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Sunday, July 19, 2009
EVEN IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH
Fifth in the Psalm 23 Series
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Psalm 23 New Living Translation:
1 A psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I have everything I need. 2 He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams. 3 He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name. 4 Even when I walk through the dark valley of death, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. 5 You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You welcome me as a guest, anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings. 6 Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the LORD forever.
The verse of Psalm 23 that we focus on today is one of the most familiar. I have used it twice already this week when I have talked or prayed with people in need of comfort.
The first time was in a conversation early in the week with a gentleman who owns his own business and is an active member of another United Methodist Church in our area. He says that other people see him as a preppy looking, successful business person, and he is, and he has also experienced unfairness and plenty of difficulty in life. When his wife was about 35 and they had three young children, she experienced a stroke. She was hospitalized for quite a while and her recovery took some time. She has had other serious health challenges since then and the whole family has pulled together in faith and has experienced God’s presence in the valley of the shadow.
But one of the things that my friend said was that sooner or later everyone will walk through that valley, and that he had known personally, not only the valley but more importantly, what the Psalmist promised, the comforting presence of God as we walk through that valley.
The second time this week that I quoted Psalm 23 was during the parts of a day I spent with a family where the father had died and I was present as we talked with children ages nine through thirteen about their father’s death and we prayed for God to be with this family and with all of us in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death.
There is a time, and there will be times for each of us, when we will walk through the valley of shadows. Remember the line from writer Tim Hansel we quoted a few weeks back? God promises us four things in life; PEACE, POWER, PURPOSE, AND TROUBLE! The peace and power and purpose are there to see us through the trouble, to see us through the valley of the shadow of death.
There is some discussion among scholars about what exactly is the right translation of those Hebrew words. There is agreement now among today’s translators that probably a better translation of the original Hebrew is that God sees us through the valley of deepest darkness, and that is why most of today’s translations of this psalm say it that way. But there is some benefit in, also, remembering how the King James Bible of 400 years ago mistranslates the words because there are valleys containing the shadow of death in each of our lives. We will not be able to avoid those valleys.
We will not walk around those valleys. We will walk through them just as the psalmist tells us. Or as Rabbi Kushner reminds us in his book on the 23rd Psalm, life is and will be for each of us a mix of joy and suffering, and we cannot be fully human, be fully alive, unless we are willing to be open to both the joy and the suffering.
When a random tragedy occurs, sometimes people say, “Why is this happening to me?” I think there is more than one answer. Sometimes bad things happen because of the way I have set myself up. For instance, if a person has neglected their health through bad nutrition or lack of exercise, or abused their body, there will be some consequences sooner or later. Other times bad things happen just randomly. Jesus believes that there are accidents. This is contrary to what some new age teachers believe who say that there are no accidents.
There are difficult times in each of our lives. There will be dark valleys. We should not be surprised by them or think that because they come to us that God has it in for us. I don’t think God sends suffering to us. God walks with us and comforts us through those valleys of the shadow of death. That is my experience, that is the psalmist’s experience, and that is our faith. God is not on the side of the suffering. God is with us and God is on our side to comfort us during the suffering and to bring us through the suffering.
The second thing to say is a bold statement. There can even be some good that comes to us when we have experienced the dark valleys of life. When we know more fully that we are mortal, that we are temporary, then we can change our priorities and use our time more wisely. If we cruise through life thinking that we are immortal, that life is not temporary, we may not use our time well.
We can see that difference in priorities when we hear from people who have been seriously ill or who have been clinically dead for two or three minutes and then have been brought back to life. There are books about these near death experiences and they contain an amazing, common thread of people feeling they are going through a tunnel from this life to the next. It is an experience of seeing light or a figure of light and a common feeling of great peace and comfort and calm. They can sometimes feel that they have left their bodies and are able to look down and see the medical team working to revive them. When they have been brought back to life, most of these people say that they began to live differently, that some things they thought were important are no longer important, and that relationships with family and friends and with God become the most important.
Dr. Kushner says in his book that there can be some benefits in knowing that we are mortal and in living with an awareness of the shadow of death. He tells about an interview with a pilot who crash-landed his small plane at a California air strip. He was able to get out of the plane before it caught fire. A reporter asked him what was going through his mind as his plane was getting close to the ground and he was about to crash. He said, “I realized I hadn’t thanked enough people in my life.”
Perhaps that will be a result in your life or mine when we take our mortality more seriously or perhaps we will live with more care and intensity.
I have mentioned before that when I served a congregation in Colorado Springs there was a period of time when it seemed that we had a funeral every year or so for teenagers from our congregation who were killed in auto accidents. Several of those kids had not been wearing seat belts. I can still name those young people. The funerals were attended by hundreds of high school friends and I remember how important it was for those young persons to file by the casket at the end of the service and to see that none of us is immortal, (at 16 or 17 years of age, most of think that we are immortal) that life is a gift only for a while, and that bad things can happen if we are not careful.
Dr Kushner thinks that there may be some benefit in having an awareness of the shadow of death, that when we have this awareness we may live more fully and less superficially. Perhaps this is what the prophet Isaiah means in chapter 45 when he says, on behalf of God, that there can be treasures in darkness, insights that we can gain from times of darkness that we cannot gain if we only live on the surface of life. Does that make sense to you? Have you seen that it is through some of the dark valleys, the valleys of the shadow of death, that you have come to some new learning and insights? I can say that from having a family member with a disability, I hope I have learned to be more compassionate and patient.
There is one more helpful part of this verse from which we can benefit. When I walk through the valleys of darkness, I will fear no evil because you are with me. God is with me. I am not alone. I can experience God in reading scripture, in reading through the Psalms. I can experience God’s presence in worship, in the music and scripture and in the quiet times. And I can experience God through the love and the support of other people.
The book we have completed on Psalm 23 tells how important it is for us to feel that we are not alone in times of darkness. The book tells of an experiment at a large university where a professor wanted to learn more about how well people can tolerate pain and what goes into our ability to tolerate pain. He invited students to measure how long they could keep a bare foot immersed in a bucket of ice water. When a student was participating in the experiment in a room by themselves, they could not tolerate the ice water very long. However, when someone else was in the room with them, their pain tolerance almost doubled. That is, when they were not alone, when they were with another caring person, they were able to endure almost double the time of pain.
I will fear no evil, the Psalmist said, because God is with me. God is with me through other persons, and God is with me even through some of the mysterious happenings, the God incidences of life, that are not explained through reason and logic. Next week we will talk about a couple of those.
Even when I walk through the darkest valleys of life, I will fear no evil. God will see me through and I know this because that is what has happened to others in those valleys of the shadow and that is what has happened to me and you in other times.
Judy and I were in Boulder last Wednesday evening for a concert with Joan Baez, one of the icons of our generation. She was great and I like her voice even better now than when she was younger and full of vibrato. She has a new album that contains a couple of songs that we may hear in worship. One is, God is God, from songwriter Steve Earle. It is a reminder that there is a spirit and power bigger than just you or me in our universe. She said it was a song inspired particularly by the recovery community.
She ended the concert with an encore, after a three minute standing ovation from the mixed age crowd. What she chose was an a cappella version of Amazing Grace and the audience got to sing along with her. Here is one of the verses we sang.
Through many dangers toils and snares I have already come Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.
Do you believe that? Do you know that grace from God? It is here for you, even in the darkest times, especially in the darkest times, and even in the valley of the shadow of death.
Thank you God.