Let us pray:  Gracious God, we encounter and follow you in ways long practiced before us. So keep us open and alive to meeting and following you in ways unexpected and untravelled. Keep us open to the ones we might otherwise overlook. Keep us open to love. Amen.

    I kind of hinted at this in the time of Learning with the Children this morning, but there is certain kind of risk in saying too much about a precious and beloved passage of scripture. There is the danger I am going to say something that might burst a bubble for some people - a bubble of comfort and sacredness, by suggesting new ways to understand a favourite and much loved psalm. There is also a danger, although I expect that is too strong a word, but some kind of risk at any rate that someone will be angry with me for even thinking that I could say more about a reading that has been loved for so many centuries. What could Peter possibly have to say to this psalm that is so well known and so well loved by so many people. I had a hint of this when I read my bible commentaries. I’m going to share more in a moment about what some of them had to say, but first I want to read this comment on Psalm 23 from this one volume commentary. I found it both amusing and somewhat disturbing.


Amusing because the language seems to emanate from a different generation. I can’t imagine someone writing that kind of comment in the present age. Disturbing because it seems to allow little critical thought to be directed towards this psalm which is so well loved.

    I have to admit that some of these concerns have directed my past attention to this much loved passage of Scripture. Except for mention in many funerals where the placid, peaceful images with which the psalm begins are very appropriate, I have never spoken, as far as I can recall, on Psalm 23 before. Part of the reason is the sense that the passage is so well known that there is little more that could be said about it, but clearly the other reason is the desire not to upset someone’s apple cart by putting the lens of critical examination up to this deeply personal piece of scripture.

    At the same time I recall a brief conversation I had with a classmate at seminary. My friend Julia was someone who enjoyed taking second looks at long held assumptions and so when she enrolled in a course on the psalms and was invited to pick a psalm on which to do a major paper, she quickly chose Psalm 23 - not because it was particularly well loved by her, but because she wanted to see what fresh and perhaps upsetting insights could be discovered.

    I never really had an in-depth conversation with her about her research and I did not take that particular course, but I do recall a conversation with her one day as we walked into the daily chapel service. She told me how she had chosen Psalm 23 and that she was learning there was a lot more to be discovered about this most cherished work. That’s all she said, but I’ve always kept that comment from her in my mind whenever I’ve read the psalm myself.

    To me, a key to deeper understanding of the psalm occurs in one line. You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies. For me it’s a startling and unsettling notion. I have no problem with the first part - the setting of a table for us by God - in fact despite the change of metaphor from shepherd to host that takes place in the psalm somewhat invisibly  - it seems to fit the opening theme to consider God as host at a table of welcome. It follows right along with the place beside still waters and the green pastures of calming rest. So God as host is not a leap at all - it follows from the opening of the psalm. It is the “presence of my enemies” which is so surprising. Presumably these are not enemies hell-bent on our destruction, for if they are, then it is a highly risky thing to stop and eat right in front of them. It is either a statement of supreme courage or deep faith - a trust in God that is so deep that even our enemies don’t scare us, so much that we can stop and eat at table right before them.

    This section comes in the dark section of the psalm - amazing how there can be definite sections in such a short reading - when we hear the promise that God will be with us even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death - yet another reference to deep trust and faith in God in the most difficult of times.

    This dark section of the psalm carries with it a strong sense of subversion. Things are not the way they might seem at first glance. God subverts the normal order - enemies do not present the same kind of danger when God is at our side. Dark, foreboding valleys are not that when God is with us. It is much the same sense as the one with which the psalm begins, but with very much less of a bucolic peaceful backdrop. I would say that there is a sense of menace in these middle verses. Reassuring yes, but unsettling at the same time, except when we get the point - that we have God with us, protecting us.

    Does communion take on a different sense when we consider it as a table set for us in the presence of our enemies? What did communion mean for early Christians who had to meet secretly and employ secret signs to get them there? What did they think when they read this poem from the sacred scripture of their Jewish past - did it disturb or console them?

    Surely this communion table in our present day would not be one which we see as dangerous to eat at - but what if it was. What would we have to do, what kind of lives would we have to live that would make it a dangerous place and a courageous statement of our trust and faith in God that we would gather around it despite the risk that might present to us? What could be dangerous about a circle of community gathered around a table of simple elements - elements meant to bring us physical satisfaction, but also meant to bring us to new understandings of spiritual fulfillment. Could it be that the circle is dangerously open? Could it be that includes people who others thinks should not be there? Could it be that it is a circle which upsets the social order of power and authority and puts us in relationship with each other in a way that subverts the normal way of being and seeing?

    I like to think it is and given this context, Psalm 23 rather than a placid and peaceful recounting of the rest and contentment that is God’s promise to us - which it still can be, can also be a powerful statement about power being subverted and thumbing our nose at so-called enemies, so much that we are not afraid to gather at table despite the threats and danger that we face.

    For me, this is part of the journey of Lent - a journey that draws us to new understandings and ideas that run counter to ones we might have had before. We are also reminded of the dangerous table at which Jesus ate. Despite the fact that that table is the one we commemorate in communion today, it is also the one which was part of the story that resulted in his arrest and execution, as we will hear next week on palm and passion Sunday.
    Open our eyes that we may see, glimpses of truth you have for us, O God. Illumine us and our faith stories in new and revealing ways. Amen.