Truthiness
Psalm 23

Linguists tell us that the internet, mobile phone text messaging, and the incessant 24-hour news cycle are bringing about rapid changes in our language. A new word or phrase that years ago would have taken decades to filter into popular culture can now become a sensation almost overnight.

One example of this phenomenon occurred in America in 2005 when the word, “truthiness,” perfectly described a common American phenomenon. “Truthiness” quickly captured America’s hearts and minds, and now just two years later, “truthiness” has a longer online encyclopedia entry [wikipedia] than the “Church of Scotland,” and is in common usage.

In a segment on his late-night comedy show, The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert first used the term “truthiness” in a satirical news report on President Bush and American culture. “Trutiness,” Colbert explained, described things that a person claimed to know intuitively, “from the gut,” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.”1

Colbert referred to President Bush’s bizarre tendency to claim heart over head. Regarding Bush’s selection of his close personal friend and admirer, Harriet Miers, as supreme court nominee, Bush didn’t say what he “thought” about his selection, instead saying of Miers, “I know her heart.” Noting not her brain, but her heart: that’s truthiness.

Or consider Bush’s summing-up of Vladmir Putin, Russia’s president whose hand-picked successor is being elected today in neither a free nor fair election. Bush said of Putin after an American visit, “I looked the man in his eye…and I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

What’s perhaps even more interesting than the word itself is the word’s soar to fame. Within a few months, “truthiness” and its meaning was discussed by America’s top news-outlets, clips flew around You Tube, America–and soon the world–had a new word.

Just two months after its invention, truthiness was being considered by dictionary committees. The American Dialect Society celebrated “truthiness” as its 2005 Word of the Year. “Truthiness” was selected by The New York Times as one of nine words that captured the spirit of 2005. And in 2006, Merriam-Webster announced “truthiness” as its 2006 word of the year by a vote of 5-1 (“google” came in second).

In a society inundated with spin, political pandering, and emotional rhetoric, “truthiness” hit a nerve. The new word describes, in a unique way, our struggle to determine how “true” a claim really is. The judging of truthiness is a vital part of our contemporary task.

Enter an ancient text, written for an ancient people, preserved and essential for our contemporary situation: Psalm 23. Read tonight by Lauren in its perhaps most beloved form in the 1611 Authorized King James translation, Psalm 23 tells the real–ancient but still relevant–truth about God and God’s people. A truth of both heart and mind. Psalm 23 tells a needy people the truth about themselves.

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

The opening verses speak of God not as a king, or conquerer, or terrorism expert, but shepherd. One who protects the sheep, leads them to green fields and luxurious shelter, restores not just physical ailments but the soul itself.

Somehow, the psalmist sings, with the Lord as shepherd we shall not want. The Lord cares, leads, and restores the people. This is not a Deist god who sets the earth in motion, then leaves creation to its own devices. No, the psalm cries, the Lord continues to care for God’s people, like a shepherd constantly watching the flock. The Lord’s goal is comfort, safe and effective leading, holistic care for body and soul.

The New Testament writers understood this comforting shepherd language and echoed it in many of their writings. Recall Luke’s gospel and Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep: a shepherd leaving the flock of 99 to search for the one lost sheep, then rejoicing when the lost is found. Jesus describes God with surprising actions and love, not giving-in when a sheep is seemingly lost.

Kenneth Bailey tells the story of a missionary to China,

“who opted to remain after the Communist takeover in 1950. This missionary was placed under house arrest and his interrogators attacked the person of Jesus by noting that Jesus told of a shepherd who left “the flock” and went after the one who was lost. The communists argued that such an act was utterly foolish and irresponsible. The collective mass was all that mattered. [The missionary] defended Jesus by pointing out that when the good shepherd in the parable goes after the lost sheep he gives ultimate security to the rest of the flock. Each sheep thereby knows, If I get lost, he will come after me.”2

And we do, all of us, wander away from God. We seek pastures for ourselves alone. And we do not listen to the shepherd’s voice.

But tonight and always, Psalm 23 tells the truth about God who restores our souls.

The psalm continues,
Yeah, though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil.
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff–they comfort me.

