IN THE PRESENCE OF MY ENEMIES

April 21, 1991

8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
1 John 3:18-24
John 106:11-18

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of RY enemies.”
~Psalim 23:5

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.’

Those words are at least 2,500 years old. They have been memorized
by children; they have comforted the sick and brought peace to the dying;
precious words, loved more perhaps than any other words. There is no
pastor about to enter the hospital room of a gravely i1] person who has
not uttered a prayer of gratitude for these ancient words.

We recite them, together in this church during the sacrament of
communion. In moments of extreme duress, in the face of the worst that can
happen, men and women turn to these words,

Fred Morris was a Methodist missionary in Brazil, in the the 1970s,
during a time of particularly harsh military oppression. He ended up in
jail because he was a friend of Archbishop Dom Helder Camara who was an
outspoken critic of. the government. .When Morris finally was released and
allowed to return home, he wrote an account of his experience for Harper's
Magazine. I still have it and have never forgotten it.

He describes the methods used by his captors, carefully designed to
inflict maximum pain without causing death - to persuade prisoners to
confess to crimes they did not commit and to reveal names of other critics
of the government. ;

“The hood was pulled down over my face and I started
the short walk to the torture chamber. Once more I
repeated the Shepherd's Psalm, 'The Lord is my
shepherd, I shall not want.' And again I found myself
calmed by those ancient words. . 1 wondered for a moment
how many people through the centuries have used that
Psalm at similar moments. I knew that no one, not even
God, was going to save me from the hands of these men,

if they decided to kill me. They had killed many
others. But the Psalm confirmed in me their limited
capacity to touch me where it really mattered. It
strengthened me even in the face of my weakness before
them." ["In the Presence of Mine Enemies," Harper's
Magazine, October 1975]

That is a picture I have never been able to forget. Another image I
associate with this Psalm is gentler. It comes from the first funeral at
which I presided in Scotland. Scots sing the 23rd Psalm at every occasion
of importance. In fact, Scots-are inclined to think that the 23rd Psalm
was written somewhere in the western Highlands. The funeral took piace in
the village where I was serving as a pastor. I was told it would be a
“Highland Funeral.” That meant that after a time in the smali house of
the deceased, the men having a “wee nip" or two in the parlor, women in the
kitchen. The men stepped out inte the small front garden for the service:
the women remained in the house. At-the conclusion of the brief service
several men lifted the wooden coffin and carried it up the road a hundred
yards or so - ancient Highland custom was to carry it over the first water
- then it was loaded onto the back of a pick-up truck and, still men only,
we got into cars and drove to the place of burial, a rough field in the
dark, brooding mountains. It was raining softly, clouds shrouded the tops
of the hills, and the ever-present sheep were visible and audible all
around us. As the coffin was lowered the men began tao sing - without

prompting - the lovely metric setting of Psalm 23, accompanied by the
sheep.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I'l] not want.
He makes me down to lie...

My table thou hast furnished

in presence cf. my foes."

It's not that the images are contemporary. We are thousands of years
and thousands of miles away from the two images in this beloved poem -
ancient shepherd and Bedouin host. Let's close the gap a little.

; Sheep were absolutely dependent on a shepherd in that dangerous
desert environment: . the shepherd often knew each one by name, cared for
it, protected it, saw to its shelter each night in a fold, even cleansed
its wounds with oil, and cupped a hand for it to drink still, not running
water. There are shepherds today in Scotland, but sheep roam,
individually, wander all day. They are never much of a flock actually,
more like stubborn individualists. The shepherd's job is to chase them
down the mountain in the evening and back up in the morning - a task
occasionally done on a trail bike.

The sacred image is equaily rich. "According to the Bedouin law of
hospitality, once a traveler is received into the shepherd's tent, he is
guaranteed immunity from enemies who may be attempting to overtake him. In
pastoral cultures no human protection was greater than that afforded by a
Bedouin chief." [Qut of the Depths, Bernard Anderson, p. 148]

Those eloquent images account for the origin and early popularity of
the Psalm but not for us. The reason this Psalm intrigues us, keeps

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commending itself to us, almost haunts us theologically, is because it
addressed, in poetry, the two basic religious questions:

"Where is God and what does the notion of God have
to do with my life?"

