An Ageless Comfort in Times of Pain

Pam and Scott Erdman were in love and working on their master’s degrees at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1981 when he was diagnosed with metastasized melanoma. Doctors gave him two years to live.

She was 22, studying to be a family therapist, and he was 24, preparing to go into ministry.

Despite the prognosis, Pam followed her heart and married Scott, who proved the doctors wrong. Today, 22 years, a son and 10 surgeries later, the disease has taken Scott’s colon and spleen, one kidney and part of his pancreas. He still works full time as a pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood.

Living with her husband’s illness has “stretched me to the end of myself and beyond,” says Pam, a marriage and family therapist in private practice.

But, during the long journey through her dark valleys, the 23rd Psalm has become her encourager, a fount of comfort, hope and peace. “It’s been my lifeblood -- I just hang onto it,” she said.

The 23rd Psalm is one of the most beloved passages in the Bible. Its theme of God as a shepherd leading a flock through “the valley of the shadow of death,” preparing feasts in the presence of enemies and bringing followers to days of “goodness and mercy” has strong appeal to people facing life’s problems, experts and believers say.

“This is a psalm that speaks to all people in a way that they can understand,” said Paul Salamunovich, music director emeritus of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. He has conducted settings of the 23rd Psalm -- one by Joseph Gelineau is a favorite -- countless times during his more than half-century as a musician.

The psalm “has everything you want in it,” said the maestro, who is Roman Catholic. “It gives you protection; it gives you solace. It gives you food. And the beautiful part of it is that it speaks to both Jews and Christians.”

Commentators say the psalm’s appeal lies in the personal way in which the psalmist speaks of God, the imagery of God’s gentle guidance and faithfulness and generosity.

Ascribed to ancient Israel’s King David -- “the man after God’s own heart” -- it is Hebrew poetry at its best, some commentators say.

But no one knows whether David actually wrote the 23rd Psalm or other psalms that are attributed to him, scholars say.

“The important thing is content, not authorship,” said the Rev. John Goldingay, a professor of the Old Testament at Fuller in Pasadena and an expert on the Psalms. The 23rd has comforted him during his wife’s lengthy illness.

To Rabbi Donald Goor of Temple Judea in Tarzana, the psalm’s significance is not its history but the fact that it expresses “so beautifully God’s presence in our world.”

He uses the psalm throughout the day as a source of meditation. “When you’re getting on the freeway, facing terrible traffic, it’s very meditative to be able to recite the psalm and focus on something other than the freeway,” he said.

The rabbi, who oversees a congregation of 1,300 families in two locations, also recites it between phone calls and e-mails, which are increasingly taking up more of his time.

“One moment with the psalm between e-mails or between phone calls helps to remind me that what I am doing is really trying to bring people and myself to this sense of serenity,” he said. “The notion of God being a comforting presence is there in the valley of the shadow of death but also between e-mails.”

The shepherd is a simple metaphor, but carries complex meanings, said theologian David Roper, author of “Song of a Passionate Heart,” a book on the psalm that also traces his own struggle with depression

“Part of the comparison is the portrayal of a shepherd and his sheep; the other is David’s experience and ours,” he said. “David painted a picture and put us in it.”

The 23rd Psalm became Roper’s “lifeline” during his two-year bout with depression.

“I wasn’t suicidal, but I’d wake up every morning, felt very gloomy, found it very difficult to motivate myself to do anything,” said Roper, who has pastored two nondenominational congregations in California and Idaho during his more than 30 years in ministry.

He memorized the 23rd Psalm in Hebrew -- because he said it comes more alive in the original language -- and just kept quoting it to himself over and over.

“One morning I woke up and the clouds were gone, and it hasn’t returned,” he said.

To Miriyam Glazer, professor of literature at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, one of the most powerful lines of the psalm is the reference to God setting a table “before me” in the presence of “my enemies.”

“My ‘enemies’ are all those anxieties, fears, self-doubts, insecurities that overwhelm me,” she said. “And the image for me is that God -- the benevolent power, the force of divine love -- is offering me always a rich and full table, a table of peace and of spiritual plenty, right in the face of those fears, so that, like little demons, they just flee, just dissolve.”

The psalm became a “very powerful scripture” to social worker Saundra Bryant when her niece was killed in a drive-by shooting just four blocks from her South Los Angeles office. She was the one who broke the news to her family.

For Bryant, executive director of the All Peoples Christian Center, the power comes from “knowing that in spite of the violence and in spite of the loss of hope that you witness, it’s through God’s grace that you’re still able to love and that you’re still able to have compassion for other people.”

Through the psalm, God showed her powerfully that she was not alone, Bryant said, and that there was “light at the end of the tunnel.” That knowledge enabled her to forgive.

After a quarter-century of helping drug addicts and ex-convicts, Bill Lane Doulos, a prominent Christian leader, became addicted to methamphetamine.

In the fall of 2001, he entered lengthy treatment in Arizona. In recovery, Doulos has been working at the Church of Our Savior in San Gabriel for a year, doing what he used to do.

As he tried to put the broken pieces of his life together, the 23rd Psalm ministered to him in a way it had not previously, he said.

“Addiction is a metaphor for death in our age,” Doulos said. “I went through a period when I desperately needed the presence of God with me even in the valley of the shadow of death.”

Goldingay, the Old Testament scholar who is an Episcopal priest, said one reason he teaches the Psalms “is because it means a huge amount to me in my own relationship with God.”

His wife, Ann, who has been fighting multiple sclerosis since 1966, uses a wheelchair. She cannot speak or make any voluntary movements.

Yet on these hot summer afternoons, writing his commentary on the Psalms on a laptop as he and his wife sit in the shade of their Pasadena patio, he feels an incredible sense of gratitude to God.

“It’s a lovely thing to do,” he said of working with his wife beside him. It’s “a gift from God that makes my life feel rich even though at the same time it’s grievous that my wife is sitting in a wheelchair next to me, not able to do things herself.”

In the presence of his enemy -- her illness -- God also prepares a feast for him, and makes that dark valley a place through which he can walk, said the scholar, who is associate priest at St. Barnabas Church in Pasadena.

“So much is expressed in terms of images rather than literal realities,” said the native of England.

“That’s what makes it accessible -- so applicable to people -- because it doesn’t narrow down the possibilities of the way in which you can see it being proved or relevant.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The 23rd Psalm

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the

paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of

the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:

for Thou art with me; thy rod and

thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the

presence of mine enemies: thou anointest

my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

all the days of my life: and I will dwell in

the house of the Lord forever.

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King James Version