Christ Cathedral

Old Testament - Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 1
New Testament - Philemon 1-20
Gospel - Luke 14:25-33

One of my favorite cartoons of all time was posted on the door to the Rector’s office at Calvary Episcopal Church in Golden, Colorado. It was a simple cartoon, and the style reminded me of the Far Side which was very popular at the time. It was a single panel, and at the center of the cartoon, there were two vending machines. Leading up to the first vending machine was a line that curled and meandered and doubled back on itself, stretching all the way to the horizon. People were waiting, money in hand, for their chance to step up and buy something from the machine. In front of the second vending machine, there was no line. It was as if this one had nothing in it, but it was not out of order. It was simply selling something that people were not especially interested in.

Walking toward Father John’s office, the basic outline of the cartoon was instantly identifiable, and a person might guess the cartoon was about some choice, perhaps between rival candy bars or soda companies. In fact, the first time I saw this little piece of paper on Father John’s door, I fully expected one machine to say "Pepsi" and the other "Coke." But when I came close enough to read the cartoon, I discovered the machines were not dispensing cans of soda. Each was offering something far more interesting. One was labeled "Momentary Pleasure" while the sign on the other offered "True Happiness." The humorous or maybe even ironic detail was that the line of people stretching to the horizon were waiting for their chance at "Momentary Pleasure."

I find this cartoon amusing because it captures one of the pervasive but I believe mistaken assumptions of our society. For many people, including a fair number of Christians that I know, being religious means giving up some measure of pleasure in this life in the hopes that you will get more in the next. Many people outside the church suspect and even declare that religion is simply the denial of life’s pleasures in the vague hope of receiving something no one has ever lived to see. The reason people are willing to wait in a long line for momentary pleasure, they argue, is that the promise of true happiness is false. The skeptics of every era have argued that religion will get in the way of enjoying life. It will wreck your golf game, your financial security, and your sex life. Celebrity skeptics such as Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins boldly proclaim that people who are really serious about God at the very least miss out on the fun, and at the very worst, engage in delusional or even harmful behavior.

And for the sake of full disclosure, I can admit that there are certain passages in the Bible, which at first glance give the impression that the Christian religion is just a bit strange. Consider with me some of the rules found in the book of Leviticus. Try this one out the next time you are considering a trip to Hog Wild or Hickory Hut for some barbeque: "From among all the land animals, these are the creatures you may eat. Any animal that has divided hoofs and is cleft-footed and chews the cud-such may you eat."

Or perhaps like me, you are considering the purchase of an older home with a questionable basement: "The priest shall examine the [house]. If the disease is in the walls of the house with greenish or reddish spots, and if it appears to be deeper than the surface, then the priest shall go outside to the door of the house and shut it up." And if after seven days the disease has spread, then the stones shall be removed and thrown into an unclean place outside the city.

A part of me groans when I read these passages, and not just because of the water in my basement. There are so many do’s and don’ts that it seems no area of life is exempt from this perplexing set of regulations. And in every age of the Church, religious leaders and well meaning individuals have zeroed in on this or that behavior, and singled it out as the worst evils of our time. Gloomy pictures and fiery sermons have been preached against everything from alcoholic beverages to altar candles, and the words of Moses have been lifted up at the moment of decision: "See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live."

Such seriousness about the law suggests that there is a lot at stake. The law is a matter of life and death; one slip and its over. But if you read the Psalms you see that the law is not nearly so dreadful as humans have tended to make it. The Psalms possess some of the keenest insights into human emotion ever written and if you read them carefully, you’ll quickly discover they are full of praise for this curious thing called the Law. "Teach me O Lord the way of your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end." "My delight is in your Law." "Oh how I love your law! All the day long it is on my mind."

And from today’s Psalm we know that there are a whole group of people whose "delight is in the law of the Lord." So which is it: is the law a matter of life and death, as Moses put it to the Israelites, or is it something else?

Today’s Psalm certainly seems to suggest that the law is more than a cosmic list of do’s and don’ts:

Happy are they who have not walked in the
counsel of the wicked,
Nor lingered in the way of sinners,
Nor sat in the seat of the scornful.
Their delight is in the law of the Lord
And they meditate on his law day and night.
They are like trees planted by streams of water,
Bearing fruit in due season,
with leaves that do not wither;
Everything they do shall prosper.

