Blessed is every one who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways! you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you.

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1 "FEAR AND BLESSING" A Sermon Preached in Duke University Chapel On the Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost and Parents' \veekend by Dr. William H. Willimon Minister to the University and Professor Of the Practice of Christian Ministry October 28, 1984 Psalm 128 It is Parents' Weekend in the University. But it is the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost here in the chapel. In the interest of continuity, we ask our preachers to follow the ecumenical lectionary which assigns certain scripture for each Sunday. I immediately expected a conflict. To my surprise, the assigned Psalm for today is Psalm 128: Blessed is every one who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways! you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Lo, t hus shall the one be blessed who fear s the LORD. (Psalm 128 : 1, 3-4) What a perfect text for a Sunday when there are many parents present, when there are (due to the presence of their parents) many STUDENTS present. A good time to say something good about obeying the Lord and being blessed with good families. Even though it may have been some time since you looked into your wife ' s eyes and told her that she was "like a fruitful vine," or your mother sent you off to college by hugging her little "olive shoot," an yone can tell that this Psalm says good things about families, about the blessing of being a parent and having parents. Of course, the Psalm says more than that. Not only does it say that families and children are blessings, it also tells how to be blessed in t he family. Did you catch that word when we intoned the Psalm a few mi nu tes ago? "Blessed be every one who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways!" Why blessed? Because, people who do that "shall be happy, and it shall be well with you." "Your \vife shall be like a fruitful vine; " "your children shall be like olive shoots around your table." This is how it goes for those who fear t he Lord. Blessings. Prosperity. Peace. A little note at the bottom of the page on my R. S. V. Bible sums up the message of Psalm 128 : "A large and prosper ous family is a reward for devot i on to the LORD. " There you have it. You want a happy family, obedient and loving children, mat erial pr osperity? Simple. Fear the Lord. Walk in the Lord ' s ways. Al l shall be well with you. Case closed, end of

2 message, let's all stand and sing the Doxology. With such a simple, straightforward philosophy of domestic harmony, why are so many American families in a mess today? The American family, and what to do about it, has become a major issue in this year's presidential election. One of our undergraduates wrote an editorial in the Chronicle last week on the sad state of the family. I need not quote the statistics. The American family is far from feeling blessed. Recent movies like "Ordinary People," and "Terms of Endearment," suggest that being in a family today is more misery than blessing. Of course, the Psalm has an answer for that. Obviously, these people are in such a mess because they have not heeded the words of the Bible: Blessed is every one WHO FEARS THE LORD, WIID WALKS IN HIS WAYS. That's how it goes. IF you fear the Lord, good things will happen to your family. This is the message of the Moral Majority, I suppose. We are in a mess with our children and our parents, families are falling apart, teenaged pregnancy is on the rise, divorce is out of control because we have not lived as we are supposed to live. It could all be so simply corrected if we just did as the Bible tells us. I daresay, whether we admit it or not, this is the working assumption behind most of our thought about families. I have heard it often; used it myself. I'm a parent. So when I am told how someone else's child has deviated from the expected pattern, fouled up, gone astray, what is my first response? "I wonder what they did wrong?" Let's see now, their son or daughter went bad. I wonder what they did wrong to mess up this child? Simple. They didn't spend enough time with her. They allowed her to go her own way, let her run free. That's why she's a mess now; irresponsible parents. Or, they gave her too much, spent too much time with her, over-protected her, yes that's it. They loved her too much, spoiled her, over-indulged her. Simple. When a family in my church discovered that their teenaged son was an alcoholic, or that their daughter was pregnant, or had flunked out of college, a predominant response was, "When our friends find out about this, they're going to think that we are terrible for letting this happen to our child." If I do right, my family will be right. What did I do wrong? I was speaking on another campus. At a social gathering, I met the son of a distinguished faculty couple. He was a pleasant, outgoing young man. Yet, later that evening, as his father took me back to my lodging, he said, "I don't know where we failed with Tom." "Failed?" I asked. He seemed fine to me. "Here we are," continued the father, "both of us have achieved a great deal in the academic world. Tom wants to be a carpenter." "Look," I said, "Jesus thought that was a wonderful way to make a living." Where did we fail? Somehow, in our effort to be good parents, we became confused. I have done everything right. No sugar or artifical colorings. Frosted Flakes have never been on my breakfast table. Television only on weekends, unless it's a National Geographic Special. If I do well, if I try hard, do my best, my marriage will be happy, my family-life peaceful, my children obedient and successful.

