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The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want , perhaps you've heard this song before. Perhaps you have even memorized it as a child, or perhaps you have taught it to your Children was appointed to

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be read last sunday and I have perhaps foolishly chosen to proclaim its good news to you this morning. As familiar as this song. Maybe there are some aspects of it that strike me as passing strange.

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For one thing, there is that business of the Lord's being my shepherd. David, to whom this song is attributed was in his own day. A claim to be the shepherd who led out Israel and

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brought it in the good shepherd of all God's sheep . But just so such a shepherd was Israel shepherd , their shepherd who might have more faithfully confessed with his people. We might think the Lord is our

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shepherd. So it's the best disconcerting to read. Not that, but the Lord is my shepherd. Does this not give into our worst instincts to privatize the faith? To pretend that I have a special

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relationship with God not available to the rest of you ? That he walks with me and talks with me and tells me I'm his own and the joy we to share, none other has ever known there is

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that danger. And given the state of much of american party, we find it all too easy to turn that my into a rather exclusive possessive. But the text says, my not our Dietrich Bonhoeffer once

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said that the theologians greatest temptation is to speak of God as if God were not in the room. That is not a mistake. This psalm commits. It is a psalm of Israel and it's language assumes

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the full and robust nature of Israel's faith. But the language is deeply personal, intimate even And his voice definitely to one who is in the room. Indeed, this one and not David, and not

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me or my or I or you. But this one is the chief agent at work in this song . The Lord is somehow enough such that I do not want. The Lord is the one who makes

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me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters. The Lord is that one who restores my soul? This is the source and giver of life. This one directs to write paths. Such

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a simple confession of faith, Uncluttered by self absorbed distractions or hesitations or desperate agendas. No, the Lord restores my soul a gift and all this. Not for my sake, not because it's so obvious

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that I'm worth his attention or that saving me is somehow God's primary business. No, the gift that enables me to say unapologetically, and indeed, happily the Lord is my shepherd is not for my sake

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at all. But we read for his name's sake , weirdly unaccountably mysteriously. This is the way that other one who was in the room works. This is his character. The Lord acts this way the

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Lord has chosen to act this way to love the sheep, which might seem a kind of insulation. Even a talisman against our worst fears, Those things that threaten to unsettle us or undo us. Isn't

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it great? We might say that the Lord is my shepherd. But again, the song here does something strange. It is that once so intimate and personal, but it has nothing of a pious smugness

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about it. Nothing that would imply that my shepherd is the muscle I can call on to keep my past comfortable and straight and carefree. No, the psalmist who claims this good shepherd is the one who

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finds himself walking in the shadow of death. Not having a bad day, not being depressed about things , but in the shadow of Death, that is the enemy that cannot be gotten around The last enemy

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No one wants to talk about yet. No one can avoid the one threat that is very powerful and would if it had its way for the purpose of this shepherd's namesake, the only way to sentimentalize this

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song Is to ignore its 4th 1st. The threat is not just the death awaits each of us and all of us. The threat is not really that we're mortal. Oh, it's deeper than that.

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The Valley of the Shadow is that almost silent whisper . We sometimes hear that none of this matters that at best are earnestness. Our pass indignation is nothing but a show. Just another way to promote our

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own agenda. Another way to pretend that we're the biggest baddest dude in the Valley until we can contrive some way to get out of it. The Valley of the Shadow is more lethal than thoughts of mortality

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. It is that deep nothingness that pervades our best motives and renders strangely full of passionate intensity without any real conviction into that valley. A place I suspect we are well acquainted. This is thomas knows we

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have to walk. The other day at a faculty meeting, a theological discussion broke out. Mhm. This may strike some of you is surprising or even implausible, but it is true. I witnessed it

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. The question arose as to whether the lyrics to jesus walked this lonesome valley. We're theologically valid, especially the verse that insists you must walk this lonesome valley. You must walk it by yourself. Nobody

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else can walk it for you. You must walk it by yourself. one of our number raised the question as to whether this was really true. Of course, each of us, it is true that

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each of us has to live his or her own life. There's no doubt about that. But do we really walk in this valley alone by ourselves? The psalmist doesn't seem to think so. In this

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lonesome valley, though we have to walk it. There is one, as he says, is with me, your Rod and your staff. They comfort me. The hopelessness of our cultures valley, the