We come of age assuming God. Our mental, emotional and spiritual
formation occurs under the gentle beneficence of a creator who is good,
who protects us, provides for us, and to whose care and custodianship we
commend al] sorts of people in our trusting childish prayers. "God bless
grandma, and Uncle Jack, God bless my friends, God bless the poor." God, as

the saying goes, is in heaven and all is right with the world - for a
while.

And then it crumbles. Someone we love very much dies: a grandparent,
Uncle Jack doesn't come home from the war, or a friend is killed. in an
automobile accident, or a baby dies of leukemia, or we discover that the
good does not always come out on top, that if God is taking care of the
poor, you can't tell by looking at them. -

We learn, in time, about the ambiguity of human life, we Jose our

theological innocence, and the notion of a good and kind and powerful God
starts to fade,

Sometimes we talk about it, discuss it into the wee hours, on those
luxurious days when matters such as the existence of God are important
enough to keep us up past midnight.

But privately, mostly, we begin to entertain the notion that we are
alone in this business, that there is-nobody there, that we are
essentially biological and genetic accidents in an uncaring, unfeeling
universe, that Macbeth is correct:

“Life's but a walking shadow, a

poor player
that struts and frets his hour

upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is
a tale told by an idiot, full of sound
and fury signifying nothing."
[Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5, line 19]

¥

Dan Wakefield, in his spiritual autobiography, Returning, tells about
his experience of agnosticism:

"I cannot mark the day or even exactly the year that I
consciously decided I had stopped being a Christian...
Maybe it began with the erosion of childhood faith when
I asked every day and night that (my) acne be taken
away and awoke to find it still my skin, my identity,
my very self." [p. 87, 88]

I believe most of us live somewhere between the innocence of
childlike trust and brittle agnosticism. The academic question of the

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existence of God is put on the back burner - perhaps because we come to
realize that we are not going to pin it down definitely, but more likely
because we can no longer stay awake past midnight to discuss things like
that, even if we cast our lot with organized religion.

IT believe the undercurrent cantinues. "Is it true? Does it matter?"

The question of God is suggested at the edges of life someone said ~
birth - death. So when we've lived long enough to know more about each,

personally, the old question re-emerges, but it is no longer academic.
Rather it returns with an urgency.

Martin Marty wrete a wonderful book, A Cry of Absence, about faith in
a time of deep personal crisis in which he observed:

"Hardened urbanites, far removed from nomadic, agrarian
experience, turn in crisis to a Psalm about the Lord as
Shepherd. Why? Because they resonate to a passage
about ‘walking through the valley of the shadow of
death.'" [A Cry of Absence, p. 34]

It helps to know that the 23rd Psalm was written in a time of
political, social and theological crisis for God's people. Jerusalem was
leveled. The Temple was flattened. God's dwelling place was no more. In
the Sixth Century B.C. human tragedy and suffering forced the fundamental
theological question just as today. If God doesn't have a dwelling place,
a temple or an ark or an altar, where is God? Which is, as you can see,
always a way of asking, “is there a God?" Or "what does the notion of God
have to do with my life?" And that, I submit, is a contemporary question,
as relevant today as ever. . The enduring power of this poem, with its
simple images, is that it makes two radical and dramatic assertions.

God is not confined to a place -— not the ark of the covenant, -not
the holy of holies, not the Cathedral, high altar, or Presbyterian
communion table. All these are reminders, only, that our God is not
contingent, limited nor confined to a place, nor to a ritual, nor to
anybody's creed or confession or theological system. Rather all the holy
places in the world, all the religious paraphernalia, all the theology are
symbols of a God whe is radically involved in the life of people, in the
life of the world, in the life of faith, communities and families, and in
the lives of individuais as a shepherd was radically and critically
involved with the life of the sheep,

That's the first matter. The second assertion is equally critical.

This Psalm suggests that God is particularly present when life in
this world takes a turn for the worse, that is to say at the very moment
human beings are about to throw up their hands in despair, at the very
moment when the idea of a loving, caring God seems most preposterous, at
the moment, that is to say, which feéls most God-forsaken.

"In the presence of my enemies."

