Library
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
BECAUSE YOU ARE WITH ME
Sixth in the Psalm 23 Series
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Scripture: Psalm 23 New Revised Standard Version 1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; 3 he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. 4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
I will fear no evil because you are with me. God is with us. That is what the Bible word “Emmanuel” means. Here is another profound affirmation that we hear in this very special Psalm. Let’s talk about HOW God is with us.
Sometimes God is with us in the mysterious coincidences of life, incidences we cannot explain in logical and scientific categories. We can hear stories about that in the books by physicians Bernie Siegel and Rachel Remen. Dr. Remen’s books are on our shelves and we have used some of her stories such as the one about the man who told of his father coming down with Alzheimer’s disease at a young age and being completely dependent on his family, his wife and two teenage sons. They were able to care for him at home for a long time. One Sunday afternoon, the mom had gone grocery shopping while the two boys and their father were watching football.
All of a sudden the father collapsed on the floor and seemed to be dying. The boys were terrified and did not know quite what to do, except that while he was lying on the floor, their father who had not been able to utter a word in several years, spoke to his sons.
He said, “Don’t be afraid boys." Don’t call 911. Tell your mother that I love her.” And then he died.
The boy who was there, told this story years later as a physician, in a small group of physicians. He told the story as an example of some things that we experience in our lives that are not logical and are just full of mystery. He said he did not understand, as a physician, how that could have been possible, but he was there and he experienced it and it was real. Perhaps it was a way of God showing God’s self to us in a very comforting and mysterious fashion.
God is with us in the valleys of life, therefore we do not need to be afraid.
Let me tell you another modern story, a true story. A father and his teenage daughter are running an errand together in the car. The mother of the daughter is seriously ill in the hospital. The cell phone rings and the father put the call on speaker phone while he is driving. It is the nurse at the hospital telling them to come right back to the hospital because the mother has taken a turn for the worse and they need to come back immediately. The father and daughter are deeply concerned, especially the daughter. They change direction to drive right back.
They are stopped at a light where a homeless person is asking for help. The father told me, he just never, ever gives handouts to people on the street. But for some reason he rolled down his window and pulled a bill out of his pocket to give to the man. The man thanked him, looked inside the car at the daughter and said this: “Don’t worry. She is going to be alright.”
They got to the hospital, and the wife/mother was not as ill as they had been told, and she recovered.
How do we explain those incidences? I cannot. We do remind ourselves that God works in mysterious ways and that there are some things in life that are just packed with mystery and need not be explained but instead should be experienced so we can give thanks for them.
I will fear no evil even in the darkest valleys of life because—You are with me to comfort me and to feed me, you set a table before me, even in the midst of my enemies.
Let’s look at the important words in today’s verse of Psalm 23. I will not fear, I will fear no evil.
Do you remember what the most frequent verse is in the whole Bible? It shows up in the Bible 365 times. The most frequent verse is “Don’t be afraid.” Tim Hansel says that it is there 365 times because God must have known that Tim would need to hear it and live by it every day of the year.
You do not need to live by fear. Don’t be afraid because you are not alone. God is with you. That was the message to Moses when he got called by God to confront the Pharaoh. You do not need to be afraid, Moses, because God is with you.
We experience fear every day. Some fear is rational and some is irrational. There are some things we should be afraid of, but if we live as God’s people, we will not allow our lives to be controlled by fear. In fact, in the Bible, fear is the opposite of faith. In the Bible, doubt is NOT the opposite of faith. In the Bible people can have questions and doubts and still decide to live by God’s instructions, still decide to live in faith.
Jesus meets a man like that. The man asks for healing for his son and Jesus says that healing and faith go together. Remember what the man says, “I do have faith, but help me please where my faith falls short.”
Doubt and faith can co exist in the Bible. Doubt is not the opposite of faith. What is the opposite of faith in the Bible? Fear.
Jesus is in the boat with His friends on Lake Galilee. A storm arises and is tossing the boat around. They wake him up and shout to him that they are all about to die. He calms the seas and says something intriguing to them: “Why are you afraid? Where is your faith?”
Because, Gracious God, you are with me, I will not let fear be in charge of my life. I will trust you more than I trust my fear. Even in an economic downturn and recession, I will feel my fear, but I will trust God more than my fear. Even in my grief when I lose someone I love and am not sure about how to go on, I will feel my fear, but I will trust God more than I trust my fear.