3 Isn't that in the Bible? "Blessed is every one who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways! you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you." Says another Psalmist, "I have never seen a righteous person's children beg for bread."(ps.37:25) And yet, even in the Bible, there is a continuing debate with this cheery notion that good living always yields good results. Consider the case of my friend Job. By all accounts, even in the opinion of Almighty God, Job was righteous. A blameless one who, in the words of God himself, "fears God and turns away from evil." (Job 1 :8) Yet all of Job's fear and righteousness counted not one whit when the wind swept across the desert one dark night and killed his seven sons and three daughters. So much for the fearing-god-getting-blessed proposition. "Why do the wicked prosper?" Job asks. "Seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness," says the Gospel of Matthew (6:33) "and all these things shall be yours as well." Yet seeking his Kingdom and righteousness did not insulate mother Mary from hardship and suffering at the foot of the cross upon which the world hung her son. Old Simeon told Mary that a "sword would pierce" her heart. When her son preached, he said, "I've not come to bring peace, but a sword. I've come to turn father against son, mother against daughter " Sometimes it's like that for mothers, Mary discovered. Much joy, yes, much blessing, yes, but also pain. As a pastor I can tell you: Don't get yourself into Mary's condition if you don't want any pain as a mother or father because it seems to come with the territory. "Blessed is every one who fears the LORD," says the Psalmist. How odd that fear should intrude itself into our thoughts of families and children. Yet there it is. It is a fearful thing, says the Bible, to fall into the hands of the living God. It is a fearful thing to be loved by God or to try to return that love in our daily, ordinary, domestic lives. We know, don't we, that there is more risk, more pain in parenting (or any other kind of love for that matter) than our cheery, cause-effect, moralistic optimism would have us believe. Good actions do not always reap good results, in parenting, marriage, school or any other human endeavor. There are these gaps, these unaccountable glitches between what we want and what we get in love. Love is a fearful thing. Gifts, blessings, are fearful things. It used to really get me when this couple would show up at my church with a little child in tow. "\.Je're bringing Susie to Sunday School," they would say. "She's six now and starting school, joining the Brownies, taking ballet, so now we thought it would be nice if she could learn about Jesus." "Don't do us any favors," I thought to myself, this is the church, not free babysitting. "Are you new in town?" I would ask them. "No, we've been here for some time. But we haven't started looking for a church until now. Of course, we don't really feel the need for this sort of thing for ourselves. But with Susie starting school and ballet and all, we thought it would be good to bring her now." That used to really get me. Statistics show that the average American couple becomes active in the church when its eldest child

