I want to speak from my heart this morning. It’s hard to be happy these days. It’s
difficult to be hopeful. I limit my intake of news. I limit how much destruction and
devastation I take in each day, how much chaos I attend to. Even so, happiness,
hopefulness, contentment – these things are more elusive these days.
I know there are those – many, actually, who feel like it’s Christmas morning with
each new order coming out of the White House. And I honor that they feel that
way. But I cannot even pretend to understand it.
Ok – so that’s where many of you might find yourselves as well.
And the truth is, we try to keep politics – in the mainline denominations, we try to
keep politics out of the pulpit, but politics has come to us. That’s just the reality.
On the day after the Inauguration, at the National Prayer Service for Unity, Bishop
Budde of the Diocese of Washington asked for mercy for those who are now living
in true fear. She became the target of calls for defrocking and deportation and for
the National Cathedral to be taken over.
Diana Butler Bass, a theologian and an author, says we can no longer ignore that
politics has been brought to us. The historical witness of the church – the church’s
good works of service, to which we are commanded by our Lord, the Beatitudes,
which is our gospel this morning – have become political.
Feeding hungry people? Political.
Preaching about mercy? Political.
Hosting a Spanish-speaking church service?
Hiring a pastor of color?
Having a woman preacher?
Displaying a sign or a flag welcoming everyone? Political.
Believing that empathy and compassion are central to Christian faith? Political.
Loving your neighbor as yourself, one of the twin commandments upon which
Jesus said hang all the law and the prophets? Political.
So things like mercy and justice – I mean things like our faith – the core of our faith
– have become politicized whether we want them to or not, Butler Bass says – and
I say, we can either fold in and become very very quiet leading to our spiritual
death – or we can ever more robustly and wholly follow Jesus, our Lord and Savior, who came to earth especially to bring us life and to bring it ever more abundantly.
Because we are not made for despair or desolation. We feel those things, yes, but
because we have each other and our Lord, we do not have to fall into the pit of
despair, or give credence and undue attention to those whose actions lead to
devastation. In the middle of the night when we are most prone to depression, we
can remind ourselves that they are, as Psalm 1 says, they are destined to be blown
away by the wind as chaff, to have no standing, no lasting endurance.
We are not made for desolation – we human beings are made for life, for joy, for
happiness. And Psalm 1 gives us a very short course, an incredibly abbreviated
course in life and joy and happiness, those things for which Jesus came to show
us the way.
Now I said at all times – I just want to acknowledge you can be a very very good
person – you can follow the way of the Law and the Prophets – you can love God
with all your heart…. you can meditate day and night – and it doesn’t mean that
bad things won’t happen to you, that terrible suffering won’t come your way. Jesus
pretty much guarantees that it will – blessed are you when people hate you and
revile you because of your faith – look at what happens to pretty much every
prophet and to Jesus and to the apostles – So the way of life, the way that leads to
happiness does not mean that nothing bad will happen – it does mean that you will
have through, a way under and through.
Ok – so what is this short course in happiness that we are made for that Psalm
gives us? It might surprise you to hear what this psalm says: Happy are those,
who delight in the law of the Lord, who meditate on it day and night.
Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t find the words – law of the Lord – to elicit
particularly delightfully warm and cuddly feelings – honestly, it gives off a
generalized sense of guilt or shame even. Not much about happiness.
That cannot be what the psalm means. So what is it about this law that brings
delight and happiness to those who meditate on it? That allows them to become
like trees planted by water, whose leaves don’t wither, and whose fruit is
abundant, even when circumstances, like the current ones, mitigate against
prospering.
And by prospering I do not mean becoming wealthy. Prospering in the biblical
sense of things means fully alive – rooted and grounded and fruitful, blessing
others – that’s prospering, regardless of what other people are doing or not doing.
So Law in the Bible means Torah – which Jesus summarized with the word Love.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your
strength, and your neighbor as yourself – on this, he said, hang all the law and the
prophets. And it doesn’t matter who calls this political or woke or whatever, it’s
what we are called to do. Meditate on this. Love. Love. Love.
But let’s get a little more specific with Psalm 1, because it’s our psalm for the
morning, and it is the first psalm, and it begins with the letter Aleph, the first letter
in the Hebrew alphabet, which is also the first letter of the word Happy, in Hebrew
– Asher – and this was the prayer book for Jesus and the disciples – and it
continues to this day to be fundamental to our worship life. So what might it mean
to meditate on the psalms themselves as law?
They are clearly human words to God. There are some very cringe worthy calls for
retribution on enemies. There are. Read the psalms and you’ll get quite
uncomfortable. There is also full-throated praise that includes all of nature. I love
the poetry. Trees clap their hands. The seas roll mightily in praise.
It’s all there – Happiness. Sadness. Grief. Anger. Despair – John Calvin called the
Psalter “the anatomy of all the parts of the human soul.”
The psalms meet us in wholehearted thanksgiving and praise – corralling us into
joining our voices with the whole forces of nature – with the heavens, the earth,
the sea, the trees in praise of God.
They also meet us in the ash heap of sorrow, of grief, of complaint, of anger. The
kind of a place, where many of us find ourselves right now. In the ash heap of grief
over what appears to the destruction of our democracy and our leadership in good
causes around the world. The ash heap. The psalms meet us here.
And they meet us in those hidden places of anger and desire for retribution and in
those shameful places of fear and shrinking.
Kierkegaard said that to meditate on the psalms is to choose to will to be fully and
wholeheartedly ourselves before God.
And this requires a very honest presentation of all the parts of us before God.
letting ourselves be fully known and fully seen.
And that requires us to get really honest with how we are really feeling. If you know
the 12 steps, you could say that the psalms invite us into a kind of 4th step – which
is to regularly do a searching and fearless moral inventory – which is the basis for
all further progress in recovery, in change, in health and salvation.
It is the very opposite of what Adam does in the garden when he hides. remember
when God comes for their daily walk and talk in the garden – and he calls “Adam,
Adam, where are you?” And of course, God knows where Adam is, but Adam is
hiding because he is ashamed.
Meditating on the law of the Lord means to bring our very ordinary selves, our
daily ups and downs, our boringness and our pettiness and our sweet small joys
and big excitements – all of it to God.
And the promise is that when we do this, when we are honest with our own dark
places and our light, with our ugliness and our beauty – when we allow all of that
to come before God – the promise is that we become like trees, who produce good
fruit – the fruit of love, the fruit of forgiveness, the fruit of life.
When we bring our whole selves to God, without hiding, without shame, we
become people of courage and resilience who can provide comfort and safety to
others who are in need.
We join the nation of those living around the world, and those of all times, of all
generations, living in faithful humility before God who are able to go beyond fear
and to stand up and be counted, knowing, intimately knowing that we are watched
over and that we are fully known and loved beyond measure.
Happy are those who meditate day and night on the law of the Lord! Amen.
A side note – not part of the homily: Meditating on the law of the Lord,
meditating with the psalms means to join our voices and our hearts with all
humanity – because while a particular psalm may or may not speak to your
particular condition in the moment, it is speaking to someone else’s condition. We
learn that, just as in the prayers of the people, prayer and meditation on God’s
ways is not simply for our own benefit, but for the benefit of others. This is pretty
much the definition of Love – that which Jesus commands of us.
