The 23rd Psalm. If you’ve been part of the church for any
length of time – and I use the word church
in its biggest, widest sense – then you are familiar with this bit of
scripture. And if you haven’t, if you’re
new to the church, if you’ve never cracked open a Bible and read its words with
your own eyes, there was still probably a recognition of familiarity in the
back of your brain:
You’ve
heard these words before.
Where was it that you heard them? Perhaps at a funeral you once attended. Or maybe, they were spoken by a character in
a movie or TV show. Or maybe an
acquaintance quoted a portion of this psalm, and you didn’t even know at the
time that it was the 23rd Psalm, but the words stuck in your memory.
Sometimes the words of this psalm appear in the
most interesting places. I was searching
online for images related to Psalm 23; I became intrigued that so many of the
images of Psalm 23 that came up were of tattoos.
I am not a tattoo person. Some of you are, and I have no problem with
that; but that’s not who I am, mainly because I don’t think I could ever be
confident enough that something I’d want tattooed on my body today, I’d still
want to wake up and look at every day of my life, tomorrow, the next day, ten, twenty, and
thirty years from now. What words or
images are so important to me that I could be 100% certain that they would remain just as important to me, no
matter what stage of life I’m in? The
prospect of making a decision like that is overwhelming. It’s easier to just say no.
But even though I am not about to tattoo Psalm
23 on my body, it is one of those scriptures that I have tattooed on my heart. So it was easy for me to understand why so
many have chosen to get tattoos of Psalm 23 on their bodies: on their arms and
their shoulders and their chests and their sides and their legs…
…and across the inside of their wrists.
Now maybe it’s because I have skinny, bony
wrists, with a very thin, almost translucent layer of skin on the inside of my
wrist, barely concealing the bone and cartilage and blood vessels that lie just
underneath; or maybe I’m just extra sensitive about my wrists, having broken
the bones in my left wrist when I was in 7th grade… but the inside
of the wrist doesn’t seem like the most, uh, comfortable place to get a tattoo.
Why would anyone do that?
Then I remembered the stories of some young
people I’ve met, counseled at camp, or been a pastor to, and the stories they
told me about times when they’ve been depressed, anxious, or under so much
stress that they would intentionally cut themselves – often on the wrist – as a
way of seeking relief, and of experiencing, for a moment at least, control over
their bodies and their lives, in contrast to most every other moment of their
lives when it seems that all control and all power belong not to them, but to
the depression, anxiety, and stress .
Cutting oneself and other forms of self-harm –
because they give the feeling of
being in control – provide some people with a momentary relief from intense
emotional stress. Thus it actually feels
good to the person doing it.
But the good feeling doesn’t last. It is often replaced by guilt and shame,
leading to isolation and a breakdown in relationships. This loneliness is then added to the
depression, anxiety, and stress, which, of course, are still there.
It’s not a pretty place in which to find
yourself: a place of depression and
anxiety, guilt and shame, loneliness and isolation; a place where cutting
oneself feels good compared to the tribulations of the real world which must be
endured.
Welcome, my friends, to the darkest
valley. Welcome to the valley of the
shadow of death.
For someone who is there, it makes perfect
sense to place on the inside of the wrist, in ink that cannot be removed, the
words of Psalm 23; and in particular, Psalm 23 verse 4:
“Even though I walk through the darkest valley
– even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death –
I will not
fear…
For you are with me…
You protect me … You comfort me.”
Here’s another story of a person’s trip through
the darkest valley…
On March 26, NPR’s afternoon news program All Things Considered featured an interview
with a woman from Minnesota named Mary Johnson.
Nineteen years ago, according to program host
Laura Sullivan, Mary Johnson “was at work when her sister-in-law called to tell
her [that] her 20 year-old son Laramiun was dead. He had been shot to death. There was a fight at a party with a gun.”
Mary Johnson said: “I don’t remember doing down eight flights on
the elevator. I don’t remember the short
walk to the car. I don’t even remember
the short walk to my sister’s home.”
A few days later, Mary Johnson got a call from
the detective, who told her that he had picked up a sixteen year-old boy; his
name was Oshea Israel.
Mary Johnson thought Oshea Israel was an
animal. She said: “I wanted him charged as an adult with
first-degree murder, imprisoned for the rest of his life.”
