Does Goodness Have a Point? A Sermon on Psalm 1 by Rich Holmes Delivered on May 12, 2018 at Northminster Presbyterian Church in North Canton, Ohio Why is it, why is it that so many times in this world the good people suffer and the wicked prosper? Wise people have asked this question for thousands of years, and for those who have asked this question, there seem to be about three different answers. The first answer says that the wicked prosper and the good suffer because justice and mercy and righteousness are for fools and if there is no guarantee that these things will serve you in the long run, there is no reason for doing these things. If they serve you well, then fine, but if they don t, then who needs them? The second answer says that there may seem to be no reason for doing these things in this life, but it is the next life is what really counts. In that life we will find true justice. In that life the righteous will be given an eternal reward, but the wicked will be punished in eternal torment, but there is no reason to look for justice in this life. Some of the people we meet in the Old Testament, and even plenty of people you could run into these days have a third answer. They seemed to think whoever would ask why the righteous suffer in this life and why the wicked prosper is asking the wrong question. God ensures that this world is a just place and if you ever think that a righteous person is suffering and a wicked person is doing well, there is nothing wrong with the world, there is something wrong with you. If you ever read the book of Job in the Old Testament, this seems to be the attitude of Job s friends. Now, just for fun today, I am wondering how you think the author of this first Psalm would answer this question. Well, maybe we could answer this question if we listened to this Psalm once again. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his 1
law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in due season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does, he prospers. Not so the wicked! They are like the chaff that the wind blows away. 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 will perish. Now, If we had to vote, what would we say? Would we say the psalmist sticks to the first answer, the answer that there is no point to justice and mercy and righteousness? Well, I don t think there is any way you could possibly say that, not if you were listening to this psalm. What about the second answer or the third answer. Does he think that the righteous are rewarded in the hereafter and the wicked in the same way are punished? Or does he think that somehow in this life the righteous are rewarded and the wicked are punished. Well, I don t think it is completely clear, but it seems that it is one of those two. In some way, he says, the righteous are like trees planted by streams of water which yield their fruit in due season. When is the due season? We aren t told. Now, I think we could all agree with the second answer, that is, the answer that there is justice in the afterlife to make up for whatever justice this life lacks, but what about the third answer. Is there anything to the idea that the righteous prosper in this life and the wicked suffer in this life. Now, I don t think there is anything to this answer if you think of it in the way that Job s friends thought, that is, if you are rich and healthy it s because you ve pleased God and if you are poor and sick it s because you ve angered God, but even so, could there be some way in which this second answer is still true? 2
Doug and Dylan are both butchers, and from all appearances, Doug and Dylan seem to run their business the same way. They are both run it honestly. They both label their meat properly, they don t lie about how fresh it is. If today is Sunday and the meat came off the truck on Thursday, they don t lie and say it came off the truck on Saturday. They say it came on Thursday. And neither Doug nor Dylan have deceptive scales. If the scale says that the ham or pastrami they sliced weighs a pound, you can guarantee it weighs a pound. If you are either one of their customer and their scales say that what you re buying weighs a pound, you don t need to worry that it really only weighs 15 ounces or something like that. They have honest scales. And whenever one of Doug or Dylan s customers happens to be an inexperienced child or an elderly senile person, that is to say whenever one of their customers could easily be fooled when it comes to giving back the right amount of change, they both give back the right amount of change anyway, right down to the last penny. Neither Doug nor Dylan lie, they don t cheat, they don t steal. You can trust them, and they build a reputation of being trustworthy in their respective communities. But there is a difference between Dylan and Doug that you can t see with the naked eye. Dylan runs an honest business because he knows that it is a good business practice to have a reputation for honesty in the community. But Doug, on the other hand, is honest for honesty s sake. In other words, you see if Dylan could get away with being dishonest, that is if he could mislabel his meat and have deceptive scales and give back the wrong change he would do all these things, if he knew he could get away with these things. But he doesn t do these things, because he knows he can t. But even if Doug could get away with being dishonest he still wouldn t dare act dishonestly. And why? Because he believes in being honest for its own sake, being honest is a virtue that lives in his heart, and it is something that is a part of him. 3
