In God's Hands, Part 2

In God’s Hands, Part 2

Psalm 31[1]

In our culture, it seems that religion is something that has more to do with dying than with living. For many people, Christian faith is all about making sure they’ll “go to heaven when they die.” Even at its best, this perspective is one that views faith as preparation to “meet our maker,” a way to approach death with confidence rather than fear. While there is truth in those sentiments, I think those who make Christian faith about dying have got it somewhat backwards. Christian faith is about living!

When we read our Psalm for today, we naturally think of Jesus’ cry on the cross, “Into your hand I commit my spirit” (Lk. 23:46), as a dying prayer. But if we view it in the light of the Psalm from which it was taken, we have to take it rather as a life motto. The Psalmist recounted all the hardships of life—enemies who seek to undo him, anxiety and sorrow from opposition, fear and even shame. At the end of it all, the Psalmist could say, “I am as forgotten as a dead man” (cf. Ps. 31:12, TEV).

And yet, in spite of all the afflictions he endured he could pray, “Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God” (Ps. 31:5). One of the details of this verse is that the Hebrew word translated “spirit” can also be translated “life.” In a very real sense, the Psalmist was entrusting his whole life to God. Despite any hardships, he could say, “it is up to you, God, what becomes of me, and I am willing to have it so.”[2] Later in the Psalm he said it this way,  “my times are in your hand” (Ps. 31:15).

The whole Psalm is a prayer of trust, of confidence in the “faithful God” (Ps. 31:5), literally in Hebrew “the God of truth” (el-emeth). The Psalmist trusted in “the God who can be relied on and believed in because [God] is true to himself.”[3] And so the end of his prayer is “Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you that wait for the Lord” (Ps. 31:24).

That’s a prayer for life, not a cry of death!  From that perspective the prayer “Into your hand I commit my spirit” is more of a motto for living than a prayer for dying. That sense of trust defined Jesus’ entire life, not just his final days. Time and time again Jesus told his disciples that his life and his purpose were entirely directed by God. Jesus is the perfect example of a life lived by entrusting oneself into God’s hands. He humbled himself and sought God’s direction for his life. He trusted God’s goodness, unfailing love and faithfulness. He was willing to take the risk of following God’s will for his life and living God’s ways of justice and mercy and love. His whole life, indeed his very being, was motivated by the prayer, “Into your hand I commit my spirit.”

We’re used to thinking that if we live that way, life will turn out the way we want it. After all, those who obey God are rewarded, both in this life and in the next. Or so we presume. But when you take the prayer “into your hands I commend my life” as seriously as Jesus did, it’s likely to lead to a cross. Actually seeking to make God’s ways and God’s purpose our way of living in our day-to-day reality usually goes against the grain of our culture. We will very likely find ourselves swimming against the stream. And in some cases, as Jesus said, we will have to give up what we cherish most in this life.

There are times in our lives when the circumstances in which we find ourselves are more than we can bear. Like the Psalmist, we may feel like we are surrounded by enemies with no way out. The challenge of Scripture to us is to find a way to entrust our lives—all of life—into God’s hands. That’s not an easy thing to do, especially when the situation feels overwhelming. In those times, we may cry out in fear, even as the Psalmist admits he did. I don’t think we need to feel ashamed of that; fear doesn’t mean we don’t have faith, it means we’re human. We can feel afraid and still have the courage to entrust our lives into God’s hands. And when we do, we find—in God’s hands—grace and unfailing love, strength and reassurance to see us through whatever we may have to endure.

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[1] ©2020 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 5/10/2020 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. James L. Mays, Psalms, 144.  Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, “Good Friday: Birth of Hope from the Cross of Christ,” in The Power of the Powerless, 120, where he calls this “believing with one’s whole life.”

[3] Mays, Psalms, 143; cf. also Kraus, Psalms 1-59, 363, who renders it “the faithful, dependable God.”

Faith in Community

Faith in Community

1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35[1]

I think many of us are discovering how important community is in this strange time. It’s wonderful to be able to stay connected through technology. But it’s not the same as gathering together with families and friends. And this is true as well for families of faith. We miss seeing faces, shaking hands, giving and receiving hugs. And it is stressful to us all when we have to do without those person-to-person contacts that we were so used to.

