"A Table for Me" given May 7, 2017

One of the risks of preaching on a verse as well-known and as beloved as the Twenty-third Psalm is that as soon as the preacher begins to read those familiar words, bang! Our minds shift gears from their careful listening mode to their nostalgia mode and poof! We're wafted away on a pink cloud of remembrance to our childhood.

Suddenly, there we are, squirming in scratchy, uncomfortable, unfamiliar dress clothes, sitting in short- legged chairs around a little table, listening to our big grown-up lady Sunday School teacher wearing white gloves and a pillbox hat tell us that Jesus loves us and how He protects and takes care of good little children like a shepherd.

Suddenly, we’re at Great-grandma’s funeral—hearing these familiar words and taking evocative comfort in them—but not fully grasping their total power to heal and console us in such a moment of loss.

After all, how many of us knew what a shepherd actually did when we were little—or had met a sheep for that matter? Some of the commentaries I read suggest that the most effective way to preach on this text is to use a different translation—any translation except the O-so-familiar King James Version.

But the risk with doing that is that you'll all whip out your King James Version Bibles from under your shoulder holsters and follow along, line by line, word by word, shaking your heads and clucking your tongues as a little voice way back in the corner of your minds goes: "That's not the right words. The preacher's a heretic! Somebody call the Bishop."

I know my wife doesn't want me ridden out of town on a rail-- much less burned at the stake. So please take note. We have already read the King James Version as the Psalter reading! You can relax--switch off your nostalgia buttons-- propriety has been observed. But let me invite you to consider—is reading a Bible passage for the sake of nostalgia and nostalgia alone, truly respectful to the Scripture itself—or to God?

So, I want to invite you to listen with open ears to a different translation-- not comparing, just listening, trying to hear it as if it was the very first time-- just for fun, just to see if it gives you a new slant on this text. Open your mind and heart to God’s holy word.

  O GOD, my shepherd! I don't need a thing.

    ²You have bedded me down in lush meadows,

    you find me quiet pools to drink from.

    ³True to your word, you let me catch my breath

    and send me in the right direction.

  ⁴Even when the way goes through Death Valley,

    I'm not afraid when you walk at my side.

    Your trusty shepherd's crook makes me feel secure.

  

     ⁵You serve me a six-course dinner

right in front of my enemies.

    You revive my drooping head;

my cup brims with blessing.

   ⁶Your beauty and love chase after me

every day of my life.

    I'm back home in the house of GOD  

for the rest of my life. (The Message)

These images of a caring shepherd and a generous host who freely offers a joyous and abundant banquet are among the most beloved and enduring in the entire Hebrew/Christian tradition. They express the deep-seated confidence of the faithful believer in the saving grace of her God at work in the world. They offer words of comfort and hope in times of loss and pain. Even our deepest anxieties can be conquered, says the Psalm, when God is on our side.

But if we listen carefully, maybe our conventional understanding of ourselves and of our God can be stretched just a bit more in this magnificent piece of faith poetry. Our God prepares a feast for us, Other Psalms compare our God to a fortress with towers and walls. But here we are promised a feast, a nurturing, enlivening, fulfilling banquet—a holy repast in full view of those who would oppose or exploit or enslave the human spirit! It's said that this particular verse was a favorite communion text in the Churches of London during the Blitz bombings during World War II. In one instance, when a part of the church building was literally struck by a bomb, the Communion Service went on.

"You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies."

Frankly, to our rational, human mindset such an act seems risky, even downright foolish. Believers letting their guard down in orders to enjoy such a banquet would certainly be making themselves into easy targets for their adversaries! What sort of fool will not seek cover when bombs are falling? What sort of fool feasts in the face of a foe?

Yet such seeming foolishness is really nothing more than a reflection of an unshakeable confidence in the supreme wisdom and caring love of our Maker. Paul wrote that God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. Our faith tells us plainly that when we open ourselves in honest vulnerability to God and God’s Will for us, it is greater than any emotional or intellectual or psychic armor that any human belief system-- Marxism or capitalism, atheism, secularism or humanism --can generate.

Think about it! It's not through flood or fire, not through natural disaster or miracle. It's not through conquering armies or crusade. It’s not through the preaching of televangelists or missionaries, or Bishops, or even your local pastor! It’s not through our memorizing Bible verses or arguing atheists in church membership. It's through a Banquet Table that our God intends to save and transform us, and to save and transform our world as well. "Thou preparest a table before me....."

I was fascinated to learn what happened when the former East German border guards began to tear down-- not just the Berlin wall, but the whole, nation-long network of stone walls and barbed wire and machine gun towers that had divided their land for those terrible Cold War decades. They found to their surprise, mile after mile of brick and mortar and concrete and wire literally falling apart on its own as they began to dismantle it.

The years, the elements, the wind and rain and sun and snow of God our Creator had worn away and rotted and rusted this monument to human tyranny away. So much so that in places it literally crumbled to their touch and blew away with the wind.

"You prepare a table for me, a banquet in the presence of my enemies." In Central America, in China, in Cuba, in North Korea and the Middle East and so many other places the human spirit reaches out for the redeeming, saving, shepherding God who promises hope and purpose and new life. All the tanks and the propaganda, all the walls and oppression and sanctions in the world cannot contain the human spirit in it's hunger for Justice, for Freedom, for Dignity, in a word-- for the Divine.

