If you saw the “Places in the Heart,” starring Sally Field, you will probably never forget the closing scene. Many in the audience and most critics could not believe what they were seeing. The scene is set in a small and simple sanctuary lit Texas. Everyone who figures in the movie drama is seated there in the pews. The camera moves in on the preacher at the pulpit, and he reads the moving cadences of the apostle Paul’s great hymn on love from 1 Corinthians 13.-We hear again how faith, hope and love outlast everything else. Then the ushers begin to pass communion trays. The camera follows the tray down the pew persons take the elements and pass the tray to the one sitting next to them, the camera focuses on their faces. Then each person passes the peace to his or her neighbor saying, “The peace of the Lord be with you” - those beautiful words of hope by which the church affirms how we are all one, how God’s forgiving love brings us together in the peace of Christ,

The camera moves from the widow, Mrs. Spaulding, who after her husband’s tragic death has mounted such a valiant struggle to survive; then to her deceased husband yes, he is sitting beside her. (At his funeral they had sung, “In The Sweet Bye and Bye, we shall meet on that beautiful shore”; and that reunion is now beginning.) The camera then moves to the person seated next to the husband, and it is the young man who shot him - he’s right there and is offered Holy Communion and God peace by the very man whose life he ended. The drifter, who helped the widow make her farm a success, is there. So is the blind man to whom Mrs. Spaulding extended a welcome and a home when he was rejected by his family. The banker, whose cruel heart betrayed his hypocritical piety, is there. And the couple whose marriage almost faltered because of infidelity are there, holding hands, as they receive communion together.

Some people did not understand that scene and wondered why it was included. But we understand it, don’t we! ‘(I am grateful for this interpretative insight of Mark Trotter, First UMC of San Diego, which further enhanced for me the dramatic impact of this scene).

The Lord’s Table is where we come together in the love, forgiveness and peace of Christ. But there is a pre-figuring of the Lord’s Table and Holy Communion in the 23d Psalm. And that is the reason I share this scene from Places in the Heart.

The lovely dominant image of the Psalm is that of the shepherd. So gripping that image that we hardly note the change in verse 5. Here the Lord becomes a host, and we are guests at his table. “Thou preparest a table before me.”

The ideas of verses 5 and 6 are basically those of the first 4 verses: “Repose and provision, danger and change, again fill the foreground; and again there is forecast of a more remote future. But all is intensified, the need and the supply being painted in stronger colors and the hope being brighter. The devout man is God’s guest while he marches through foes, and travels toward perpetual repose in the house of Jehovah.” (Alexander Maclaren, The Psalms Vol. 1, George H. Doran Company, New York, p. 230).

Let’s stay with the images of these last two Verses as we close this Psalm series.

I

First, a table in the presence of mine enemies.

I see two suggestions here: Providence and protection. Providence is a big word, a big idea captured in the spiritual we sang earlier, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” One of our problems is that our ideas about God are too small. The Psalmist works on that. He seems to be saying: “I am more than Jehovah’s sheep; I am Jehovah’s guest”

This is a part of what providence means – guests of God in a world that he created, and whose destiny he will ultimately determine. “Thou preparest a table before me.” In Old Testament Judaism to eat with a person was the deep of identification and acceptance. That’s the reason the Pharisees became so angry at Jesus for eating with Publicans and sinners. Eating was not only a means of satisfying hunger but an experience of intimate affectionate love.

That’s what the Shepherd Lord who has become our banquet host offers – his providence, expressed in love and daily care.

Will you believe it? We sit at the table of God’s daily providence.

So when you tend to pride over what you have accomplished, take a second thought. When you’re drifting further and further into that deadly pit of self-sufficiency, draw yourself back. Where would you be without God?

The very air we breathe, God gives. Our physical life is but a flickering light dependent upon a remarkable infrastructure of life which God provides.

