Psalm 1: Intentionality for the Community of Believers
The following is the manuscript I used for my sermon at Imagine Church on 2/27/22.
Thank you Josh for the chance to speak here at Imagine once again. Good morning everyone! I have to say that Josh asked me a couple weeks ago if I’d be able to speak today, and I said yes, but I had no idea what to talk about. But then in talking with Josh about some of the things that are focal points for Imagine right now, one of the words that came up was the word “intentional.” And that word stuck in my mind, because it’s a word that has come up multiple times for me in the past couple weeks, so I want to focus our attention on that topic this morning.
So if you want to turn in your Bibles with me to Psalm 1, that’s going to serve as our primary passage for this morning. For those of you with physical Bibles, turn right to the middle and you’re probably in the Psalms, and then just page back until you get to the first one. Those of you working from a digital device…I mean, the trickiest part will be that “Psalms” starts with a “P,” I guess? Anyways, while we’re turning to Psalm 1, I’ll go ahead and pray for us here.
Dear Lord, we come before you and thank you for giving us today and this chance to gather together. We pray that we would feel your presence with us here in this place. We pray for eyes to see and ears to hear as we approach your word and focus on this topic of intentionality.
Amen.
So, do we have any documentary fans in the house today? Any fellow nerds? How about on the livestream, documentary nerds? I like documentaries…well, I had a professor at Bethel who, for any subject we were talking about, could say “I have the documentary back in the office,” and he just watched like, hundreds of documentaries, so by that measuring stick I’m nowhere close to the top, but I do enjoy a good documentary. And one that came to mind as I’ve been thinking about intentionality is the documentary Free Solo. (Free Solo fans?) Free Solo follows the journey of Alex Honnold, a professional rock climber, as he sets to the task of attempting to climb El Capitan, a mountain in Yosemite National Park, without any ropes or safety equipment. Just him, a bag of chalk, and a nearly 3,000 foot ascent up a sheer wall of granite.
This is what Alex Honnold is known for, not just this movie or this ascent, but for being a free soloist, climbing routes around the world without ropes. For those of us who aren’t climbers, we look at that with amazement and maybe terror, but for people in the climbing community, they actually understand all of the difficulties, dangers, just the sheer level you need to be at to make these climbs and survive without ropes.
And so we can probably understand the trepidation filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin felt when they approached Alex about making a documentary about him, and he said “what if we do this instead?” The filmmakers have said that they pulled back and had to ask themselves whether they were comfortable moving forward with the project. Was there any way that their process of filming him on that climb could interfere with his ascent and cause him to fall? Would the presence of cameras cause Alex to take any unnecessary risks? All of the camera operators would need to be some of the best climbers in the world, and would come from inside Alex’s community: what would it mean for them if they were to watch him fall to his death?
Ultimately what pushed them to go ahead with the movie was seeing Alex’s process, maybe not understanding why he makes free soloing a part of his climbing, but seeing the process he goes through, the hours and days of practice, the intention with which he approaches climbs like this, and the amount of work he had put into this climb in particular.
I don’t think a lot of us here are free soloists, and hopefully we don’t find ourselves in such immanent life or death situations on a regular basis, but I think there is something to be said for the imagery of needing to climb with such intention, to know that every movement in our journey has the power to give life or death, in a way that I think Psalm 1 discusses.
Now, to some people I’m sure it may feel a bit extreme to jump from this example into the Psalms, but I would argue that the people of Israel would have understood the life or death context. I’ll grant they may have thought the example of a professional rock climber is a bit trivial, but life or death they would be familiar with. See, the individual Psalms themselves were written at different points in the history of Israel, but there was a specific point in time when the book of Psalms was compiled. I want to think about the group of Israelites who would have used the book of Psalms after it had been assembled, or maybe even the people who worked to assemble it. The people of Israel at that time would’ve had the historical knowledge that they had been conquered by Babylon and spent 70 years there in exile. They would’ve understood the death and destruction that came at the hands of Babylon. And they would’ve understood the historical context of what had been happening in Israel to cause these events, and the ways they had turned from God in the process.
