Thomas J Parlette
“Trees Planted by Streams of Water”
Psalm 1
9/22/24
One of the great Christian storytellers of the 20th century was a Jesuit priest from India named Anthony de Mello. One of de Mello’s may parables is about a woman in coma, slowly dying. She’s barely aware of her surroundings as she lies on her sickbed. But she suddenly has the impression she’s been taken up to heaven and is standing before the judgment seat of God.
She sees nothing but clouds of dark smoke. Out of the ponderous silence comes a voice. “Who are you”, asks the voice.
Not knowing what to say, she turns to the answer she has used most often in life – “I’m the wife of the mayor.”
“I did not ask whose wife you are, but who you are.”
“I’m the mother of four children.”
She hears a similar response – “I did not ask whose mother you are, but who you are.”
“I’m a schoolteacher,” she says.
“I did not ask what your profession is, but who you are.”
And so it goes, over and over – but no matter what the woman says, her answer is unacceptable.
Finally she tries another answer. “I’m a Christian.”
“I did not ask what your religion is, but who you are.”
“I’m the one who went to church every week, and always helped the poor and needy,” she says.
“I did not ask what you did, but who you are.”
De Mello concludes his parable by observing that the woman evidently fails the examination, because she is sent back to Earth. Soon after, she awakens from her coma and resumes her life. But something is different. Something has changed about her. From that day forward, this woman resolved to discover who she was. And that, the storyteller concludes, has made all the difference. (1)
So, who are you – really? Strip away all those layers you have spent your life carefully building up – all the labels, titles, degrees, certifications – and what’s left? What is the essential core of You?
That was the question behind one of the most well-known songs from the rock band The Who. Pete Townsend, the lead guitarist, wrote the lyrics that repeated over and over – “who are you, I’d really like to know, who are you…” It’s song really addressed to himself. Townsend had just had an 11 hour, highly contentious meeting with a record producer about his royalties. When all was said and done, the walked away with a big paycheck, but he also had a nagging feeling that he and the band had sold out. They weren’t the rebellious rock stars anymore, he wondered to himself, am I just a member of the corporate music industry now. So the song “Who are you”, is really Pete Townsend asking himself if he is a hypocrite, a sell-out.
Or consider the story of Alex Haley. He was retired from the military, safe and secure after 20-plus years in the service, living on a comfortable pension. He’d achieved a standard of living higher than his parent’s wildest dreams. By all accounts, he should have been quite happy. But he was not. He felt like something was missing.
Alex Haley longed to know where he had come from. So, he set out to discover his roots.
Everyone he told about his quest said he was crazy. How could an African/American, a descendant of slaves, trace his family back across the ocean? There were few written records of black people in America’s courthouses. For many years, the official line had been that slaves were not people – they were property. Most of them had no last name, and if they did, it was the name of the master.
But Haley had listened well to the stories of his family, the lore passed down from generation to generation. He’d heard about a man from an earlier generation who did not have his own name – Kunta Kinte, who was captured by slave traders and torn away from his homeland in West Africa. Inspired by the power of that name, and by the conviction that there had been a living, breathing human being behind all those stories – Haley managed to do what everyone thought was impossible. He traced his family roots back, generation by generation, all the way to Africa. The book he wrote, Roots, tells his family’s story (2) It became a bestseller that spawned several television miniseries. It also sparked a genealogy craze that hasn’t died down since.
Although Haley was criticized for some errors he made in his research and for plagiarizing some details of the African portion of his story from another novelist – no one doubts that his book is a triumph of imagination that captures the experience of an entire people. Alex Haley’s Roots has helped countless Americans of African heritage remember who they are.
There is a rich tradition in the Hebrew Scriptures that specializes in helping people uncover who they are. It is known as Wisdom Literature. The heart of Wisdom literature is the Book of Psalms, the hymnbook of ancient Israel. There’s a lovely song in the very beginning that looks at human life and what it means. Psalm 1 has long been a favorite of Rabbis, who like to use it with their very youngest students, the children just starting to study the Scriptures. Psalm 1 provides a road map of what’s ahead, frames the picture, and defines the boundaries of the spiritual life.
It starts out on a positive note – “Happy are those…” Lots of word would fit here, “fortunate, blessed, rich” would also work, but happy is a good choice. “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked.” That would seem pretty obvious. Who wants to be on the wrong side – to be one of the villian’s henchmen or henchwomen? I don’t know many people who watch Star Wars and yearn to be an Imperial Storm Trooper. Who watches The Wizard of Oz and thinks, “I”d sure like to be one of those flying monkeys.” Most people who watch the Harry Potter movies want to be a Gryffindor, not a Slytherin.
The advice of the wicked is easy to shun when it comes from movie villians dressed in black, rubbing their hands together and hissing when they speak. The problem is that real-world wickedness rarely wears black. Most of the time it is attractive, appealing, even comfortable.
The advice of the wicked refers to the prevailing value system promoted by our secular culture. It’s sort of message we hear every day, especially in big-budget advertising. We’ve all heard the tempting songs:
Acquire more stuff, be more successful, look younger and sexier, pursue personal happiness as the highest value, use other people to get what you want, get ahead at all costs.
These are the sorts of things that the Psalmist means by “the advice of the wicked.”
“Happy are those who do not take the path that sinners tread.” This phrase is just slightly different from the previous admonition, in that it’s not about who you listen to, but who you emulate – who you actually follow.
