Our burdens of discontent, worry and guilt have played out through the first three verses of the 23 Psalm Read 1-3 But when I asked our book study what grabbed their souls, what touched their hearts, from this psalm the consensus was the 4th verse- The darkest valley is met with the assurance of God being with you. There is a key change in today’s passage- which is the hinge, the turning point of this beloved psalm. Read Psalm 23:4
Cooper and I love to watch the TV show Castle- with a beautiful NYC detective and a mystery writer working together to solve crimes. Whenever the bad guy is about to get caught or a standoff when someone might die, the camera almost always zooms in on the barrel of the gun. This weapon and the person wielding it decide this life or death moment. Be it NCIS, Law and Order, or CSI, we love the good characters, good mystery, and watching the good guys win helps us feel like we can beat death- helps us address our fear of death. But we all know there are two things in life which are inescapable– one we are preparing for now and are due on April 15 and the other comes with no due date, only certainty. (Taxes and Death)
Max Lucado writes about the burden of loneliness, the burden of fear and the burden of the grave. We might boil that down to “How will I face my fears? When will I die? And will I be alone when it happens?” Taken all together, that is the $64,000 question and one we live out on a smaller scale every day. Let’s take loneliness for example. “Loneliness is not the absence of faces. It is the absence of intimacy. Loneliness doesn’t come from being alone; it comes from feeling alone. Feeling as if you are facing death alone, facing disease alone, facing the future alone. Whether it strikes you in your bed at night or on your drive to the hospital, in the silence of an empty house or the noise of a crowded bar, loneliness is when you think, I feel alone. Does anyone care?” (Traveling Light pg. 108). A friend shared that fear of loneliness with me right before being taken to the hospital. My parting thought, prayer was even in the darkest valley, the loneliest valley, God is with you. God with us is a foundational scriptural promise; repeated over and over again in difficult situations. Before Joshua goes into battle God promises to be with them, in the 46th Psalm be still and know that I am God, the Lord of hosts promises to be with them, Emmanuel is Jesus’ name- meaning God with us, Jesus promised the disciples during the great commission, I am with you always until the end of the age. God with us is so profound I will be doing a weekend retreat on that very simple truth. Even in your darkest, most fearful moments, know that you are not alone, because God is with you.
Max Lucado tells a great story of helping his young daughters overcome their fears. We all know that when fear strikes it can feel like we are drowning in our fears, overwhelmed with no life preserver. When he was teaching his daughters to swim they started out fine when they were in the shallow end, but refused to go into the deep end, because who knows what might be lurking under the water. Fear is all about what we cannot see, whatever is lurking under the water. He writes, “I didn’t want my daughters to be afraid of the deep end, so with each I played Shamu the whale. My daughter would be the trainer. I would be Shamu. She would pinch her nose and put her arm around my neck, then down we would go. Deep, deep, deep until we could touch the bottom. Then up we would explode, breaking the surface. After several plunges they realized they had nothing to fear. They feared no evil. Why? Because I was with them” (pg. 85).
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me.” God is with you! David knows God is with him- he learned it when he faced Goliath, and when he became king. You do not need to face death alone. God is with YOU.
- “You may be facing death, but you aren’t facing death alone; the Lord is with you.
You may be facing unemployment, but you aren’t facing unemployment alone; the Lord is with you.
- You may be facing martial struggles, but you aren’t facing martial struggles alone; the Lord is with you.
- You may be facing debt, but you aren’t facing debt alone; the Lord is with you” (Traveling Light, pg.110). There is great comfort and strength in knowing God is with you! It changes everything.
Let’s pause for a moment and take a helicopter view of this psalm. During the first three verses when the Shepherd leads, David speaks to us and God listens. Then with verse four, when facing death, David speaks to God and we listen. This is a subtle but crucial shift in the psalm. “It’s as if David’s face…now lifts toward God. His poem becomes a prayer. Rather than speak to us, he speaks to the Good Shepherd. “You are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (pg. 84). With this shift, David takes his fear to God in prayer. He does not ask the other sheep or worry about what he should do. No he looks toward the Good Shepherd and his tools of comfort and care. David does not stay focused on the fear, on the problem. He does not zoom in on the barrel of the gun which leads to death. Rather he turns to Shepherd’s rod and staff, the tools that the Good Shepherd uses to keep the sheep safe, God’s tools which keep him safe, the same rod and staff that keep us safe. So when you face a fear, turn your face towards God, cling to the comforting tools of God, his rod and staff and trust that your Good Shepherd is always with you.
God is always with you even unto death. Jesus while hanging from a cross promised the thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk. 23:43). He also promised to prepare a room for you in his father’s house (Jn. 14:2). A few verses later in our gospel lesson we hear, ‘You will weep and lament but … your sorrow will turn to joy.” Jesus is explaining to his disciples that the temporary sorrow they will soon feel when he is dead, will be transformed into joy through the resurrection. It is the same joy we will feel once we are with Christ in heaven. God’s gift of eternal life is paradise, God’ promise is to all of God’s children. God will lead you through the valley of the shadow of death.
Whenever I heard, shadow of death, it felt like a pall hanging over the end of life; a darkness surrounding death. But then I heard the story Dr. Barnhouse told his children as they drove home grief stricken from the cemetery after his wife’s death. “He searched for a word of comfort to offer but could think of nothing. Just then, a large moving van drove by. As it passed, the shadow of the truck swept over the car. An inspiration came to Dr. Barnhouse. He turned to his family and asked, ‘Children, would you rather be run over by a truck or by its shadow?’
The children said, ‘Well, of course Dad, we’d rather be run over by the shadow. That can’t hurt us at all.’ (Don’t you love the directness of children?)
Dr. Barnhouse explained, ‘Did you know that two thousand years ago the truck of death ran over the Lord Jesus… in order that only its shadow might run over us?’” (Traveling Light, pg. 93-4). The shadow is no longer a pall; rather it is something that cannot hurt us. Through the resurrection, Christ has reduced death to a shadow, to something that passes over us. For even though we die, we have eternal life with Christ. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me. Amen.
