didn’t matter. God had looked on David’s heart and found it to be right and good, and so the Lord instructed Samuel to anoint David as king of Israel.

There was of course much, much more to David’s story that helps define who he is and why he is important to us in our own story of faith. Beyond the stories that I mentioned earlier, many look to his adultery with Bathsheba and his subsequent coverup that put her husband Uriah on the front lines of battle to be killed as a mark of our deep sinfulness, especially if we think of the words of Psalm 51 as David’s confession:

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.

Others remember the tale of the boy David’s defeat of the warrior Goliath with only a slingshot and five smooth stones as a mark of how God uses the small to overpower the weak. And still others look to the bond between David and his dear friend Jonathan for an image of holy friendship that can inform the relationships of our world and our lives today. But ultimately I think David’s story defines us not so much because of its importance in the life of Israel or the way that informs our understanding of Jesus but rather because it shows us yet again how God consistently looks beyond all the standards and expectations of our world and calls the forgotten, the overlooked, and the outsider to be bearers of the message of God’s love and faithfulness.

This is the same image of God that is portrayed so beautifully for us in the beloved words of Psalm 23. While so many images of God depict a mighty and powerful and dignified divine ruler, the image of God as a shepherd puts a very different spin on things. This psalm shows us a God who is willing to get down and dirty with us in the messiness of our lives: to show us places of comfort and care amidst pain and hurt, to guide us when we go astray, to walk with us through dark valleys, to offer us grace and mercy beyond our wildest dreams, and to give us a home worth dwelling in all our days. This God is willing and able to shepherd us and all of the forgotten, overlooked, and left-out people of the world “beyond our wants, beyond our fears, from death into life.” Just as God turns David’s life upside-down, from being the youngest son left out in the fields to being anointed as king of Israel, God flips all our images of a mighty and distant and powerful “Lord” and instead shows us this kind of present and gentle and humble shepherd.

This is the strange kind of God who is around us and before us and beside us—a Lord who is our shepherd, a powerful, mighty, and omnipotent God who cares so deeply about us that, as the Heidelberg Catechism says, “not a hair can fall from head without the will of my Father in heaven,” a God who chooses a leader who is not the one most likely to fit the standards of the world but who is most fit for the work and challenge ahead. And so God steps into our world and into our lives, insisting that we like David can step up beyond our limitations, calling the forgotten, the overlooked, and the outsider to act beyond our seeming limitations and do mighty and wonderful things, demanding that we join in the transformation of our world that comes as the lowly are given power and authority to step up and speak out and as the unexpected gifts of our lives are transformed by God’s grace, mercy, and power to be instruments of peace, justice, reconciliation, and new creation.

So may David’s story of being chosen despite all his weaknesses and limitations continue to define us as we trust God’s shepherding grace and love, seek God’s presence among us in those whom we might otherwise overlook or leave out, and look upon the hearts of others and ourselves to find the the hope and vision to embody something new as all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.