Bible reading: Psalm 1.

Just before 9 o’clock on the evening of February 6^th last year, a passenger train hit two trees which had fallen across the track near Thetford in Norfolk. It was a dark night and there was no way that the driver could have seen the trees. The train was travelling at over 80mph and came off the rails; fortunately it wasn’t badly damaged and just one of the 32 people on board suffered a minor injury. The two trees and the train were quickly removed so that the line could re-open; the investigation into what had happened took several months.

According to the accident report (for your minister is a sad person who reads these things), it was soon established that the pine tree had fallen first, bringing down the oak as it fell. But why had these trees, which were neither unhealthy nor rotten, fallen at all? The answer lay in two things: rain and the soil. Heavy rain had saturated the sandy soil which had then lost its grip on the trees’ roots. Although the night was not particularly windy, a gentle gust was enough to bring the trees crashing down; the entire rootplate pulled out of the ground. The consequences could have been much worse (and, indeed, climate change means that the railways have suffered a spate of tree-related incidents over the last couple of years).

Psalm 1 gives us a vivid contrast between two groups of people. The first group, it says, are like trees growing beside a stream. They have lush green foliage and bear succulent fruit. The second group, however, are like chaff or straw in a parched field: brittle, dry and easily blown away by the wind. The first group, we are told, is made up of people “who delight in the law of the Lord” and who “meditate on it day and night”; the second group are more vaguely defined as “the wicked”, people who show no interest in following God’s law. While people in the first group, says the psalmist, will prosper, those in the second “will perish” – a chilling prospect, even if we’re exactly sure what it means!

Before we go any further, I need to mention something which is so obvious that you won’t have given it a moment’s thought: it’s that the Psalm we’re looking at is No.1, the very first in the collection. You’ll know that most modern hymn books (but not “Mission Praise”) divide their contents into several themed sections: the book of Psalms does exactly the same thing and in fact has five distinct parts, culminating in glorious praise as it comes to its close. We can therefore say with some confidence that this psalm comes first for a reason: that it “sets the stage for all that will follow”. And what it does is reflect a view of things which we meet in virtually all the other psalms: that all human beings fall into one of two camps, the Righteous and the Wicked. We may feel that this is much too neat and tidy, but it’s the foundation of the whole book. One either lives life oriented to the Creator God of Israel, following his Law, or one does not. It’s a simple choice.

This brings me to my next point, which is that we often think of Law as a series of orders or restrictions saying, “You mustn’t … you can’t … don’t even think of doing it”. We see this in resistance to the Welsh 20mph speed limits (“How dare you restrict my freedoms on the open road”) and in our attitude to the Ten Commandments, which we often think of as a list of “Thou shalt nots” when, in fact, at least two are couched on positive terms (I’ll let you work out for your-selves which they are!). The traditional rendering of the Jewish word “torah” as law is in fact misleading and leads us to a very negative view of today’s Psalm 1: “Do the right things, and God will bless you; do bad things, and he’ll punish you”.

We rightly dislike that but, once we discover that a better translation of “torah” is “teaching” or “instruction”, we realise that the psalm is really saying that human life flourishes when we follow God’s guidelines or rubrics. This is true for society as well as individuals; as the Rev Dr Mark Clavier, Canon Theologian of the Diocese of Swansea and Brecon, said on the radio this week: “Laws are not just rules; they are the framework within which communities flourish. At their best, they protect the vulnerable, promote fairness, and guide us toward peace – answering the call of Scripture: ‘To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God’.” (Micah 6:8).

We must also think about what the Psalm means when it promises “prosperity” to those who follows God’s law. Some folk might – and indeed do – take this to mean financial prosperity: wealth and riches in this life. (Indeed, this line has been peddled by many unscrupulous, or simply uninformed, preachers). It’s not surprising that folk have read the psalm in this way, as the English word “prosper” is bound to bring money or material wealth to our minds. So we take the psalm as saying, “Obey God’s law, and you will be suitably rewarded”. However a better translation would use words such as “thrive” or “flourish” instead of “prosper” – one writer says, “If there is a reward involved, it is the stability and strength derived from connectedness to God which offers the opportunity to grow and bear fruit”.

To recap: Psalm 1 sets the tone for the whole collection of sacred songs; “law” should be understood as “teaching” or “instruction” rather than “rules”; and “prosperity” in this context has nothing to do with money. Let’s now dig a bit deeper into the psalm and think about how it tells us to be strongly rooted in God. I have to say that it makes me think of Jesus’ parable of the sower, where some of the seeds fall on good ground and eventually produce a good harvest, while others fall on shallow soil where they cannot get firmly rooted: the seedlings soon wither and die in the heat of the sun. It also makes me think of Jesus as the True Vine, where it’s those who maintain a spiritual connection with him who bear fruit: quite possibly the so-called “Fruit of the Spirit”.

I think the key message we need to take away is that “blessedness” or, perhaps, “contentment”, are given to those who follow God’s law. This state of affairs is not a mechanical process: “Follow X amount of laws and God will give you Y amount of blessing”. I may be doing them a disservice, but I wonder if this came as a bit of a surprise to the psalm’s original Jewish readers, accustomed to running their lives according to a comprehensive set of guidelines and regulations. What this psalm seems to be describing is a more reflective and dynamic process, a constant meditation on Scripture which helps us to understand God, life and ourselves. We aren’t being promised an idyllic life in which everything runs smoothly: many of the other psalms show us that believers are subject to the same pressures and problems as everyone else. But I think we’re being told here that we can be strong enough to resist those winds of life if we have taken the time and made the effort to root ourselves firmly in our faith.

What, though, does this mean? Paul gives us a clue as he exhorts the Colossian Christians to “keep their roots deep in Christ, build their lives on him, and become stronger in your faith, as they were taught”. Clearly we aren’t just talking about contemplative prayer, good as that may be (it’s something I’m incredibly bad at), but also about taking the time and effort to learn about our faith and think it through. Many Christians seem to be content with having only have a sketchy understanding of what they believe. They know the basic Christmas and Easter stories, they are familiar with a few parables, psalms and Bible stories, but that’s as far as it goes. They show little desire to delve into the more obscure parts of the Bible, they’re not interested in reading books about Christianity, they claim to have neither time nor need for “all that theology stuff”, they’re happy with “Treat others as you’d like others to treat you” and “God is love”. That kind of faith will have shallow roots and won’t be strong enough to help us when life poses tough questions and difficult challenges – the times when we need our faith more than ever.

Those of you who were here last Sunday may remember me talking about the choruses we sang at Bible class when I was about 9 or 10 years old. Let me fast forward to a Leaders’ Training Weekend I attended when I was about 17. At that weekend there was a bookstall; and I bought a book which I thought I might find helpful. It was a basic study guide in Christian doctrine, designed for Christian students, first published back in 1936 and amazingly still in print today – although I think it’s been revised over the years. The book’s title, however, was a bit puzzling: “In understanding be men”. Only later did I discover that it was a quote from the King James Bible, part of Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Christians whose immature enthusiasm was clearly testing his patience. In exasperation he wrote, “Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults” – in other words, “Grow up!”

I’d like to finish back in the Old Testament, with a rather lovely quote from Jeremiah. This is God speaking.

“I will bless the person
   who puts their trust in me.
They are like a tree growing near a stream
   and sending out roots to the water.
It is not afraid when hot weather comes,
    because its leaves stay green;
it has no worries when there is no rain;
    it keeps on bearing fruit”.

We need to “root” ourselves more firmly in Christ and our faith; God has given us the means to do so.