May 8, 2011
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
High up in Yosemite with my main responsibility for the weekend is to watch over our almost 5 year-old granddaughter Sage, I was not aware of what was happening in the world. On Monday as we were going to breakfast at Yosemite Lodge’s food court, I saw the front page headlines and pictures—Osama bin Laden Killed. I didn’t know that after 10 years of blaming bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks, that America’s Enemy Number 1 was finally dead.
In front of the bank of newspaper dispensers, I bent down to Sage and told her that what we were talking about is that this man hurt a lot of people but now he’s dead. Throughout the weekend, this confident little child, Sage would say, “I can do it!” Whether it was opening a granola bar to turning on the movie player strapped in my car, she had an “I can do it!” confidence. I wonder how confident she was in understanding what just had happened in the world.
If you were like me, I carefully read about the elite SEAL team operating under the radar detection at night to sneak into the compound in Abbottabad to kill bin Laden. It was like what a good Hollywood movie is about when the SEALs slid down ropes from hovering helicopters.
With our sophisticated communication technology, President Obama and his security team met in the White House Situation Room to monitor and hear live action thousands of miles away. Before the SEALs left the compound with computer hard drives, intelligent documents and the body of Osama bin Laden, they blew up one of the four helicopters because of mechanical failure to protect top-secret equipment from being captured.
The world reacted with both jubilation and silence depending on what side you are on. Earlier this week, we had a high sense of confidence since the dark days of September 11, 2001 nearly 10 years ago. In the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, May 3, there was a Washington Post article by Eli Saslow and Philip Rucker who wrote,
“The first day without Osama bin Laden was not so different from the 3,520 that preceded it.
There was still fear, still grief, still war. There was still the incessant threat of terrorism at home and abroad, prompting the latest official warning for travelers about “anti-American sentiment.” There were still security checkpoints and full body scanners, three-volley salutes and workers digging a grave at Arlington National Cemetery.
Even after bin Laden’s death, America continued to live in the world he helped create.”
Today we live with just little more confidence in the darkness of our world troubled about terrorism and war.
The Good Shepherd
Psalm 23 is probably the best-known passage from the Bible. Even many people who don’t read the Bible at all can quote at least a line or two from it, if only because they’ve heard it so often at funerals, the darkest days of our lives. It’s a comforting passage to mourners. But if we think of it only as a funeral text, we can miss the fact that the Psalm is mostly about living confidently in the darkness.
In the ancient world, as it is today, shepherds were herders and tenders of sheep, but back then, “shepherd” was also a metaphor for the role kings were to play. They were to tend their subjects, providing for them and protecting them. Problem was, many of the kings were lousy shepherds of their people, either inept or more concerned with their own wealth and power.
For someone in that culture to say, “The Lord is my shepherd” was similar to saying, “The lord is my king,” and the point was that God does what a king/shepherd is supposed to do. When someone were to recite Psalm 23, the person was declaring an intention to live under God’s rule, and the rest of the psalm then becomes a description of the good things that come to that person as a subject of this king.
Thus, because the Lord is a good shepherd and I am a member of his flock, I shall not be in want. I will have what I need. Lying down in green pastures, being led beside still waters and fearing no evil in the valley of the shadow of death are poetic ways of saying the Shepherd-King provides what I need to stay alive.
When we read, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley…” we believe that God’s shepherding will see us through the difficult, troubled and hard stretches of life. Because the Lord is our shepherd, we are talking about life—“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”
The Shepherd Knows the Way
Let’s go back to that valley for a moment. The psalmist says the reason for not being overcome by fear while in the dark valley is that God the Shepherd is with us. The psalmist takes comfort that the Shepherd has a rod and staff ready to protect him. But what can give us more confidence is that the Shepherd had been through this valley before.
Only a foolhardy shepherd would take his flock into a dark valley he’d never been in before. The only reason for leading sheep into or through a valley where there might be risk to the sheep is because the shepherd knows there’s something the flock needs—grass or water or shelter—in the valley or at the other end of it and that he can handle whatever threats to the sheep might occur there. We can say that the shepherd has already gone through this valley before and has the confidence to walk in the darkest valley.
Thus, this Psalm becomes a statement of confidence in God. Whether our dark valleys are times of trouble or the actual passage through death itself, we believe God is not only with us but is more than equal to whatever threats to our spiritual well-being or our physical safety may lurk within that darkness.
Raising Children in These Times
Last weekend, there were many little children who came to Yosemite with their parents and grandparents. I give a lot of credit to parents today since they are raising children in this time after 9/11. They are confident that tomorrow will be brighter than yesterday. These children will grow up thinking that it’s perfectly normal at the airport to show your ID before handing over your boarding pass, take off your shoes, remove your jacket, place your laptop in a separate plastic bin, and get a full-body scan.
Before the French Revolution, Charles Dickens described a time as—“the best of times…the worst of times.” He was describing, in a sense, every historical period in human history. All time periods have good elements and bad elements, and to wait for the so-called perfect time to bring a child into the world would be futile.
