“Blessed is the Man…”

A sermon based upon Psalm 1

By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

Father’s Day,  June 16th, 2019

Happy Father’s Day!  Have you every thought about what it means to wish a Father to be happy?   Does it mean the children need to behave today?   Does it mean that his wife take him out to eat or fix him his favorite meal?  This is the question today’s Scripture puts before us.

Today, on this Father’s Day, we begin a series of summer messages from the Psalms. I’m calling this series Singing through the Summer, because the Psalms were originally the worship songs, prayers, poems, and deepest thoughts of God’s people. They were music and thoughts offered up to their God as both prayer and praise.

This first Psalm was first, not because it was the first Psalm ever written, but because it offered a good introduction to what all the Psalms are about.  They express what it means for a person to seek to live their lives in the fullness of God’s presence.  Living in God’s presence opens a person to receiving the blessings of God’s promises, even in a world where life also has the potential and possibility of becoming dark, negative and cursed.

I realized that speaking of a ‘curse’ is very heavy, serious language for Father’s Day, but until you know what we have to be ‘happy’ about, how can you be happy about anything.  Besides, finding happiness can be elusive.  The more you go after happiness, the less happy you can become.  That’s why it’s important to understand the spiritual connection between happy and blessed, between happiness and holiness.  This is important to understand, because life does not always bless us like it should.  Even a very good world can become dark, negative, oppressive, and cursed.   This is part of what the opening story about Adam’s sin is about.  Because of the freedom to sin, life can be turned into a curse, rather than a blessing.

But the most important thing about understanding how life can become a negative, is to know that right back at that same time, when the curse of sin came into the world, God put a rescue plan in place.  God’s rescue plan was to reach out and bless certain willing, responsive, and obedient people so they could be blessed, and become a blessing to others, bringing God’s blessing back into the world.  The first to hear and answer God’s call to blessing was Abraham. God called Abraham to be blessed, so that he could be a blessing to many, many more.  It is no accident that we call that first, obedient man, the father of all.

Why did the world need a spiritual father?  Well, why does anyone need a father?  We come into this world vulnerable and helpless, where everything could be against us, were it not for the family where we are loved and blessed.  If we don’t have this kind of family, where are blessed with love (an instruction too), we too could have ended up cursed in or for life.  But when we have a caring family where we grow up loved, we can have the feeling of being blessed all our lives, no matter what we might find ourselves up against.  This is what fatherhood is about, whether we are religious or not.  We all need someone to give us this kind of blessing.  And, according to Jesus, God’s greatest desire is to be known as our loving, heavenly father, who will give us the blessing that can guide and shape us, for all of our lives.

It is this giving of the  “Blessing” that makes truly makes  ‘happy’ possible for us, and it’s what makes Father’s and Mother’s the most important people in our lives.  But where does this parental power to bless come from?  That is what this first Psalm is about.  In a patriarchal society, this Psalm about ‘blessedness’ was especially written to the ‘man’, to the proverbial ‘head of the household’, but today we should take it to mean any person; male or female, father or mother, single or married.  ‘Blessed’ or “Happy” is the ‘person’ who is like this; to be blessed and to bless. If you want to rise above the  ‘curse’ that still haunts in this world, the Psalmist implies that God’s people start ‘here’.

BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO WALKS…

Blessed is about living, not having.  The world has so much to offer, that it can mistakenly become about what people have or don’t have.  You know how that goes, if I drive a nice car, I’m a successful person.   If I have a bigger, nicer house, I’m have much more than you.  If I go after everything I want, then, when I obtain it, I’ll be happy.

Interestingly, that’s normally not the way it really is.  Studies in Cultural Anthropology normally show the opposite. Poor people in other cultures, who just have enough, who have to keep family and friends close to survive and get by, are generally much happier than wealthy cultures like ours.  Have you ever wondered why the Amish live so simply?  Have you ever wondered why we have so much, but still struggle to get along with each other? When will we finally realize that life is much more about how we live than what we have.

Besides, most of the time, when we have something, just to have or show something, it points to something missing in our lives, that we are trying to make up for.  I recall hearing some fellow on the radio who was constantly bragging and how America was better than any other country in the world.  He explained how he had been all over the world, and there was nothing that could compare.  Of course, the fellow had only visited all those other countries.  He was making a very shallow observation.  What he was saying had a lot more to say about him, than it actually said about the rest of the world, or about America.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we can be blessed to live in a free country, and there is certainly nothing wrong with working hard, earning, or buying, or having anything, including a ‘great country’, except when it comes at the expense of living as we should be living.  Life is for living, more than it will ever be about having, and living is not about living it up, as it is about being blessed so that we can pass the blessing along.