That’s the reason I can’t understand people who do not tithe. Not to tithe is like glaringly snubbing your nose at God. It is a gross stance of ingratitude and selfishness. That’s the reason Jesus told the story of the successful farmer who tore down his barns and built bigger barns. You remember the story. The judgment is graphic: “Fool! This night your soul is required of you.” That has a frightening curtains-down ring to it. But the haunting line is the one that follows. “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:20)

Let that question jangle your conscience when you begin to think about what have done, what you have achieved, how successful and sufficient you are. Give that question your clearest consideration when you’re deciding what part of your income you are going to give to the Lord. “And these things you have prepared, whose will they be?” They are not passing questions of the moment. They have to do with eternity. Who would you be? Whose would your things be if God withdrew his daily providence?

But there’s another side to the coin. Peter captured in his first epistle, Chapter 5: verses 6 and 7:

“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you. Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you.”

What a promise – “cart all” – This is our call to trust the loving providence of God.

I have a dear friend who has learned this, but oh had he learned it earlier! What a difference there would be. He’s about to get married for the third time. The failure of his earlier marriages witnesses to his own self-centered efforts to control and determine destiny and his narrow focus on his own selfish desires. Now with a deep experience of God’s grace and a commitment to the graceful providence of God, his whole thought-process is changing.

His marriage is being delayed because of his fiancée’s unwillingness to make the final commitment. Current economic uncertainty is holding her back. My friend asked me recently, “Do you believe the marriage vows literally?”

“Literally!” I said.

“I never did before,” he responded, “and that was my problem. But now I know it can’t be any other way. I want to make, and I want her to make, a commitment – for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. I want her to make a commitment now – as I am willing to do – in spite of, if necessary.”

Then he went on to make the clearest Christian witness I heard him make: “I’ve surrendered myself to the Lord and that includes my economic life. I’m trusting God and my happiness now is not dependent upon the success of this project.

He was talking about a multi-million dollar project that is an up and down proposition, a source of tension and anxiety that may lead to bankruptcy.

My friend is at the right place now. Many of us need to join him there in response to Peter’s word:

“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you. Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you. (I Peter 5: 6,7)

That’s the first suggestion of the image of the table set before us, but other than providence, there is protection: “Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of mine enemies.”

The psalms are full of expressions of this bracing truth. Listen to some of them:

The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. (Psalm 9:9)

I love thee, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge. (Psalm 18: 1, 2)

But thou, O Lord, art a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. (Psalm 3:3)

It’s a matter of trust and commitment. The Lord will protect us. He will eat with us — be intimately present, in the presence of our enemies, in the presence of those circumstances and forces that would lead us astray and take us far from his righteous path.

“Greater is he that is within you than he that is in the world.” More and more I’m convinced that Satan and the powers of evil are after God’s people every day. We must claim the protection of God – believe and act on the past that he will prepare a table for us in the presence of our enemies. Call on him as we begin to sense the tempters approach – Immerse ourselves in his word and in daily prayer that we may be alive in his presence.

II

Now the second affirmation: Thou anointest my head with oil.

To see this picture clearly, we must watch the Shepherd leading his sheep toward the sheep fold at eventide. They’d been out all day in the barren, hostile, dangerous countryside. Feet are tender, knees are perhaps grazed on the rocks, heads torn by sharp thorns in some cases. But, it is sunset, and the time for rest. The sheepfold is in sight...

“At the end of the day, the Shepherd, going in front of the sheep, would stand in the gateway and call the sheet to him. As they came, he would examine them one by one. Sheep are peculiarly susceptible to fevers, the feet might need attention. The grazed head or torn knee would be treated with soothing oil.” (Leslie D. Weatherhead, A Shepherd Remen Abingdon—Cokesbury Press, 1938, pp. 128-129.)

That’s the way the shepherd did it. It’s a picture of sustaining grace – the ministering love of God. Let’s stay with the image of our being a guest at the table of the Lord. The host to his guest is expressed by the precious fragrant perfumes, with which he anoints them on their entrance into his home…it’s a beautiful picture. When the psalmist says the God anoints the oil, he is saying that life is a feast in which we are guests and God is host. God always greets us in love and welcome. He is not niggardly or churlish, but glad to see us and glad to make us happy.” (F. B. Meyer, The Shepherd Psalm New York, Hurst & Co. Publishers, pp. 111, 112).

He confers upon us not only necessities, but an extravagant grace that makes some of our darkest hours shine, and puts a sweetness into our bitterest experience.

