Beloved Members of St. Martin’s,
The first words that jumped out at me today in our readings for this weekend came from our Psalm, Psalm 1. Its first two verses are these:
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.”
Think of it: the very first word of the Psalter is “Happy.”
Now some versions of the Bible use a different word: “Blessed.” That’s an amazing thing. Happiness here is explained to us as something deeper than mere giddiness, but a sense of being rooted in community with God and all creation. And those who are happy in this way know their blessings, no matter what else may come.
This is an insight that all too often gets drowned out in the lives of many of us. We are programmed to think about satisfaction—or more importantly, the lack of it. We are told to buy, buy, buy. We are persuaded that products will make us more beautiful, thinner, fuller—as if those three things could coexist at the same place and time. But will those things make us truly happy? Will they make us truly blessed?
Sometimes the things we try to possess possesses us instead. Instead of money being a way to security, it becomes something we fear we will run out of, and those thoughts preoccupy us to the exclusion of real relationship and purpose. To whom do we belong? To whom or to what do we give our hearts? Dare we give them to God? We pray that every week, when we pray for God’s will to be done. We pray it in Psalm 1, when we hear the happiness that meditating upon God’s law of love can have as the center of our life and activity. What if we chose a life of faith—including our own faith to make a difference, with the help of God?
As Jesus will elsewhere remind us, the organizing principle of the Law and the Prophets is love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:29-30). Devotion to the law is not a devolution into legalism, but is rather an attitude or relationship to God and to those around us.
As we celebrate Scouting Sunday, celebrating young people who undertake to live by a code of honor and engagement in the world, may we too rededicate ourselves to being truly happy, by centering our lives on the loving path of God.
In Christ,
Mother Leslie+