A Psalm for Chicago (4.26.26)

Psalm 23 
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.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
    I fear no evil,
for you are with me;
    your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
6 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.

How would you do on this Chicago Trivia? 

What’s the official name of the bean in Millennium park? (Check the end, no, I’m, not giving you the answer here.)

What year was the Great Chicago fire? 

Which is better ketchup or mustard?  (The answer is so obvious here that you will not find it at the bottom, you will know it in your Chicago bones.)

What street intersection is zero in the street number grid system in Chicago—where the address numbers start going up?

(This is a tricky one, but pay attention because the trivia questions are starting to get relevant…I'll give it to you: State and Madison.  And if you that right, extra credit).

But underneath this trivia, there are older stories.  Try this one: What was the name of the ancestral lake that came before Lake Michigan?  

Lucky for me, we have a Chicago historian in the church who could back me up on this one on a Sunday morning

 
…

Glacial Lake Chicago. 

No, I’m not making this up. 

If you're a Chicago fan, you probably heard at some point about the glaciers that melted eons ago revealing a land that had been ironed flat. (Make way for those Illinois prairies, right?) Almost all the land had been pressed like a panini except, for the high ridges that formed when the glaciers had dumped trailing piles of sediment as they shriveled back to the north. Scientists call these ridges of sediment moraines. And here, around Chicago, they are the shallower edges of what was the Glacial Lake Chicago.  

13,000 years ago, the land the church sits on and possibly the land you’re on right now if you’re reading in Chicago was deep under melted glacier lake water. As the water drained the lake into the size of today’s Lake Michigan, those ancient beaches and bluffs that had been cut by waves and those rocky ridges made of glacial sediment emerged.

As the land settled and grew swampy, ancient people stuck to walking along these moraines and ridges and over time wore these smooth footpaths. One of these ancient paths travels the ridge of what we know we know today to be Lincoln Avenue a few blocks East of church. 

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In Psalm 23, the Shepherd leads us in right paths. 

The Lord is my shepherd, 
I shall not want, 
he leads me besides still waters, 
he restores my soul, 
He leads me in right paths.  

Across our Bible, this same word for paths is translated in a couple of ways (and “scenic walk” ways is not on the list of options.) (Shout out to bible scholar, Joel LeMon here and his translation work). The Hebrew word we know as path can be translated as rut or a trench--like a furrow that forms where people walk it over and over. But our Bible translators chose to use the word path here.   Why? Why did the translators use path? 

My best guess is that they landed on path because the idea of our Lord leading us through the "trench of life"  or “right ruts”just didn’t ring in English—

Or does it--?

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In the 1830s the Illinois and Michigan Canal Commissioners hired a surveyor to plan out the young town of Chicago based on the US Public Land Survey System. This system was a standardized way of dividing land into straight rectangular blocks.  I read that it would help make city lots easier to parcel out and sell. Point zero started at (see trivia question) the intersection of State and Madison downtown. The grid was then rolled out from that point on the cardinal directions. 

Today, if you happen to be going down one of these north/south or east/west streets on the grid and you come to a diagonal street— Lincoln, Clybourn, Elston, Archer--It can slow you down.  And likewise, if you’re walking one of those ancient foot paths and you hit the grid, it can trip you up.

The grid is orderly and efficient. Every eight blocks is roughly a mile; every house number calculated and organized. This is not a bad thing.  Life is lived on this city grid. The busses run. The grocery stores are open. Quite possibly, you are sitting on it right now as you read. The vast majority of us live on the city grid in Chicago proper. Life is predictable here. But this isn’t the whole truth of what is going on.

Our person from the bible who gave us 23rd psalm was a person on the move. They are walking beside still waters, they are traveling over paths, through valleys and green pastures. And so are we.  

Some days, we stretch out on the shores of still waters like cats in the sun, our souls restored and purring.

Other days, we drag through the darkest valley, our minds thick with too much, our feet heavy with mud.

And then, there are those times when it can even feel like someone has just picked  up our pretty little grid map and shaken it out like a blanket with all the little characters and street lights and cars and plans tumbling onto each other in a heap--And it can take our breath away. 

But, just as the land has older stories under it that we can’t see, so do we.

We have ancient prayers and songs that have been repeated at bedsides, and whispered on desperate nights. We have stories of healing and persistence, of bitterness and forgiveness that have been passed down and clung to. We've got stories of chicks gathered under fierce wings, of seeds planted, of light dawning. These aren’t just some old stories. They make up the things that have worn the path smooth: The prayers and songs and memories tucked around God’s people like blankets on a cold night that are returned to over and over.

Thank goodness for this. For all of it. Except for the word “path,” which I am embarassed to say I am still using.  Neither “path” nor “trench” nor “rut”  seems to get at what I want. 