While we all have probably heard someone say “I can worship God better on my own than at church,” the fact of the matter is that our faith thrives in community, because we thrive in community. We experience the wholeness of the new life through our community of faith. Something about the way we’re put together as human beings makes it so that we just cannot grasp the high and holy truths of our faith unless someone is there to show us the grace and mercy and love of God in action. We need our community to enable faith to truly live in our hearts.

Unfortunately, I think our present crisis has exposed to us how “futile” our way of life has become. We have closed in ourselves as a society, isolating ourselves by engaging in a reality that is “virtual” as we stare at one kind of screen or another. While the “futile ways” that Peter mentions in our lesson for today were very different from ours, I think the message applies to us as well. We have given ourselves over to a way of life that is draining, hopeless, and empty. And yet, the good news of Easter is that we have the freedom to change, the freedom not to stay stuck in the same old ruts, the freedom to find new life in our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ.

Part of the reason for this is, as Peter says, we have been “ransomed” from those “futile ways.” Because of Jesus’ death on the cross, we are now free to make the change from a way of life that essentially drains the life out us to a way of living that is whole and truly alive.  We have been set free from everything that would keep us stuck in a rut that leaves us feeling drained and empty instead of fulfilled, joyful and whole. This transformation happens best in a community.

The simple truth is that faith has always been a community endeavor. From the very beginning, we find Christians gathering together to share with each other the experiences they have had with the risen Christ. As our Gospel lesson illustrates, when the disciples discovered that Jesus was alive they immediately went back to the rest of the group to tell them what had happened. It’s one thing for them to race from Golgotha to the upper room in Jerusalem. It’s another thing altogether for the disciples on the road to Emmaus to run 7 miles back to share the good news with the others! The cumulative effect is that in the sharing they were supporting and encouraging and strengthening each other’s faith! As one contemporary prophet puts it, “The resurrection is not a fact to be believed, but an experience to be shared.”[2]

I think this is true for all of us. Faith simply does not flourish in a context where we think we can be spiritual “lone rangers.” Faith flourishes in a community. I like the way Henri Nouwen puts it:

“Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us … . That is how we dare to say that God is a God of love when we see death and destruction and agony all around us. We say it together. We affirm it in each other.”[3]

It takes a community for us to make the journey of faith if for no other reason than we need human flesh and blood, skin and bones to translate the truths of our faith into new life.  We need the experience of living out our faith in a community where we “love one another deeply from the heart” (1 Pet. 1:22) if we’re going to thrive. Especially in this challenging time, we need a community to hold on to the faith that God is working to bring grace and peace and mercy and love and life to every life in the midst of all the suffering and heartbreak that are going on right now. That doesn’t happen well when we try to go it alone. Faith is something that thrives and grows when we share it with a community.

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[1] ©2020 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/26/2020 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Walter Wink, “Resonating With God’s Song,” The Christian Century (March 23, 1994).

[3] Henri Nouwen, Finding My Way Home, 105.

Hope is Alive

Hope is Alive

1 Peter 1:3-9[1]

Sixteen years ago my son Derek and I visited two canyons in the Southwest. We spent a day at the Grand Canyon with about 12,000 other people. The sight of the canyon was truly impressive; it is one of those places on earth whose grandeur cannot be captured by photography. We also spent a day at Chaco Canyon in Northwestern New Mexico.  You may not have heard of it. It is the site of the oldest ruins in the U. S. It’s about 20 miles off the pavement along a bumpy dirt road.

Archaeologists think that Chaco Canyon was first occupied about the year 500 by farmers. By about the year 800 they were building the crescent-shaped pueblos for which the site is famous. The pueblos were built along lines marked out by the sun and the moon, as well as perfect East-West and North-South lines. The discovery of many pre-historic roads that fan out to the surrounding area suggests that Chaco Canyon may have stood at the center of a fairly large and well-developed culture, known today as the Early Puebloan People. They flourished there for another 350 years, until they were forced to leave by an extended drought. Most historians would agree that they founded the Pueblo Cultures that still thrive in the desert Southwest.