When the Psalmist used the word ‘blessed’ as a way or ‘walk’ of life, he was using it in a similar way in how Jesus used ‘blessed’ in the Beatitudes.   When you read the Beatitudes you can easily see that ‘blessed’ is definitely not about being ‘happy’ for something.  The ‘pursuit of happiness’, according to Jesus, means something all together different.  Jesus’ way or walk of happiness is certainly not the American Dream, which could become the American Scream’ when people don’t get or have what they want.   The very people who think the purpose of life is to go after their own happiness, often end up the most miserable of all.  This is why the ancients preferred the pursuit of ‘blessedness’ instead the ‘pursuit of happiness’. 

What the Psalmist wants to say, right at the first of everything else, is that happy, or blessed is a verb, before it can be an adjective or a noun.  In other words, happy starts with how you live.  The Psalmist understood that our God has a morally, good heart, and we are created with that same capacity and need, to be and do good with our lives.  It should be ‘goodness’ and not ‘gladness’ that is our first priority.  Gladness flows out of goodness, not goodness out of gladness.  If we are only seeking gladness, according to the Psalmist, we will miss what it means to be blessed.  Blessed has much more do with ‘how’ we live than ‘what’ we have. 

BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO WALKS NOT….

This call to ‘goodness’ and to finding gladness through goodness; through how we live rather than through what we have, might sound complex and complicated.  But is ‘good’ really that complicated?  I wish I had a nickel for each time I left my home and Mom or Dad told me, “Be Good!”  When I think about, if I had once been smart enough to respond by asking, ‘What do you mean by good?’, what do you think would have happened next?   I didn’t dare ask, because they assumed I knew, and I’d better know, if I wanted their blessing.

What I learned, even very early on, was not everything about what was good, or wasn’t, but I learned that being good and being blessed is about choosing.  It was, and still is about choosing; choosing  from what I should know is right, and what I know is wrong.  Being blessed meant that doing or being good was the only choice I could make, and enjoy the blessing in my life.

That’s also how the Psalmist understood the good; at least in its most basic form. It was not that complicated.  It was a clear choice between two clear ways.  It was a choice out of what we already should know.  It was how we first learn how to do or be good, starting with the company we keep, or should I say, the company we ‘shouldn’t’ keep.  

Isn’t it interesting, how uncomplicated this is? It sounds just like the world of Eden, where Adam and Eve had the whole world of Paradise, if they would’ve just stayed away from the tree.   Their future of living in a good world depended on, first of all, what they shouldn’t do.  This is where goodness starts, as a choice.  I’m not saying that this is all ‘good’ means, only refusing the bad, the negative, or the temptation, but the Psalmist is right in saying that the refusing to join in with the bad; which he names as the ‘walk of the wicked’  the ‘way of the sinner’, or the ‘seat of the scornful’.  Isn’t this often where the choice to do right or wrong most always starts? Gaining God’s blessing is so uncomplicated, so elementary, and so basic, it starts with as simple an effort of learning what you shouldn’t do.  We all hear no, long before we learn what is a yes.  The greatest good starts, as Nancy Reagan used to encourage: “just say no!”

Think about it. Why would you listen be quick to listen to the world for advice? It could turn out like a man who had a sick mule and he went to his next door neighbor and said, "Sam, my mule is sick. When your mule got sick what did you do for it?" He said, "I gave him a quart of kerosene."

The man went home and gave his mule a quart of kerosene and the mule died. He came back and said, "Sam, didn't you tell me to give my mule a quart of kerosene?" Sam answered, “No, you ask me what I did. , "I did give my mule a quart of kerosene, but don’t feel bad, mine did too!"

There are people who are dead today, in prison today, people who are on the junk heap of life today, people who are eaten up with sexual disease today, because they kept bad company or listened to the wrong crowd.  And do you see how easily it can happen from the clear progression of this text?  The blessed are not only told not to listen, but they are told not to ‘stand’ around bad company because once when stay around bad company you can start to believe bad company, then it isn’t long until you begin to behave like bad company. What you let into your head will make its way into your heart, belief will soon be behavior. That is why, as James Merritt puts it: “if you feed your mind mental junk food you will live a junk yard life. If you listen to the wrong crowd and you hang around the wrong crowd, then you will start acting like the wrong crowd.

