It's All Souls this weekend when we remember those we've lost. This reflection on Psalm 23 resonated at an Evensong earlier this year and it's a reminder that God is with us always, even in the valley of the shadow of death...

Penny Pullan

A reflection on Psalm 23, for All Souls 2024

I preached a sermon based on this reflection at an Evensong earlier this year, and it resonated with people. It seems a good time to share it more widely.

In the oncology/haematology ward, the patients don't move much. Lying there, gasping, sighing or, if they are lucky, sleeping for a while, the patients are the focus of attention. Anxious relatives and friends try not to get in the way of the busy nurses, doctors and healthcare assistants, as they roll patients over, change drips or try to get people to take a little bite of food.

I wasn’t expecting to write this in a hospital, but here I am in side room 7 of the West Bergholt ward in Colchester Hospital. Alongside me in the bed lies my father. His cancer, which had responded well to chemotherapy and gone into remission last autumn, has come back with a vengeance. Cancerous white blood cells crowd out his lymph nodes and are gradually crushing the life out of him. “It’ll be weeks, not months”, says the consultant. “If he gets a chest infection, he’ll be gone – just like that!” the consultant says, clicking his fingers.

I was all set to write a piece about the use of psalms. But here I am, sitting alongside my sleeping father and, instead, I find that I’m in the midst of living a psalm, something much deeper than the psalm readings I’ve been doing every day this year. Psalm 23 is echoing through my mind, whether I choose to think of it, or not. It feels beyond my direct control! It echoes with every step I take through these strange days, from my old life as a daughter, towards a rapidly approaching death and a new future without any older generations of my family. It's a psalm that I know inside out and back to front. I’ve said it and sung it all my life in multiple versions. So here goes. I’m going to try and catch this prayer that is resonating throughout me right now, in a much deeper way than it could ever have been had I just read through it, set out to pray it consciously or to study it academically. This is life in all its rawness. Incredibly deep feelings are at play, along with a deep connection to God. Right now, my mind and soul are echoing Psalm 23, all day every day. Perhaps God is teaching me what the Psalms really are, what they are for and how they are to be lived at a deep level, and not just read or recited?

A Prayer – based on Psalm 23

The Lord’s my shepherd, but I don’t really know any shepherds, Lord. What does that mean? Perhaps I could say that you’re my carer, my nurse, my helper? Lord, I’m seeing so much care here: the student nurse who makes sure that there’s enough space for Dad’s hand to stretch out when he’s rolled on his side; the haematology registrar who wants to take a bone marrow sample, but knows that Dad had a horrible experience of that last year and so he offers masses of local anaesthetic to ease things for him, and then finally decides not to take the sample after all; the lady who runs a caring agency, softly talking me through all the things to think about if Dad does have the chance to go home to die; the nurse who revels in the privilege of walking alongside people who are dying and caring for them and their families. In them, I’m seeing an echo of Your care and love. Just as these wonderful people are caring for my Dad, the shepherds of Biblical times cared for their flocks and led them by still waters. You are leading and guiding me too.

I have never walked this path before - my mother died instantly of a heart attack - so I know very little of palliative care. I’m learning from a low base. I don’t know what to do but call out on you to guide me along the right paths and to give me strength for this difficult journey. I know You will. I feel overwhelmed but, with You there, I’m not afraid. I’m remarkably peaceful as the world changes around me and will never be the same again.

Sometimes You help me to lie down by metaphorical still waters and green pastures. Other times You don’t. Right now, I’m in one of those other times. It’s not easy, but I know that you are with me, Lord. Here I am, in the valley of the shadow of death, watching my father gradually weakening and fading, knowing that death is waiting in the wings. But You are here. I can feel Your presence with me, blessing me, giving me everything I need to keep going. You refresh my soul, even when it feels as if it has been emptied, pulled apart with sadness and there is nothing else to give.

You’ve even ensured that I would have a most unusual dip in my workload right now. Now I can see that You, Lord, are in control and have been preparing my life for this. Thank you for being with me always, from when I found my dad collapsed on the floor last Saturday, through the ambulance ride and now, here in the ward. You comfort me here and now. Guide me now and always.

I know that you love my father too. You are his shepherd, his carer too. Help him to feel Your love through the care of those around him. He knows this psalm too. He’s not used to calling on Your name. He’s going through a very difficult time, unsurprisingly, as it’s his death that is approaching so rapidly. Help him to get closer to You, and give me the strength to help him too.

What’s in store? What’s at the end of this whole journey? You remind me through the familiar words of the psalm that goodness and mercy will follow me all my days. You’re preparing a place for us in your house. Thank you for being with me now, and for preparing my future home.

Amen.

How can psalms help in such difficult situations?

I really wasn’t expecting this, either the difficult situation, which arose out of the blue, or how Psalm 23 has become core to my thinking and praying, in fact my very existence this difficult week. The psalms reflect whole breadth of emotions and experiences of life with God in the world, and their intensity too! The psalm writers wrote from their real, lived experience and share their intense emotions: woeful lament and even retribution, which usually turns later into joy and praise. What I’m finding is that the psalmist has captured truths about God and an intensity of emotion that really resonates with me as I go through this strange and precious experience of accompanying my father as he lies dying in a hospital bed.

In me, the psalm has generated a feeling of wellbeing and peace at a time which would be considered terrible by many. Psalm 23 reminds me of who I am and who God is and how he cares for me. No wonder it is so often used at funerals, as it taps into the essence of what’s needed. Even the words used are powerful: ‘the valley of the shadow of death’ is an incredibly powerful metaphor that helps put into words the experience I’m having sitting alongside my dying father.

I found in my reading that I’m not alone in finding this resonance with deep human emotions in the psalms. Yohanna Katanacho, for example, shares his prayers of the psalms for his context as a Palestinian Christian in his 2018 book (translated from the original Arabic). He found that praying the psalms has transformed him. This helped him to expand his understanding of the psalms as he prayed out his theology. They also enabled him to express all of his frustrations, hopes, joys and helped him, as a minister, to develop a theology of tears in the midst of oppressive realities. Reading his prayer from Psalm 23, it felt familiar to me and echoed much of my prayer above. It helped me to identify with him as a fellow Christian, struggling in the Middle East.

In his harrowing book ‘Lament for a Son’, written in 1987, Nicholas Wolterstorff shares the story of his son, Eric, whose life ended on a mountainside in Germany at the age of only twenty-five. In the book, once the story is told, Nicholas ponders it, drawing on the psalms throughout (p.88 and elsewhere).

Ian Stackhouse sums up my own experience of Psalm 23 this week when he says:

“The truth is, we are not alone… Our pastor walks ahead of me, relentless in his commitment to get me to the other side. And what awaits there is a banquet, for it turns out that what has been pursuing me all this time are not the wolves of my imagination, but the goodness of the Lord.” (Stackhouse, 2018)

Just as I have found, psalm 23 reminds us that, at our limits, God’s perfect love casts out fear. Isn’t it incredible that a book written so many centuries ago can tap into our deepest needs in the 21st Century?

Psalm 23 (NRSV Updated Edition)

 1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2     He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
3     he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
    for his name’s sake.

4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
    I fear no evil,
for you are with me;
    your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy[f] shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    my whole life long.