My husband is a grump. His fishing boat is named Grump

Transcription

1 Because I m Happy! 9/14/ My husband is a grump. His fishing boat is named Grump His family nickname is grumpie gills. He acquired this name when the movie Finding Nemo first came out: our youngest daughter would poke him in the tummy and ask, all Dori like, what s the matter, grumpie gills? This is sure to get a laugh, even to this day. My husband works from home and plays Pharrell Williams Because I m Happy on repeat to keep himself cheered up. Sometimes I doubt that it is working. Yet, despite his grump-like demeanor, my husband is one of the happiest people I know, at least in terms of Psalm In Psalm 1, happiness is far more than a cheery frame of mind. Let s look at Psalm 1 and see what it says about this happiness. In the NIV, Psalm 1.1 begins, Blessed is the one. The Hebrew word translated here as blessed is translated as happy in some versions. The Hebrew word is actually not the same word as the one used when we talk about God s blessing, for example, of Abraham, when he is promised the land in Genesis 12:12. Rather, the term here is ashrey and the phrase is a sort of exclamation: Hey, look how blessed that guy is! The Greek term used in the Septuagint is makarios: the same word used by Jesus in the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-12). In both cases, the focus is not on the benefits provided by God, but on the happiness of the recipient and the beatitudes give a clue that this happiness is not dependent upon receiving stuff from God: the list of those declared blessed includes the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and

2 Because I m Happy! 9/14/ thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. In these examples, the condition of the blessed ones is, in some cases, quite the opposite of what we might expect. But which guy is Psalm1 actually talking about? Well, the psalmist does not come right out and say which guy this is poetry, after all. Rather, he begins by noting three things that the happy guy does not do: 1. He does not walk in step with the wicked. According to one commentator, the term might be translated as unfaithful. According to another commentator,the wicked here might include individuals who has been excluded from the sanctuary by order of the priest, having been found guilty before the Torah of God. It also might include other sorts of wickedness, but the statement here is pretty general. More to the point, this does not mean that our guy avoids the wicked person, but rather he avoids imitating the actions and attitudes of the wicked person, much in the same way that Jesus sat with sinners and tax collectors, but did not sin nor cheat people while collecting taxes. 2. He does not stand in the way that sinners take. The same commentator observes that the sinners have committed offenses against certain commandments in the Torah. Often Christians think that since Jesus came around, died for our sins, and was resurrected on the third day, that we are free from having to pay attention to commandments. However, when Jesus was asked to identify the greatest commandment, he responded with a conflation of Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 when he answered, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the

3 Because I m Happy! 9/14/ first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:37 40). For Jesus, the acts of loving God and loving neighbor are what the commandments in the Torah are all about. 3. He does not sit in the company of mockers. In other words, he does not join in when mockers speak disrespectfully towards or about God. What all three of these groups of people have in common is that their attention is turned away from God. So, after noting some things that our happy guy does not do, the Psalmist lets us in on what he does do. Verse 2 reads, but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night. At the heart of the matter is the term law. The term law here is one possible, but slightly misleading English translation of the Hebrew term Torah. If we read the term law as 21 st century Americans, i.e. as legislation, we are missing out a bit. While the section of the Bible known as the Torah does contain some legislative material, it also contains material that would be better classified as instruction in English. (Martin Buber=direction). I have a friend in Scotland who has written a paper about the terms in Psalm 119, the great Torah psalm. He shows that both the terms Torah and Word (dabar) are leading terms and that the cluster of other key terms includes both legislative and moral ideas. So our guy spends his time focused on God s instructions. Day and night. In other words, all the time, his way of doing things is influenced by his understanding of how God would want it done. He is probably not perfect, but because he is paying attention, he knows what the right

4 Because I m Happy! 9/14/ thing to do actually is. (Like Dr. Laura, who ended her radio broadcasts with, Now, go do the right thing! ) In verses 3 and 4 the psalmist includes a metaphorical contrast between our guy and the wicked, stating, That person 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. Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. In verse 3, the image of a tree planted by water, which Psalm 1 shares with Jeremiah 17:7-8, provides rich background for the psalmist, who equates the stability and fruitfulness of the blessed one with the situation of a well-positioned, well-watered tree. We have a lot of well-watered trees in the PNW, but this was not the case in the ancient Near East. While Jeremiah 17:7-8 uses this image to describe the one who trusts in the LORD, here the psalmist is concerned with the one who focuses upon God s tôrâ, or instruction. The description of the tree is telling: it is fruitful and its foliage is consistently healthy due to the constant presence of life-giving water. Because the blessed one remains focused upon God s instruction, he is stable, healthy, and productive. Verse 4 compares the wicked with the portion of grain that was disposed of in the ANE threshing process. When forkfuls of harvested grain were tossed in the air, the heavy grains dropped back to the threshing floor for careful preservation, while the chaff was carried off by warm, arid winds. Here the wicked are equated with the chaff, which is the useless, dispensable part of the plant. I have another friend who observes that this characterization of the righteous and the wicked is actually counterfactual, and in some ways I agree with him. Other psalms, such as Psalm 10 describe the wicked as those who prosper and the

5 Because I m Happy! 9/14/ righteous as those who are weak and needy. In some ways, Psalm 1 presents things the way they should be, rather than the way they actually are. Verses 5 and 6 conclude the psalm with a final contrast between the wicked and our guy, who is finally outed as the righteous: Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction. The respective fates of the righteous and the wicked are quite different on a number of levels, the most significant of which has to do with God s protective presence. Ultimately, the righteous are the beneficiaries of God s presence, while the wicked, left to their own devices, fade away to destruction. My grumpy husband is indeed blessed according to Psalm 1. While he may not always feel like shouting about a room without a roof, there have been times when I marvel at his ability to turn his back on the bad stuff and do the right thing. Example 1: Grumpie and his colleague. What is any harder than asking for forgiveness? Example 2: Corrie Ten Boom Psalm 1 provides the example of one who concentrates on the Torah, and this provides a well-spring of life that allowed both Grumpie and Corrie forgive. This is accessed in two ways, first by avoiding unfaithfulness and secondly by pursuing God s instruction.

6 Because I m Happy! 9/14/ How might this look for us? How do we do it? How do we get on the right side of righteousness? First, as Corrie s example shows, we cannot do this on our own. So, the first step is prayer and seeking. Next, there is preparation marked by consistency: consistency in seeking God s instruction over time. Finally, there is interaction, acting on what we know is right. Now, let s go and do the right thing!