Helpfully, that Hebrew word for path is related to the Hebrew word cow (which isn’t as odd as you might be thinking).  Think about it: an ox pulls a cart. A cart would create ruts or even grooves in the earth. Well worn grooves that are traveled over and over and over

.

He leads me in right paths. 

He leads me in right grooves. 

In fact, it would not be inaccurate for me to say The Lord is my Shepherd, he leads me in righteous grooves (thank you again, Joel LeMon). As if walking with God, were like finding the groove: 

The Lord is my shepherd...

He leads me in right paths; 

he leads me in right grooves.

We walk in the groove. But what if we lose it? What if things are shaken up or we wander off—then what? At the end of the psalm, we hear that surely goodness and mercy will follow me all of the days of my life. But this is not “follow” as if God were following me and trailing politely behind—with some encouraging words and applause, Or following with his tricky eye on us.  Instead under this Hebrew word “follow” is a sense that God pursues us. 

Surely goodness will pursue me. 

Surely mercy will pursue me.  

Not the way an enemy pursues us, but the way a shepherd fights to get to the sheep caught in the brambles; the way the woman with the broom sweeps the house top to bottom looking for the precious coin; the way the voice in the garden called out to Mary who wept Easter morn next to the tomb; or the way the stranger on the road popped up next to Cleophas and his wife on their way to Emmaus and joined their conversation. God’s pursuit isn’t one that chases us in order to tackle us or hound us into a corner. God is not interested in conquering us or dominating us or dragging us home by the arm. …

God's pursuit is more like knocking on the door when our soul becomes like a locked house with the blinds drawn. God’s hot pursuit of us  looks more like some question we can’t quite shake, or like someone who said the truth so clearly that it’s still ringing in our ears, or like something so beautiful or fantastic that just stops us mid-sentence, bedazzled and found in wonder.

Surely, goodness and mercy will pursue me.  
Surely God will pursue me. 

For underneath the everyday, scripted hum of life (eight blocks to a mile with every address counted from State and Madison) is an ancient groove that so many have walked before us. 

What does it mean? to be led on right paths or to get in the groove? Well, these ancient, well-worn grooves of our tradition call us to live with kindness and justice towards one another and towards the earth.   But not in a fancy or shiny way, it’s more like in a way of apologies and dishes and cooking dinner, a way of organizing the community and free little pantries and pots of herbs outside the church door for the neighborhood. Getting in the righteous path or groove means--A way of remembering that everything that we touch is touching us right back—the one in the car next to us, the neighbor walking his dog, the woman picking our bananas somewhere far away  

I think Jesus knew something of walking this ancient groove and even of trailblazing when the path was over grown. Of taking the everyday bread and feeding people,  of touching bodies other people didn’t want to touch, of sitting at tables where mercy was seemed to be missing. In fact, Jesus was and is God’s great gift of pursuit for us.  In Jesus, God’s holy goodness and mercy that pursue us takes on flesh and dwells among us. And this groove he walks is a path that calls for love and repair and in living in such a way that the light of God can actually pass though these lives we’ve been given.

If you take a moment to feel the pew beneath you to feel the stone floor beneath you…or feel your chair, your couch where you are.  How many hands have slid down these pew rails? how many feet have worn over these stones in the floor?  

The saints that came before us, both here and beyond deepened that groove of God’s way.   But not on their own.  Goodness and mercy pursued them, pulled them back to those off-center paths. “Surely,” the psalm says, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” 

Underneath that English word “dwell” is a returning to God. And we don’t return to God because we’ve lost God It’s a returning that feels like putting down the thing that has kept our hands full. It’s a Returning that feels: less like climbing and striving and reaching and more like sinking into that soft ground that has been holding us all along. 

Surely I will return to 
and dwell in 
the house of God forever…

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Should you find yourself walking around Chicago, I’m quite certain you will bump into these diagonal streets.  And when one of these old, ancient paths like Lincoln or Clybourn or Elston or Archer—interrupts the grid, let it interrupt you too.  Like a bell. When you bump into one of these time worn paths. May you notice where you are and remember that there are older deeper grooves beneath the ones we can see.   There is an older, loving mercy underneath and deep within us that reaches for you and calls us to reflect God’s love in our lives. 

*****

This city of Chicago with its El stops, and schools and hospitals, This city with its taco trucks and advertisements and street cleaning, with all its beauty and sting, it’s unfairness and struggles, these people walking with strollers and smartwatches and dogs and brief cases and lunch boxes...even here, and especially here, this city is awash with tiny bells: small interruptions of love and grace calling us back to the path, the groove. 

This city, held by our ancient earth beneath is a picture of Psalm 23.

Trivia answers:  
(cloud gate)
1871
(intersection of State and Madison point zero of the city grid).