Psalm 23 (NKJV)
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the Lord Forever.
Sermon Text
In some ways, preaching on the twenty-third Psalm is one of the easiest things that a minister can do. Imprinted in the hearts of so many faithful people are the words of hope it gives us, In the midst of disaster, of fear, of trouble, there is a brilliant truth – God is with us. Easy to say, brilliant to sing, but is it something we really believe and hold to be true within our hearts. Can we, in the midst of disaster, proclaim that God is alongside us? Depending on the timing, I would say that we are more or well willing to accept something like that. The most difficult time to accept God’s presence can be in the deep valleys of life, and if our eyes are not trained to find God in the day-to-day, our Savior may seem scarce.
Today I want us to focus on the idea expressed toward the middle of the Psalm. We are told that, “Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow Death,” we can be secure in the fact that God is with us. The term used here, “Valley of the Shadow of Death,” is a construct of a construct. What I mean is that the valley is being described here as “צַלְמָ֡וֶת” (Tselmawet,) a compound word simple made up of “Shadow,” and “Death.” This Death Shadow is invoked only a few times in scripture, and usually with cosmically bad situations. The people of God, suffering and in need of a savior, are described as living under the Death Shadow.[1] God’s wrath is described as descending on people like a Death Shadow.[2] Most prolifically, Job described his view of death, a world deep beneath creation that is dark as dark can be, a world made up of one large Death Shadow. He even goes so far, in the lowest moment of his life, to ask God that the day of his birth become like that world – an empty place, forgotten by everyone who once knew it.[3]
My point in highlighting these uses of the world is to show that when the Psalmist describes us walking through the “Valley of the Shadow of Death,” it is not just the mundane problems we face that make up the chthonic darkness around us. The worst things imaginable do not separate us from God, even if they can obscure a great deal of God’s light in their midst. Christ, for all his radiance in this world, is described as a light that the darkness nearly snuffed out, but could not quench. God does not always appear as the fire atop Sinai, or the light of the Mount of Transfiguration, sometimes God is as to us as a dim light glimpsed through the deepest fog and the darkest shadows.
The most consistent reason that people leave the faith is hardship. Many years of evangelists will tell you that it is the allure of this world, and I will agree that sometimes people decide they’d rather have a life free from religion so they can do whatever they like, but I do not believe these people are anywhere near the majority. The fact is that many people leave the faith because something happens that pushes them beyond a place of comfort and they are forced to look on the world as it is. A scary place, a place where disaster is often more common than goodness, and where disease and struggle lurk in the midst of even the most blessed of lives.
When we are knocked loose from our mooring, when we experience real hardship, we can do one of two things. The first is to dig our roots deeper into our faith, the second is to let go of that faith and hope we can make it well enough on our own. The first is obviously the preferable decision, but it isn’t an easy one. In the midst of hardship, when the light seems to dim from the world around us, it is easy to fall into despair. It is easy for us, in a season of plenty, to say that those who are struggling should just have more faith, but it just isn’t that easy. When a storm comes and wipes away plants from a rocky cliff face, one flower cannot just tell another in that moment to grow roots deep enough to keep them in place.
The truth is, it is the duty of the Church to support those who hurt, and not be afraid of suffering. We have spent so long equivocating happiness with blessings, that when we see someone suffering, we just want them to get better so we can be done with the whole thing. This isn’t only a selfish impulse, not just discomfort, it is also just a misunderstanding of grief. We see something wrong, we want to fix it, but sometimes that is not enough. Job, famously, was unsettled by his pain. He yelled to God that he would win any court case with an impartial jury. God regarded this lashing out by Job as good, as a Godly way of addressing his grief. Meanwhile, Job’s friends who wanted their old friend back immediately were chastised, and God accused them of blaspheme for their idle words.
In my own life, as someone with depression, my mind likes to invent low points. Everything can be perfect as can be, and I will descend into a valley created by a lack of certain neurotransmitters in my brain. Lights dim, sounds become less interesting, foods blander. I lose the ability to discern even the most basic of good things. For me I know the trouble is chemical more than it is real of spiritual. Yet, those same neurotransmitters that are lacking in my brain chronically are the ones that a person in the midst of trouble and trauma will be missing. I once, in an attempt to explain my depression to people came up with an image of what it feels like to be suddenly covered in the deep darkness it brings. A creature latched to your brain, encircling everything and corrupting everything it touches.
There are two things to keep in mind as Christians in times of trouble. Firstly, a thing for those who struggle, and secondly a thing for those who walk alongside those who struggle. For those who struggle, whether it be the most world shaking of disasters or a consistent problem that cannot be shaken. Know that God is with you. That is sufficient for you to hold in your faith. You do not need to be happy with God in the moment you are suffering, you do not need to respond to the world around you like you had before. Faith is not always singing praises loudly, sometimes it is the simple acknowledgement that God is there, distant and hard to understand, but God is there. If you hold onto that, then the rest will follow, bit by bit.
For those are not presently suffering, but care for people who are, the duty becomes being the roots that hold another person in place. Show such love and support, listening rather than speaking and allowing people to experience grief in their own time and turns. You know why trees are able to stand as long as they do in forests? Because their roots are wrapped around each other. Why the largest organism on Earth is a mycelium colony? Because they long ago decided it was advantageous to live as one rather than live alone. The Church becomes a place where people can sustain their faith when the people of God become the visible presence of God in hard times.
There will be many dark nights in life. Some of them will seem to stretch on indefinitely. Yet, God is always just a ways off. The stronger our faith is, the easier it can be to see God in the midst of things, but it is not always necessary to see. Sometimes it is more than enough to know. Did Peter, as he sunk into the waves, see Jesus or did he simply know that someone was there to grab his outstretched hand? Did Job understand why God allowed such disasters in his life, or did he trust that when he cried out in anguish someone heard his cry? When we suffer and we feel like nothing will every be ok, do we do so alone or do we do so with a God who has known life and death, joy and pain, disaster and resurrection?
People of God. The world can be a dark place, but God is always with us in the darkness. No matter how dark the Death Shadow may be that rests on the world around us, no matter how lose we may feel, we can rest knowing that our God is never lost in the midst of it all. – Amen.
[1] Isaiah 9:2
[2] Psalms 44, 107, and Jeremiah 2 and 13.
[3] Job 3:5
Teach us to Number our Days 