The Song of Life

Scripture: Psalm 23

The twenty-third psalm is unquestionably among the most beloved and familiar texts in the Bible. It has a central place in both the Christian and Jewish faiths. Early religious education often includes committing the psalm to memory—a project some children pursue more successfully than others.

One of my favorite YouTube videos features a little girl named Abby reciting the psalm. She does a wonderful job but has a little trouble remembering the verses. She does, however, recall that the word “surely” is important because it signals the closing lines. So periodically she pauses and looks into the camera and says “surely?,” “surely?” “now surely?” All of us who have tried to memorize Psalm 23 can feel nothing but empathy.

Psalm 23 is one of the few biblical texts that turn up frequently in our popular culture. Musical renditions of it have been composed by everyone from Franz Schubert to Duke Ellington to Leonard Bernstein to Bobby McFerrin to the Eagles. As all you heavy metal fans know, even the group Megadeth has set it to music.

It is quoted in numerous films, from dramas like The Elephant Man and Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat to comedies like The Bishop’s Wife and Woody Allen’s Love and Death. Because of its association with desperate situations it appears in a disproportionate number of horror movies, resulting in more than a few absurdities. In the film Van Helsing, Frankenstein quotes from the psalm after being captured by Dracula. And in the 1953 cult classic The War of the Worlds a priest recites it as he walks toward invading Martians.

Yet somehow the psalm has not been cheapened or its power diluted. It still consoles and inspires us. We still turn to it in times of anxiety, softly uttering its opening lines as if they made breathing possible again. We still turn to it in times of grief and loss, particularly in times of death, invoking its verses as if they made some sense out of that final transition that so often seems to us senseless.

So it is unsurprising that President Bush quoted from Psalm 23 in his speech on the evening of September 11, 2001. And it is unsurprising that it is often the scripture chosen as the reading for church services remembering the terrible events of that day. To borrow a phrase from psychiatrist Carl Jung, the twenty-third psalm has an honored place in the “collective unconscious” of humankind.

All this leads to a question: why does Psalm 23 have such a strong and distinctive hold on us? I think there are three reasons, two fairly obvious and one perhaps less so. And I think that in teasing out these reasons we may not only discover something about this psalm—we may discover something about life itself.

The first attraction of Psalm 23 lies in its magnificent poetry. The Bible contains few passages that have the same dramatic pauses (“The Lord is my shepherd … I shall not want”), the same stunning imagery (“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies”), the same haunting metaphors (“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil”), or the same lyrical sweetness (“He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul”). I obviously haven’t kept count, but I’d guess that by now I’ve probably written more than a million words in the course of my life; I’d happily trade all of them for the privilege of being able to claim that I had written “He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.” It doesn't get any better than that.

But the poetry here is not just beautiful; it is dense with meaning. Consider, for example, the first five words of the psalm, which convey five very different messages depending on the word you stress. The Lord is my shepherd—there is only one God. The Lord is my shepherd—I follow the Lord and no one else. The Lord is my shepherd—I experience God’s presence in my life here and now. The Lord is my shepherd—God cares for me as though I were the only one. The Lord is my shepherd—God leads me and loves me. Five distinct messages; communicated in five words; all of them profound; all of them true. This is writing of divine genius; do not try this at home.

The second attraction of Psalm 23 is the sense of deep restorative peace it provides to us. Psalm 23 works this magic by embracing a fundamental truth about human nature: we feel comfort when we are in the presence of loving strength. Indeed, this truth is embedded in the very language we use: the word “comfort” is derived from the Latin “con fortis,” or “with strength.” So Psalm 23 takes an idea we may think of as soft, warm, and fuzzy—the idea of “comfort”—and joins it with images that are strong, powerful, and authoritative—the rod and staff of the shepherd.

And the world presented in Psalm 23 is a world that requires strength; it is the world as we find it; it is, as author and rabbi Harold Kushner observes, a “dangerous, unpredictable, frightening” world. Psalm 23 does not try to comfort us by imagining a life filled with sweetness and light and bunnies and ponies—a life we could dismiss as the fantasy of someone in deep denial of reality. Rather, it gives us life as we experience it: life with hunger and thirst; life with worry and fear; life tormented by enemies and haunted by the shadow of death. Psalm 23 succeeds in providing us with comfort because it offers no false promises about where our travels will lead us. Rather, it offers the simple—but infinitely powerful—assurance that God will go along with us every step of the way.