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passionate intensity of our political slogans, the loneliness of our own resources. These are not strange places to this shepherd. Who knows the darkness of the cross ? His burden was to walk this lonesome valley,

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though even there he did not walk it by himself , but in the company of centers whom he did not forsake even on the cross. And this is where the psalm takes in my judgment. One of

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its strangest turns for one might expect some elaboration given to that Rod and staff business, perhaps some ethical or political strategy, or even advice for negotiating the vicissitudes of the Valley. What's the program after all

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for dealing with are hopeless culture. Our polarized rhetoric are broken politics. Where is the course for conflict resolution or educational training or dealing with congregational divisions in the valley? Yeah. Were it only so easy

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the psalmist has entered not a sociological experiment or even a political campaign or calls, but the Valley of the Shadow Death and its surrogates are not so easily swayed by our strategies. What the psalmist notes is

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that that one who has been with him in the Valley sets up a table there. Yeah. How ridiculous. How useless. In the midst of that hopelessness, the shepherd sets up a meal and not

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just a meal, but in the face of my enemies, some of whom, many of whom may dwell within me, but there this blessing overflows with abundance. What kind of answer is this? To

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what ails us? What good can such a table do, Stanley? Howard was has famously said that the church does not have a social ethic. It is a social ethic, and that is what this

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table describes. The self giving life that makes for a life together. A table broad enough to encompass us and our enemies. A table around which we are stuck with those whom we have not chosen,

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but whom this good shepherd would not be without. Is the table that surprises us as much as it does our enemies. A table that does not pretend that we're all friends or that we all agree a

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table that knows what it is to have and even be an enemy. And just so a table whose grace overflows our enmity? American christians, I think I don't like to think that we have enemies.

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We're good people, most churches or at least many churches take pride in advertising themselves as friendly churches. And I suspect we like to think of our seminary as a friendly place and all things considered. We

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should want to be friendly rather than unfriendly but goodwill , kind thoughts and that most popular virtue these days hospitality cannot serve as a substitute for this table's presence . Here is where competing factions that tear our lives

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apart, that break our hearts, that threaten us with the death of relationships, neighborhoods, marriages, families and nations. Here's where enemies come to eat . Does that strike you as a strange remedy for

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what ails us? It should. What kind of answer in the Valley of the Shadow is a table a meal, A life together, joe queen. I'm the writer and columnist. Tales of growing up

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in a working class section of philadelphia with an alcoholic father and a despairing and hopeless mother. Their home was not just impoverished, it was that, but the poverty they experienced was so destroying because it rendered

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their lives. He writes so chaotic. They had to move from rent house to rent house sometimes in the dead of night, he had to endure the unpredictable meetings of his abusive father and the indifference of

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a frightened mother. His salvation. He came, salvation came, he writes. And the form of the church where he served as uh altar boy every morning for morning mass and in the public library where

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he found the order and peace to read. The church is morning Mass shaped his day and nourished, he writes, brought him into a community of ordered worship and light, and the library provided space for

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him to think and question and grow and wonder. It reminds me a little bit of seminary here and our life together. Yeah. You see the Valley of the Shadow loves chaos. Weirdness. Maybe in

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Austin virtue that we like to celebrate especially over against some oppressive conformity, but without the ordering gift of love. All our attempts to be weird become numbingly the same and ultimately lethal. This table orders of

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life that flourishes that can in the words of window berry rejoice, even though we have considered all the facts. It is with that rejoicing the song concludes with the affirmation and confident hope, the national dwell

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in the house of the Lord my whole life long or as the Yeah, King James used to say forever. What a strange hold. Not that I will look on my enemies and triumph or watched while

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the flames consume them. No, none of those things simply, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. To awaken in such a house is rejoicing that ordering love that makes of us all

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no longer strangers or guests, but Children happy to be at home and commenting on another psalm. Father alexander Schmemann writes words that fit here as well. The first, the main source of everything he writes

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is my soul rejoices in the Lord. The fear sin does not say from sin. Joy in the Lord saves a feeling of guilt or moralism does not liberate from the world and its temptations. Joy is

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the foundation of freedom. And that's where this psalm leaves us as if those who discover this table in the midst of a very dark valley also discover that it was set just for them, as if we

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somehow belonged here. Like it or not, that this good shepherd intends that we shall sit and eat and dwell in the house of the Lord forever.