If you’ve ever been to the Grand Canyon, you can perfectly understand why so many people go there. But if you visited Chaco Canyon, you’d have to ask yourself why in the world anyone would want to visit, let alone live there. It’s a stark and barren landscape. There’s really nothing much to commend it as a place to build a fairly sophisticated complex of pueblos. We can only speculate at this point, but some have suggested that the unique geographical and astronomical alignment of the canyon may have related to ancient Puebloan religious beliefs.

As Derek and I wandered the ruins of Chaco Canyon that day—with about 12 other people as opposed to 12,000!—I found myself wondering what it was that enabled men and women to do what it took to survive the harsh conditions of that time and place. It’s hard enough to survive what life has to offer in the relative comfort of what we call “civilization.” 

If we took the time to study what life was like for the early Christians, we might ask the same question. As Peter says in his letter, they suffered for their faith in a wide variety of ways—ranging from ridicule to hostility, and from ostracism to lynching! In the midst of their hardships, the Apostle Peter reminded them that the Easter faith offered them a “living hope.” Their hope was “alive” because it is a hope that comes from the life of the risen Christ who defeated death. Their hope was alive because it is a hope that comes from the promise of never-ending life in God’s new creation and “brand-new” life here and now through God’s Spirit. Their hope was alive because it is a hope that nothing can quench—not doubt, not hostile enemies, not even martyrdom, which they suffered on occasion. I believe they were able to endure their hardships because their hope was alive!

But there had to have been times when those First-Century Christians asked themselves why they had to suffer so much if all that was true. I think part of the problem is that our faith in the resurrection and our hope of new life simply exceed our ability to really and truly understand. But the fact that we may not be able to get a handle on them doesn’t mean that our faith and hope are not just as alive today as they were in Peter’s day.

Even though we may not be able to fully grasp our “living hope,” the good news of Easter is that the new life of the risen Christ is something that takes hold of us and changes us forever. That’s the basis for our hope and faith—not that we can grasp everything there is to know about God and faith and eternity, but rather that God has grasped us through the living presence of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. The hope of Easter, that new life will one day transform everything and everyone, keeps our hope alive.  

And as Peter assured those first Christians doing their best to live their lives in the midst of the struggles of their world, he continues to assure us that the experience of being “grasped” by God is one that cannot be diminished by time, or doubt, or even death.  It is an experience that transforms us for good because we are from then on “kept safe by the power of God” (1 Peter 1:5, TEV). We can face our hardships with a hope that is alive!

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[1] ©2020 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/19/2020 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

On This Day

On this Day

Psalm 118:24[1]

On this day we come together to celebrate the heart of our faith: that Jesus lives! It is something that may be difficult for us to wrap our heads around. We can understand sacrificing oneself for the sake of others. Most of us have been called upon to do just that for the sake of the people in our lives we love and care about. But none of us has any first-hand experience with resurrection—at least not literally. We may have known someone who has had a “near-death” experience. But there is simply nothing in our experience of this world that gives us a basis for grasping the idea that a person who was dead—not for minutes, but for over 36 hours—somehow came back to life. 

That doesn’t bother me too much, though, because I know that there are some elements of our faith that we may never understand. But while I may never be able to explain the resurrection of Jesus from death to life, I can experience the risen Lord in and through my life. I can sense the presence of the Spirit, I can feel Jesus’ impulse to compassion, and I can enjoy the freedom of faith and hope in the God who is always here. At the end of the day, I think that’s what Easter is about. When we experience the presence and power of God in our lives, it is the same Spirit that the disciples encountered in Jesus of Nazareth. And the reason we celebrate the resurrection on Easter Sunday is because that same Spirit of the risen Christ lives in you and in me and in all who have the experience of his continuing presence.

The Psalmist celebrated a kind of death-to-life renewal. He spoke of being in distress, of being surrounded on every side (Ps. 118:5, 10-11). The Psalmist spoke of being “pushed hard” to the point of falling (Ps. 118:13). The language suggests the setting of battle, but I’m not sure we should take that literally. Whether he was at the crucial point of a battle, at the point where it could have gone either way, or simply at a critical turning point in his life, he felt as if he could have been defeated. It’s in that setting that the Psalmist affirms, “The LORD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation” (Ps. 118:14). Like a piece of stone that had been cast aside as worthless, only to be retrieved later as the most important building block that holds the rest of the structure together, the Psalmist rejoices that he has been delivered from whatever it was that threatened him.