She was there, in the courtroom, every time
something was going on. She was there
when he was sentenced. She wanted to see
him punished. She said: “I hated
Oshea.”
Laura Sullivan reports that “Mary Johnson
struggled with her grief for more than a decade.” (That’s a long time to spend in the darkest
valley.) “But one day, she read a
passage from a book about two mothers who had lost sons. The mothers were in heaven.”
The way Mary Johnson tells the story, “one
mother said, ‘I would have taken my child’s place on the cross if I could
have.’ And the other mother fell on one
knee and she said, ‘Oh! You are she,
the mother of Christ!’
“And the mother of Christ lifted her up, kissed
the tear from her cheek and said, ‘tell me of your son, so that I may grieve
with you.’ And she said, ‘My son is Judas Iscariot.’”
After reading that story, Mary Johnson knew
that she had to meet Oshea Israel.
“And so, early one morning in 2005, Mary
Johnson went to the prison in Stillwater, Minnesota, where Oshea Israel was
incarcerated.”
Mary Johnson said: “Halfway up, I just broke
down and I said, ‘God, I cannot do this.
I’m not ready to do this.’”
But she made it to the conference room and took
a seat. And then she spoke to the man
who had killed her son. She said:
“Look, I don’t know you. You don’t know me. You didn’t know my son. My son didn’t know you… We need to lay our
foundation. We need to get to know one
another.”
Laura Sullivan reports that “they talked about
Mary Johnson’s son, about her pain, about Israel’s remorse. And then they talked about their lives. They talked for two hours. Mary Johnson had only planned to visit Israel
once. But a moment at the end of the
meeting seemed to bind them together, when Oshea Israel asked Mary Johnson if
he could hug her.
He later said: “I felt like, you know, she just
offered me her forgiveness. I don’t have
anything to offer her. At least I can
show her some compassion.”
They embraced.
Mary Johnson said: “I tell you I had something going on in my
feet physically, moving, stirring in my feet, and it just moved up and up and
up. And I felt this ‘whatever’ leave
me. And I knew that … all that hatred
and the animosity and anger – the bitterness – I knew that all that stuff I had
inside me for twelve years, I just knew it was over. It was over with.”
Early in his ministry, Jesus announced his
mission: his mission was to bring good news to the poor, release to the
captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed.
For twelve years, Mary Johnson had been living
without good news. For twelve years she
had been captive to anger oppressed by her own bitterness. For twelve years, she had been living in that
darkest valley.
One of the things Jesus taught was the power of
forgiveness. “Rabbi, if someone keeps on
sinning against me, how many times should I forgive? As many as seven times?”
“No, not seven times, but 77 times!”
Forgiveness is a tool that we have been given;
it is a gift that has been given to us, to help us move beyond our anger and
bitterness, and make our way out of the darkest valley.
As Mary Johnson found out, it may be very
difficult to take those steps on the path to forgiveness; but only by taking
those steps can brokenness give way to healing, wholeness, and salvation.
The darkest valley is different for each one of
us. For some, it’s the depression,
anxiety, and stress that leads them to inflict self-harm by cutting. For Mary Johnson, it’s the pain and anger
that were left after her son was murdered.
For you, it may be something else entirely.
I know a lot of people who get so caught up in
life, going to work everyday, earning money with which they buy a nice house
and fill it with nice things… and then they look around and they think, “Is
this all there is to life?”
And all of a sudden, everything becomes – to
quote Ecclesiastes – vanity of vanities, a chasing after the wind. Life becomes like a stream that flows to the
sea, always flowing, day after day after day, and yet the sea never fills up;
nothing ever changes.
And they enter their own depression, their own
dark valley, because it seems that nothing they do makes any difference.
Nothing matters.
But even in that darkest valley, God is
present. God is with you, protecting
you, showing you the way out, giving you the tools you need to cope.
And then we remember what God has taught
us: that in fact, there is so much more
to live for; that joy doesn’t come from an abundance of nice things.
This we’ve heard so many times, but we never
really believed it … not until we entered the darkest valley, and realized that
none of our nice things could save us, protect us, or comfort us.
And maybe Jesus was right: maybe we need to lose this life of nice
things… just let go of it completely and die to it… in order to find what’s
really worth living for … in order to find our way out of the darkest valley …
in order to find life itself, in all its abundance … in order to find the Love
that was right there with us all along.
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