This last week marked the first anniversary of my mother’s death.
During this past year we siblings sold the house that she and our dad designed and built. It has been home for us, my brothers and sister and me for 70 years and a welcoming place for the grandchildren and the great grand children. But it is hardly recognizable anymore, the inside gutted to meet the needs of the new owners. My sister lives across the street from the house and has permission to wander in and see progress as it goes a long, but all work on the house stopped when the contractor ran off with the new owners money and is now being charged with fraud, again, who knew he had a warrant out, but that’s a different story. The story I want to tell is how on one of these nostalgic wanderings, my sister became shaken by sadness and loss. She was literally in the valley of the shadow of death, though not her own. She stood in what had been our parents’ bedroom and sobbed, great big tears, what we call the ugly cry with red noses and staggered breaths and longed for our mother, cried out for our mother. Her loneliness and pain were palpable. And the sight of this 62 year old woman, mother of seven, grandmother of eight, overcome with emotion, surrounded by debris and dust and echoes of the past, and I know she was still in her pajamas for sure, could have been comical, except it wasn’t.
Now I have to say, that my sister is a little dramatic. Always has been. Her daughter says other people are born, but with my sister, God lit a fire. Honestly, you don’t know my sister, but we know this isn’t drama, but life. We have all stood in remains of the past and felt deep loss. If not for a someone, then for a might have been, or a never expected this, or a safe place that disappeared or a safe someone who turned hurtful. A love. It is a brokenness that we acknowledge in our saner moments as being human.
This event with my sister pales compared to the stories of horrific atrocities and death, destruction that we see and hear about on the news this past week. Terrible and terrifying. Inhuman. Words cannot express the pain of millions of people at war. I feel a little guilty about not addressing those issues this Sunday, but, today for just a few minutes let’s think about our pain, In this congregation, the little congregation that does good things and sings about being here for good, we try to live out the message of the good news as best we can, with God’s help, welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, visiting the widows and the orphans of our world in their affliction. For this moment, let’s think about what God wants for us. Especially when we are hurting. Our pain is personal and real and I believe matters to God. And Psalm 23 says I’m right. Against all that happens in our lives that brings us to tears, we hold up these words, for comfort and for peace in our hearts. The Lord is my shepherd. Note, if you haven’t already, how personal the pronouns are, my I me. The psalmist makes it all very personal. And in what he writes, we cannot help but notice that our needs are acknowledged, that we do not have to worthy of healing, that the comfort of the green pasture and the still water are ours, out of God’s goodness alone, a truth, what we often refer to as grace.
Still, in these few verses of scripture, we are invited to participate in our own recovery, or healing. It is God’s gift to us, but we still have to decide if we want to receive it or not. It begins with the declaration, the lord is my shepherd. Our part is first to acknowledge the relationship we have with God whom we follow, depend upon for protection and comfort. You might agree, we personally have a western way of controlling and self sufficiency that skips this part until we are in over our heads, until we are standing in our pajamas in a demolition zone, feeling very alone and broken. We have a little ego that makes this first part of the psalm not easy for us to proclaim. The Lord is my shepherd, which makes me a part of the flock and so I can be cute and cuddly but opinionated, stubborn, and susceptible to wandering off. Not a big boost to my self-esteem. And I repeat, until we are in over our heads.
This is a good psalm. It is helpful to remember that we use the 23 psalm at funerals not at baptisms or weddings. It is intended to comfort when we are in trouble. Not a one size psalm fits all. It’s more a your heart is heavy with pain, let me carry some of that load for a while. You rest.
And that is enough, isn’t it? I’ll offer you a chance to cry your tears, shout your curses, connect with others, remember better times, rest.
Lie down in green pastures.
Be restored.
Sounds real good when you are in over your head.
Scholars tell us the 23rd psalm is actually two psalms put together. The second one begins with he prepares a meal in the presence of my enemies…
I always thought, as I was growing up, that this was a picnic lunch, since we were already out in the countryside, in green pastures with a little stream running through it. So we rest and we eat. We know the healing power of food shared in time of loss, so it made perfect sense to me.
I learned later, of course, that in the time of the psalm was written, eating with your enemies meant that you were not enemies any longer.
You eat with someone means you agree to let go of the past, you drop all plans for revenge, you may not be friends, but sharing food fixes what was broken between you and your guest/enemy. So God prepares the meal and if you choose to eat, your relationship with the other is redeemed. Repaired. Mended. Open to a new future.
That makes the 23rd psalm even more perfect for funerals than the comfort of the rest and restore part. After hundreds of funerals, I have often found that the funeral dinner is more healing than the funeral service. In-laws, crazy cousins who still call you by your grade school nickname, and neighbor who drinks too much, share a meal in a time of loss and you just never know what will happen. It’s an opportunity. Something good could come out of it. Some history forgiven. Some new future opened up.
For my sister and for others whose grief is deep and long lived, identifying the enemy may be hard: loneliness, feeling abandoned, needy. It is complicated. But if we think of the first part of the psalm as an invitation to let God participate in the pain we carry, then this part could also be an invitation to let go of what is holding us in a past that doesn’t work for us.
You can’t get even with an ex, or a disappointment, or a dream gone missing, and live your life in the fullness God intended. Best to eat and move ahead.
When we had my mother’s service, we did not use the 23rd psalm. My brother who is also a retired pastor and I just thought it too much of a cliché to consider and I think, now that was a mistake. My siblings and children and grandchildren, need the comfort of that pasture and stream and invitation to live in the Lord’s care. But more than that, they need the good news for the psalmist’s four words, he restores my soul. It is a reminder that God is invested in wholeness and better said, in our wholeness. Pain and loss that leaves holes, gaps in our souls are not what God desires for us. And I invite you, in the business of our congregation and in the privacy of your own lives, to take comfort in the words, the lord is my shepherd….surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. Even when, or especially when that life overwhelms and tears fall.
You know maybe I don’t need to feel guilty about not addressing the chaos of the world right now. Maybe talking about our own grief over loss is the best way to think about the people of Gaza and Israel and Ukraine and Russia. And maybe the 23rd psalm is the best prayer for peace at this moment. In over your head seems like an apt description of much of the world. You can decide for your self out of your own history with healing and forgiving and having your soul restored, if this is so.
Thanks be to God for the good news of today. Amen.
- Nell Lindorff