And so he rejoices that “This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps. 118:24). That’s the way most translations put it. But if we pay attention to the sequence, it seems like there’s more to this verse than just celebrating God’s hand in each day. This is a special day. The rejected one has been raised to the place of highest honor. In response the Psalmist says, “This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes” (Ps. 118:23). One of the features of the Psalms is that verses are parallel with each other. Sometimes to point out a contrast. Here, I think it is for emphasis. And so that familiar verse probably shouldn’t be read as “this is the day the Lord has made,” but rather “on this day the Lord has done it; let us rejoice and be glad in what he has done.” It’s a celebration of an act so unexpected, so unique, and so “marvelous” that all we can do is to celebrate what God has done with joy and gladness.

I think that’s what Easter is about. It’s a celebration that on this day, all those years ago, God acted decisively to break the break the power of everything that threatens to enslave or oppress or distort or destroy our humanity. It’s a celebration that, on this day, God took all our pain and sorrow and suffering and sadness and loss and death and turned it all into new life. Easter is a celebration of the new life that came into being on this day and that it will one day transform everything and everyone. It is a celebration that, on this day, God acted in a decisive way to demonstrate that he is constantly working to restore the whole creation to the place where it is once again “very good.” 

Simply put, because the Spirit of Easter is alive and well in this community of faith, I believe in a God who is working to bring grace and peace and mercy and love and joy and life into every life. And we experience that “marvelous” work of God in our own lives as we know the continuing presence of Jesus in all our lives. It means that for us, “Jesus is the light in our darkness, the bread that satisfies our hunger, the vine that is the source of our life, the healer who makes us whole … .”[2] Not “Jesus was,” but “Jesus is.”  Easter is like a promise that points toward a future filled with hope and joy and love and life.  But it is a promise that we can all begin to experience right here and right now because Jesus is alive and well in us all.  Although we may never understand all that Easter means, because Jesus is alive and well in us, on this day, we can celebrate what God is doing in and through us. 

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[1] ©2020 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/12/2020 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Borg, Heart of Christianity, 88.

God is There

God is There

Psalm 22[1]

As we conclude the season of Lent with the remembrance of Jesus’ suffering and death, we may recall that Jesus quoted the first line of Psalm 22 in his agony on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1). The very idea is unsettling: that the God who promises never to forsake us would in fact do so. And the prospect that he abandoned his own Son at the moment when he fulfilled God’s saving purpose most completely can be shocking. I think Jesus knew he had to die. Yet he cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” I believe Jesus trusted that God would raise him from the dead. Yet he cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” What troubles me is the question where God was while all this was happening. 

I know the standard response: “he had to turn away because Jesus took all the sin of the world on himself and God cannot look upon sin.” That just doesn’t cut it for me. I want to know where God was during the awful silence that followed Jesus’ prayer. It is a prayer after all, addressed to God. Jesus wasn’t just acting out some sort of elaborate play. This was the real thing. And when the agony of the cross overwhelmed him, Jesus cried out one of the most heartbreaking prayers of the Bible. And God’s response was … silence. Did God really forsake Jesus on the cross?

Maybe we’re looking at this in the wrong way.  We tend to equate silence with abandonment. But sometimes we’re silent with those who are suffering because we are suffering with them. I believe that’s what was going on at the cross. Rather than abandoning his Son, God was right there with Jesus, experiencing all the anguish his heartbreaking prayer expresses.^[2] God was silent because God was suffering with Jesus. While the idea of God “suffering” might seem strange to us, at the cross God made it clear once and for all that his suffering has become our redemption, and his apparent weakness is in fact a demonstration of his powerful love.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in all of this that the cry “My God, My God, why?” can actually be an expression of faith. What we have to notice is that the Psalm takes an abrupt turn. The psalmist cried out to the Lord, and the Lord heard his cries and delivered him from whatever was causing his trouble. And he confirms that God is the one who is on the side of those who suffer: “[God] did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him” (Ps. 22:24). The point of this is that even in the midst of suffering, God is there, paying close attention to those who are suffering, hearing their every cry for help.

