Wandering in the Valley
On Sunday, April 30, 2023, our morning congregational worship service was interrupted when someone threw two bricks at the church door. This occurred toward the conclusion of the sermon. Due to the disruption, several people have asked to have a copy of the sermon.
Scripture Readings
Psalm 23 and John 10: 1-10 (11-21)
Sermon
Why do bad things happen?
Not just to good people, as Rabbi Harold Kushner asked in his best selling book from so many years ago, but why do bad things happen to anyone at any time? At all.
There are so many examples. There are the big questions:
Why are there natural disasters, floods, and pestilence of all sorts?
Why is there war?
Why do some people decide to kill children by shooting up schools?
But there are also very specific questions we each have. Here are some of mine:
Why did my co-worker’s son develop meningitis when he was 4 years old and die?
Why was our neighbor’s daughter in a car wreck where she almost died yet another girl walked away?
Why did both my aunt and uncle develop different kinds of cancer, yet both proved fatal?
The Rev. Susan Sparks, pastor of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church in NYC, puts it this way:
Why do evil and suffering exist? For people of faith, this is an especially troubling question. Why do terrible things happen in a world that is supposedly governed by an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God? The fancy term for this question is “theodicy.” And it’s every pastor’s biggest nightmare. Because if you are theologically responsible, you must be willing to stand in front of your congregation and say I don’t know.¹
Two weeks after I started as pastor in my first church, a 16-year-old member died in a car crash. It happened at the same bridge where his mother had been in a car crash more than 20 years earlier. She survived that wreck, but her first husband didn’t.
Why? She wanted to know. Why? The congregation wanted to know. Why? I wanted to know.
Presbyterian minister and author Frederick Buechner describes such a moment this way:
ON THE EVENING OF THE DAY the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists, a service was hastily improvised in one of the largest New York churches, where crowds of both believers and nonbelievers came together in search of whatever it is people search for at such times—some word of reassurance, some glimmer of hope.
"At times like these," the speaker said, "God is useless."
When I first heard of it, it struck me as appalling, and then it struck me as very brave, and finally it struck me as true.
When horrors happen, we can't use God to make them unhappen any more than we can use a flood of light to put out a fire or Psalm 23 to find our way home in the dark.
All we can do is to draw close to God and to each other as best we can, the way those stunned New Yorkers did, and to hope that, although we may feel that God may well be is useless when all hell breaks loose, there is nothing that happens, not even hell, where God is not present with us and for us.²
The twenty-third Psalm is often used at funerals or memorial services, and it is useful for that. But it is not only for such a purpose. Psalm 23 is one of the Psalms of trust which also include Psalms 4, 11, 27, 16, 62, and 131.
Psalm 27: 1
The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Should I fear anyone?
Psalm 61: 2
Only God is my rock and my salvation—
my stronghold!—I won’t be shaken anymore.
Psalm 131: 2-3
But I have calmed and quieted myself
like a weaned child on its mother;
I’m like the weaned child that is with me.
Israel, wait for the Lord—
from now until forever from now!
We hear Psalm 23 with the words of the KJV—
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
But there are other things to fear besides death. Anytime there is an abyss we face, there can be fear. The CEB version speaks of a dark valley—
Even when I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no danger because you are with me.
And those dark places happen a lot. They are not just the horrible scenarios mentioned earlier. They are all too common.
And when we are in the dark places who do we trust? Where do we find meaning? What can provide hope?
Psalm 23 speaks to us of trust that provides assurance because we don’t want for anything. As The MSG translation reads:
God, my shepherd!
I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.
Even 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.
The Hebrew confidence for such trust arose because of the experience of the Exodus. For 40 years the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness after their captivity in Egypt.
Deuteronomy 2:7
Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.
Life in the wilderness was hard. It was challenging. Yes, there was grumbling, yet manna was provided. Yes, there were deaths, yet a new generation was born. Yes, the people were thirsty, yet the Lord directed Moses to strike the rock and the people drank. There were grassy meadows (green pastures) , restful waters (still waters), and the needed direction (a right path).
Such provision developed in those people a sense of trust in God. That trust was passed from generation to generation. We still pass it down today. Yet with each generation we must learn to trust again. We may have been taught to trust, but we learn what that means in whole new ways.
During Jesus’ lifetime and in the period of the early church, Jesus’ followers were learning to trust all over again. The words of John 10 speak to how we do this. Jesus began by sharing the image of faithful followers as being sheep. Just like sheep you need to know who you trust. But then Jesus realizes his first attempt doesn’t get through. So verse 6 tells us:
Those who heard Jesus use this analogy didn’t understand what he was saying. So Jesus spoke again. I assure you I am the gate of the sheep.
I have to wonder though if Jesus thought that after this second try he wasn’t getting through. So he used another metaphor:
I am the good shepherd.
I know my sheep and my sheep know me.
He doesn’t settle on I am the good shepherd once. Jesus told this to the disciples twice.
The Good Shepherd. The one who takes us into green pastures, still waters, and sets before us the right direction.
We are here because someone gave us the gift of trust. So we have to learn how to use it, develop it, and accept it. This may sound a bit dismissive. How can we move forward with all the untrustworthy things that happen in the world? We do it by exercising the gift of grace and love shared by God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. Again, good churchy words.
Let me use the words of the poet Laura Kelly Fanucci from the summer of 2020 (you remember that time) during those early days of the COVID pandemic:
When this is over, may we never again take for granted
A handshake with a stranger
Full shelves at the store
Conversations with neighbors
A crowded theatre
Friday night out
The taste of communion
A routine checkup
The school rush each morning
Coffee with a friend
The stadium roaring
Each deep breath
A boring Tuesday
Life itself.³
Simply: green pastures, still waters, and the right direction.
Prayer
Lord God, may we continue to grow in our ability to trust you, others and ourselves so that we may live in your love. Amen.
¹The Rev. Susan Sparks, Just Keep on Walking, April 25, 2023, Day 1.org
² Frederick Buechner, Sermon Illustration: Disaster, May 2, 2023. Day1.org.
³ Laura Kelly Fanucci, When This is Over, 2020.