For My Shield This Day I Call a Mighty Power

A Sermon for Pilgrim Congregational Church, UCC, Lexington

Rev. Reebee Kavich Girash

March 15, 2026

(video)

SCRIPTURE READING

Psalm 23 Common English Bible

The Lord is my shepherd.
    I lack nothing.

2 

God lets me rest in grassy meadows;
    God leads me to restful waters;

3 

        God keeps me alive.
God guides me in proper paths
    for the sake of God’s good name.

4 

Even when I walk through the darkest valley,
    I fear no danger because you are with me.
Your rod and your staff—
    they protect me.

5 

You set a table for me
    right in front of my enemies.
You bathe my head in oil;
    my cup is so full it spills over!

6 

Yes, goodness and faithful love
    will pursue me all the days of my life,
    and I will live in the Lord’s house
    as long as I live.

–

Mrs. O’Keefe can sense the danger Meg and Calvin and Charles Wallace are about to face. She draws from her ancestors and speaks:

All Heaven with its power,

And the sun with its brightness, 

And the snow with its whiteness,

And the fire with all the strength it hath…

All these I place
by God’s help and grace
between myself and the powers of darkness….

So begins Madeleine L’Engle’s novel A Swiftly Tilting Planet.  Our heroes take this rune, this prayer, this song with them as they face epic conflict.  As they travel in and out of generations and face and overcome what could be the end of the world, these words become their shield.  

And since reading this book in childhood, when I have faced danger or needed courage, I have called on this prayer: I call all heaven with its power… to stand against all wrong, to bridge the gap, to protect me, to be my shield.  To protect those I love, to be a shield for my neighbors when danger comes.  Sometimes prayer has to be fierce.    

But it was this year that I realized the rune at the center of the plot long predated this novel.

Madeleine L’Engle was a novelist and poet – and an Episcopalian who drew this prayer right from St. Patrick.  

Patrick, whose words inspired our first hymn today.  Patrick of Ireland, whose teachings moved Columba to Iona, whose words and ideas are heard down the centuries in Celtic lands.

And therein lies an invitation, from Celtic Christian tradition, to all of us.  

“For my shield this day

A mighty power:

The Holy Trinity!

Affirming Threeness,

Confessing Oneness

In the making of all

Through love”

In the west of Scotland, Celtic Christians were known for praying at every occasion – from getting up in the morning, stoking the fire, to the birth of a child to moments of danger.  Every moment was steeped in prayer. There was a sense that prayers protect us and connect us to the power of God.  Ancient runes invoke God’s presence to stand in the gap.  And there were moments and years and centuries of danger, there were moments and years and centuries of suffering.  So, sometimes prayer had to be fierce.

Over the centuries, this tradition of prayer and poetry became prayers of resistance.  “It was song [and prayer] that sustained them in their times of loss, suffering, and exile.”

There is a beautiful collection of the prayers of the Scottish Hebrides, the Carmina Gadelica – Songs of the Gaels – gathered in the 19th century, when it seemed this oral tradition would be lost if not written down.  Because they were written down, we can lift up prayers like this:

God to enfold me, 

God to surround me, 

God in my speaking,

God in my thinking,

God in my sleeping,

God in my waking,

God in my watching, 

God in my hoping.

God in my life, 

God in my lips, 

God in my hands

God in my heart.  

Esther de Waal writes of praying such ancient words today: “I find that while it is a desperate entreaty, a cry for help, it also carries a great feeling of confidence that the powers I invoke will come to my aid.”

From the prayers of Patrick to the songs of the Gaels, we have a treasury of strong Celtic prayer.  Runes of protection.  

–

It was this week that I realized Psalm 23, that beautiful chapter so many of us know by heart, can also be a rune of protection in times of trouble.  Psalm 23 can be a fierce prayer.

There are moments when the challenges we encounter are almost cosmic in scope.  We face cataclysmic disruptions in the world – and we face our own personal strife. 

These are moments when scripture, and the prayers of our ancestors, can become tangible cloaks and shields.  

The Lord is my shepherd.

As Paul says, moments when we put on the whole armor of God. 

When we don’t know where to go, 

We invoke God’s guidance.

As the Psalm says:

God lets me rest in grassy meadows;
    God leads me to restful waters;

        God keeps me alive.
God guides me in proper paths
    for the sake of God’s good name. (Psalm 23 CEB)

And as Patrick said:

“This day I call to me: God’s strength to direct me, God’s power to sustain me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s vision to light me, God’s ear to my hearing, God’s word to my speaking….”

When we face adversaries – and that could be human opponents, or illness, or a world that seems to have gone off the rails – God is next to us.

As the Psalm says:

Even when I walk through the darkest valley,
    I fear no danger because you are with me.
Your rod and your staff—
    they protect me. (Psalm 23 CEB)

And as Patrick prayed:

“God’s hand to uphold me, God’s pathway before me, God’s shield to protect me, God’s legions to save me…”

When we cannot find hope, there is God’s love, no English translation can contain the kind of love the Psalmist spoke of, chesed in Hebrew:

Yes, goodness and faithful love
    will pursue me all the days of my life,
    and I will live in the Lord’s house
    as long as I live.

And as Patrick proclaimed:

“Christ beside me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me….”

The strength that is beyond strength, the courage that is beyond courage, the power that is beyond power, the guidance that is beyond guidance.  God’s chesed.  God’s unfailing and steadfast and fierce love.

“All these I place
by God’s help and grace
between myself and the powers of darkness…”  

–

The Celtic Christian tradition of hundreds of years ago was an oral tradition.  The prayers, songs, poems, runes were memorized and passed down like precious, sometimes secret gifts.  We basically don’t do that these days.  Rote memorization is out of vogue.  But most of us know Psalm 23 by heart.  

So if you know these words by heart, I wonder if you might try to remember them a different way today.  Not just as a memory or a statement of faith.  But as a power, as a shield.  Might it be, sometimes, that remembering Psalm 23 might become part of your courage?  A shield, a cloak of protection?

I chose to print a less familiar version of the psalm today, with the hope that its symbols and promises would feel fresh.  But now I want to read this Psalm aloud to you again, using the version most familiar to English speakers, but reading it to you in the form of a fierce rune of protection and a declaration of courage.

1 The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4 Even though

Even though,

Even 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.

 5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. 

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. 

Amen.

Postscript on enemies in Psalm 23: There’s a major question that I’m jumping over in my reflections today.  The Psalmist frames their struggle against enemies.  How do we deal with that language?  I commend to your attention Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s reflection on Enemies in Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible.  (discussed https://www.christiancentury.org/features/praying-imprecatory-psalms-bonhoeffer,  and quoted at length in https://renovare.org/articles/the-enemies ) .  I also commend to your attention W. David O. Taylor’s Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life, Chapter 9 – on Enemies: “It is important that we be clear about the purpose of enemy language in the psalms. Its purpose is to remind us that the violent, sinful ways of human beings – including our own violent, sinful ways – need to be named so that God can step in and do something about it…not a license to do violence to others…[it] is a matter of honestly naming our experience.”  Taylor goes on to offer Christians the framing of Matthew 5:43-45 and Luke 23:34 to hold in parallel with these passages from the Psalms.