That brings us to the third, and perhaps least obvious, attraction of Psalm 23: it is not just a beautiful poem full of consoling thoughts; it is a song about how we should live; it is, indeed, the song of life. Biblical scholar J. Clinton McCann, Jr. puts it this way: “To be sure, it is appropriate that Psalm 23 be read and heard in the midst of death and dying. It may be more important, however, that this psalm be read and heard as a psalm about living, for it puts daily activities, such as eating, drinking, and seeking security, in a radically God-centered perspective that challenges our usual way of thinking.” (New Interpreter’s Bible, 767)

So Psalm 23 depicts a God who lives in every dimension of our life. The Lord goes before us and “leads” us like a shepherd. The Lord goes beside us and brings us rest, food, drink, and restoration of the soul. The Lord even follows behind us: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”

This last observation raises an interesting point: although the word “follow” has a long tradition in translations it probably misses the mark. The Hebrew verb used here has a much more active sense to it. Indeed, it is better captured by the word “pursue.” (McCann, 768) This is not a God who follows us around; this is a God who pursues us—and pursues us with goodness and mercy. What else would we expect of a God who understands how lost we would otherwise feel in a world that so often seems to us “dangerous, unpredictable, and frightening?” What else would we expect of a God who knows how easily we wander off the paths of righteousness? What else would we expect of a God who loves?

As McCann says, this invites us into a “radically God-centered perspective” on life. It calls us to recognize that while we’re busy watching for extraordinary things from God we should not miss God’s presence in ordinary things. The great Jewish theologian Martin Buber puts it this way:

"[O]ne should hallow all that one does in one’s natural life. One eats in holiness, tastes the taste of food in holiness, and the table becomes an altar. One works in holiness, and he raises up the sparks which hide themselves in all tools. One walks in holiness across the fields, and the soft songs of all herbs, which they voice to God, enter into the song of our soul. One drinks in holiness to each other with one’s companions, and it is as if they read together in the [scriptures]. One dances the roundelay in holiness, and a brightness shines over the gathering."

The idea that we can devote our every action to God—no matter how small the action—is reflected in the monastic tradition within Christianity, where eating, drinking, sleeping, even sweeping the floor take on the spirit of holiness because they are done in the spirit of holiness. As that tradition recognizes, we can charge almost anything we do with divine light—and, if we find we cannot, then perhaps we ought to take a closer look at what we’re doing.

You may say, “well that is all well and good for those who live in monasteries or in religious retreats, but I live in the real world.” Well, Psalm 23 takes any such excuse away from us. Its text makes clear that the psalmist lives in the same place we do—that “dangerous, unpredictable, and frightening” place we call life. Indeed, the Bible attributes this psalm to David, a man who knew worry and war and weakness in ways most of us can only imagine. Centuries later, another poet from the House of David would come into the same hard world, a world that would crucify Him. And He, too, would tell us to put the Lord at the center of our lives.

The Lord is your shepherd. If you follow, you will find everything you need. Your soul will be healed. You will know the right path. And even when that path takes you down into death itself you will have no reason to fear, for the Lord will give you strength, and, through strength, comfort. Along the way you will face many trials and tribulations; but the grace and love of the Lord will provide a banquet of peace for you even in their presence. God will bless you and fill you to overflowing. And, while you may sometimes turn your back to the Lord and flee in the wrong direction, the Lord will pursue you, so that you might know the goodness and mercy the Lord provides.

Could it be so? Could it be that the most powerful force in the universe—the very creator of the universe—cares so much for each and every person? Could it be that God so loves the world?

As the psalmist says—and as little Abby kept trying to say—surely, surely, surely it is so.

Amen.

Why church?

The power of the individual spiritual experience can awaken us, change us, move us, save us. It can also seduce us. It can lure us into believing that the collective experience of worship has little or nothing to offer. Those of us who choose to attend church hear over and over from those who do not about the presence of God in nature, at home, on the tops of mountains, in isolated meditation and reclusive prayer, amidst gatherings of friends and family, and so on and so on.


I have no disagreement with the idea that God is everywhere and that human existence offers abundant opportunities to connect with the divine that have nothing to do with where you are at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning. But I think that idea is irrelevant to the question of whether going to church also has something to recommend it. After all, the idea that God is omnipresent and the idea that church attendance may help us grow spiritually are not mutually exclusive.


Regular church attendance has many virtues. One of its greatest virtues is that it ensures we will take at least one hour a week and focus on God and God's work. This is, of course, a pitiable amount of time. But, for many of us, it is one hour more than we would spend if left to nature, mountaintops, meditation mats, and cookouts.


To claim we do not need this discipline seems to me a kind a hubris. And conceding that we do need it seems a worthwhile exercise in candor and humility. Church compels us to concede that we may need some help in finding our way to a deep and valuable relationship with God. It is a concession we should readily, indeed cheerfully, make.


The story goes that a student once inquired of a Zen master: "You say that Zen is everywhere. If that is so, then why must we come to this temple?" The master replied: "Zen is everywhere. But, for you, Zen is right here."

God is everywhere. So why go to church? Because, for us, in all of our splendid limitedness and stubbon self-centeredness, God is right there.