Kenyon Scudder, the distinguished penologist, told a story of a friend of his who was riding one day on a train. Seated next to him was a troubled young man. Finally, the boy blurted out that he was a convict returning from prison. His crime had brought shame on his family. They had written to him, but he had refuse so ashamed was he for what he had done.

Now he was out of prison.

He wanted to make it easy for his family, so he had written them to put up a signal when the train passed their farm on the outskirts of town. If they wanted him to return home, they were to tie a white ribbon in the apple tree near the tracks. If they did not want him back, they were to and he would stay on the train and go West and lost himself forever.

Nearing his hometown, the young man’s suspense and discomfort grew to where he could not look. Scudder’s friend offered to watch and the two exchanged places by the train window. A few minutes later, the friend laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder and whispered, “It’s all right! The whole tree is white with ribbons!”

That’s the extravagance of God’s grace – not only with forgiveness, but with all His ministering love. “Thou annointest my head with oil – my cup runneth over.”

III

And now that final, climactic, triumphant word:

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

There are two ways of looking at this, both providing vital lessons.

One is to go back and put up the image of the shepherd and the sheepfold, and to link it with that incomparable word of Jesus, The Good Shepherd: “I am the door; by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and shall find pasture” (John 10:9).

It is the picture of our being with the Shepherd, and belonging to His flock. Moffatt translates the phrase “in the house of the Lord forever” with the words “within his household forever more.” That means belonging to the flock belonging to the family.

Looking at it that way, we can move through life with courage and joy knowing that we are a part of God’s forever family. There may be mountain of trouble and turmoil over which we will have to climb; sloughs of despondency and despair may drain us of spiritual sensitivity and blind us to the light of God’s presence. Certainly we will pass through the Valley of the shadow of death. Yet, the knowledge of belonging to the family being within the Lord’s household forever more will provide us the bracing and energizing power to carry on. Because we have entered into the Household by the way of the Good Shepherd, we know we are saved and we can rise every morning and be off to find pasture.

“There seems to have been a sense in which David enjoyed heaven before he got there. To him the Lord’s house was not simply a thing of the future, but a possibility for the present. In another psalm he talks of dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, and in yet another he employs the noble word, “one thing have I desire the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.” So, what is the house of God but the presence of God, habitually recognized by the loving and believing spirit. (F.B. Meyer, The Shepherd Psalm Hurst & Co. Publishers, New York, pp. 161-163)

Then there is the other way of looking at it, the perspective of the Lord being our host who will bring us at last to his glorious home, where we will be his guests forever more.

Heaven. “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” Here is the promise of the soul’s true home. And there is magic in that word – Home. What power is in the word. “It will draw the wanderer from the ends of the earth. It will nerve sailor and soldier and explorer to heroic endurance. It will melt with its dear memories the hardened criminal. It will bring a film of tears over the eyes of the man of the world.” What will we do or bear if we can’t keep our home together?” (Meyer, Ibid. pp. 155-156)

The promise here is of an eternal home. Does it quicken the beat of your heart — the anticipation of dwelling in heaven — of dwelling in the house of the Lord forever.

I like the way Kipling put it:

WHEN EARTH’S LAST PICTURE IS PAINTED

When earth’s last picture is painted,
and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colors have faded,
and the youngest has died,
We shall rest, and by faith,
we shall need it — lie down for an eon or two,
‘TiI the Master of all Good Workmen
shall put us to work anew.

And those who were good will be happy,
They shall sit in a golden chair,
They shall splash at a ten with brushes of comet’s hair
They will have real saints to draw from Magdalene, Peter and Paul
They will work for an age at a setting
and never grow weary at all.
And only the Master will praise
And only the Master will blame
And no one will work for money
And no one will work for fame.
But each for the joy of working
And each in his separate star
Shall paint the thing as he sees it
For the God of things as they are.

I cannot believe that the psalmist is ringing down the curtain in the last verse. I think the final emphasis he would leave on our minds is his determination to remain one of God’s own people. He is not bringing the adventures of the close. He is, rather, saying that he will belong to this shepherd forever.