A Rude Interruption of Life

“A Rude Interruption of Life”

Psalm 23 (MSG)

First Presbyterian Church

The Reverend Donald E. Ray

March 2, 2008

Fourth Sunday in Lent

Can we go home now? No, we can’t. Jenny’s going to play again and we don’t want to miss that. For weeks, the choir has reveled in Cyndi’s rendition of “Pie Jesu” and that was just in rehearsal. Today, in the atmosphere of worship—well, I’m glad I didn’t have to speak after it. Then the musical setting of the poem by Mark Hayes gives another fresh perspective on the too familiar 23^rd Psalm. We could just bask in all that beauty still pervading the air about us.

But Psalm 23 has another side and we would be remiss if we passed by its dark valley. May we be in prayer.

During my earlier years in ministry I served as pastor in a rural southeastern Pennsylvania community. An old bachelor school teacher was the recognized leader of the congregation because he was the most highly educated among that collection of farmers, mill workers, and small town merchants. In his retirement years, he had settled into studying Scripture, church history and theology, earning him respect as the town’s religious guru. Except for Sunday mornings when I did what I was supposed to do as the preacher, I more often learned at the feet of the resident master.

But then Stanley fell ill with cancer, terminal cancer. And he panicked. He maintained his outward demeanor with most. But he needed someone, and I was the pastor, so he shared his fears with me. He questioned all that he had professed. He had always warned that we must live in the fear of God and now that came back to haunt him. He knew that like any of us, he had broken rules along the way. Now he would soon die and in his mind, meet the God he pictured on the judgment throne and he was afraid, panicked.

I shared in his distress. I was losing one I looked to as mentor. I was losing the foundation on which I was seeking to build a faith. But somehow as Stanley and I walked death valley together, we had an awareness of not being alone. We began to discover that faith is not so much a foundation upon which one builds as it is a path which one walks.

The poet of the Psalms was if anything, a realist. Word pictures of the splendor of creation abound and almost always point to the Creator. But threats and foes and inward anguish also pervade the verses, acknowledging the harsher side of life.

We would prefer to take our ease in green pastures, beside still waters, in halls of spell binding music. But then the poet takes us into the valley of the shadow of death, a rude intrusion on the serenity of “God’s in his heaven and all is well with the world.”

But the dark valley is part of life as well; a part that none of us escape. Be it a life threatening illness, prolonged chronic suffering or a tragic loss befalling our self or a beloved, the shadow of the valley of death cast upon us seriously disrupts our life walk. The death valley’s impact may be mellowed by the gratification of a long life. Death valley may be welcomed as ending prolonged struggle, but that’s after our eyes have adjusted to the darkness. When we first step into that shadowy valley, it’s a jolt. It’s a rude interruption of life we think we select and manage.

Having suffered the death of my infant son; having endured the break up of my marriage and family; and having faced disease holding a serious threat to life, I would never minimize the impact of death’s valley. The first shadow fall is shocking, frightening, often stirs volatile reaction. In the 22^nd Psalm, the poet in his anguish cries out; “God, God…my God! Why do you dump me miles from nowhere?” (MSG) I recommend the reading of that Psalm, especially when ever the shadow of the dark valley first falls. It becomes evident that even in his raging, the poet felt caring acceptance in the presence of God. I believe there is internationality in the 23^rd Psalm following that raging cry, for it is out of darkness that either despair or faith grow, and for the Psalmist it is faith.

There have been times when theologians were supposed to inhabit ivory towers and devote themselves to writing ponderous books with answers to the puzzles of life. But the important theologians have done their thinking and writing about God in the midst of the action: Paul writing from his prison cell urgently guiding the course of fledgling churches; John, exiled in the prison of Patmos, sharing his vision to encourage his friends facing assault from enemies of their faith; Calvin seeking to bring community out of Geneva’s rebellious rabble; Bonhoeffer writing of grace as a fugitive in Nazi Germany.

While I do not minimize the pain, the anguish, the fear and doubting, the walk in death’s valley is just an interruption. Life goes on. It changes dramatically, but life goes on. We walk through and beyond death’s valley because we do not walk it alone. We may isolate ourselves; we may choose to stop walking and stay in the darkness. That we may not do that is why we read this Psalm and no matter how familiar it becomes, we read it again and again and again.

In the green meadows and by the still waters in life, the Psalmist saw God as shepherd caring for the flock. Knowing also that the shepherd comes to the side of the feeble ewe when she falls behind the pace of the flock, or seeks the straying lamb entangled in the brush, he writes that “even when the way goes through Death Valley , I’m not afraid when you walk by my side.” (MSG) In the dark valley, the poet changes from painting a pastoral scene to the language of prayer, trusting the nearness of God. I think the Psalmist, with tongue in cheek, is saying sheep are attuned enough to know that, are we?

My email pal sent me one this week with a slide show of scenes from nature and animals. It’s mostly green pastures and still waters tranquility, but a little of the scary, harshness also. Lightning streaks across a sunset; a volcano erupting; a cat and an eagle facing on a deck railing, but only looking at each other. The scenes of animals, domesticated and from the wild are all of peaceful cohabitation. That includes the human animals: a polar bear and boat skipper nose to nose through the cabin window of a boat; a baby elephant bedded down with the family in their cottage; a blue bird eating from a man’s fingers.

The slide show, titled “Sit back, relax and enjoy the simple yet remarkable life of mother nature and the animals she created,” is set to the music of a love song sung be Celine Dion. It is a love song, but then what is God if God is not love. I’m excerpting from the lyrics that struck me as I viewed the photos.

“When you call to me

when I hear your breath

I get wings to fly…

I feel that I’m alive

When you reach for me

Erases fear inside

Loves knows that…

That I’ll be the one standing by

Through good and through trying times

And its only begun

I can’t wait for the rest of my life

When you blessed the day

I just drift away

All my world is dark

I know that…I’m alive

Yeah

I get wings to fly

God knows that I’m alive. (1)

When Death Valley is the little and big deaths that are a rude interruption of life, “your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life.”

When Death Valley is our death, even genetic skeptic that I live with being, I walk in the peace and trust that “I’m back home in the house of God for the rest of my life.”

Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness that are the inspiration of the church’s Lent, the Scripture say were spent with the leading of the Spirit. I picture it as a beautiful, centering, energizing time, something like that slide show my friend sent to me. Confronted with the evil that was Death Valley for all that Jesus was drawn to in commitment to love, he has no fear, only firm resolve.

Through this Lent as the Spirit leads us, among those things we give up let it be the Death Valley interruptions that become more than interruptions and can overwhelm and ensnare us. Let us walk through the Death Valley that we may live again in the beauty and love that chase us.

(1) “I’m Alive” from Celine Dion …New Day Has Come Album

There is assurance in God’s love:

In life, in death, in life beyond death, there is that of us that in God’s love will never end.

Through this darkness to thy day

To thy life that knows no death

To thy time that knows no end

To that home that ends the way.

Grant unto thy servants rest

Grant them thine eternal rest.

“Pie Jesu” Faure’

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