The tree of Calvary gives life which is seen in Jesus resurrected from the dead. Blessed are those who find their life and rest in Him.
The dilemma in Eastertide for preacher’s hoping to use the Old Testament pericope is that there is of course NO Old Testament pericope. Each week that we have been in Eastertide we have gone over the appointed Psalm of the day. This series gave us a chance to sharpen our homiletical skill on a sometimes underrepresented category of preaching: Preaching Christ from the Psalms.
We conclude this series with the appointed Psalm for the seventh Sunday after Easter. Psalm 1 is a brief but theologically rich passage. It proclaims the beatitude: “Blessed are those who find delight in meditating day and night on the instruction of the Lord.” Perhaps the most memorable thing about Psalm 1 is the way the psalmist draws a sharp contrast between the righteous and the wicked, noting the life of the righteous person and the emptiness of the life of the wicked. God sees all, and the righteous will live, while the wicked perish. Focusing in on the word “blessed” will allow us to examine this psalm and how it relates to the theme of beatitude more generally in the Old Testament and specifically in the teachings of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.
By unpacking the word “blessed” from Psalm 1, you can add rich context for the meaning of this word when you read it against the backdrop of Moses’ teaching about what it means to be “blessed.” The only time “blessed” was used by Moses was in his blessing of Israel (Deuteronomy 33:29):
“How blessed you are, Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is the shield that protects you, the sword you boast in. Your enemies will cringe before you, and you will tread on their backs.”
Being blessed means being saved and protected by God! What wonderful news to share on Eastertide. We are the people who have been saved by the Lord through the victory of His Christ over sin, death, and the Devil.
By drawing out this connection first, it then allows you to move to Jesus’ familiar teaching about being “blessed” in Matthew 5:3-12. Here, Jesus Himself teaches us what it means to be “blessed.” However, most people view His beatitudes as imperatives, giving His teaching a particular law emphasis. This is unfortunate because they are actually adjectives which, when translated according to their proper emphasis, give a distinctly gospel flavor to Jesus’ teaching.
Jeff Gibbs provides a rather helpful insight into this understanding of Jesus’ beatitudes.
“In each of the nine Beatitudes, the Greek puts the plural adjective μακάριοι, “blessed,” in emphatic first position, and therefore I have (underlined) it in the translation. Wallace notes this common phenomenon of fronting for emphasis.[1] In each Beatitude μακάριοι is predicate to the subject (here οἱ πτωχοί). “The poor in spirit are blessed because the reign of Heaven is theirs! The people who are mourning are blessed because they will be comforted! The lowly are blessed because they will inherit the earth! The people who are hungering and thirsting for righteousness are blessed because they will be satisfied! The merciful are blessed because they will be shown mercy! The pure in heart are blessed because they will see God! The peacemakers are blessed because they will be called sons of God! The ones who are persecuted because of righteousness are blessed because the reign of Heaven is theirs! You are blessed whenever people insult you and persecute you and, by lying, say every kind of evil against you because of Me! Rejoice and exult, because your reward is great in Heaven, for in this way they persecuted the prophets who were before you!””[2]
Being blessed means being saved and protected by God!
Is it not strange what this slight shift in emphasis reveals? Instead of thinking you must become this state in order to be blessed, what this teaching highlights is that wherever you find people in a low estate, there you find God. And what is He doing? He is making sure these people (in a hidden way) are blessed. How? In Christ, who meets us in our suffering through the cross and raises us again in His resurrection.
Chad Bird probably put it best when talking about finding God in the lowly, unexpected, thin, blessed places:
“To visit the site where Jesus was crucified, you need only spend some time with those who bear the crosses of sickness, loss, grief, loneliness, and persecution. Golgotha is as close as the nearest hospital. It is down the street at the Starbucks where you meet a friend who got laid off work six months ago and is fighting the demons of depression. The cross is where Jesus is, for though resurrected, He is always the crucified Christ. In, with, and under the crosses of His children is the cross of Jesus Himself. They are crucified with Him. And their crosses are grafted as branches onto the tree of His cross. Calvary is as close as the nearest person in need of grace and mercy.”[3]
In fact, if you need some rather engaging sermon illustrations of participation for a sermon on this subject, Chapter 3 of his book (listed in the footnotes) is a great place to start.
After you have done the demanding work of unpacking the context from both testaments for this theme of being “blessed,” you return again to Psalm 1. Walk through it slowly. Allow the new understanding to trickle down into their minds. Finally, end with the point that those who are blessed are blessed like a tree or rather from a tree. The tree of Calvary gives life which is seen in Jesus resurrected from the dead. Blessed are those who find their life and rest in Him.
Since we are focusing on a word and what it means, perhaps a Thematic Structure would work best for this sermon. One thematic structure known as the “Definition Structure” works best:
“This structure locates a topic (for our purposes, beatitude) within a general category (like, what is means to be blessed) and then names particulars about that topic (for example, Moses’ understanding of blessing, with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5, with our new insight into Psalm 1, through life from the tree of calvary). While numerical identification of the particulars about the topic is common (as in first, second, and third respectively), a persuasive reasoning for the ordering of particulars is more effective. In this example, the order highlights how we are to understand the nature of a beatitude before focusing on what it means for us to be blessed according to Psalm 1. In contrast to classification, where the sermon would consider the topic in relation to topics outside of it (for example, how prayer differs from an incantation or a wish), definition considers the topic in and of itself. In contrast to classification, where the sermon would expand the vision of the hearers beyond the topic of prayer, definition limits the vision of the hearers to specific details about the topic.
Often, when working with definition, the preacher will offer a single example for consideration and then draw the various points of the definition from that example. So, the biblical text might offer... (in our case, an example from Moses or Jesus and the preacher then works with that text in its context to communicate a larger theological teaching about the meaning of “blessed”) to relate the teaching to the lives of God’s people in Christ today.”[4]
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Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out out 1517’s resources on Psalm 1.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you in preaching Psalm 1.
Text Week-A treasury of resources from various traditions to help you preach Psalm 1.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
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[1] Wallace, Greek Grammar, 307–308.
[2] Jeffrey A. Gibbs, Matthew 1:1–11:1. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006. 234.
[3] Chad Bird, Your God Is Too Glorious: Finding God in the Most Unexpected Places. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2018.
[4] https://concordiatheology.org/sermon-structs/thematic/definition/
