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very few months, saint benedict’s table throws a curve ball into our usual way of doing worship and offers a jazz eucharist. If you’ve never been to one of these before, you’ll probably find yourself wondering why we’re not singing; after all, this is a community that sings out, and sings out well. Is this business of being asked to simply sit, listen and meditate really worship?

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Audio, Commentary, Music, Turntable | No Comments »

I’ve got an old sheep

Unquestionably one of the most widely used and highly sentimentalized of the Psalms, the 23^rd is to be counted amongst those that Walter Brueggemann classes as “psalms of new orientation;” psalms that come out of an experience of having come through some crisis or spiritual trauma. This is perhaps ironic, because it is so often used to express or evoke some feeling of overall confidence and pastoral comfort. It is widely requested for funerals, often by grieving families who have relatively marginal connections to the community of faith. References to the shepherd, green pastures, the valley of the shadow of death, and to dwelling in the Lord’s house all seem to make this the Psalm d’jour for such occasions.

I suggested that there is an irony here, and that is because the Psalm has in it, for all of its pastoral prettiness, a quality of resilient and almost rugged faith. It is evocative, but what it finally evokes is a sense of the steadfastness of faith in a God who is faithful even in the darkness. To quote Brueggemann,

The reason the darkness may be faced and lived in is that even in the darkness, there is One to address. The One to address is in the darkness but is not simply a part of the darkness (John 1:1-5). Because the One has promised to be in the darkness with us, we find the darkness strangely transformed, not by the power of easy light, but by the power of relentless solidarity.[i]

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