But as Easter people who believe in the Resurrection of our Lord, we believe in “kairos” time—a time when something of ultimate truth breaks into the relative truth of the world. It is a time of great excitement, because the ultimate has been revealed. But this is also a time of immense stress because each person is called upon to make the choice of how to react to this revelation: to ignore it and remain in the safety of the status quo, or to follow it, wherever it may lead, even if doing so leads to persecution and/or death.
Even if the world is less than perfect and fraught with threats and terrorism, good parents encourage their children to leave the world a better place than they found it. We can teach them to be good stewards of God’s natural world made so plain to see when you are in Yosemite. We can model for them respect and appreciation for different cultures, nationalities, and languages especially with people with Muslim and Middle-Eastern background. And while there may be some degree of celebration that is justified or long-time coming from the events of this past week, we can teach our children that life on both sides of a conflict is precious.
We still live in a world that is unfair, unjust and even brutal at times. The early Christians knew this only too well. This means that we need to teach our children the indisputable truth about every person who has ever been born is that he or she is a miracle. What begins as an overwhelming sense of wonder and mystery in the event of a miracle, such as birth, always wanes over time. The best parents don’t allow themselves to ever forget that each child is a miracle. They keep this belief alive by actively remembering and talking about their birth, celebrating birthday parties, and keeping records of each accomplishment as the child grows and develops each day.
When parents sincerely take time to reflect on the miracle that is a child, we as a people who live in “kairos” time that God’s revelation of Good News in Jesus Christ is known by us that we can indisputably say that all children in the world are miracles.
Confidence Today
We have nothing resembling proof that God will be with us in the dark places of life, but we do have the testimony of Scripture and other Christians that God has been there before us and knows the way through it. The depth of the darkness sometimes shakes our confidence, but the testimony of people of faith and of the Scripture is that God doesn’t leave us alone in the dark valleys.
Besides Psalm 23, there’s Psalm 139 that proclaims the truth that God has gone ahead of us into the darkest valleys.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you (Psalm 139:7-12).
That’s a testimony from someone who’s been in a dark valley, and that person invites us to believe that our experience in the valley will be similar, if we trust God. To trust God doesn’t mean we have to muster up belief or desperately try to shore up shaky hope. It does mean we rely on more than just what our fears tell us. Confidence in God doesn’t change the facts about the world, but it does change the conclusions we draw about those facts.
For example, two people can look at the same facts and arrive at opposite conclusions. One man might look at the dark valleys in life and conclude, “There’s no God. If there were, he’d have never let us go through such troubles.” Another can look at those dark valleys and say, “It’s so comforting that God has gone through them first so we can trust him to shepherd us while we’re in them.” Same facts; different interpretations.
Holding Hands
With the death of Osama bin Laden, it brings some symbolic closure to many families who lost loved ones almost ten years ago. But in many ways, the first day without bin Laden was not so different from the 3,520 that preceded it. Already there’s heightened security at airports, train stations, bridges and shopping malls because of possible “anti-American sentiment.” While bin Laden is dead, al Qaeda is still operating and is looking for a successor. We still live in a world with fear and terrorism.
Spending a weekend with an almost 5-year old granddaughter for the first time can be a fearful time for the grandfather. I drove extra careful and slowed down. I declined taking her on a bike ride fearing that she might be injured. When we park my car at night, Sage reminded me to make sure we took out all food and evidence of food so that the bears won’t break into our car at night. When we saw the car undamaged in the first morning, Sage was relieved and said, “We did a good job, Yeh Yeh!”
All of us will walk through darkest valleys in life. There’s no way to avoid them. But when we hold hands crossing the dark street intersections, we know that someone has gone before us. Every time Sage confidently says, “I can do it!” she also knows that when she does need help, her grandfather and parents have gone before her to help her when she can’t.
In Psalm 23, we are reminded that there will be those times when the path of our life takes a sharp turn and leads us through the darkness. We may not be able to avoid the dark valley by taking a detour around it. But if we have to go down this dark valley, there’s a promise that we will never have to go through the darkness alone. Like a good shepherd who cares for the sheep, like a loving parent who holds the hand of a child, the Lord promises to be with us on that way through the darkness.
God is never overcome by the darkness. When we are in the darkest valley, we are confident that we’ll find God there with us, and he will help us.
Let us pray.
Loving God, you are our guide and protector, our caretaker and our provider, our shepherd and the gate to abundant life. We place our trust in you and the winning work of Christ. Settle your caring hand upon us as we face the dangers and difficulties of life. Bless all mothers in their child-bearing, all parents in their child-rearing, and, when necessary, in child-dying. Sustain your children as terrorism threatens, wars erupt, and life unravels. Bear us up, as we seek to bear up under the pressures of life. We ask to be saved from the time of trial and be confident in the darkness. In Christ we pray, Amen.