"You prepare a table for me." Within each and every one of us, there’s an impulse if you will, to try and make sense out of our existence--a need for meaning. Michael Novak, a contemporary Roman Catholic lay Theologian writes about this deep inner yearning within in us all. He calls it,

....a drive to unify my own psyche, to perceive its harmony (or in any case relations) with others, with nature, with history.....

The drive which ultimately gives sense to all my diffuse actions is a unifying, meaning-giving drive. It is that drive which even in atheists and agnostics, I wish to call the religious drive. It ties one's life together.

In the Book of Romans, Paul simply calls this tying together, "coming into our own". St. Augustine wrote in the Fourth Century that our hearts are restless, until they find their rest in God. As a prisoner in Auschwitz, Psychiatrist Victor Frankl noticed that those who survived the Death Camps were, to a great extent, those who had found some purpose to go on living. He wrote a book after that terrible experience called Man's Search for Meaning.

The truth is, you and I are drawn, almost irresistibly to our Maker. And the wonder of this is that our God is also drawn, by our Maker’s own overflowing goodness and mercy, to us as well. If we were to imagine that we had to look for God, we might well lose heart. But as our Lord Jesus points out in this morning's Gospel lesson, The Shepherd calls the sheep, each by name and they come. Our Shepherding God seeks us out and calls us, each by name, just as we are each drawn to the sheepfold door. Our Shepherd will tie our life together.

Call it hunger for the Ultimate. Call it the religious drive within us. Call it a yearning for a Higher Power to manage our ungovernable lives. Call it the Holy Spirit at work within us. Call it the Divine spark. Call it the Imago Dei

Call it what you will--still it is undeniably there within our deepest hearts. Still it is true. Our Shepherd God calls every single one of us by name. By our very nature, we are each of us drawn to meaning, to purpose, to a sense of our place in the universe, to God. And by God's very own nature, our God is drawn to us.

We might well feel lost at times. We may well feel at times that we are trapped in the valley of death and despair and darkness. But even there, our Shepherding God is still with us. Our God--the Giver of Divine Hospitality, the Source of all Good will prepare a table before us.

In the Middle East, the shepherds often had to clean our a field before sheep could be allowed to graze in it. Poisonous weeds and thorns had to be uprooted, and snakes and scorpions would have to be killed. This process was called "preparing the table."

Then at evening, as the sheep were corralled, the injured and sickly ones would be separated from the flock. Their wounds would be treated with healing oils. They would be fed a home remedy, a curative drink made with herbs and fermented wild honey.

Christ our Good Shepherd, the Creator who is the Source of Divine Hospitality, and the Holy Spirit who works within us, has prepared a table for us--in the presence of our community and even in the presence of our enemies. At the Banquet Table you and I come to feel the Divine hospitality of our God, We feel it in the warmth and security of the Spirit we know as we find ourselves, through the Son, drawn close to the Creator's heart.

In that same spirit of Divine hospitality we are able to understand Archbishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela and the other South African Christians-- black and white-- who struggled so long and so hard against Apartheid-- as attending a wedding banquet in the presence of those who would keep them under the murderous heel of hatred and divisive tribalism. They literally invited those who supported legalized racism to put down their guns and come to the Table of our Shepherd God.

It is the same spirit we saw in the life and mission of Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King. It was the same spirit we saw in the people of the Philippines a few years ago when they faced down tanks with prayers to reclaim their country from the Marcos regime. It is that same spirit we saw in the life and ministry of the martyred Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero who said at the last,

...I am obliged by divine command, to give my life for those whom I love--and that is for all Salvadorians, even for those who may assassinate me. If the threats should come to pass, I offer God, for this very moment, my blood for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador.

Ours is a God who transforms lives by the irresistible power of Divine hospitality. Ours is a God who wears down walls by the indomitable power of the human spirit. Ours is a God who frees whole peoples through the gentle power of non-violence. Who could not be filled with wonder and awe to contemplate such Divine power?

The Table that our God has prepared throughout the ages, for all of us, finally culminates in Christ Jesus. His Life and Resurrection and the Sacrament he left us are the ultimate symbol of Holy Hospitality, demonstrated in full view of the enemy. Jesus, we read in John's Gospel,

"…loved those who were His in the world, loved them to the end." Yet He did so freely, John adds, “laying down his life for his sheep".

That is why for Christians this text is so well known, so loved. That is why for us the Shepherd image is so powerful, no matter how old we are, no matter whether we've ever even seen a live sheep in our life. The Shepherding God the psalmist sang about, is one and the same with Christ our Good Shepherd. And we are his beloved flock.

But Jesus also reminds us that he has other sheep—not of our fold. And we recall his command to Peter. “ Do you love me? Feed my sheep. Do you love me? Then feed my lambs.” Love-- family love, romantic love, sacrificial love—honest, genuine love of any sort-- is never passive. When you and I truly love, it changes us. Once we’ve experienced it, we find ourselves feeding His other sheep through our welcoming fellowship, our outreach, our charity—through the witness of our lives.

Following Jesus, giving our lives to Him and His service then, are the keys to the door to the abundant life and life eternal. He is that Door. His heavenly banquet has been prepared for you and for me by the very hand of our God. Let us rejoice. Let us offer our praise, and make our offerings. Let us believe there is still life and hope and possibility here, in this place where our Savior has planted us. Let us reach out to others in His name. Let us come to the Altar of Christ our Shepherd with reverence and thanks, our hearts and lives running over with gratitude and love. Amen.