“Oh Lord, deliver me from this text!” was my seminary professor’s thought. Fred Holmgren stood in the North Park chapel and told how he was teaching a course on the Psalms. So he had committed himself, for his day to preach in chapel, to speak on whatever psalm was assigned in the daily lectionary for that day. It was Psalm 23, our text for this Sunday.
Of course Psalm 23 has to be included in our list of the 90 greatest chapters of the Bible which we are reading in the first 90 days of 2013. Yet I feel a little like Fred did so many years ago. Why did it have to fall on this Sunday, so that I have to use it as my preaching text?
Don’t get me wrong. I love this psalm. It’s one of a few longer Scripture passages that I have committed to memory and repeat to myself almost every day, often several times a day, particularly in those night times when I find myself worried and awake.
Yet it’s very familiarity and beauty make it a daunting text for the preacher. What can one say that hasn’t been said about it? Especially after having read Phillip Keller’s sweet little book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23? I’ve got no agrarian insights to offer, no original take on words that have echoed in all their power down through the ages. I’m tempted to just read the text aloud and let it stand on its own.
But of course I will find something to say. I want to share how I’ve discovered elderly people with dementia who remember hardly anything else, but will join in repeating “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” as soon as they hear it begun. I want to share how this psalm constantly reassures me of God’s care and guidance no matter what is happening around me. And I want to help us claim the New Testament truth that Jesus Christ is the Lord who is our Shepherd, and that we will dwell in His house with Him forever.
So I’m confident that my Lord will walk with me even through the valley of the shadow of preaching on a text where there seems to be nothing to say that has not already been said many times. But that’s just fine. Originality is probably one of the seeds of heresy.