The book of Psalms was intentionally arranged the way it was largely due to this history. As a people who had just been exiles after forsaking their God, the Psalms were arranged to remind them of their history and direct their focus back to God and his teaching, or a word some of us might be familiar with, direct them back to the Torah. To quote The Bible Project, “The book of Psalms is being offered as a new Torah that will teach God’s people the lifelong practice of prayer as they strive to obey God’s commands given in the first Torah.” “They’re poems for exiles who are learning to live by God’s wisdom and to seek God’s justice in the world as they hope for the coming Messiah and the kingdom of God.”
And in order to introduce the people of Israel and all who would follow to the book of Psalms and to these ideas, Psalms 1 and 2 were intentionally placed at the start. And we can begin to understand why immediately as we look at Psalm 1.
Starting with verses 1 and 2:
1:1 Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
Right off the bat, we see this call to return to Torah, that those who meditate on the law of the Lord day and night will be blessed. We also see that this example is set against a different option: participation with groups who run counter to the law of the Lord. The ways that these groups take literally twist and distort God’s creation. We cannot participate with these groups and continue in the way of the Lord at the same time.
But, when we consider this in the context of what Israel had gone through, I think there’s actually a more complicated aspect to these verses. The Psalmist is not just warning us or the people of Israel to stay away from some vague idea of “bad people.” Before it was destroyed, Israel hadn’t just done some fast turn away from God. There was a gradual process of turning away from the law and toward wickedness, slowly twisting and warping worship, adding things from other religions here, taking a few things away there, to the point where the worship they believed was honoring to their God was in fact destroying themselves.
Think about that as we move to verses 3 and 4:
1:3 That person (the person who meditates on God’s word day and night) is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
1:4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
We see in verse 3 that constant interaction with the word of God provides a constant stream of nourishment. Whoever does this is literally rooted to the word. Bible scholar Derek Kidner puts it this way:
The phrase its fruit in its season emphasizes both the distinctiveness and the quiet growth of the product; for the tree is no mere channel, piping the water unchanged from one place to another, but a living organism which absorbs it, to produce in due course something new and delightful, proper to its kind and to its time. The promised immunity of the leaf from withering is not independence of the rhythm of the seasons…but freedom from the crippling damage of drought.
-Derek Kidner, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries
In contrast, the wicked are not fed. They’re not anchored. They have no roots. They’re compared here to chaff, literally like dust that can just be blown from their place, a simile that the nation of Israel could directly tie to their own history. Any Israelite approaching the book of Psalms after it was assembled could potentially look at these verses and understand that Israel as a nation was meant to live like verse 3, rooted to the land and to the word of God, but through their actions and their corrupted worship instead became like verse 4, blown away from the land and into exile in Babylon.
So we move into verses 5 and 6, and into a summary the people would have understood through their history:
1:5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
1:6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.
In verse 5, we see two statements that are parallel - the wicked are equated with sinners, and those who stand in the judgment are equated to the assembly of the righteous. It is important to note that the words used here in Hebrew for “the judgment” and “the righteous” serve as two halves of shalom. Since the wicked will not be counted among the just nor the righteous, they will not know shalom: true, fulfilling peace. As verse 6 says, their way leads to destruction. In contrast, those who stand with the just and the righteous walk the path of the Lord, the path to shalom.
One thing that has come to fascinate me here, though, is how verse 6 emphasizes the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked rather than emphasizing the groups themselves. I’ll admit here that this thought is from my own reading, and I don’t know how biblical scholars would approach this point, but when I see this verse emphasizing each way rather than the groups themselves, it seems like people can be understood to be on a journey rather than necessarily defined by either group, and that they have the ability to move between each path.
What do I mean by that? Well, let’s use the nation of Israel as an example. Prior to their conquering and exile at the hands of Babylon, Israel had a series of kings who alternated in their leadership in ways that we could consider “righteous” or “wicked.” One king of Judah turned to God as the northern kingdom was conquered. The following king was perhaps the most wicked king of Judah. Then there was a return to proper worship of YHWH, followed by a return to wickedness that led to the exile. Looking at different points along this timeline, Judah could have been said to be on either of these paths.
But perhaps what is most interesting to me is how difficult it seems to be to stay on the path of the righteous. We know how difficult it is from the history of Israel. We can see from across the Old Testament Israel doesn’t consistently walk that path because they are repeatedly called back to this same lesson, calls that are literally repeated almost word for word throughout their history.