4 reaches school age. Yet a friend of mine, a psychologist, said to me, "I'm sceptical of what those parents say." "\~hy?" I asked. "Because I see parents acting out all sorts of things through their children," he said. "Hhat is happening to people when their eldest child reaches school age? Their marriage is entering a dangerous new period. This little child whom they have protected up to this time in the safety of the home is now going out into the world where there are value conflicts, and unknowns, and other people. Parents during this period have more arguments about discipline, standards, values. What those parents may be saying to the church is, 'Help. We are scared to death of raising this human being. We are unsure if our resources are equal to the task. But we don't have the honesty to admit that to ourselves so we'll put forth little Susie and tell you that she needs the church -- but if you can give us any help in being parents, in keeping our marriage together, for God's sake help.'" They may be unsure, unequal to the task, compulsive, neurotic, running scared as parents but at least give them credit for knowing how perilous, frightening, awesome is this vocation to which they have been called. The "fear of the Lord" is, in part, respect for the Lord's gifts and the responsibilities they entail. Nor is the way clear for those who are the recipients of parental love. "Honor thy father and mother," says the Ten Commandments. Why? "That thy days may be long "(Exodus 20:12) Most of us want to please our parents, make them proud, return some of the love and sacrifice which they have given us; but this isn't easy. As we grow, we find that there are gaps between our intentions and the results, mysterious dark places in our relationships with our parents that we spend our whole lives trying to comprehend, yet cannot. I know people in their fifties who will not smoke a cigarette in front of their mothers. I've seen a whole household thrown into disarray because one, frail, octogenarian Daddy, now confined to a bed, bearly breathing, doesn't approve of something that is going on in the other room. We do want to please them, but can we with our little lives and puny achievements, we wonder? We're still their little boy or girl when we reach twenty-one. They never cease trying to Mother-Daddy us and we never stop wanting-not wanting them to do so. A counselor here on campus told me that she has seen students walk out into the woods and end it all at nineteen rather than go home with a B in Chemistry. No, the Psalmist is not right, if he or she presumes that blessing, happiness, and perpetual well-being is the automatic fruit of marriage, family, child-bearing, and parent-pleasing. Even good marriages, faithful families, and grateful children find the world a good deal more awesome than that. And yet, the Psalmist has a point: The "fear of the Lord" helps us make sense of it, helps us live the mystery without being overwealmed by it. Like any good Jew, the Psalmist insists on getting religion off the mountaintop and out of the temple and into the marketplace. We may have come this morning to chapel, expecting to ponder majestic visions and ethereal thoughts. But no, once again the Bible has brought us down to earth, insisting that God be served where

5 we live -- where the biblical "fruit of our hands" usually looks like cornflakes with skimmed milk. But sometimes, by the grace of God, we look into our spouse's eyes, that oh-so ordinary person who has chosen to live with an even more ordinary person, and see "a fruitful vine." And that one whom you sent off to college (now sitting slouched beside you in the pew) is seen to be none other than the apple of your eye and the "olive shoot" whom you now desperately miss each evening at the family table. "Lo, thus shall they be blessed who fear the LORD. " You need not be in chapel to experience the blessing of the Lord blessing is as close as the ones who gather around the breakfast table. Yet sometimes, in the crush of everyday life, amidst paying tuition, and writing home for more money, and doing the dishes after supper, you must come to chapel to be reminded of what a wonder is the stuff with which this good Father-Mother of a God has blessed us. Life is connected, says the Psalmist. God is all mixed up in our parents, and children. Something so simple as food, the work of our hands, does make us happy and does make life good. Not that these blessings are without responsibility and pain -- thus the Psalmist points us to the fear of God as a means of ordering our lives. The Moral Majority is wrong about so much but right about this: The way we form our family life, the way we act as parents, IS a religious, deeply spritual, deadly important matter. God cares what happens around the family dinner table. God expects us to treat our children and our parents for who they are -- cherished, awesome gifts from the very hand of an awesomely loving God. Blessing entails responsibility and every responsibility risks failure. Sometimes our families are in a mess because loving people is a messy, unpredictable, demanding venture. Love is like that. Everybody ought to know that. But what everybody doesn't always know is that the gift of children, the love of parents, the responsibility of material blessings, would be too great a burden for us if God were only a God of fear and not also a God of mercy. God's forgiveness enables us to l ove without being destroyed by our failures to love. We look into the faces of those gathered about the table in the evening, and, through the eyes of faith, see the presence of Almighty God, come among us in something so ordinary and blessed as bread and children. To be near such risky, demanding love is a fearful matter, but also a blessed one. "The LORD bless you! May you see prosperity all the days of your life! May you see your children's children! Peace be upon you!" Amen.

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