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The Psalter is not at all squeamish about the fact that there are
enemies and there is evil in the world. In fact, the Psalms become so
humanly expressive that they make us wince sometimes. C. §. Lewis was

amused at the way the Psalms go lumbering merrily along, praising God, and
then, without warning:

“af thy goodness, Slay my enemies..." (143)
"may his days be few..." (7)
“when he is dead may his orphans be beggars..." (9)

Fortunately we Presbyterians believe that the Bible is a human
document which God uses, so we are not stuck with the appalling notion:
that it's all inspired and that the Holy Spirit dictated instructions an
how to kill your enemies' children.

The Psalms know what we know - namely that there are dark valieys
through which each of us most go; that there are enemies with which we
must contend; that this is not a perfect world. It is a world in which
bad things happen to good people, awful things happen to innocent people
who happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Mothers and
children and grandparents in a bomb shelter in Baghdad when the smart bombs
hit. Kurdish people encouraged to revolt and then abandoned to violence,
disease and starvation. Little children gunned down coming home from
school in Chicago. it's not a perfect world by any stretch of the
imagination. And any religion that doesn't know that, doesn't have some way

to acknowledge evil, same vocabulary to express the human dilemma, will not
be worth much.

One of the most common human experiences is the absence of God. An
honest spirituality needs to accommodate that, to be big and strong enough
to know that people of deep faith are afraid too, brave enough to hear
Jesus ask, "0 God, why have you forsaken me?" and not try to explain it away.

And Hans Kung, writes about an elderly man, critically il1, who after
years of skepticism, returned to God. "He needed a God," Kung explains,
“against whom he could fling his complaint, his despair, his anger." He
said to professor Kung, "God be praised that I have a God once more, since
in my excessive pain I can permit myself a few curses and blasphemies:
this sort of thing ig not permitted to the atheist." [Eternal Life,

p. 201]

The power of the 23rd Psalm is that it comes right out and says
something we all knaw but rarely speak about, namely the valley of the
shadow. And the redeeming idea in this beautiful poetry is that God is
particularly there with us, and that precisely when the valley is dark, and
there seems to be no light, no hope. When the enemy is closing in -
whatever that is for you: a physical enemy, or a foe with which you have
struggied all your life, an enemy like fear, or insecurity, or lack of
self-confidence, self-esteem, and depression, or guilt, or obsession, or
addiction which hems you in and rules you in spite of your best intentions
- the redeeming word of this Psalm is that "In the presence of the enemy,
God prepares a table." .

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Even when we're distracted, even when we are totally occupied with

our illness, our pain, our anxiety, even in the midst of mortal combat,
our God is with us. :

As I worked on the Psalm this week, revisiting the books and
reference materials that I've read many times, wondering if there might he
anything fresh, I pulled a book off the shelf that was new to me. I don't
know where I got it. It's an old book, se someone must have given it to-me
along the way. I had never looked at it, nor had anyone else, apparently.
But on the page where a commentary of Psalm 23 began, I found a small
laminated card - a little faded. Sir Jacoh Astley's prayer before the
Battle of Newbury. Astley, I discovered, was a preminent Royalist general
in the English Civil War and that Newbury took place in 1643 and again in
1644, Before going into battle, Sir Jacob vrayed:

“Lord, I shall be verie busie this day. I may
forget Thee but doe not Thou forget me."

It is a prayer for all of us - before battle, before facing the

enemy, before surgery, before work, before the busy days which make up
your life and mine.

We shall be busy this day. We may forget Thee, but do not Thou
forget us.

A table is spread, even in the “presence of our enemies."

Five hundred years after that Psalm was written, there was one who
lived out its implications, who verbalized his fear and despair on the
cross, but bravely died committing himself to God's care.

It was that one, who surely knew this Psalm, who had memorized it as
child and recited it in synagogue and prayed it at home. It was that same
one, Jesus the Christ, who one day said to his disciples - and to us:

"J am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and they know me.'

That is good news indeed. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Se

0 Lord,
You prepare a table before us in the presense of our enemies:
You annoint us, care for us, love us and walk with us.
May goodness and mercy follow us ali the days of our lives,

And may we dwell ‘in your house, now and forever. Amen.

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