“Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.” Psalm 23:6
The Reverend Luther Zeigler
Emmanuel Church
July 22, 2012
We have the great, great privilege – you and I – of living in
this idyllic town by the sea, surrounded by beauty and peacefulness. I worry, though, that the sheer loveliness
and tranquility of this place can sometimes insulate us from the reality of
pain and loss and evil in this world – that is, until we are confronted with
something like the horror of what happened in Aurora, Colorado, my hometown,
early Friday morning. Twelve people
randomly murdered; 59 injured, some critically so.
And as the news reports continue to come out of Colorado
about the awful shootings that occurred there, we begin to realize the
intensely human dimensions of this tragedy.
Behind each of the numbers of those murdered or wounded are individual
stories. The story of 6-year-old
Veronica Moser, a little girl whose simple dream was to begin swimming lessons
on Tuesday. Or 27-year-old Matt McQuinn,
who took a bullet lunging in front of his girlfriend to protect her from the
barrage of gunfire. Or 27-year-old Alex
Sullivan who was celebrating his birthday the night he was shot down and who
today would be celebrating the first anniversary of his wedding with his wife,
now his widow. And these are just three
of the heartbreaking stories.
There is no explanation for this madness, theological or
otherwise. Evil is an ugly and
inexplicable reality in this world. One
of the consequences of being given freedom – both the freedom God gives us in
creation and the freedom our country gives us as a democratic society – is that
freedom can be hideously abused. As it
was early Friday morning by a lone and crazed gunman.
But while we do not have any explanation for the existence of
evil, we do know this about our God: the
truth of the Cross is that God in Christ fully shares our pain and our loss
even when we cannot understand it. Those
men and women and children were not alone as they died in that movie theatre,
for Christ was with them. And the truth
of the Resurrection is that, as horrible as this tragedy is, God will not let
this evil, this suffering, these deaths be the last word. On the last day, every tear will be wiped
away, every wound healed, every life lost will ultimately be saved.
It is fitting that one of our readings for this Sunday is the
Twenty-Third Psalm. There is no text in
the history of our faith that is more beloved or treasured in times of loss and
suffering that this simple poem. It is,
of course, a text that anchors most funeral services. And it has been set to music in some of our
most memorable hymns: The King of Love My Shepherd Is and
Isaac Watts’ My Shepherd Will Supply My
Need.
Indeed, I will never forget hearing Isaac Watts’ beautiful
hymn sung in the wake of another national tragedy: the attacks of September 11, 2001. I suspect most of you will remember where you
were on that fateful day, and how we struggled as a nation in the ensuing days
and months and years to cope with that tragedy.
One way we coped was by coming together on Sept. 14 in Washington’s
National Cathedral to pray.
And what I remember about that service was not so much the
presence of all the living American Presidents and other dignitaries. Nor was it Billy Graham’s sermon. Nor the eloquent prayers said by the clergy
gathered that day. Rather what I will
never forget is when the little boy and girl choristers of the National Cathedral
took the chancel steps and sung in their angelic voices the words of the psalm
in Isaac Watt’s beautiful musical paraphrase:
“My shepherd will supply my need, Jehovah is his name.”
What accounts for the psalm’s enduring place in the lives of
Christians? What makes it such a
powerful and comforting prayer?
There are three things that stick out to me: The first is the deeply personal and intimate
relationship between the psalmist and God. This close connection is established in the
very first verse: The Lord is my
shepherd who cares for my every want. He
is attentive to my deepest desires, and knows my needs before I can even ask.
This intimacy is further reflected in the subtle shift in
perspective that occurs from the first to second halves of the psalm. In the first three verses, the psalmist talks
about God in the third person – “The Lord is my shepherd” – but by the last
three verses, he has shifted to speaking to God directly: “thou art with me.” We are literally drawn into a closer
relationship as we pray the psalm from beginning to end.
Second, the psalm overflows with abundance, reminding us
that when we align ourselves with God’s will, when we draw ourselves near to
His heart, our life becomes full in every way:
luxuriant pastures, life-giving water, a banquet of food to nourish us,
oil to heal our wounds, wine filling our cup, a roof always over our
heads. To be sure, scarcity may
sometimes beset us in the external circumstances of our lives, but when we
attend to God’s presence in the depths of our being, we once again discover
abundance.
Third and finally, the psalm rests on the promise of eternal joy, which is nowhere more poignantly
captured than in the very last line:
“Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Our relationship with God cannot be broken –
not by pain, not by death, and certainly not by the ghastly acts of a mass
murderer. In St. Paul’s words, nothing
can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing.
Two days ago, Bishop O’Neill of Colorado, sent out a pastoral
letter asking Episcopal churches around the country for their prayers in the
wake of these murders. His letter
states: “I write to ask your prayers for
those who are most directly affected by these shootings—those who are wounded,
those who have died, emergency responders, medical and law enforcement
personnel, and those who are providing immediate pastoral care. The greatest
gift we have to offer one another is our collective prayer—not merely kind
wishes, not simply good intentions, but deep prayer—the ability to hold,
tangibly and intentionally, others in that abundant love that flows freely and
gracefully within us and among us. This has substance. This has weight and
heft. For it is the source of deep healing and lasting transformation.”
I can think of no way we can better honor this request – and
honor the individual lives of all the victims in Colorado – than to pray
together the Twenty-Third Psalm, keeping each one of them in our hearts as we
do. Please open your prayerbooks to page
476, and this time we will pray the psalm in the words of the King James version
so treasured by many of us.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh
me to lie down in green pastures:
He
leadeth me beside the still waters.
He
restoreth my soul:
He
leadeth 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 thou art with me;
Thy rod
and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou
preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
Thou
anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth 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.
Amen.
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