The 23rd Psalm...A lesson in perspective

When I called Katie Church (she is the "Tenant Service Coordinator" for Moore Place) to discuss just what I had agreed to, she told me to only expect a "handful" of participants. Months earlier, Katie had sent an e-mail out to area pastors requesting volunteers to lead weekly bible studies with tenants at Moore Place. You can learn more about Moore place at urbanministrycenter.org. In a nutshell it is brilliant ministry that began with building brand new condominiums to house Charlotte's most desperate and chronically homeless. The paradigm is the opposite of the "get sober and get it together, then we'll find you a place to live" paradigm. It is a ministry that offers security FIRST, then support for re-building lives and relationships. And it is working!

Anyhow, I signed up to lead. And this past Wed. was my time. I asked Katie what she thought about Psalm 23 as a point of study and conversation. Was it "overdone"? Would the folks talk to me? She said, "Oh yes, they'll talk...and you can do any bible study you want...just, please, look at something other than the story of the Good Samaritan - every pastor thinks these folks need that story!"

So, I was feeling pretty good about the 23rd Psalm. It was the assigned psalm for this past Sunday - I'd need to do some studying on it for my sermon-prep anyhow. May as well share my well-educated and informed insights with others. I determined to give my Wednesday morning/afternoon to preparation and gleaning bits of wisdom from various scholarly resources from hither and yon (mostly from the internet!). Then Henry (my son) got sick - nothing scholarly about vomit! So, Wednesday evening, I walked into Moore Place completely unprepared - but it's the 23rd Psalm. Not much new, there (yeah, right!).

The bible study was to begin at 7:00, and I walked in the front door precisely on time. Katie welcomed me and showed me the room where we would meet (there was even a chalkboard placard with "Tonight at 7:00 - Bible Study with Pastor Sara!" announcing my presence). Then we stood there and looked at each other. Just me and Katie. No one else. Eventually, someone walked by. Katie recruited, "Ms. Von (her name is "Veronica," but everyone calls her "Von") are you coming to Bible Study?" "Yes ma'am, I just need to go get my bible." I asked Katie, "will she come back?" Katie said, "I don't know." Katie and I went into the room and sat at the empty table. A few minutes later Von did come back. I immediately noticed her very well worn, dog-eared bible. I was immediately intimidated (she can probably quote book, chapter, verse way better than I can!). Before long she told Katie who to call. "Ms. Katie, you called Glenda?" Katie said "Ms. Von, you've got a phone. You call her!" Von said, "No ma'am I don't have my phone. I don't bring it to Bible Study." Katie went and called Glenda. "Ms. Katie, you called Annie?" Katie called Annie. This went on several more times, and before long, as promised, we had our handful of people.

We began with a prayer and I told them we'd be looking at the 23rd Psalm. Then, because none of them made a move to open their bibles, I (with, what I realize now, was a probably a quite condescending voice) proceeded to tell them how to find the psalms in their bibles (open your bible to the middle and odds are good you'll hit the psalms!). Ms. Von opened her bible out of courtesy, but no one else did. And Von never looked at hers. At some point, it occurred to me: "It's the 23rd Psalm for God's sake! When they had no place to live and nothing in their lives to call their own, they called this psalm and this LORD their own ("The LORD is MY shepherd" - only time in the Old Testament the the LORD is called MY shepherd - everywhere else it's plural - like OUR shepherd)!" 

For the next hour, these simple scholars gently schooled me in perspective. I, who have never come face to face (in a very literal sense) with evil - "I will fear no evil" - was given a broader understanding by them who have had guns held in their faces and/or pimps controlling their every move. They schooled me in what it means to live in the "valley of the shadow of death." They opened my understanding of what it is to know "thou art with me."

By the time we got to the next verse, "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies," I just said, "That's is a really hard verse for me. What does that mean for you?" And I let them speak first. I think it was Annie who said something like, "I think Jesus must have known that verse. The way he always eating with everybody, even prostitutes. And then, the way he ate with Judas and Peter and all the rest - those people who betrayed him and denied him and ran away. They were his enemies - but he just kept feeding them and loving them. Just like he do for us."

We closed with prayer and I realized that I had been sitting or "dwelling" in the "House of the LORD" that evening ("I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever." Forever doesn't wait to start until we die. We're in it right now...otherwise, it wouldn't be "forever."), gathered around a table with people who, while they certainly were not my enemies, are not folks I would "naturally" find myself with - divided by culture and attitude and "evil/enemy" type things like preconceptions and fear. And people who showed the wear and tear that resulted from combat with the enemies of homelessness, and exploitation, and addiction, and "invisibility," and injustice, and ignorance, and hunger, and violence, and on and on and on. And darned if God, the Shepherd, didn't just go ahead a spread a table right there in the the middle of it all.

The next day the House of the LORD appeared at the Taco Bell in Yadkinville where a table was spread before me and my friend Rick (He came to St. Luke's through our Drop in Center - an outreach ministry to the mentally ill of Charlotte. He now lives in a "housing project" in Yadkinville).

Later that evening the House of the LORD appeared in our Fellowship Hall during the Volunteer Appreciation dinner for Loaves & Fishes of Charlotte/Mecklenburg County (a ministry founded more than 25 years ago, to confront hunger.). There were more than 300 people there - Christians and Jews and "non-religious" types, people who volunteer their time to spreading tables right in the presence of the enemies of hunger and loneliness.

And you know - since we are still in the season of Easter - it seems right to point out, that wherever the House of the LORD shows up, resurrection is going to show up, too! In new relationships and banished fear and understanding and friendship and hunger relieved and beds provided and dignity given and voices heard and thoughts shared and enemies overcome with love.

After all, this is NOT a psalm for the time of death (except as regards the death of evil), it is a psalm for the time of deliverance (which is just another way to say "resurrection.").