If anything is clear, it is that Doug is a better person than Dylan. Dylan seems to do the right thing but he could just as easily be enticed to do the wrong thing. Doug though, could not and because he loves the right thing for the right reason, he seems to be a better person than Dylan. But the question for all of us is this: Is Doug somehow better off than Dylan?. That is, does he have a better life than Dylan? Well, when I read this psalm I think of people like Doug, because it says happy is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night. Whenever I run across people like Doug I can t help but think of this psalm. Whenever I run across people whom you could not pay all the money in the world to lie, or to betray a friend, or to cheat on their spouse or to stab someone in the back, I think to myself that this is what someone is like whom the psalmist says delights in the law of the Lord and on that law they meditate day and night. They love God and the commandments of God for their own sake. It is their ultimate joy in life before all else. And if that is your ultimate joy in life, no one can take that away from you. The remarkable thing about a life that is devoted to loving God is that it is completely free. Anyone can do it. You can do it even if you are blind, even if you can t walk, it is completely free. They can take your legs they can take your eyes, they can take your money even, but if you love God and your heart is filled with the love of God, no one can take that away from you. And so the psalm says those who do this are like streams planted by trees of water. In all they do they prosper. Thick trunks, root systems that dig deep into the earth, branches that stretch so far they seem to reach all the way to heaven. But what about the wicked, the Dylans of this world, can t they also prosper? Well sure, they can for a time, but you see their lives are caught up in things they can lose. Things that are here 4
today and gone tomorrow. And so the psalmist says they are like chaff that the wind drives away. It is not that the righteous will always prosper in the sense that people like Doug will always have customers and they will always have a successful business. All of us may have believed that when we were young, but with a little age we learn the painful lesson that this isn t always so. But they have something that they can never lose. They take delight and joy in something that they can never lose. Maybe Jesus said it best. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust can destroy and thieves can break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust can destroy and thieves can never break in and steal. Now as you reflect on all this, you may say that so far this sermon is missing something. I think it is in his confessions where Augustine talks about a time when he was a kid and he and his buddies would steal apples from an apple orchard, and they did this not because they needed apples but just because they knew it was wrong. So what is this sermon missing? You may say to me Pastor Rich, just like you can do good for goodness sake, can t you also do evil for evil s sake, and isn t your delight in doing evil also something that no one can take away from you. Well, I suppose you could love evil for evil s sake, but I think that if we could bring the author of this Psalm before us and ask him about this, he would say that in that case you would be even more like the chaff that the wind drives away. Let us go back a minute to those two butchers Doug and Dylan. I think it is interesting that there are plenty of people in this world like Dylan who pretend to care about goodness when they really don t, but no one that I know of pretends to care about evil when what they really care about is doing good, unless 5
they re doing it as an actor on a stage. Why not? Because society doesn t have much patience with those who openly love evil. And that is something we can thank and praise God for. Even though Augustine liked doing evil for evil s sake when he was a kid, he doesn t say he did this for the rest of his life. He would have blown away even sooner than those who at least pretend to love goodness. Today in this country we of course celebrate Mother s Day, and Mother s Day can be a time of great joy for people in the church, as it is a day when husbands and children get to stay home and surround mom with love and affection for a day and probably give mom a well-deserved day off from a lot of the chores that moms are often stuck doing. But I also know that Mother s Day can be a time of great pain for many in the church because they may have lost their mothers and today is a reminder of someone they mourn, and for other people it is a cruel reminder that maybe they don t have the best relationships with their mothers. Maybe their mother was abusive or neglectful and they have therefore lived their lives estranged from their mothers. But regardless of whether this day brings you joy or sadness, comfort or pain, here is what I would say about this day. If you are the kind of person who delights in the law of the Lord, as the psalmist says, if you are the kind of person who delights in justice for the sake of justice, mercy for the sake of mercy and righteousness for the sake of righteousness, then you probably have your mother to thank for that. If you are that way, you probably have your mother to thank for that, which is not to say that fathers don t play a role in this kind of training too, and in some families they do all the training, but in my own experience I find that these families are more the exception than the rule. In most families I know about mom did the lion s share of teaching you to love right for its own sake, to love goodness for its own sake, to love 6
mercy for its own sake. Mom may not have been perfect, you may even have a long list of things you wish your mom did differently, but if you grew up as someone who as the psalmist says is like a tree planted by streams of water, you probably have your mom to thank for that. Do the wicked really prosper and the righteous really suffer? Certainly not in the life to come, and I think not even in this life if your delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law you meditate day and night. And if you do that, you can probably thank mom for that, you can certainly thank God for that, and may you always live like that. 7