Psalms for Today?
Psalm 1
Pentecost 2 (Narrative Lectionary 3 Summer)
June 2, 2013
The Bible has sometimes been called a handbook or manual, a guidebook for living. Now, assuming this is true, what section do you turn to for this, or do you just read through until you find something useful? Would you turn to Jesus’ words, perhaps the Sermon on the Mount? Perhaps it’s Paul’s letters, such as Galatians we just finished. Maybe you use the inspirational method, where you let the Bible fall open and point blindly to a passage.
What about the Psalms? Have you ever turned to the Psalms for guidance, or have you only thought about it as the church’s worship supplement, hymns of prayer and praise for past age? It’s true, the Psalms were used in worship and for worship, and they are marvelous vehicles for praise and prayer, in the fullest sense of the words, but as Psalm 1 indicates, they are far more than that.
Today, we are beginning a six-week series on the psalms, something I have long wanted to do. The goal of the series is not simply to introduce you to the psalms and to make them more accessible, but for us to see the psalms as an important resource for your life of faith, today. There’s no better place to start than Psalm 1, not only because it is the first psalm, but because it makes some startling claims about the psalms as a whole while it introduces the rest of the psalms. The added bonus is that we will be adding the psalms back into our worship and chanting them as well.
The claim that Psalm 1 makes is that the psalms have something to teach us about life. It does by using vivid images that seem contradictory while presenting pairs of opposites. As we will see in other psalms this is a typical methodology used by the psalmist. The first image we have is that of the road or way, depicting life as a journey in which we have two choices of paths to follow. One way depends upon God for our life and the other one depending on us. The second, apparently contradictory image, is that of a tree rooted deeply next to life-giving water drawing on the resources of faith, identified as God’s law, that bring abundant fruit.
I’m not the first one who, upon reading this psalm, thinks of Robert Frost’s The Road Less Traveled. It’s the poem that countless high school senior classes have chosen as their sending metaphor. The poem is about two roads going through the woods and the choices we make in life. Now, I’m not sure that the life of faith is the “road less travelled,” but the psalmist makes a faith claim that the way we live our lives is decisive for how our lives turn out, and the best way is to live a life dependent upon God, not ourselves. Clint McMann puts it this way: “Prosperity doesn’t involve getting what one wants; rather, it comes from being connected to the source of life.”
This connection to God that the psalmist not only advocates, but says that the psalms provide, is shown in the image of the tree planted near a flowing stream, which we can see that in the bulletin picture. I love how the picture not only shows the water, but also how the tree leans into water of life. Have you ever driven through a desolate area and suddenly spot a tree? You know that, even though you can’t see it, there must be water nearby. This is especially true for weeping willows. You just know there is a pond of water under their boughs. The image tells us that the psalms are not so much a collection of useful wisdom, but a connection to God’s presence. Scripture, including the psalms, connect us to God that results in a life lived on the right path.
One final word: when the psalmist talks about how we should delight in the law, s/he is not talking about rules and regulations, stuff we have to do. As Frederick Buechner says, that’s only one way to talk about law; the second is that laws describe how things are, such as the law of gravity. We are to delight in the way things are, otherwise it will be like stepping out of a tenth-story window and expecting to be unscathed. As we will see in the weeks to come, as we journey on the road of faith, this resource that God provides in the psalms is a rich one in which to place our roots, reaching deeply to the source of life. Thanks be to God! Amen.
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