Unfortunately, the idea that those who suffer must be undergoing punishment for some kind of wrongdoing is something that has become ingrained for many of us. I think this pattern of thinking can be most harmful when we encounter suffering ourselves. When hardship strikes us we tend to think, “What did I do to deserve this?” And yet if we can take the Psalmist’s perspective, perhaps instead we can trust in God’s unfailing love despite any hardships we encounter. We can take this step of faith because at the cross God demonstrated once and for all that he is the one who is there with all the afflicted in their suffering.

When we wonder where God was while Jesus was suffering on cross, the answer is that God was right there suffering with him. And that answer also applies to each and every one of us when we may wonder where God is in our moments of anguish.^[3] God is just as present with us as he was with Jesus. God will not abandon us any more than he abandoned Jesus. If God seems silent, it is not because he is ignoring us, it is because he is suffering with us. That’s where God always is—right beside us, walking with us every step of the way, supporting us in ways that are sometimes unseen and unfelt. But they are real nevertheless. Wherever you find any suffering or heartbreak or anguish in this world, God is there, pouring out his love to bring healing and new life.

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[1] © Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/9/2020 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann The Way of Jesus Christ, 173: far from abandoning his Son, “in the surrender of the Son the Father surrenders himself too.”

[3] Cf. Martin Marty, A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart, 174 “God participates in the life of the people [who suffer] and suffers at their side.”

In God's Hands, Part 1

In God’s Hands, Part 1

Psalm 31:1-16[1]

I would say that we who live in this society are accustomed to the idea that our lives are in our own hands. Many of us have been raised on the creed of individualism: hard work and independence. Others have embraced a more collaborative approach to life. They work in teams and believe that they accomplish more together than they can separately. Whether we are “rugged individualists” or “team players,” we all still seem to assume that “you only live once,” and what we get out of life is what we put into it. We assume that our lives are in our own hands.

Our Scripture lesson from the Psalms presents us with a different approach to life, one based on trusting God with all of life. The whole idea of trusting in God implies, as the Psalmist expresses, that the course of our lives is out of our hands. Our lives are in God’s hands (Ps. 31:15).^[2] Recognizing this truth is at the heart of what it means to trust in God. More than that, it means entrusting all that we are, all that we have, all that we are concerned about, all those we love, into God’s care. And the Scriptures teach us that God’s care is infinite and unfailing. 

I think this may explain why Jesus could look an excruciating death squarely in the face and pray “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46, quoting Psalm 31:5). In spite of the circumstances, we shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus prayed that prayer at the end of his life. Trusting God was the main focus of his whole life. When we think about the ultimate sacrifice Jesus made for us on that Friday so many years ago, I think we have to recognize that what enabled him to go through with it was his trust that the God into whose hands he had entrusted his whole life would be with him in his darkest hour.

  A faith like that seems to me to be the highest expression of trust. It’s not easy to look at our lives, at all that we are, all that we have, all those we love, and essentially let go of it all by placing it into God’s hands. But that was the kind of faith that Jesus modeled for us throughout his life. It was that kind of faith that enabled him to live out the prayer “Into your hands I commit my very life” (Ps. 31:5, NIrV).  And it was that kind of faith that enabled him to face the prospect of making the final sacrifice with the prayer, “not my will, but thine be done.”  As we seek to deepen our trust in God, Jesus’ commitment stands for us as the defining example for our own faith. It challenges us all to give up thinking that our lives are in our own hands, and instead to entrust our lives, our whole lives, into God’s hands.

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[1] ©Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/5/2020 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] cf. James L. Mays, Psalms, 144: “In the mouth of Jesus [this] sentence is surely a profound interpretation of his entire life.”

You Will Live Again

You Will Live Again

Ezekiel 37:1-14[1]

  At some point in life, many of us lose hope. We find that, whether due to our choices, or due to circumstances beyond our control, the ground has given way beneath our feet, and we have been swept away to a place where we feel completely and hopelessly lost. That experience of being lost is part of life. I think it can feel so hopeless because when you feel lost, really lost in life, it can seem like you will never find your way again. It’s hard to hope when fear and sadness, loneliness and uncertainty are your constant companions. You wonder whether you’ll ever find joy and peace again.