The key to understanding this Psalm is found in its very first word: "Happy." "Happy" is a word which makes me cringe in certain contexts. In an effort to modernize the Bible, translators have sometimes substituted the word "happy" for the more serious and dignified word, "Blessed." "Blessed" was, after all, good enough for nearly every translation of the Bible up through the middle of the 20th century, and when I read this Psalm, I wanted to know why "happy" had made this sudden appearance. What was wrong with King James and his good old "Blessed"?

The truth is that good old "blessed" may sound better, but it misses the point. Scholars have shown us that there are in fact two Hebrew words which older translations rendered with the English word "Blessed." As it turns out, blessed was only right half of the time. In ancient Hebrew, the first word translated "blessed" is the Hebrew term baruk. Many Jewish prayers begin with the phrase baruk ata adonai-blessed are you Lord God-and if you have ever heard someone pray in Hebrew, chances are that he began the prayer with this word.

But there is a second Hebrew word, ashre, which describes another state of being blessed, and most of the time this word has little to do with the blessedness of God. Unlike the heavy theological meaning attached to the word baruk, ashre denotes the sort of thing that we typically call happiness in English. The ancient Jews used this word to describe all the good things in life. A person could be ashre or happy about any number of things: a good harvest, a particularly fine pair of oxen, or even a beautiful young woman.

Ashre had very little to do with God directly, but it had everything to do with the ordinary happiness that comes from the good things in life. To put the matter briefly and vividly on Labor Day weekend, the Hebrew word that we translate "happy" in today’s psalm has more to do with a weekend at the lake than the average Sunday morning at the Cathedral.

Before you all start sending in your pledge from the lake, however, let me point out to you that the Psalm does not leave God out of the equation of human happiness. A person will be happy says the Psalm, if he does two things. The first is keep clear of a certain troublesome sort of people:

Happy are they who have not walked in the
counsel of the wicked,
Nor lingered in the way of sinners,
Nor sat in the seat of the scornful.

But the Psalm quickly moves from caution against the wrong sort of company, to suggesting that a fuller and deeper understanding of God’s reasons for doing things is the secret to enjoying all of the best things that life has to offer:

Their delight is in the law of the Lord
And they meditate on his law day and night.
They are like trees planted by streams of water,
Bearing fruit in due season,
with leaves that do not wither;
Everything they do shall prosper.

And this is truly a difficult thing for us to understand. How are these behaviors going to make us happy in the same sort of way that we are happy when we read a good book or go for a walk on a cool Kansas evening?

Last fall, we were visiting Holly’s dad in South Dakota, and we spent a fair amount of time playing with his horses. At the time, Bill had a couple of foals who were just discovering the joy of running. As we rode the older horses, the foals would follow for a while, then without warning, they would be seized by some unstoppable urge to run, and they would take off across the pasture as fast as their legs could carry them. They would leap and dodge and whirl about imaginary obstacles in a movement which could only be described as pure joy. They were created to run, and when discovered this, they ran as if there was nothing finer on earth for them to do.

In a far more meaningful way, human beings are creatures made by God, and just as horses are born to run, we are in some way born to love God and keep his commandments. We are wired to do things God’s way, and deep down inside of us, there is something which responds to good. What the Psalmist is telling us is that the natural result of keeping God’s commandments is a deeply human satisfaction and pleasure. Learning what it means to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves somehow unlocks a part of us that rejoices in getting things morally and spiritually right. When we meditate on God’s law, we get a sense of our true purpose in life, and like colts running through a pasture, we find that life is no longer drudgery, but joy.

And it is this sense of immediacy, the instant payoff that brings me back to the cartoon on Father John’s door. Remember the two vending machines? Depending on how you look at it, the saddest or funniest part of the whole cartoon is the length of the two lines. The line leading to momentary pleasure is so long, it is almost endless but it only offers a moment of pleasure. It’s like Disneyland; you wait all morning and find that the ride is only 10 seconds long. And when you finally reach the front of the line, you look at your watch and wonder if it was worth the wait. But what about "true happiness?" The most appealing part of true happiness is that there is never a line. True happiness is available anytime, and no one is ever in your way. So what are you waiting for?

Happy are they who have not walked in the
counsel of the wicked,
Nor lingered in the way of sinners,
Nor sat in the seat of the scornful.
Their delight is in the law of the Lord
And they meditate on his law day and night.
They are like trees planted by streams of water,
Bearing fruit in due season,
with leaves that do not wither;
Everything they do shall prosper.