Saturday, August 31, 2019

Psalms in the key of life: the key of life in the Psalms (Psalm 1)



the sermon was preached on Sunday September 1st at HopeWhangarei  and here is the audio including an introduction to sermon bingo. 

Maybe it’s hard for us in a country blessed with plentiful water and evergreen tress to understand the significance of the metaphor at the heart of psalm 1 about the person who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates or chews it over, day and night being like a tree planted by a stream.

Lynn Baab who was the lecturer in pastoral Theology at Otago University was in a similar position. She had grown up in the pacific north-west, where rain fall was reliable and frequent and water was plentiful and trees just grew everywhere. There were vast swaths of lush green forest as far as the eye could see.

She said it wasn’t until she moved to Shiraz in Iran that she discovered the significance of a tree planted by a reliable water source. Shiraz is 1500 meters above sea level and can be described as mountainous desert. She lived there for six months and in that time it only rained twice. Once for five minutes and the other for half an hour. Her impression of the place was that it was all beige brown. Beige brown houses and dusty beige brown streets surrounded by beige brown country leading off to beige brown mountains. There were no trees, only scraggly shrubs with withering leaves. When it rained it didn’t result in green plants sprouting it simply turned the beige brown dust briefly to beige brown mud.

 Friends from the church she attended there would take her and her husband on trips around the country. One day they were in the beige brown mountains and her guides stopped the car by a small stream. The blue of the water was such an amazing contrast. They walked up through a small gully and came to the place where the stream originated as a spring bubbling up out from under the mountain. There by the spring was a big healthy tree with green leaves…”totally unexpected astonishing and refreshing” said Lynne “ here was the tree of Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17. The tree planted by the reliable water source, that did not run dry” She took a photo of it and it reminds her to meditate and dwell in the scriptures as that source of living water in her every day busy and messy  life. The same encouragement we get from the reading this morning.

We are starting a series today looking at selected Psalms. The series is called “Psalms in the key of life: songs of hope amidst real life”. The book of Psalms presents us with a picture of real life, a messy picture of ups and downs, great joys and deep dark sorrows, faithfulness and failings, challenges and obstacles, broken promises and broken hearts and bodies, self-doubts and darkness, for Israel as individuals and as a nation, amidst that the presence and the guidance and the goodness of God, a source of living water, nourishment, encouragement and hope. Reason to worship and praise and persevere and put ones trust in God’s unfailing love.  These songs, these prayers have been a source of comfort and hope for over two and a half thousand years. They were the sound track of the Jewish people, the sound track of Jesus life and they are lyrics that speak to us still. They are for us now, they draw us to God.

The book of Psalms surprisingly starts with a beatitude. A way in which a person can be blessed by God. You could say that the psalms in the key of life start with the key to life in the psalms. Jewish poetry is not about rhyming words or metered lines, rather it is about metering out wisdom in rhyming ideas. Coupling together different ways of looking at the same thing. And the blessing in Psalm one is given through two contrasting examples, two contradicting ways in which we could live.
A negative, a way we should not live to receive God’s blessing, which is walking and sitting and going in the way of the wicked, the sinner and the mocker. Not that we avoid them but that we don’t allow them to influence us. This is contrasted with the positive of delighting in the law or torah, and meditating on it day and night.  Meditating means to chew over, and extract all the goodness for our sustenance. Like a cow chewing its cud.

One way which while looking like it may yield a great harvest, but is in the end hollow and has no roots. That is like chaff blown away by the wind. An image drawn from the agricultural practices of winnowing wheat. Throwing it in the air on the threshing floor so the wind will blow away the chaff, the husks of the wheat seed, the rubbish, and only leave you with the good seed to be ground into flour.

One way which is likened to that tree by a stream, even in the hot desert sun, the strong dry wind, it will put down roots find sustenance, grow, remain green and bear fruit. Fruit which Paul talks of in Galatians 5 as the result of walking with our live attune to the Holy Spirit… Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

One way, which flourishes for a season, but which the Psalmist tells us lead to destruction. That does not provide wisdom to make right decisions, sound judgments and discern what is best in life…  
The other way which is a safe path, even though the desert land, even in treacherous territory because the Lord watches over those who walk it, providing wisdom and guidance.

