Narrative Lectionary Program Year Four– John “Psalm One”
May 30, 2021: Psalm 1
Free Additional Resources for Study & Sermon Preparation
Furthering the Power of God’s Story – Narrative Lectionary Commentary
by Daniel D. Maurer
Dr. Kimberly Leetch is correct by establishing that Psalm 1 is about finding a happy life for yourself. However, within the Jewish community, it wasn’t simply about doing these things for the sake of yourself. Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that Dr. Leetch was implying an individualistic approach to today’s text from the Narrative Lectionary, Psalm 1.
The issue at stake is that Americans, in particular, fall into the trap in assuming that anything in the Bible is talking about you and you alone. That’s not to say that individual responsibility isn’t a thing. It is. However, I would like congregational leaders to help people temper a mode of thinking that it’s about me, and me alone.
From a Jewish standpoint, the community took precedence over an individualistic approach to any sacred text. However, within modern western thought, individualism rules the day. What’s more, in American politics, the tribalistic us-versus-them seems to magnify a person’s own responsibility, or, if anything, how one associates and incorporates their tribal group-think into their own lives. It’s ironic how that group-think is sold as individualism, but I digress.
How, then, can a pastor read today’s reading from Psalm 1 differently?
First, it depends on your assumptions in approaching any sacred text. Is it a guide to moral living? Often, yes, it is. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a wholesale sellout to: room for grace, building community, and/or a guide to how to love God.
All too often, it’s easy to lay down a measuring stick and see where we fall on it. Progressive churches can fall into this trap just as easily as those more concerned a more moralistic understanding of the Psalms—grace doesn’t make up for our shortfall automatically. That grace came at a great price.
Moreover, a black-and-white interpretation doesn’t cut it either.
What’s this Psalm really about then if it’s not to deal with individual responsibility with a person’s relationship with God?
For that, an anecdote.
I suck at golf. I mean, really, really stink. I don’t usually try to remember scores (I don’t play the game very often, for one), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the scores were in the triple digits for 18 holes.
But someone once from a parish I served in western North Dakota said, “Dan. Chill out. This isn’t a game about you against me. It’s a game against yourself. The rest is just fun.”
I’ll never forget that. And I think it connects with today’s text beautifully. Our relationship with God isn’t that this good man is happy and the bad man two doors down is unhappy. It’s that you can be happier in life if you first acknowledge that it isn’t you against me—instead, it’s how God is for us. That includes you, too, of course.
When an exegete approaches a text from the Hebrew Bible as a community-building story from which to grow and flourish their community of faith, then the life from the Psalms springs forth—not as a tool to measure how each member is doing, but as a communal memory of the poetry of the Psalms of the ancients. We can hear their voices, too, if we but listen.
New Testament scholar Richard Hays reminds us that “The biblical story focuses on God’s design for forming a covenant people. Thus, the primary sphere of moral concern is not the character of the individual but the corporate obedience of the church.”
The church is built from people. Broken people. Hurt people. Abusive people. People with anxiety. People with depression. People just trying to get by, from day to day.
Today’s psalm reminds us that we find firm ground in the words pointing us to God. In them, we will not falter—neither individually nor corporately.
I’m better than you? Hardly.
We’re better together with God and through God.
Happy preaching.
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The following links and resources are not produced or maintained by Clergy Stuff. However, at the time of this posting, the links were active and considered to be good source material for proclamation for the text for this week. Please scroll down or click on the quick jump menu you find below. For more free worship resources & planning materials, please visit our links for RCL Worship Resources.
Other Resources
Exegetical Links
What Makes Us Happy? word-sunday.com
Psalm 1: A Psalm for All Seasons Bible.org
The Pandemic Has Shown the Flaws of American Individualism NevadaCurrent.com
Great Quotes
“There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.”
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples”
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
A Good Read
Interpreting the Psalms: An Exegetical Handbook (Handbooks for Old Testament Exegesis)
by Mark D. Futato
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Video Resource
Psalm 1 - Music Resource
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Free Dramatic Reading For This Text (NRSV)
Psalm 1
Readers: Narrator 1, Narrator 2
Narrator 1: Happy are those
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.
Narrator 2: They are like trees planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.
Narrator 1: In all that they do, they prosper. Narrator 2: The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Narrator 1: 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.
[NARRATIVE DRAMATIC READING GOES HERE]