Psalm 23 (part two)

The LORD is my Shepherd – I will fear no evil

Psalm 23 part two

Let’s talk about phobias. The definition of a phobia is an irrational fear of something and there are all kinds of phobias out there. I had a look at some recognised by the Oxford English dictionary and there are some pretty obvious as well as some pretty obscure ones. 

For example did you know that if you have a fear of Americans you are suffering Americophobia? A fear of body odour is bromidrosiphobia and a fear of bullets is ballistophobia. Although I think a fear of bullets is generally healthy and to be encouraged!

I’m going to test you on some this morning. The first one is easy and is probably quite prevalent at this time of year. What is arachnophobia? (Fear of spiders)

What about ichthyophobia? (Fear of fish) Gamophobia? (Fear of marriage) Gephyrophobia? (Fear of bridges). Triskaidekaphobia? (Fear of the number 13). And finally, thanatophobia? (Fear of death). Ineterestingly most of these words come from Greek and I know a few people who studied NT Greek with me who definitely suffered from Hellenophobia – a fear of Greek or Latin terms!

Fear of death is, of course, very real for many people. Even if we don’t actually fear death itself, the process of dying can, we know, be unpleasant, painful and hard both to go through and to watch. So, perhaps, it is the fear of suffering more than the fear of dying, that we struggle with. 

So, how is it that David could get to a position in writing Psalm 23, where he could say ‘I will fear no evil’. I suppose the clues are there throughout his life. This is the young man who fought off wolves and bears as he looked after Jesse’s sheep in the Bethlehem hills. This is the man who faced down the Philistine champion with a sling and a stone. This is the man who, when on the run from Saul, twice crept close enough to him to kill him but was courageous enough to stand up to the temptations put forward by his men. This is the man who led a rescue party to bring back the kidnapped wives and children of his men. This is the man who ultimately defeated the Philistines, captured Jerusalem and built a kingdom. 

David knew about courage in the face of evil if anyone did, but the secret of his courage is revealed here in this psalm. It was not his own strength of character or will power that made David courageous and allowed him to say ‘I will fear no evil’. It was the knowledge that the LORD was his shepherd.

So, what is the evil David is referring to in this psalm? Some translations talk about the valley of the shadow of death. Others say simply the darkest valley or the deepest darkness. Clearly it is a path of suffering. It is a path down which nobody wants to travel.

It is probably that idea of the valley of the shadow of death which, more than any other, leads us to use this psalm at funeral service, but I think we can understand this valley to be any path of suffering we might go down including the path of death and bereavement.

All of us, to some extent, have walked these dark paths. We have endured the suffering of losing a family member. In some cases that loss has been sudden and shocking. In others it has been preceded by a period of watching and waiting as a loved one slowly slipped away from us. The language of a shadow is very powerful because we do feel enveloped by darkness at those times. 

But the times of deep darkness are not limited to death and bereavement. They include the times of ill health that begin with the unexpected diagnosis from the hospital and continue through the periods of treatment, exhaustion and isolation. We go through pain. We endure setbacks. Our physical strength is weakened and our emotional strength is wrung out.

There may be times of mental illness – anxiety or depression – that lead into that long, dark valley that so many people experience but so few people still talk about. The darkness of depression is a valley of deepest darkness. It is a struggle just to get out of bed in the morning. Simply meeting people and talking to people is physically draining. There is an unexplained feeling of shame or guilt attached to admitting that we are, in fact, not fine. If we say that we are just not coping at the moment, it feels like an admission of weakness.

Whether it is bereavement or physical or mental illness, we can feel hemmed in by the darkness. No matter where we turn or what we are doing or who we are with our minds are filled only by thoughts of the person who has gone or the situation we are in. 

Some people enter our valley with us for a while. They sit with us. They pray with us. Perhaps they give us a hug or bring food. But then they leave again because while they feel sad and sorry for us, they are not experiencing the grief we are experiencing. They have their own lives to live. They have their own issues to focus on. They have their own paths to walk down and, for now, their path does not take them through the darkness.

All these paths are hard paths to travel. They are painful paths but they are not wrong paths. When the shepherd guides the flock through the valley he does so in the knowledge that these are dangerous paths. He knows that there are lurking threats from wild animals or bandits hiding in the caves and rocky cliffs. We do not generally end up walking these paths because of some sin that we have committed. We are not being punished. Derek Kidner in commenting on this verse says this; ‘The dark valley, or ravine, is as truly one of his ‘right paths’ as are the green pastures – a fact that takes much of the sting out of any ordeal. And his presence overcomes the worst thing that remains: the fear.’

The danger of fear exists on these dark paths because it is here that we come face to face with evil. The anniversary of 9/11 earlier this week reminds us that sometimes it is acts of pure evil that plunge us into the deep darkness without warning.

In bereavement we come face to face with the evil of death, the curse that our sin has brought into the world that blights every human relationship. Each time we face bereavement something within us wants to cry out ‘This is wrong! This is not the way it is supposed to be! This is evil!’ And we are absolutely right to feel this way. 

In illness we come face to face with the evil of weakness and suffering that we were never supposed to endure. 

Mental illness brings into sharp focus like nothing else that we are creatures living in an identity crisis, made to live with God in a perfected eternity but dwelling in a time and space full of suffering and sickness and sorrow. We were made for a world without evil and we live in a world where evil exists all around us and even within our own hearts.

