Psalm 23
Mike Banister
The Shepherd
“It is God’s companionship that transforms every situation. It does not mean there are no deathly valleys, no enemies. “ - Walter Brueggemann
When I was a child I would pray a lot at nighttime, lying in bed with my face turned toward the
window to catch the breeze created by our window fan. My parents who had mental health and
addiction problems would reserve the time right after putting me to bed to have their loudest and angriest quarrels. I suppose in their minds they were protecting me. I couldn’t make out all the words
but I could sense the waves of anger in the house. It saddened me but mostly it frightened me. Then I would focus on my memory of a picture of Jesus carrying a lamb on his shoulders, Jesus with strong
shoulders and a smiling face. It was a picture I saw every week in Sunday School class. I pictured this
Jesus in my imagination and asked him to protect me. I would feel immediately, completely comforted and calmed. I would drift off to sleep.
I share this story, not because it is unique to my experience but because it is exemplary of a million other stories of people finding comfort and strength in this simple poem.
I know very little scripture from memory but I know this Psalm word for word and pray it in
times of stress and grief and find it hasn’t lost its power. Again I would be willing to bet there are
millions of other folk who could confirm that practice. It is part of our heritage as the Church Universal
that reminds us that the great ancient library of books, that all too human book, that flawed
masterpiece, we name Bible, simply cannot be given away to the care of Christians who wish to use it to
forward an agenda of selfishness and mindless nationalism. It is a book for liberals, full of comfort for
the afflicted and eloquent pleas for justice and peace. Read it with the eyes of Jesus. Develop a Jesus
hermeneutic. If you don’t find Jesus’ spirit in it, skip it, if you do, treasure it. I believe it is an
indispensible book for Kingdom people.
Again from Walter Brueggemann:
“It is almost pretentious to comment on this psalm. The grip it has on biblical spirituality is deep and genuine. It is such a simple statement that it can bear its own witness without comment.”
And again:
“It is God’s companionship that transforms every situation. It does not mean there are no deathly valleys, no enemies. “ - Walter Brueggemann
John 10:1-10
Hope Gold
Once upon a time, there was a man named John Murray. He was an Englishman and minister in the late 18th century who was raised in a strict, religious household. Murray became a believer in James Reilly’s Universalist teachings in the late 1760s, and his congregation promptly excommunicated him. Soon after Murray’s conversion, his young wife and their one-year-old son became ill and died, as did three sisters and a brother. He fell into debt and fell out with family and religious colleagues who opposed his new views. He was depressed, considered suicide, and eventually decided to go to America and leave behind his old life, including religion.
He got on a ship bound for the American colonies, determined to “lose himself there.” He landed in the New England area, where he met a man called Thomas Potter. Potter had just finished building a small church/chapel in hopes that a minister would come to spread the Universalist message that he had recently discovered. John Murray showed up (out of the blue), and Potter was in awe at the serendipity, or hand of God, in Murray’s arrival. Potter tried to convince John Murray to preach there, and at first, Murray was wary. He had been “burned” by his previous experience and was still grieving and hurt at the downward turn his life had taken. Eventually, Murray succumbed to Potter’s pleas, and Universalism found its way to America. Sharing hope, instead of hell, became their primary message.
I love this story. It shows the hand of God in Murray’s journey, and how God ushers in the right circumstances and support for us when needed, even when we’re not feeling very faithful at the time. This story also brings to mind “the gate” as discussed in John 10:1-10. Jesus says that thieves will try to get into the gate, and that their intentions will be bad. He states that if one comes through the gate (Jesus calling himself the gate as metaphor) that they will be “saved.”
This view of avoiding hell and making it to heaven through Jesus has been taken literally for millennia. However, when I read this passage, what I interpret is a message that is universal for all humanity. There is a gate, and Jesus incarnated to help us along on this journey and show us “the way” to make it back home. Hence, he is the gate. He embodied the way home. If you tune in to his teachings, you find nuggets of information about how to live, how to remember our source, and how to make it back home at the end of our lives. He implied that death, of course, was illusory and a transition to God. Is Jesus the only gate? Are there other gates? I think so, but who can be certain of that answer? It is easy to be led down paths of dis-ease and behavior that won’t assist a person in his/her psycho-spiritual growth (hence the thief metaphor. ) Therefore, when one chooses the gate of forgiveness and love, they have found the “way” Jesus espoused, and can make his/her way back to God. If you don’t find that gate do you not find God? Possibly. But you will, eventually, and when you do, God is always waiting on you. There is no eternal damnation for not quite making it through the right gate. That was the essence of the Universalist message- you might have to work some issues out after death- we all have a “judgement day,” but you will at some point, be united with God.
There is hope.