In this blessing the psalm asks which way will we allow to influence your life? Which way will we walk? Where will we find your delight? What is your water source for life?

Psalm 1 is also seen, along with psalm 2 as an introduction to the whole of the collection. In texts from the middle-ages it would have been written in red ink with no number given, acknowledging that it is a preamble to the Psalms. It is the compilers forward instructing us how to use the Psalms. Both liturgically, they are songs and prayers that form the basis of communal worship, in the temple they would have been recited at the hours of both day and night  offering peoples praise and prayers to God. On a personal level they are prayers and songs that as we reflect on them bring the whole of our life before God, and open us up to God to speak and minister to us.

When we think of meditating on the law of the lord, or the torah we can think it simply means the first five books of the bible. From our position post the cross and the resurrection we can find ourselves wrestling with that as we wonder where grace and gospel fit in. But In the Psalms themselves, and in particular, psalm 119 which many scholars see as written by the same person who wrote psalm 1, there is a series of five different words that are used interchangeably, including law, to speak of the whole scripture. Maybe this is reinforced by the fact that what we know as the book of Psalms, is actually presented as five books, given to us like the five books that make up the law. Scholars also see in Matthew’s gospel written primarily to Jewish people that Jesus teaching is presented in five groupings, Matthew’s way of equating Jesus teaching as torah, to be read meditated on and put into practice.

The other thing Psalm 1 says about the Psalms is that there is value in the study of them systematically, there is much to be gained from reading through them as a collection, studying them and allowing them to speak to us.  

I want to simply bring out two of those benefits today. 

One is that as I’ve been saying the whole of our life is bought before Godin he psalms. Even in the psalms we find difficult, like psalm 88, which is known as the dark heart of the psalms and finishes not with praise to God, but by saying ‘darkness is my only friend’ sums up moments and seasons, where we wrestle with tragedy and  grief and wrestle with the spectre of seemingly unanswered prayer. Or Psalm 109, where the psalmist filled with anger, calls curses down on his enemies, but somehow is able to leave judgment in the hands of God, the God who answers all human darkness and sin through the cross of Christ, not in vengeful spite. Psalm 51 where the pain of knowing we have sinned is bought to God, Psalm 31 which speaks of trusting in God as our refuge, while sometimes we simply feel like broken pottery or refuse. Then there is the comfort and assurance of God’s life-long love and goodness in Psalm 23. The times when we just want to jump and rejoice and celebrate the Goodness of God, in psalm 150, where we are told to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, and like in Psalm 42 when we have to speak to that spirit of heaviness and depression that tries and hold us captive and say why are you so downcast O my Soul… I will yet praise him my Lord and my king… All that is lifted up to God in the Psalms, as a gift for us.

Secondly, as we focus and mediate on the Psalms, like all scripture they point us to Jesus Christ, God’s word made flesh, the fulfillment of the law. They foretell of his coming, and point us to the ultimate victory of the Kingdom of God. Psalm 2, amidst the rage of nations and kings, God speaks of establishing his son as king. The psalms that speak of the David pointing us forward to the hope of that just and righteous king, Jesus. Psalm 22, which Jesus himself quotes on the cross, that starts with the lament “my god my god why have you forsaken me and finishes with salvation in the line “God has done this”…”it is Finished”. It is as we meet and mediate and focus on Jesus that we find the living water we need for life, abundant life, and eternal life.

I want to finish with our New Testament reading from this morning, from the end of the sermon on the mount, because Jesus, who had started his sermon with beatitudes, how to live the life blessed by God, finishes as well with wisdom that there are two ways to live. And also brings a metaphor from the desert land to illustrate that. Jesus is speaking to people who had meditated and reflected on God’s word all their lives, but somehow for many it had not impacted on the way they lived. He says that there are two ways to build one’s life. Either on sand or on a solid rock, the solid foundation of hearing his words and obeying them.

One of the things with living by a stream in the middle-east is that they often in a wadi a steep sided valley. When storms come and the rains fall the wadi will begin to fill and flash floods will happen and sweep anything in its path away as surely as the wind blows the chaff away, anything that does not have a solid foundation.

It is not just enough to have the psalms or have Jesus word’s it is as we allow them to be the foundation for the life we build that we will find them enough to weather the storms of life, that we will find them and him a life giving source of water.

Lets Pray

No comments:

Post a Comment