Sermon – Psalm 1- Belonging to God

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard
Sermon – Psalm 1- Belonging to God
Eagle Rock Presbyterian Church
May 24, 2009

Listen to this sermon.

We have all experienced crises in our lives when our problems seem to overwhelm us. Even though we have tried very hard to do what is right problems befall us and happiness sometimes eludes us. When bad things happen to us we can either fall into despair or we can remember to whom we belong. This is what we will be thinking about today.

But first please pray with me. Lord Jesus, we gather here today in celebration of your resurrection on Easter. This gives us great hope. But sadly we still experience difficulties in our lives, and we need help to remember that when problems arise we can depend on the love of God to sustain us. We pray this in your glorious name. Amen.

NRS Psalm 1:1 Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; 2 but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night. 3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Last weekend I attended the Baccalaureate Worship Service at Occidental College. At one time Occidental was a Presbyterian college, but no more. It is now a secular institution and this was reflected in their multi-faith Baccalaureate service. The Rev. Susan Young, a Presbyterian pastor, serves Occidental as their Interim Director of Religious and Spiritual Life. She designed the Baccalaureate service held in Herrick Chapel last Saturday.

At this multi-faith service the several faith groups at Occidental presented readings from each of their traditions. Most of these focused on what each of us can do to lead a better life. We can be better people. We can work harder. We can be happier. We can be more creative. We can transform the world. All of these ideas resonated in the young minds of new graduates, filling them with hope and motivating them as they embarked on their professional lives.

The student speaker that morning had a very interesting story to tell. Evidently she had experienced few problems in her young privileged life. At Occidental she was studying Geology with the intent of enrolling at one of the leading graduate schools in the country. Although not required for her major, there was one course she needed to take to get into a prestigious graduate program. This course was General Physics. So last fall she took General Physics, and that’s when her problems began. She tried very hard in her Physics class, but her grades were poor. So she hired a tutor, but her grades went lower. She thought that she did pretty well on the final, but was devastated when it came back with a failing grade and with it her dreams of attending a prestigious graduate school when up in smoke.

Faced with a crisis, possibly for the first time in her young life, she turned to faith. She was in an Asian Studies class studying the religions of Japan. And while reading the Wikipedia article on Buddhism she realized that this religion taught many of the same beliefs that she had been raised with in her atheistic family. Buddhism taught her to work hard and be a good person, and if you do these thing you will be happy, like Buddha, and happiness would transform the world. This reinforced her believe that working hard and being good was the right path to leading a happy life. So she decided to become Buddhist and try to be happy like Buddha.

But as I sat in the congregation that day I couldn’t help but think that she had worked hard, very hard, and she did what she was supposed to do, but she had still failed General Physics and had experienced great sadness. Hard work and being good did not lead to happiness in this instance. In fact hard work and being good led to a crisis and she felt terrible. There had to be different answer. Atheism and Buddhism with their emphasis on working hard and being good just didn’t seem to work.

The keynote speaker at Occidental’s Baccalaureate service was the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chou, Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Rev. Young introduced her close friend as the denomination’s representative in multi-faith discussions. Hence Rev. Reyes-Chou was there to provide a Presbyterian response to the atheistic/Buddhist view which we had just heard.

Rev. Reyes-Chou chose this occasion to tell a story about his family. He started by saying that since he was of Chinese descent he is short of stature. In fact his whole family is very short. And interestingly, this led to his daughter being expelled from preschool. Here is how his story went.

After Rev. Reyes-Chou had preached his first sermon at his first church as a new pastor, an elderly woman in the congregation came up to him and said, “It is amazing that a man so small could have a voice so big!” It was then that he realized that working hard or being a good person was less important than realizing that you belong to someone. The key question we ask is “to whom do we belong?”

Rev. Reyes-Chou then pointed out to the graduates of Occidental that whenever they talk about spirituality it’s not about their own spirits, but it’s always about a spirit beyond themselves, out there somewhere. To be spiritual means to belong to a spirit. And the important question is “to which spirit do you belong.”

He then told the congregation a story about his daughter being thrown out of preschool. Like the rest of the family his daughter was short. So whenever the kids in the preschool played house, some of the kids were selected as mothers, others became fathers, but his daughter, being short, was always cast as the baby. This was an endless source of frustration for the little girl, and she took her frustration out on another preschooler by hitting her over the head with a stick. Rev. Reyes-Chou was told to come to the principal’s office that afternoon when he came to pickup his daughter.

Now Bruce Reyes-Chou had been no stranger to the principal’s office, because he had been there many times as a kid, and had no desire to go back there as an adult. So he called his wife and asked her to pickup the child that day. But when she couldn’t he reluctantly drove down to the preschool to meet with the principal.

While in the principal’s office Rev. Reyes-Chou heard what his daughter had done. And he asked her why she had hit her schoolmate with a stick. The four year old replied: “I did it because God wanted me to do it”.

And that’s the point, from the mouth of a preschooler, we belong to God. If we trust in ourselves, our own abilities, hard work, being good, then we are like
the chaff that gets blown about by the wind whenever we experience problems. This is what the student speaker experienced when she took and failed General Physics. Despite her hard work and good intentions she failed and now cannot go to the school of her dreams. Hard work and right living produced only failure and disappointment. But if we belong to God then we are like trees planted near streams of water yielding good fruit in season and having leaves that never wither. This is what Rev. Reyes-Chou has found. Despite his own limitations and failures he has found lasting happiness by belonging to God.

So how do we belong to God? The psalmist tells us in the very first psalm that we belong to God when we meditate on scripture day and night. That’s why it is so important for us to read scripture every day. If you go to my blog on the church’s web site you will see the lectionary reading for each day. These are readings from the Bible that are used by Christians all over the world. There usually are four readings each day from the Old Testament, Psalms, New Testament and Gospel. Another way to read scripture every day is to pick up a copy of Our Daily Bread on our back table. These have daily Bible readings and devotions. I often read them at Early Morning Prayers.

The promise of scripture is that if you meditate on the Word of God every day you will belong to God. This is you only hope when dealing with crises that will arise in your lives. Your happiness depends on your belonging to God and daily meditation on scripture is the key to this happiness. The Heidelberg Catechism puts it this way.

“What is your only comfort, in life and in death?
A. That I belong--body and soul, in life and in death--not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.