The Psalmist says more: in the valley of the deepest darkness, I will fear no evil.
Is there evil? Some church leaders have personified evil over the centuries and used the image of Satan or the devil to represent evil, sometimes even requiring a dualistic belief in a being called Satan if one is to be a Christian. The figure of Satan in the Bible is more complicated than just a figure with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork. In Hebrew, the Satan or hasatan, simply means the adversary. He is not usually portrayed as being equal to God. This is an interesting research project to explore with the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. If you do that you will probably be surprised.
You do not have to believe in a mythological being named Satan or the devil to believe in evil. How would you talk about evil with a friend or with a child? Where do you see evil at work? That might be a good lunch time conversation starter.
I will fear no evil because God is with me. I can know that God is with me in those mysterious coincidences of life. I can know God is with me when I take time for God in prayer. I can know God’s presence through worship in the music and the hymns and the quiet time. If I don’t take time for prayer and worship, I will feel distant from God. It’s the truth in the old bumper sticker we have quoted that says, “If you feel distant from God, guess who moved.”
God is with me through other people. We told the story last week of the university experiment about how long a student could keep their foot in a bucket of iced water. When some other caring person was with them, they could last twice as long as when they were alone. We will know God through the compassion and love and concern and just the presence of other people.
When each of my parents died, I can remember the people who came to be with me. I do not remember much of what was said, except for my fundamentalist aunt who told me that my father’s death was just God’s will. What I mostly remember was that people were present and that they cared.
We express our caring by being present with each other and by listening and by doing some little things that just need to be done, whether it means shopping for groceries when someone is unable to do that for themselves, or caring for children to give a parent a needed break. It might be holding a hand and letting someone pour out their heart without judging or giving advice.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been pleased to see people in our congregation doing all of these things when there has been a critical need during times of illness, death, and funerals. They have provided compassionate care and they are letting themselves become instruments of God’s presence and God’s love. That compassionate care of each other has always been a hallmark of the community of faith ever since the Christian movement began 1900 years ago. One of the descriptions made of those early Christians was: Look at how those Christians love each other and care for each other.
Our own congregation has an excellent care team and team of Stephen Ministers available. They are trained caregivers and listeners who take time regularly with each person who has reached out and identified a need. Jenny Ricklefs is our staff person in charge of that whole caring ministry and Kathy Bartsch and Jim McKeever are the lay coordinators. Any of these people can be contacted to initiate our caring ministry team. It means that each of us realizes that there are times in life when we will be able to care for someone else and there are times in life when we will benefit by asking for help. Being fully human involves both giving help and receiving help in various times. I hope that each of us will feel free to contact Jenny or others when we are in need, or if we are open to being a Stephen Minister ourselves, we can contact Jenny for the next training session.
We also have several support groups available for people with a variety of needs, from the eight different groups using the twelve step philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous to a brain injury support group and a depression support group that meets monthly.
We had a chance to talk openly about the depression support group and about the illness of clinical depression when Angie Nock gave us the freedom to talk with each other about depression and suicide at her husband Clif’s funeral on Wednesday morning. Copies of the funeral meditation are on our website, http://www.st-andrew-umc.com.
A few minutes ago we could have identified the illness of depression as one of the evils that God wants to help us deal with and one of those things that God helps us deal with through other caring people.
When Judy and I attended the viewing for Clif Nock at the mortuary Tuesday evening, Angie Nock had very wisely chosen the music that was playing during the evening. One of the songs speaks so powerfully to God’s presence with us in the dark and fearful times of life, that is to say the promise that God makes in Psalm 23, that even in our darkness and our fears, God is with us. It is a song by folksinger Carrie Newcomer entitled I’ll Go Too.
Newcomer tells in the song about a time when she was small and afraid of the things under her bed or afraid of learning how to swim in the deep water. Her father reassured her and told her she was not alone and said, “I’ll go too.” She tells about saying those words recently to her father at her mother’s funeral as they stood by her grave in the April snow. She ends with the image of the time when each of us is at the end of life and walking into the Promised Land hoping an angel is there to take us by the hand and say to us, “I’ll go too.”
Nancy Williams is offering that very song for us.