The Hebrew word for “sinner” used here by the Psalmist doesn’t refer to a person who is bad to the core. It literally means a person who has missed the mark, like an archer who aimed for the target, but sent to arrow flying off into the woods.
We don’t have to look far to see plenty of people who are missing the mark these days. They’re shooting at the wrong targets and pursuing the wrong goals. They’re caught up in the rat race of material achievement – of seeking pleasure and power for themselves, no matter what it may cost those other people around them. The impulse to follow the crowd can be powerful. If we sit on the sidelines or take another path, it might feel like we’re falling behind. So we do what everyone else does. That’s what it means to take the path that sinners tread.
There’s a third step in the slow, downward spiral laid out by the Psalmist – “to sit in the seat of scoffers.” Scoffers are cynics, those who, in the words of Oscar Wilde, “know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Few things are easier in life than sitting back and mocking things that have true value. There are some among our society who mock what we do, see no value in worship, and are quick to question the motives of those who seek to do good for others. Boldly they proclaim that they avoid church because there are too many hypocrites in it. When they hear Christians speak publicly of their faith, scoffers deride them as holier-than-thou. Eagerly they pounce on every social media story of a religious leader who falls into sin, imagining that this somehow discredits the whole Christian faith – forgetting that Christianity has always proclaimed that sin is, by its very nature, seductive and dangerous – and no one is immune to its effects.
The cynic’s mocking song can be so appealing that we may even find ourselves humming right along. It’s an appealing little ditty, even if it is utterly wrong.
It’s an easy, gently sloping road from heeding the advice of the wicked to following the path that sinners tread and sitting in the seat of the scoffers. But one good thing about that road is that’s a two-way street. It is always possible to repent, turn around and head back in the opposite direction.
The rest of Psalm 1 is mostly about how to take the opposite direction – to act positively to strengthen our spiritual lives. The people that are truly happy or blessed are those “whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on that law they meditate, day and night.”
The Psalmist provides a beautiful, deeply poetic image in verse 3 that captures what it means to be a person of God:
“They are like trees planted by streams of water,
Which yield their fruit in its season,
And their leaves do not whither.
In all that they do, they prosper.”
Do you know the most important part of a tree? Ask any landscaper, and they will tell you – it’s the roots. Landscapers go to great lengths to make sure the root-ball stays tightly packed and moist, and that it gets planted in the right kind of soil at the right depth, at the right time. All kinds of damage can occur to the trunk, branches or leaves, but as long as the roots are intact, there’s hope for recovery and growth. But if the roots are destroyed, the tree will probably
die.
The Psalmist sings of a tree planted by streams of water. Its roots are sunk in the best possible place. They drink up the life-giving water, and even if a drought comes along, this tree will survive and flourish.
It’s a clear, and beautiful metaphor for the spiritual life. Ancient Rabbi’s understood this well, and they turned to Psalm number 1 as the starting place for teaching their youngest students. The Psalmist says to meditate upon it. The Hebrew word for “meditate” is derived from the word “murmur.” It refers to the practice of repeating a biblical text over and over to oneself, to commit it to memory – as Orthodox Jews do in their worship even today.
What kinds of meditations fill your mind each day? Is it your shopping list? Your To-Do list? The test coming up next week? The memo your boss sent around? When was the last time most of us truly pondered and reflected on God’s word, and made meditation and reflection a major part of our daily life.
That is the goal of worship – to meditate on God’s word together – to plant ourselves by streams of God’s life-giving water so we can be nourished. No single worship service is going to fix everything in your spiritual life – it’s the cumulative effect of a healthy root system, nourished by streams of water that gives our faith staying power. With a good root system, there is always hope for recovery, renewal and growth.
So happens if we ignore our roots, neglect God’s word and forgo the discipline of worship and meditation?
Well, as the Psalmist notes, there are consequences. “The wicked” – the ones who neglect God’s word- “are like chaff that the wind drives away.”
Chaff is an interesting word here. Unless you grew up on a wheat farm, you probably not too familiar with chaff. But for the ancient Israelites, chaff was a part of everyday life. When wheat was harvested, it was threshed. The sheaves of wheat were dumped out on a stone slab called a threshing floor, where the villagers would beat it with sticks. Then, someone threw it up in the air with a pitchfork. As it hung in the air, the wind would carry away a fine dust, called chaff – indigestible stuff that was no good to eat.
Here’s how one fellow preacher described the contemporary threshing process:
“I don’t think city folks understand chaff. In Montana, every fall we had harvesters who came around with a threshing rig. The bundles of wheat would be thrown into this machine. The straw would be blown out into the stack and the wheat would come dribbling out to be poured into trucks or wagons and taken away to the granary. But floating around in the air everywhere was chaff. It was the worst stuff you ever saw. It stuck to the skin wherever you sweat, on the back of your neck and down your shirt. It created frightful itching. It was universally regarded as the most worthless stuff there ever was.” (3)
That, says the Psalmist, is the result of a life that never focuses consistently on God’s word. It may look like a great life – following the crowd towards success and luxury, but ultimately that life is barren and empty, like chaff blown away by the wind.
But if we live our lives like trees planted by streams of water, our spiritual roots will grow strong, we will bear fruit in due time, and we will prosper in everything we do.
And for that, may God be praised. Amen.
1. Anthony de Mello, The Prayer of the Frog, Prakash Publishing, 1988.
2. Alex Haley, Roots: The Story of an American Family, DeCapo Press, 2016.
3. Ray Stedman, “A Song of Foundations”, www.raystedman.org.