For example, right at the start of Joshua, when Joshua takes over leadership of Israel after the death of Moses, God tells him to meditate on the book of the law day and night (verses on screen). Or in the book of Jeremiah, written in the midst of Judah being conquered by Babylon, God speaks to the people that those who trust in the Lord:
“will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”
These two examples come essentially at the start and end of Israel’s time dwelling in the land, hundreds of years apart. There are numerous examples of the same message being conveyed over the course of these hundreds of years. But even with multiple warnings throughout their history, we see what happened to Israel. God eventually allowed them to be consumed by their wickedness.
But as I say that, I want to take a pause, because I know that personally I can start to go to a place where I begin judging this group of people. Something I know I do when I read a story, maybe something many of us do, is that I try to see myself in the story. Not even necessarily on purpose. I find someone I can identify myself with, and then imagine how I would react in the situation. And typically, I look to identify with a “good guy,” one of the protagonists. So when I look at something like this history, I think, “how could they continue to make these mistakes? They literally have God talking to them. There’s no way I could make those mistakes with God talking directly to me.”
But looking at Psalm 1, I’m not sure if it would make a difference in different individual scenarios if I made better decisions than the people of Israel.
See, I feel like I hold myself to a very high standard. Some might say impossibly high. Thinking about intentionality specifically, I’ve had a number of people recently make comments about how they see me as a very intentional person. I hear about how people see me engaging with issues I’m concerned about, making very deliberative decisions, having a heart to follow a path I feel I’ve been called to. But each time I hear something like this, I just think, “really?” Because I live with myself 24 hours a day, and I focus on my failures. Here I am, the guy who went to seminary, feeling like I can’t bring myself to read the Bible as consistently as I want. Here I am, the guy who cares so much about justice, and I can’t seem to continue researching at the level that I want. Here I am, someone who wants for everything in my life to have some level of intention, scrolling on my phone. I don’t speak up as much as I’d like; I don’t engage with others as much as I’d like; scenarios come up where I feel it would be the perfect place to offer an opinion or some level of help, and I find myself unprepared. To put it like the apostle Paul, “what I want to do, I don’t do, but what I hate I do.”
I look at this Psalm, at the call to meditate on the law day and night. I look at the level of intention needed to walk the path of the righteous, to not fall into association with the wicked, and I see a path I can’t seem to maintain. The level I feel I attempt to hold myself to seems to pale in comparison to what is called for here.
There are probably hundreds of different things that I feel keep me from this level of intention, but 4 in particular come to mind upon reflection.
First is fear. I find myself afraid of other people, of what they may or may not do. I see fear of judgment for my mistakes. I see fear of failure. Honestly, I could find enough fears that we’d be here for days as I listed them off. Second is shame and guilt. This is filled with “shoulds.” This is what I should be doing. That is what I should have done. If only this, if only that, if only I could be strong and focused enough. Third is greed. I want what I want. I want to focus on what I want, and why should I have to do anything else. And fourth is apathy. What can I even do to make changes? What power do I really have? So much that happens around me doesn’t really directly affect me. Surely someone else can be responsible for whatever could be changed.
The thing about all of these things is that I don’t think any of them are intentional. None of them require effort. And so many of them come up in times when my focus shifts to myself and I am trying to do something on my own.
And it is at this point, I think, that we must return to the text, because the introduction to the book of Psalms does not stop with Psalm 1. It also includes Psalm 2. And in reading Psalm 2, I can’t help but think it acknowledges that we cannot walk this path alone. It tells of how the wicked see the rule of God as bondage, how they plot in vain against God’s anointed. Or, if we retranslate that phrase based on how the words are translated elsewhere in the Psalms, the wicked literally meditate on delusions while the righteous meditate on the word of the Lord. The righteous read, internalize, and obey this word, while the wicked internalize and obey their vanity. And when I think about who I identify with when those four emotions come into play, when my focus shifts solely to myself, I know that I am not walking the path of the righteous at all times. And if we are honest, I think we can acknowledge that, if we are called to follow the path of the righteous at all times, it is not a thing we can do. In fact, I think there is only one person in the history of the world who has walked that path as consistently as necessary to be truly righteous. And this, I believe, is what Psalm 2 points us to: our need, all of us, for a savior. It points to the Messianic king. Psalm 2 ends as Psalm 1 began: all who take refuge in the Messianic king will be blessed.