  It would seem that the people of Israel felt that way during their time of exile in Babylon. They were a whole world away from everything that was “home” to them. After spending not only years but decades in a place that was very foreign to them, it makes sense that they felt lost and hopeless. That was the whole reason for Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones. As the Lord speaks to the prophet, he says that the vision of new life was intended to address the fact that “the whole house of Israel” was saying “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely” (Ezek. 37:11). 

  Into this despair, the message that the Lord had for Israel is that nothing and no one is ever beyond hope! Think about the lesson for today: what could be more hopeless than dried-out bones. How can bones come back to life again? What possibility would any of us see for God to bring new life? And yet, before Ezekiel’s eyes, God gives new life to those lifeless bones. And the message that God has for the people is that “I will open your graves of exile” (Ezek. 37:12, NLT) and “you will live again” (37:14). It was a dramatic demonstration that nothing and no one is beyond the hope of new life—not even those who have felt lost so long they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be home. 

  It may be dawning on some of us that we’re in a situation similar to the people of Israel. Extended isolation can push our ability to hold onto hope past its limits. We don’t know how long this form of “exile” will go on. It may go on so long that we begin to feel lost; lost to ourselves, lost to life, lost even to God. But one of my favorite themes of Scripture is that those who feel lost are never lost to God. In story after story, somehow, God always finds a way to give them life again. I believe that still holds true today. No matter how hard it may get, the promise of scripture is that no one is ever beyond hope. No one is ever lost to God. Even though we may feel lost, we can trust that we are not lost to God. No matter what our circumstances, we can hold on to the hope that in his time, and in his way, God will bring new life to us all. We can hold onto God’s promise that we will live again.

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[1] ©2020 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/29/2020 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Not Afraid

Not Afraid

Psalm 23[1]

A world-wide pandemic. One of the steepest downturns in the stock market. Hoarding of basic supplies. Schools closing and going to remote instruction. Restaurants going to take-out only service. Restrictions of the number of people gathering together. These are just some of the startling developments that have happened in less than a month, many of them in the last week! It would be impossible not to feel the stress, the loss, and even the fear of the moment in history in which we find ourselves. So what crazy person came up with a sermon entitled “Not Afraid?”

And yet, I think there are good reasons not to be afraid. The most important of them is our faith that no matter what happens, God is with us, supporting us with his love and mercy and grace. I think that’s the lesson of our Scripture reading from Psalm 23. It presents us with the image of God as “my” shepherd. In that role, God is the one who leads us all individually beside still waters and makes us lie down in green pastures. God is the one who directs our paths in the right way, simply because it pleases him to do so. God is the one who protects us with his “rod and staff” even in the most frightening situations. God is the one who prepares a lavish banquet and makes us the guests of honor.

All of these images reinforce the declaration that “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” The images come together to bring calm and peace to us as we imagine what it might be like to lie down in green pastures, and to rest beside still waters. Or as we imagine his constant presence protecting us even in the darkest of valleys. Or the joy and refreshment of sitting down to a meal of all our favorite “comfort foods,” prepared just for us.

One of the important details of the Psalm is that the assurance it promises is based not just on personal experience, but on what God has done in the lives of his people in the past. This is especially true for the people of Israel. From the Exodus out of Egypt to the Wilderness wanderings to settling the land “flowing with milk and honey,” God continually protected and provided for his people. And so they could say, “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”^[2]

More than that, I believe God takes great pleasure in caring for us in this way.^[3] Some providers and protectors do so out of obligation or duty. God does so out of grace, out of love, out of his determination to be “God-who-is-with-us” and “God-who-is-for-us.” Of course, we see this grace and mercy of God most clearly in Jesus, who declared himself to be our “Good Shepherd.”

All of these images in the Psalm reinforce the promise that God is with us always, in whatever situation we may find ourselves. The God who watches over us is the one who constantly cares for and nurtures all creation—galaxies and nebulae we have never even seen; the sun, moon, and stars; plants, animals, rocks and trees; and people of every size, shape, and color. If God delights in caring for all of that, I think we can trust that God delights in caring for us. And so we can be “not afraid,” because “the Lord is my shepherd.”

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[1] ©2020 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/22/2020 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. James L. Mays, Psalms, 117-19.

[3] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2.1:74-75.