The Lord is My Shepherd, Pt. 1
Scripture and the Moral Life: Beginning with the Verb
The psalm opens up with a curious equivocation, something more than simply a metaphor which can illustrate or illuminate. The psalm opens up flatly, in the English, in a “this is that” moment, introducing THE LORD as the shepherd. We’ll return to what this equation of the creator of all things with a sheepherder, but before we can make sense of the equation, we will begin by asking about the verb: the “is”.
The pursuit of the moral life is not one which begins, I think, with a command for its own sake, or with a rule without rationale. There is a place for rules and commands in the moral life, but that place is not in the beginning, for in the beginning, there is only God. There are no rules yet, no articulations of goodness, nor are there metaphors or analogies: there is only God.
The “is” here stands as the midpoint which allows for any future speech about God, or indeed, any speech at all! Without the being of God, prior to commands, directions, or dictates, the moral life becomes only discussion of the conditions of rules, flickers of light without any indication of where light directs us toward. In Thomas Aquinas’ Summa, it is with good reason that he begins with the eternality and essence of God before talking about any other topic, much less the moral life of the later questions.
That God “is”, prior to the analogies, is the word of the burning bush, that I AM THAT I AM is the question within our journey through the world. For the moral life is ultimately, I think, about the earth and all that is in it reflecting the glory of the Lord, not by constructing towers to heaven, but by all of our ways being inhabited by the One who has come among us by always being. The eternality of God, before all starting points, frames the nature of our search in the most simple way: toward God.
In that singularity of the “is”, the eternality of God before all articulation of right or rule, is likewise the unity of God: that the God who gives us the way home is the simple God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, who works in unified fashion in creation. Any sense of division between the Decalogue and the Sermon, of the prophets and the Gospels, or of Law and grace, is put away here—the self-same God who always is speaks with a single word to draw that creation across time, through valleys and into the halls of enemies, that we might live in the house of the Lord forever.
And so, the Psalm’s start orients us in time by beginning with the God who is before creation, before time, that in our moral lives, there is a great deal at stake in the grandest of ways: we are being drawn by God. Absent this, all speaking of the Lord becomes hypotheticals, and all commands become vacant and abstract tyrannies.
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Reading: Matthew Whelan’s Blood in the Fields is a great depiction of Oscar Romero’s life and work, as one invested in agrarian and land reform. It’s helping to connect the dots for me in a lot of Dorothy Day’s work, by tying together labor, land, and the intent of creation. George Hunsinger’s The Eucharist and Ecumenism for a class discussion: it annoys me, but in ways that are productive. My oldest has been enjoying The Benedict Society series, which is a pretty delightful caper/mystery/adventure series for younger kids.
As a parting word this week, if you’re liking this newsletter, share it with a friend?