Psalm 23 - well known but misunderstood

Lesson Six

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever

After the activity of the shepherd leading his sheep across the hills and the strange battle scene in verse five, the final verse may appear to be an anticlimax, almost tame, in comparison with the action-packed first five verses.

There’s nothing wrong with a quiet ending of course, but it’s the abrupt shift from the battlefield feast and the unexpected anointing that takes us by surprise. Suddenly storm and tempest are replaced with a calm and sunny day, a few clouds drifting in an otherwise blue sky.

And the final line seems to follow a linear progression, the battle has ended, peace is restored, and he finds his way home, even if it is a house like no other house, considering who owns it.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life

A notable feature of nearly all the pastoral epistles in the New Testament, whether written by Peter, Paul, or John is the seemingly formal greeting, synonymous with our ‘Dear…’ in the opening paragraphs:

‘Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’ Rom 1 v 7
‘Grace to you and peace be multiplied’ 1 Peter 1 v 2
‘Grace, mercy, and peace…from God the Father and …’ 2 John v3

But this is not a formality. One of the characteristics of an apostle – someone ‘sent’ (‘apostle’ means ‘sent one’) by Christ is that, upon arrival or via a letter, they convey a sense of grace, mercy, and peace. It is foundational. After the foundation has been established and renewed then the apostles move on to deal with any local problems and challenges.

Jesus did the same. Immediately after the resurrection, the scriptures tell us He appeared that evening to the disciples. There were approximately 120 disciples in Jerusalem at the time but we can safely assume that at least the eleven, and the women travelling with Jesus, including His mother, were present.

Jesus appears among them. They are terrified wondering if He is a ghost. His first words, the first words of the resurrection era were ‘Peace to you’. In part, of course, this is to deal with the disciples’ astonishment and fear, but there was also an elephant in the room: the men had failed to believe the women who had reported the resurrection to the men. Peace was the very thing that was absent in the room.

When Mary Magdalene and the others reported the resurrection to the men, Luke’s gospel tells us that ‘their words seemed to them to be old wives tales and they did not believe’.

Imagine the tension between the women who had witnessed the resurrected Jesus and the disbelieving male disciples. It was into this atmosphere that Jesus said ‘Peace to you’. Having appeared and proclaimed peace, He made his way over to the table where the disciples were sitting:

‘Later He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table, and He rebuked their unbelief because they did not believe those who had seen Him’ Mark 16 v 14

In my imagination I see Peter, of course, standing up, and making his way across the room. There are tears streaming down the rough Galilean’s face as he embraces Mary Magdalene and apologises for not believing her. It sparks of a flurry of similar reconciliations. There are many tears. And peace is restored. The disciples are now ready for the next forty days, forty days that will change the world. The peace that Jesus wanted to bring as foundational to the next forty days before He ascended into heaven now existed and He could continue with his important work during those forty days.

There are tears streaming down the rough Galilean’s face as he embraces Mary Magdalene and apologises for not believing her.

St Paul greeted the Romans with grace, mercy, and peace before going on to deal principally with tensions that had arisen between Jewish and Gentile believers in the church in Rome. In Corinth he repeated the same patter: grace, mercy, and peace before tackling immorality in the church and other serious pastoral issues.

At whatever stage in our discipleship or spiritual maturity we need to be reminded that ‘we’ have not achieved anything, and even if we have been successful or ‘fruitful’, we did not earn God’s love, his favour, or his blessing. We are not, as Paul wrote, ‘under law’, attempting to impress God by our obedience or righteousness. We are, in fact ‘under grace’. Grace is freely given on the basis of faith not our ‘works’. The word charis or grace means a gift that is freely given. To receive it all we can do is believe it is for us and open our hands and take it with thanks. Mercy is ‘undeserved kindness’ and foundational. We receive it and pass it on to everyone we meet. And peace. We have peace with God not because we have meditated away our troubles, or have avoided sin for a few days, or we have taken a break from too busy a schedule and are lying on a sun-soaked beach. Meditation, doing good not evil, and a good work-life balance are all beneficial but our peace with God is due entirely, as with grace and mercy, to Christ and what His death and resurrection achieved on our behalf:

‘Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful’ John 14v27

‘Having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’ Rom 5v1

‘For He Himself is our peace…’ Eph 2 v 14

We can only pass on what we first receive. This disciple has, like a sheep, followed the shepherd through all kinds of terrain and conditions in life. And there have been some battles along the way. But the idea is that whatever we pass through grace and mercy are right behind us, ready with fresh supplies.

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Our final phrase. Ignoring the future tense for the time being the setting sounds more like a beginning, doesn’t it? Often on meeting someone we soon get round to asking: ‘What do you do?’ and ‘Where do you live?’ Applying that to Ps 23 and the answer might be ‘O I am just a sheep, you know, one of the flock’. And then ‘I don’t own my house, but it’s mine nonetheless to live in. It’s the shepherd’s house’.

This house is not one that we visit at the end of our apprenticeship, as if we have ’graduated’ or finally passed the test and finally can be admitted. Neither is it referring to the end of our life and resurrection in heaven. It is referring to our present address. The future tense stresses the permanence ‘forever’ not that it is a future address to move into. It’s saying, ‘I might not own the house, it will always be the house of the Lord, but neither do I pay rent, and, no, there’s nothing I can do that will get me evicted’, this is my permanent address, I live here. In fact, it may sound strange, but I don’t ever leave the house, we travel together, I’m part of the house, it’s a living house and it’s on the move.

Jesus put it like this:

‘I am the true vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in Him, bears much fruit: without Me you can do nothing’ John 15 v 5

Peter, the apostle to whom Jesus commanded to ‘feed My sheep’ expressed it like this:

‘Coming to Him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up, a spiritual house…’ 1 Pet 2 v 4,5

Final Comment

In the words of T S Eliot’s poem East Coker ‘In my beginning is my end’.

And now, perhaps we ‘see it’, that as informative as the linear approach to this Psalm can be, once the disciple has been fully formed, he or she will have the whole Psalm alive and well living inside like an internal orchestra with each verse playing along but at any one moment maybe one or two stepping forward and playing a wonderful solo through your soul at any one time.