Sermon Psalm 1 “Belonging to God”

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard
Sermon Psalm 1 “Belonging to God”
Presbyterian Church of Easton
May 16, 2021

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Last Thursday I went over to the Amish market to pick up some groceries.   It was closed.   On the door, the sign said that they were closed for Ascension day.   The next day I went back for what I needed.  And I asked the girl at the counter what they did on Ascension day.   She said it was just a day of rest when families gather together.

The first Ascension day occurred 40 days after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.   Jesus took his disciples up the Mount of Olives toward Bethany.   The whole church gathered around Jesus asking him if it was time for the Kingdom of God.  Jesus told them that no one knows when that will happen.  But first, the good news of His resurrection had to be taken throughout the world.  And that is our mission today.   Then Jesus ascended to the clouds and was gone.   He went to heaven where He now sits at the right hand of the Father.  Let’s pray.

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.

Psalm1:1 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.

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.  

A few years ago,  I attended a Baccalaureate Worship Service at Occidental College in Los Angeles. 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, was serving Occidental as their Interim Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.  She designed the Baccalaureate service held in Herrick Chapel.

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 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 just like her parents taught.  If you do these things you will be happy, like Buddha, and happiness would transform the world.  This reinforced her belief 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 not happiness, but 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 a 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.

Rev. Reyes-Chou had worked very hard to be a pastor.  And he was trying very hard to be a good one.   But all that hard work and all that being good was not enough.  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 pick up 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 pick up 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 had 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. The promise of scripture is that if you meditate on the Word of God every day you will belong to God.  This is your 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.  

Last week I taught a class for Washington Theological Seminary on Reformed Spirituality.   One of the things I taught was on a Protestant Reformed method for meditating on scripture called Lectio Divina.   It works like this.  

Take a short passage from the Bible and pray that God will open up its meaning for you.   Read the passage slowly, then pray, asking God to reveal the meaning of this passage to you.  Pray silently and wait to hear God speak to you audibly or intuitively.  Then say or write down what the passage means. 

Then read the same passage again.   Pray that God will reveal to you what He wants you to do in your own lives with this passage.   Pray silently that God will speak to you about what you should do.  The say or write down what God wants you to do.

Then read the same passage again a third time.   Pray that the Holy Spirit will enter you and transform you into a beloved child of God.   Pray silently asking God to speak to you.   And finally, say or write down how you feel after meditating on this scripture.   Conclude by thanking God for being with you.

Our source of happiness is that we belong to God.  The Heidelberg Catechism puts it this way.

1Q “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. 

Let’s pray.   Faithful Father, we thank you for blessing us as your children.   We are grateful that we belong to you.   We will meditate on scripture every day.   Blessing us with true happiness our whole life long.   In Jesus’ name, we pray.   Amen.