The truth behind these words–why they give such comfort–is found in the dark valley. Or as the Authorized Version puts it, “the valley of the shadow of death.” For we know, our world has its shadows, its darkness, its death.

The psalm calls us not to blink our eyes and say everything is fine and dandy, but instead meets us in the dark valley itself.

We are all there at some point. The shadow of death. The shadow of doubt. The shadow of illness. The shadow of worry…for children, for the poor, for changing times, for those living with AIDS/HIV, for the prospect of climate change, for our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, for those addicted to drugs, for our political systems, our churches, our future, for many many things. The shadows that continue to nag, no matter what we do.

The psalmist knows the real truth of the human experience: dark valleys persist, shadows lengthen. It’s a truth of heart and mind.

But the psalmist turns to God–or seeks God who is there all along. Comforting with a rod to strike the dangers away, with a staff to lead the strays back home. Even in death’s darkest valley, the shepherd is there.

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

In our politically correct world, the use of the word “enemies” might seem antiquated to some.

You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.

Surely we don’t have enemies anymore?  With our sophisticated understandings of human relations, we must not have enemies but “non-allies” or “opportunities for new friends” or “under-developed relationships.”

And there’s some truth to this. We teach our children not to make or keep enemies. We seek mediation and conversation with the staunchest of foes. We want to believe there’s a better way–and there probably is. Jesus, after all, instructs us to pray for our enemies.

But praying for our enemies acknowledges that, indeed, we have them. Despite our best efforts to love one another as Jesus loved us, enemies persist. If we’re honest with ourselves, we probably have made a few enemies in our lives–that co-worked who lost her job when you reported her; that friend whose marriage will never be the same.

And beyond people, there are the enemies of other sorts: Cancer and disease. The enemies of poverty, famine, and war. Anything that hinders us from glorifying God and enjoying God forever.

This is a truth about our condition–we have enemies still–it’s a sad truth, but a truth nonetheless.

As we note this truth, we have work to do. Before we label ourselves “entirely good” and our enemies “entirely evil,” we should remember to consider ourselves and contemplate the log in our own eye. It is not truth to say or think: We have enemies, therefore we ourselves are entirely benevolent.

Or to think, that poverty it’s an enemy, but it’s their enemy, not mine.

So before we point fingers at the other or throw our hands up in desperation, we should consider our call, somehow, to love our enemies, and to pray for them.

But as we pray and love our enemies….we also acknowledge another truth.

A seminary professor of mine told me that there was a time when he didn’t like using the word “Satan”–the ultimate enemy–he didn’t think speaking of Satan in contemporary conversation was ultimately helpful. That was, until, his wife was diagnosed with cancer. Then, for my professor and his wife, the cancer was the ultimate enemy, striving to take away life itself.

For this couple, thinking of cancer as the enemy, as Satan, was helpful, even necessary.

Psalm 23 meets us in the truth of our deepest crises and dilemmas, when enemies wage war and the struggle is real, present, and painfully true.

Somehow, though, we find our shepherding God already there, even in the enemies’ midst. God anoints our head with oil, marking us as God’s own, as God’s beloved sheep no matter what. God fills our cup to overflowing–giving more generously than than we can imagine. And God promises us being in God’s presence for the length of our days.

God’s goodness does not end. God’s shepherding continues for ever. Though the reigns of kings wax and wane, though the grass withers and the flowers fade, though we die and our bodies return to dust, God’s goodness and mercy follows us forever.

As George Matheson put it in the hymn we’re about to sing, “O Love that wilt not let me go.”

The shepherd will not let us go. We know this truth from psalm 23, and we see it confirmed on the cross.

This is the truth of the psalm; this is the truth of the gospel. It’s not a truth that makes the news much these days. It won’t be added to any dictionaries this year. But there it is: ancient words in an ancient book proclaiming the truth for all ages.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Adam J. Copeland

Assistant Minister

Ayr: St. Columba Church of Scotland

—-my sketchy non-html footnotes below—

1 This definition and the subsequent description of the truthiness phenomenon is thanks to the thousands of unknown good people who wrote the wikipedia entry.

2 Bailey, Kenneth E. “Psalm 23 and Jesus” in The Presbyterian Outlook online 02/18/2008