Happy are those
Psalm 1
who do not follow the advice of the wicked
or take the path that sinners tread
or sit in the seat of scoffers,
but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
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.
The wicked are not so
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous,
for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
Happy.
There it is: the first word of the Psalter. We carry around in our Bibles a book of songs, with hymns we can sing in all sorts of different circumstances. There’s some for when we’re feeling thankful in the early morning hours, some for when we’re thirsting for fellowship with God, others for when we feeling like we’re at the end of our rope and start to fear that God won’t keep his promises to us. And we tend to sing these songs a lot. (The first song we sang this morning, for example, is a version of Psalm number 117.) Isn’t it remarkable that the whole entire book of hymns that we sing over and over again starts with this surprising word? “Happy”? Is that what the Christian life is about? Being happy?
In one way, there’s a lot of danger in thinking that. You see, there are plenty of folks in churches who are eager to tell people that the Christian life is about being happy. Some people call that kind of message the “prosperity gospel.” And I think it’s right that we be careful about the prosperity gospel. That’s because, even though there are a lot of promises that God makes to us in the Bible and in Jesus, there’s no guarantee that all is going to be hunky dory when we put our faith in Him. If we start to think that, just as long as we do our best to love God and serve our neighbor, everything in life will be easy peasy, we’re in for a rude awakening. And even worse: at the first sign of struggle, we’d begin to despair of all of the other promises God makes to us. The prosperity gospel is dangerous for exactly that reason.
To ward off the perils of prosperity gospel kind of thinking, some might rightly point that, in a lot of translations of the Old Testament, that first word of the Psalter isn’t translated as “happy,” but is rather translated as “blessed.” That might sound way better to us. But the Hebrew language has a different word for that, it’s “baruch”. The word that’s here, in the very opening of the book of Psalms, is ashre, which means happy . (Those of you who know your Bible better than I do will remember that, in Genesis 30, when Leah’s sixth son is born, she says she’s especially happy, and so she decides to name him Asher, which means happy. And that’s the same word that starts Psalm 1. Asher.)
So the fact is: even if we feel weird about it, our being happy is something that the Bible speaks to—it’s something that God cares about. What we might have to figure out, though, is exactly what kind of happiness is being spoken of in the Bible—that is, what kind of happiness we should anticipate in our lives as Christians—and where that happiness is supposed to come from.
Some of you know that my husband, Justin, and I are now expecting our first child. (We’re really excited. We’d probably take Leah’s lead and name our kid Asher, too, but one of our dearest friends already took that name for her son!) It’s an incredible thing to be preparing for parenthood—and I’m thankful that Karen invited me to preach on this Mother’s Day Sunday, since doing so has given me another chance to reflect on what it will mean to follow Jesus in our lives as parents. As I’ve been reflecting on this psalm this week, I’ve thought to myself: what is it that we want for our little baby? Surely, we want our little son to be happy. But what kind of happiness do we want for him?
Surely, Justin and I would be very quick to insist that we want our little bambino to have a happiness that’s deeper than just the gratification of his desires. We want him to know God, to feel a strong sense the love of his parents, to learn how to overcome difficulties, to enjoy the simple delight of long walks with dear ones. We want for our hijo the kind of happiness that I think this Psalm points us to: an enduring peace and joy in the world.
Of course, that said, it’s been very easy, during this time of preparing for his arrival, to fall into the trap of thinking that our son’s happiness depends on having the finest stroller and the safest car seat and the coziest organic cotton onesies and the fanciest baby monitor. It’s so easy to get caught in the baby stuff trap: among other things, we are programmed to believe that getting these things for your kids shows how much you care for them.
But we know none of that is true, right? This psalm reminds us that what brings genuine, long-lasting happiness is not any of those things, but rather being attentive to God’s word and will. That’s where that deep happiness comes from. We’re told in verse two that the kind of happiness that God’s people have come from the delight that they get from the law of the Lord, and because of that they think on it all day and all night.
It’s worth noting here that there’s another interesting word that’s being used that doesn’t so much mean “law” as something like “teachings” or “lessons.” The word is torah, a word that we often use to name the first five books of the Bible. But in the Jewish tradition, Torah means the whole Bible. It means all of the things that God teaches us in the scriptures he gives us. The parental image shows up here, too: the Old Testament regularly uses the word torah to name the kind of teaching that parents do for their kids.
I love reflecting on that image. I know that Justin and I are both so excited to get to teach our little bambino about how to walk and draw and wave hello, how to sing and how to pray. In this Psalm, we can just imagine God being so excited to have us learn from him, like a parent excited to teach her child about the world. And God reminds us that when we focus on learning from him, when we pay attention to the things he wants for us to do and be, that’s what will make us happy.
I think this image can be a helpful remedy for the kind of language that Protestants sometimes have about “the law.” At times we tend to think of the law as a big bad scary thing that we know we can’t live up to, and we put it in opposition to the good news of Jesus. But the thing that the word “law” here names is something we are encouraged to love—even to delight in.
Psalm 1 says that we will enjoy real, deep, genuine happiness when we connect to the maternal and paternal love that God offers us, the love that teaches us how to live well and to care for our neighbors. We are to root ourselves in him. What does that involve? Surely, it includes spending time in prayer and reading our Bibles. But rooting ourselves in God also means being thinking about how God is present and active in every moment of our lives.
I really love that the Psalm uses the image of a tree, planted by the water, growing tall and bearing fruit, to convey what this real happiness is like. I think that might be helpful for us. So I’m just going to encourage us all to meditate on that for a second, to imagine ourselves as trees like the tree in Psalm 1. If you’re able, I’ll invite you to stand up—(pause)—and close your eyes—(pause)—and think of yourself as a tree like the one in Psalm 1. Feel your feet. What’s the ground beneath you feel like? Does it feel solid? What kind of soil are you rooted in? Are you getting any of the water from that nearby stream? Or do you feel like you need to dig deeper into God’s nourishment to get what you need?
Of course, if you’re a tree you’ve got some roots, but you also must have some branches. Reach your arms up into those great tall branches of yours. What are you reaching toward? Where are you growing? How are those fruits doing on your branches? Is there anything you feel like you need to flourish? (pause) When you’re ready, feel free to open your eyes and take a seat. (pause)
On this Mother’s Day Sunday, I’m so glad that we have had a chance to encounter—or perhaps reencounter, for some of us—this meaningful introduction to the book of Psalms. It’s so fitting that today, we’ve had the chance to sense the ways in which God loves us, just as a mother loves her children. In this first psalm, we’ve seen God as one who wants the best for his children—not simply that they would be alive and safe but also that they would be happy. Of course, we also know that, like a good mother, God doesn’t just want our cravings to be gratified. Happiness here doesn’t just mean getting what you want. Good parents, after all, don’t give their kids ice cream whenever they want it. But they do want their children to grow and blossom and thrive.
We also have seen God in this Psalm as the kind of parent who teaches us. He’s got lessons for us—sometimes they come in the form of withholding that ice cream, and other times they come in the form of quite abundant blessings. He also knows that without those lessons, we simply won’t be able to enjoy the growing and blossoming and thriving that he wants for us. And so in this first Psalm, God invites us to root ourselves in him, both by meditating on the words he gives us in the Bible and also by paying attention to his presence with us every step of the way. May we all find our happiness in him. Amen.