When I talk to non-Christians, often there is a disconnect between their assumptions about what a Christian, much less a pastor, should be like, should talk like, should look like, and the way I perceive other Christians and myself. There is the perception that the pastor of a church, or any Christian for that matter, is a special person, who somehow floats over mud puddles in the Spring, who glows with the presence of God. Somehow we are perfect, and everyone else is something less than fully human. We do nothing wrong, but if we do, it is a serious emergency. Apparently I never swear, I never am tempted, I am on a higher human plane of existence. I think these assumptions, which admittedly are a little exaggerated, come from the Catholic church, to be honest. In the Catholic church there are two different sets of personal holiness; one for the priests and one for the regular folks. Priests live on pillars, in these beliefs, and everyone else is much closer to the ground, more in contact with sin. Less holy. Less potential for holiness. I seem to confront those myths, and debunk them.
For a long time pastors, not just priests, were expected to be these larger than life figures, no problems, no weaknesses, nothing they said was open for debate or critical thinking. But that’s not me. I am a very Generation X pastor. What you see is what you get. I’m not perfect. I have strengths, and I have weaknesses. If you are around me for any length of time you will certainly figure out what those are. I’m not special, I have not been created differently from other folks. There is this perception that pastors, or Christians, must be somehow different because of the way we act. There are people longing to come into churches who know they aren’t good enough to come in. And the truth is that they aren’t good enough to stay out. None of us are. There is not something about us that makes being a Christian easier for us. We struggle with temptations, we struggle with finances, we struggle with family issues. There is not something about Christians that helps us to live for Christ. In fact, just the opposite is true. God created us to follow His ways, to follow His Son. That is what we were created for; so to me, it is harder to rebel against God’s ways than it is to follow them.
Is that an odd thought? That God created us and the world to live together, under His ways, and what is really hard is to live in rebellion of the laws God set down for us. Think about that as we look at Psalm 128 this week.
Blessed are all who fear the LORD,
who walk in his ways.
2 You will eat the fruit of your labor;
blessings and prosperity will be yours.
3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your sons will be like olive shoots
around your table.
4 Thus is the man blessed
who fears the LORD.
5 May the LORD bless you from Zion
all the days of your life;
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem,
6 and may you live to see your children’s children.
Let’s pray.
As you may have noticed, we are looking at a particular series of psalms for a time before Easter. In the same way that Jesus was headed toward Jerusalem for His showdown with the devil, and the priests and scribes who headed up the Jewish religion at that point in Israel’s history, we too are going up. But we are going up to Jerusalem following the psalms that the Jewish pilgrims would have sung as they went up to celebrate the Passover. In Luke Jesus makes one long trip up to Jerusalem; it is entirely possible that these are the songs He and the disciples would have sung from time to time as they were also heading up to Jerusalem. These psalms were sung for centuries by Jewish pilgrims, just like Jesus, as they went up to Jerusalem to celebrate feasts, or to offer sacrifices; they would travel from all over the known world to perform the rituals of the worship of Yahweh. These psalms of the Ascent help us to think about life as an ascending journey toward God. As you may know, God was specially present in the Temple in Jerusalem, deep in the inner sanctum. So a journey upwards to Jerusalem was also an upward journey toward God. This is one of the main reasons I like these psalms so much.
So here we are at Psalm 128. It is a psalm about blessedness. God blesses people. There is a blessedness to living in Christ, to living as a forgiven person. Blessedness is a state that we really seek, a happy place where everything works together for good. You can imagine the Jewish pilgrims singing this psalm as they traveled toward Jerusalem. This is a song about the good life, the joys of living in God’s ways. The Psalm begins with several promises. Here they are, listen and read carefully.
Blessed are all who fear the LORD,
who walk in his ways.
2 You will eat the fruit of your labor;
blessings and prosperity will be yours.
The Bible is the history of God blessing people; from Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:27ff
“So God created mankind in His image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply…” and so on. Then again in Genesis 12:2, during the call of Abraham, “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will less you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” In the very beginning of humanity with Adam and Eve, in the very beginning of God calling a person and a people to Himself, it is called blessing.
Blessed are those who fear the Lord. Probably a better translation of this word, is reverence. You’ve likely heard the verse, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Well, a better word for our time is reverence. Fear for us conjures up violent movies where actresses are terrified the whole time. Blessed are those who revere the Lord, not those are terrified of God. Blessed are those who stand in awe of the Lord, who believe He is holy, that He is mighty, that He is worthy of our adoration and love. Those people are blessed. Those people who know who God is, worship and adore Him, those people we would define as blessed because they know God. That doesn’t mean they are necessarily blessed materially, which seems to be what we are most concerned with. They instead are blessed with something more important, belief and knowledge of God through Jesus Christ.