But the message of the 23^rd psalm is that, even when we come face to face with the lurking evil in the darkest of paths, we need not fear. We need not fear because our shepherd is with us.

Last week we thought about how Jesus deliberately identifies himself with the shepherd of psalm 23. He is the good shepherd. He is not like those hired hands who run off in the face of danger. He faces down the evil. 

The rod that the psalmist talks about was the shepherd’s weapon. It was a cudgel like implement with which he could fend off the attack of whichever wild animal was threatening the flock.

Our shepherd, Jesus, has faced down and defeated the devil himself. He does it in the wilderness when he refuses the devil’s temptation to do things the quick way rather than the right way. He does it in Caesarea Philippi when he rebukes the devil for using Peter to try and deflect him from the cross. He does it in Gethsemane when he overcomes the anguish of the cup that he must drink and sets his face towards the cross.

And on the cross itself he disarms and destroys the powers of evil once and for all. The one who led Adam and the entire human race into sin is bound and fettered at the cross of Jesus. As promised in Genesis 3, the seed of the woman has crushed his head and he is a defeated enemy.

The shepherd’s staff is his aid to walking through the rough paths and difficult to terrain. Just as hillwalkers today have their walking poles, he had his staff. His aim is to keep us walking until we get through the dark valley. He is with us to encourage us, comfort us and keep us going. He is not going to run away. He is alongside us no matter what happens. He lays down his life for us. He will not leave us.

 ‘In death’s dark vale I fear no ill, 

with You, dear Lord beside me; 

Your rod and staff my comfort still, 

Your cross before to guide me. 

We don’t need to fear any evil when this shepherd is beside us.

In the Narnia story the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Edmund, Lucy and their cousin Eustace find themselves on a Narnian ship set out to explore the furthest reaches of the seas. On one of their adventures the ship sails into a mysterious and magical darkness that surrounds an island. In this darkness all those on board the ship start to imagine their worst nightmares coming true. 

The entire crew are in abject terror until they spot a beam of light in the sky with something flying towards them. ‘Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something in it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked like an aeroplane, then it looked like a kite, and at last with whirring of wings it was right overhead and was an albatross. It circled three times round the mast and then perched or an instant on the crest of the gilded dragon at the prow. It called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose and began to fly slowly ahead, bearing a little to starboard. Drinian steered after it not doubting that it offered good guidance. But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her “Courage, dear heart,” and the voice, she felt sure was Aslan’s and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.’

Here are the words Jesus whispers to us in the midst of the darkest valley. ‘Courage, dear heart.’ He loves you. He is with you. He has been this way before you and he can guide you through. Stuart Townend has taken that image and put it this way in his song There is a hope.

There is a hope that lifts my weary head,
A consolation strong against despair,
That when the world has plunged me in its deepest pit,
I find the Saviour there!
Through present sufferings, future’s fear,
He whispers ‘courage’ in my ear.
For I am safe in everlasting arms,
And they will lead me home.

Even when the path leads eventually through my own suffering leading to death, he is with me. As Derek Kidner says, ‘only the Lord can lead a man through death; all other guides turn back, and the traveller must go on alone’.  I face the darkest valley of all on our own unless the LORD is my shepherd. 

But when he is with me, even death itself is robbed of its fear and its power to hurt. This is the good shepherd who lays down his life. He suffers and dies, faces down everything the evil one can throw at him and then he is buried.

His body bound and drenched in tears
They laid Him down in Joseph's tomb.
The entrance sealed by heavy stone
Messiah still and all alone

But this is the good shepherd who lays down his life only to take it up again. 

Then on the third at break of dawn,
The Son of heaven rose again.
O trampled death where is your sting?
The angels roar for Christ the King

Death has no hold over him and has no hold over us as we trust in him. In the midst of the darkest valley we can imagine, we discover that our shepherd is also the king who conquers death. Who else would you have walking with you through that valley?

In The Lord of the Rings (I know a Narnia illustration and a Lord of the Rings one in the same sermon is a bit much but stick with me). In the Lord of the Rings the ranger, Aragorn, leads a group of people into a dark and dangerous mountain pass known as the paths of the dead. In that pass, it is said, dwell the undead spirits of soldiers who betrayed their king at a crucial moment and have been cursed ever since. No-one has ever gone down those paths and returned. But Aragorn goes nonetheless. 

Sure enough, he and his men encounter the ghostly soldiers and, just at the moment when it seems all is lost, Aragorn reveals his true identity. He is the one true king to whom they owe allegiance. They are unable to harm him or any of those with him. Anyone else wandering those dark paths would not survive but this group does because the King is with them.

The one true King walks with us through every path in life. He is there among the green pastures. He is there by the still waters. And he is there in the deepest, darkest valley we can imagine. And because the king is our shepherd, we have nothing to fear.

The Anglican vicar David Watson, died of cancer in 1984. After his diagnosis he began writing a book called ‘Fear No Evil. This is what he writes towards the end of that book. 

‘God offers no promise to shield us from the evil of this world. There is no immunity guaranteed from sickness, pain, sorrow or death. What he does pledge is his never-failing presence for those who have found him in Christ. Nothing can destroy that. Always he is with us. And, in the long run, that is all we need to know.’

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.