Then, you will finally move into the third phase, where you "Join in with scoffers." (Psalm 1:1, NLT) This is the worst stage of all. This is when you are really you become the wrong crowd. First you are enticed, then you become engaged, as you embrace the world, as the world embraces and applauds you.  What is most important to learn here, is that you can avoid this downward spiral altogether by making a simple choice. God’s people find the good God intends because they chose to walk a different way, and this walk starts with a no, before it is yes.  Isn’t this the approach to living, that the great American poet, Robert Frost meant, when he spoke of meeting a fork in the road, and taking ‘the road less traveled’.  It was choosing and going the opposite of the normal way of the world that ‘made all the difference’.  And so often, the road we don’t take, is what helps us turn down the road we should travel in life.

BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO…

Finally, finding the ‘blessedness’ the Psalmist means, is surprisingly about being, not doing; it is about being the person God created us to be, not trying to be something we’re not. 

In many of my messages these days, I  emphasize ‘doing’, because ‘doing’ and ‘following’ Jesus is a very important part of our Christian life and walk.  Doing is important, very important, especially in our witness in a world that has more troubling trusting that what we say, or what God says, is true.  As someone has said, ‘we all live in Missouri now, the show me state” and people need to see before they can believe.   This is the state of things in the world, but it’s not the heart of things, nor the heart of the matter. 

The heart of the matter, however, is that God blesses us because of who we are, not simply because of what we do.  We don’t live a certain way, because we should, or have to, but we live a certain way because of who we are, and whose we are. Being always comes before doing.  Being is being who we are supposed to be, down to the depths of our heart and soul.

Did you notice here how psalmist compare God’s people to trees?  Trees were often symbols of life, strength and goodness to the ancients.  A healthy tree stood firm (1:3) and strong, weathering great storms.  And when planted by the ‘waters’ of life, in the right soil, a heathy tree is practically impossible to uproot (Matthew 15:13).  If you study history, you will find that most of the people who have truly moved this world have been people the winds of this world could not move.

Where on God's earth would we be today in America, if it had not been for people like Martin Luther King? How could one African-American man move an entire nation in a way that a civil war could not? And when God’s people stand strong, even when the negative winds blow full force, if we are planted in him, we can not only weather the storm and bless the world.  But if our roots are too shallow, or if our hearts are not alive in him, who knows how long we can hold on?

There is a Christian college in the mid-west where there was once a large lovely tree that was a central part of the landscape. It was one of the places that students would love to come and meet and talk. For decades that giant oak brought beauty to the campus and shade to thousands of students. One day a loud crack echoed across the campus and that tree, under which so many conversations had taken place and so many memories had been built, crashed to the ground. 

When they examined it, they noticed that disease had been growing within that massive tree to the point where all that was left was the outer trunk. Inside was nothing more than an empty shell, so when the harsh wind blew, the hollow tree fell.

This is an important word to conclude with because it’s easy for us ‘men’ to define the value and strength of our lives based upon what is on the outside; our careers, work, or upon our success.  But what the Psalmist says and means by living a blessed life is always be more about ‘who’ we are on the inside, and how connected we are to the source of life.   Blessedness is a state of being, that comes from the choice to be connected to God and who he created us to be.

Isn’t this state of being, at the heart of what the Psalms reveal?  The Psalms constantly take us into the heart, of people whose hearts are in God; in God’s love, living for God’s purpose and living each day in God’s presence.  This is why the Psalms start with the hope of finding God’s blessing, and ends with resounding and repeating ‘Hallelujahs:  Praise the Lord! O my soul (146).  Praise the Lord!  How good it is To sing his praises! (147).  Praise the Lord, from the heavens(148).  Praise the Lord, Sing…a new song(149).  And finally, “‘Praise the Lord In His Sanctuary! (150).  Did you notice how the man who knows the promise and blessing of God, ends up at church?  He ends up there because as the last Psalm exclaims, ‘Let everything that has breathe praise the Lord!” (150:6).  Again, it’s not because of what they do, but because God gives them life and their life is in God.

In the same way, the man, the boy, the woman, or girl, who realizes that simply by being alive, they walk in the way of God’s blessing, can’t help but end up praising and thanking God for each and everyday of life. It is in understanding the simplicity of this greatest of all blessings; the blessing called life, that we can know how to feel blessed, and also know how to bless. Amen.