Now, throughout my years of going to churches or ministry events and listening to sermons, I think that I’ve heard many a well-meaning pastor conclude a sermon talking about meditating on scripture and on our need for a savior finish the sermon by talking about our need to focus on our personal relationship with Jesus. However, I think that to do that alone is to miss the fullness of what the book of Psalms, and indeed the entire biblical text, calls us to. Remember, the Psalms were arranged for exiles who are learning to live by God’s wisdom and to seek God’s justice in the world as they hope for the coming Messiah and the kingdom of God. This was intended for the entire community of believers, for the collective group. This was not a thing they were to do only on their own; they were being instructed on how to worship God as the people of God.
And with this in mind, I want to offer a number of suggestions. First, we are called not only to read and meditate on God’s word on our own; we are called to read and meditate as a community of believers. This includes not only the members of this church, but people from other churches, ethnicities, racial groups, socio-economic groups, and denominations. Scholar Justo González presents this idea through the imagery of standing in place and looking at a landscape. To give sort of a Minnesota spin, imagine you’re on the top floor of the IDS Center in downtown Minneapolis. From there you can see for miles across the city, but you can’t see everything that’s present. There are buildings in the way, people move from place to place, even the weather will block your view from time to time. We need to communicate with people in different locations in order to get a fuller, broader view of what we are looking at, in order to actually understand everything that is going on.
Not only that, but we all have a place to speak into this, whether you find yourself in a position of “leadership” or not. One of the comments that would bother me most when I was in school was when someone outside of the seminary would say something about Christianity or the Bible and then couch their comments with, “but I’m not in seminary” as though their comments had less merit. There is something to be said about having some knowledge of what we’re talking about, but the point I would try to convey when these comments would come up was that you may not be in seminary, but you’re still a part of the body of Christ. We all contribute to the life of the body.
Next, and closely related, we must commune together. We must break bread together. And, as the cliché goes, we must “do life” together. Again, this does not stop inside of our church walls, but extends to those ethnically, racially, socio-economically, denominationally different groups. Christ called us all to participate in the act of communion in remembrance of Him, and we must find a way to do that as the full body of Christ.
Not only that, but I believe that a way to combat walking in step with the wicked is forming a community where we can walk together along the path of the righteous. In order to do that, we cannot ignore things that make us uncomfortable. I was struck by Psalm 1:5, that the wicked would not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. As I said before, the Hebrew roots of those two words, the judgment and the righteous, are the two Hebrew words for justice, the two concepts that must be paired to form shalom. The realization of God’s shalom, God’s perfect, rectifying, restoring peace, cannot be realized in our communities if we fail to acknowledge what is keeping us apart. To this point, a quote I heard from Arielle Grant, a business woman working for change in South Minneapolis, comes to mind: “If it needs to be righted in the community, it needs to be righted by the community.” And we must understand that this community extends to the entire community of believers, the entire body of Christ.
As I alluded to, Israel’s worship had become perverted prior to their exile in Babylon. Despite God’s demonstrated concern for groups which have come to be known as the “quartet of the vulnerable,” this worship caused harm to the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the immigrants in the nation. The idolatry of Israel allowed them to justify harming these vulnerable groups. Not only that, but in their idolatry they created a God who allowed such things and called it YHWH, thereby perverting the actual message and worship of YHWH. The path of the righteous by definition includes the redeeming, restoring form of justice that rights the wrongs committed through action or inaction against the most vulnerable among us.
All of these things require intentionality, an intentional focus and movement that could allow you to climb a mountain without ropes. This is what the Psalms call us to. As David Crowder said in his book Praise Habit, “...you either embraced these words (the words of Psalm 1) with the living of them or you rejected them with a life of disregard, and it is the difference between life and death (47).” Unlike Alex Honnold, though, we do not do this alone. We do this together, and we do this with Christ. We must do these things, and we must continue to do these things. As Josh said back in January,“true change only happens when it’s done on purpose.”
Let’s pray.
Lord, we come before you today, and we acknowledge our desire to be an intentional people. We acknowledge that we fail to do this far more often than we want. Lord, help us to learn what it looks like to pursue this intentionality, and to rely on Christ in this walk. As we move forward in community, help us to hear the voices of others encouraging us to remain faithful, and to provide that same encouragement to others as we move forward together. Allow us the grace necessary to discuss topics we find uncomfortable as we seek to reconcile to you, and to one another, in your name. Amen.