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Things that are familiar can have a particular resonance for us!
How do you feel when you get home after a long trip? Assuming your home is a good place for you, no matter how good the trip has been, there is nothing like getting home – unpacking and sitting down – Aaaah!
I like to sit in front of a familiar picture or painting for a long time and see what surfaces. I have on the wall in my office at the church a calendar with some fantastic prints from the National Gallery of Victoria. The one for this month is not titled but is sometimes called the two wise men or the two philosophers. It portrays two aged men, one seated at a writing desk, engaged in an enthusiastic conversation. Some say that those men are St. Peter and St. Paul. Even though I have seen this picture many times I do not tire of it.
One of the realities of being human is that we like to follow familiar patterns of response to particular situations. We are by nature ritualistic.
When we meet someone new, we follow certain familiar patterns and customs to break the ice. “Would you like a cup of tea?” “Take a seat.” “What have you been doing today?”
We like singing “Happy birthday” at a party for someone’s birthday. And we think something is not quite right if we don’t.
For Christian we know something is wrong if we have a meal and we don’t say Grace.
There is something significant, comfortable and powerful about the familiar.
Familiar words have a power too!
There is nothing like watching a play and suddenly words you have heard somewhere jump out at you and speak because they are familiar. The delight in such situation is not found in wondering what will happen next, but knowing what happens/what is said next.
This power of the familiar is particularly the case with the well-known works of young Will Shakespeare. Even though I was quite tired the other night when James and I went to Macbeth familiar lines spoke with power:
As Macbeth contemplates
foul murder he begins a speech with the words:
“Is this a dagger which I see before me… ?” (Yes,
I know that bit.)
Later one of the witches who rejoice at one point in being called “midnight hags” speaks the words, “… something wicked this way comes…” and instantly Macbeth comes onto the stage. (Heard that before, too.)
The power of the familiar!
I know some people (including some here) know the scripts of certain comedy shows off by heart and enjoy quoting the familiar such as, “He’s not the Messiah, he’s just a naughty boy.”
Of course with the familiar we do risk sometimes missing the point entirely – because somehow we stop really looking at those things we think we know.
Speaking about missing the point I loved the story I heard about recently of two ladies who went to a famous art Gallery. Clearly one of them hadn’t been grasped by the art because she said to the other as they walked into a room, “We've already been here, I remember the fire extinguisher!” 1
Familiarity can be a powerful thing, but there is also some truth in the old adage that “familiarity breeds contempt” and I think it is also true to say that familiarity can also breed complacency.
Sometimes we think we know something so well we give up on it.
“I have been there so many times, why would I visit that place again?
”Oh yes I know the story of the prodigal son or the story of the good Samaritan, what is there new that I could glean from these story. (Yet thanks to Henri Nouwen and Rembrandt some of us discovered some aspects of the story of the prodigal son a few weeks ago that we have never seen before.)
All of which obviously is an entrée to thinking about the power of Psalm 23 for us as believers.
I guess there was once a time when most people in our country would have known the words of this famous Psalm.
I suppose we would now say that most church goers (and of course synagogue goers) would know the Psalm.
We don’t know who wrote it, even though it is credited to King David. Did he or did he not? We don’t know.
Its power is that it contains a number of elements which are all working together.
There is an affirmation about the nature of God and God’s caring relationship for us!
1 The Lord is
my shepherd – I shall not want! 3 he restores
my soul. I fear no evil; 5 You prepare a table before me |
There is also a radical trust in God taking place throughout the Psalm.
| The Lord is my shepherd – I shall not want! |
But this isn’t all unreal, disconnected from reality stuff.
These affirmations are not taking place in some sort of Arcadian Paradise which is cocooned from the pressures and struggles of this world. The Psalmist says that he writes in the context of some major threat:
Even though I
walk through the darkest valley, |
The Psalm is honest: being cared for by the loving God does not protect us from the random nature of this world, or to quote Shakespeare again, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”
The power of the Psalm is the way it focuses on that thing so central to the path of faith: our relationship with God.
It is not a sort of statement about God in the abstract, it plunges us into speaking about us and God – God and us.
I don’t think we will thus ever tire of it.
The Psalm has thus not surprisingly found use in all sorts of situations.
It is regularly used in Jewish worship.
It was sung by the early Christians in the wee small hours of Easter Sunday as new Christians were brought out of the baptismal font, anointed with oil, clothed in a white alb and ushered to the table of the Lord.2
We sing it as part of our worship, we use it as an affirmation of faith.
We sing it in times of celebration and in times of difficulty and mourning.
There are many musical settings for the Psalm - perhaps Crimond being the most famous in the Anglo-American world.
I have known it chosen for weddings as much as funerals.
I use its words when
visiting the sick and dying.
I use the opening line as a way to move into prayer.
I recall vividly how people at the worship services at the aged care centre in Bairnsdale who often could not take in much because of the ravages of dementia, would suddenly come very much connected with what was going on when we sang well known hymns, when we shared the Eucharist and when we used familiar passages of scripture – particularly when we read Psalm 23.
Our familiarity with the words of Psalm 23 enhances rather than detracts from their power.
May this wonderful Psalm keep speaking to us of the comfort and hope we find in the Lord who spreads a table before us. Amen.
Resources:
1 “Nuggets” from the site “Sermon
Fodder” http://home.twcny.rr.com/lyndale/
2 Carroll Stuhlmueller, Psalms 1, Michael Glazier Inc,
Wilmington, 1983, 153.
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