Can We Pray Like This?

Lent 4a: Can we pray like this?

Psalm 23.  You probably were in second or third grade when you first learned it and had to recite it in front of the Sunday School class or maybe even the congregation.  But you forgot it along with the Gettysburg Address and the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.  Maybe you had to learn it again for Confirmation class. But now as an adult, you have heard it at every Episcopal funeral you have ever attended.  “The Lord is my shepherd” is a comforting psalm.  We pray it in times of fear, times of pain, times of sorrow.  But with the comfort of Psalm 23, there is also a challenge.

For the psalmist goes on, “I shall not want.”  Do we really feel that about God, the God of mercies?  Do we believe and say in our hearts that God is our shepherd and the one we trust?  We belong to him.  Do we feel his hand guiding all of our life, his providence watching over us.  Is God closer to us than we are to ourselves? Is God like a shepherd taking us to cool green valleys to graze and then to quiet streams for peaceful refreshment? Do we lack for nothing?  Can we pray this psalm honestly, deeply, confidently, or  are we always thinking of  how to get more, have more, how to get ahead, how to find satisfaction.  Can we pray the 23^rd Psalm?

The psalmist says to God, you are my shepherd and there is nothing I shall want.  He or she says it boldly and calmly. Even when circumstances flatly denied his words, even when nations invaded and attacked Israel, even when he and his children may have gone to bed hungry, even when his fourteen year old son was killed in someone else’s war, Even when he felt like praying “My God, My God why have you forsaken me”  The Psalmist prays “Lord you are my shepherd” calmly, bravely, defiantly even when daily realities contradicted this prayer.  Can we pray that way?  The psalmist prays it because some transcendent level it is true. It is the only truth and his faith that God is his shepherd and that he lacks nothing.  He goes on to paint what seems to be a daring, optimistic and even cheerful picture of his life: 

He makes me lie down in green pastures *

     and leads me beside still waters. He revives my soul *

     and guides me along right pathways for his Name's sake.

Dear God can we pray like this?  When our dear friend dies of prostate cancer, when we see someone unjustly in prison, when a mother wastes away with scleroderma and lupus, when our experience proves that life is not fair, can we pray this way? Is life green pastures and still waters, our souls restored and feet guided along right pathways because his name is compassion, wonder counselor, almighty prince of peace? When bad things happen is God a good shepherd?  The psalmist says it is all true. Is he a foolish optimist? A Polyanna?  A hopeless Romantic?  Αn unrealistic, pie in the sky dreamer? No he’s not.  He is not a foolish optimist, for he continues,

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

So he does have his feet on the ground, he has tasted death and bitterness.  He has crossed over the river styx and even when he is walking through the valley of the shadow of death, he knows this path, this life, is the only path he’s got,  and so it must be the right pathway, the pathway that the Shepherd has guided him on even when the light grows darker and darker.    And so he goes on:

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

 I shall fear no evil; for you are with me;

The good shepherd is with us, our Emmanuel, in our tribulations and our pains and problems.  He is with us even we pass through the valley of the shadow of death and feel far from the quiet streams and cool green valley.

·        Can we pray this psalm about the good shepherd in our own lives?  Yes we can.

·        Can we turn to the Good shepherd when we are in the hospital having stints put in our arteries?  Yes we can.

·        Can we humbly trust that his rod and staff protect us when we worry about what will happen to the ones we love after we’re gone? Yes we can.

·        When we walk in the valley of darkness and depression,  when we miss the children taken from us?  Yes we can.

We can because we know that Jesus is the shepherd and guardian of our souls and that he has already walked with us through the valley of the shadow of death all the way to Golgotha.  Yes we can because he is the good shepherd who laid his life down for us so that we could believe that God is and always will be our Good shepherd.  Yes we can confess the faith handed down us by our mothers and fathers that this is our faith, our faith experience and no one can take from us our faith that:   

The LORD is my shepherd; *

There is nothing I shall want.

Amen.