Reverence is due the majestic God. I suspect strongly we reduce God in our minds to being less powerful than He is. God could intervene, but we don’t think He will. Our response to God’s answering no to our pleas is to decide He is incapable of moving, or miraculously saving. We reduce God in our minds to someone we can keep in our pocket, and talk to when we have the need, but we don’t really expect God to show up, to move in our lives, to require us to do anything out of the ordinary. We bow each week before a mighty God, a holy God, and proclaim Him to be our Lord. But I often wonder if we sincerely mean what we say. If it cost us something, how quick would we be to praise God’s name, to glorify Jesus alone. I’ve recently subscribed online to something called the Voice of the Martyrs-and some of the prayer requests that come through there will be appearing in bulletins and possibly the Lamplighter. In there are the stories of people who are persecuted everyday for worshipping God; it has cost them status in the community, their comfort, sometimes their houses, sometimes their freedom. And yet, despite their suffering, despite our imperfect lives that don’t turn out the way we hoped, we are blessed to know a holy, a mighty God, who cannot be tamed, who will not be mocked by false piety or pretend worship. And to combat this very human tendency, to reduce the majesty of God to something we can control, the Bible needs to talk about the fear of the Lord, or the reverence due the Lord because of who He is. We need to stop whining and worship; we often need to stop talking and offering up our list of prayer of materials blessings’ we’d like God to take care of for us, and worship before the Almighty God. Fear-reverence.
Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who walk in His ways. God made us, God knows how we function best, He knows that life will be easier for us, that we will be blessed if we live life the way He say we should. God tells us how to live not because He is a cosmic killjoy, but because He wants us to be happy, wants us to live well in Him. Those people who seek to do that, to live in God’s ways, seeking Him, those people are blessed. There are ethical standards we seek to live up to. We have the 10 commandments, but then we have more that Jesus gives us that move us deeper into God’s way, and they all start with blessed…blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who morn, for they will be comforted, blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who walk in His ways; the way that Jesus articulated for us in the Beatitudes. Blessed are they who walk the road with God, before Him, ever upward toward Him. The way is fairly plain to see. We know what it is; we know generally what it looks like to follow God’s ways. There are occasions where it gets murky; like medical ethics or very specific business cases but for the most part we all understand what it looks like and what it entails to follow God’s ways instead of our own. You know people who refuse to walk in God’s ways, are forever chasing after other ways of living, and when they fail, as they inevitably do, are continually surprised that things aren’t working out the way they thought they would.
The Psalm then goes on to explain what it looks like, at least in part, to be blessed.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your sons will be like olive shoots
around your table.
4 Thus is the man blessed
who fears the LORD.
The crown of a man back then was his family. What this describes is not an attempt to be paternalistic, but to describe blessing in a way those folks would understand. This image is the best life someone back then could imagine-a lovely wife who loves him (which was potentially chancy in a time when marriages were arranged), sons a plenty to care for the man in his old age; this is an image of a blessed life. For us the image may be different; but it certainly isn’t all about having the biggest house and the biggest boat. Our image is fairly close, I’d think. A loving spouse. Children who are healthy and stay out of trouble. A house and job to pay for it. I think that would be an updated version of this image. That of course doesn’t mean anyone without those things is cursed; that would then include me. But it is what I suspect we all desire; people that we love to be around us, both friends and family.
And as soon as we dwell on this image for a second, we all think, that’s not really how it is for me. Our world is messed up, and so am I, and I try to walk in God’s ways, but it doesn’t always feel like I’m blessed. It has been explained like this: if we want to go north, but all the paths lead straight east, it will seem like we’re having to go through hedgerows, over walls that are designed to move us east, but we are determined to go north because we know what we are doing. Is that a helpful image for you? We are designed to walk in God’s ways, we are designed to worship Him, to serve Him, designed to seek Him out and treat others in a way that befits their status as made in the image of God. But we seek to head north, when we should be heading east; we follow ourselves and the sinful desires of our hearts when we should be giving that all up to God.
We know the way to make the path we travel easier. It is to surrender to God. It is to place Him at the center of our lives-to replace us with Him. We do that one day at a time, one prayerful decision at a time. It is to finally say to God, I want you to be the focus of my life, I want you o show me how to walk in your ways. I want to head East, not north. I want to walk in your ways. The center of this psalm is about walking in God’s ways. The result is God’s blessing. That may take many forms. And as we think about our blessings, we become better at seeing the way God has blessed us. Are your kids driving you nuts? At least you have kids and they are healthy enough to drive you nuts. Is money tight? At least you’ve got a place to live, and food in the refrigerator, and a loving church that will back you up if you are ever in trouble. Are you lonely? Make a friend with someone else who needs a pal. We are so blessed that we focus on what we don’t have rather than what we do. The solution to feeling sorry for ourselves is to count our blessings, and help someone who is less fortunate than we are. That really puts things into perspective, at least for me. After all, we are not blessed to keep it all for ourselves, but like Abraham, we are blessed in order to be a blessing.
The psalm ends with one last blessing.
May the LORD bless you from Zion
all the days of your life;
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem,
6 and may you live to see your children’s children.
Peace be upon Israel.
This could be a benediction almost. May you be blessed, always, may you live to see God’s special city blessed and in right relationship with Him, may you live long enough to see your grandchildren. The psalm opens and closes with a blessing. We don’t come to faith in Christ with the desire to suffer for Him. Many people come seeking blessings-but we mature hopefully. We begin to understand at some point that knowing God is the big blessing, everything else is just gravy.
Some of us are blessed in this life materially, some of us struggle to make ends meet. Some of us are blessed with children, some are blessed with other’s children. But all of us are blessed with God’s presence in our lives. As we travel ever upwards we are getting to know God better; time spent in prayer helps us to learn how to pray better, to be better God listeners.
The New International Version , (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House) 1984.