Walk, Stand, Sit (Psalm 1)

2024 has been dubbed by political watchers as a “super election year.” Possibly the greatest election year in the history of the world. Political rhetoric and behaviour have ramped up in terms of hostility, anger and fear. How can Christians engage well with politics in such a difficult time? 

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There are 150 Psalms—150 chapters in the book—that are all poems. They are all the lyrics to songs that people sang to Yahweh God in their homes, or in their gathered worship in synagogues or in the Temple.  

The Psalms aren’t all songs of praise reminding us of how great God is. Many of them are psalms of lament, the kind of song that cries out, “Lord have mercy.” A lot of them are a combination of the two: lamenting, and then celebrating the fact that God has heard our struggle and our grief. One writer divides the different kinds of songs into psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation, and psalms of reorientation. 

The editors who compiled those 150 songs into a certain order and organized them into 5 internal books figured that a good place to start—a good thing to have for Psalm 1—was a psalm not of lament, not of praise, but of wisdom.  

Psalm 1 is a psalm of wisdom. If you're familiar with the book of Proverbs, you may see things in Psalm 1 that ring a bell, that look a lot like the things we read in Proverbs, which is an entire book about wisdom.  

In Psalm 1, the writer is giving us advice. They are saying, “This is a good way to live.” 

Starting in verse one: 

Blessed is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. 

That word “blessed” means that this is a happy condition to be in. It’s a great way to live. It’s good news for you if you are living that way.  

It's a great way to live to not follow the advice of un-Godly people. To not spend time with people who egg each other on to doing things that are wrong or stupid or harmful. Not doing that—that's a great way to live.  

Next, the writer says: 

Blessed is the one who does not stand in the way of sinners.

What a great way to live! Not standing on the path that's worn down to the dirt by people who fight God, who break their promises. It's a great way to live, not sharing the philosophies and perspectives of people who are determined to shake their fists at God's loving will for them. Not doing that—that's a great way to live.  

Next, the writer says: 

Blessed is the one who does not sit in the company of mockers. 

Whenever I read this line, I always think of high school. I would take the bus to school in the mornings. I would get off the bus and every single day there were four or five teenage idiot guys standing in the doorway to the school. As we walked through, they would provide a running commentary on your value as a human being, or how your hair looked, or what you were wearing, or what you said in class yesterday. It was persistent mockery. Every time I read this passage, I think of those guys standing in the doorway, judging people as we walked past. But the psalm writer says, what a great way to live, to not do that. To not demean other people, to not put yourself on the judge’s seat and pass sentence. To not devalue other people, to not belittle other human beings created no more and no less than you yourself in the image of God. Not doing that—that is a great way to live. 

In verse two the writer continues: 

But blessed is the one whose delight is—who takes pleasure in—the law of the Lord.

I always pause there, too. When I see that kind of statement, I kind of go, “Really?” If there are two words that don't really go together in the same sentence, in my mind, it's “delight” and “law.” 

“Law” is a list of rules. “Law” is fun stuff I'm not allowed to do. It's not-fun stuff that I have to do. If it were delightful, we wouldn't need a law in the first place because isn't it better to just be free?  

But the writer is talking about God's Law, which is not like a bunch of rules and the consequences for breaking them. God's Law is more like the law of gravity: they are both a statement about just the way things are.  

When we look at the 10 commandments (which is a summary, sort of a TLDR of the detailed body of God's Law) the first four commandments are: don't have other gods, don't make idols, don't use God's name without proper respect, keep the Sabbath. Those four laws are the law of gravity for people who are built for relationship with God. When we ‘fall’ in accordance with that law, we sustain and we build our relationship with God.  

The other six commandments are: honour your parents, don't murder, don't cheat on your spouse, don't steal, don't speak untruthfully about others, be content with what you have. These are the law of gravity for people who are built for relationship with other people. When we ‘fall’ in accordance with that law, we sustain and build our relationships with each other. God's Law, like the law of gravity, is just a description of how things work. How we are designed to function. How we are designed to thrive best.  

Gravity makes life possible on this planet. Gravity keeps us from drifting off into empty space. Gravity provides order and meaning to planets and suns, to solar systems and galaxies.  

And that is delightful.  

This psalm of wisdom lays out for us, reminds us of, the healthiest and most delightful way to live this very human life. God has created us for the delight of living in His way.  

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We can't entirely ignore the politics of our day. So how do we engage well as believers in Jesus with the politics of our world? 

Well, we do what Jesus did. 

We walk in the counsel of the innocent—being guiltless, but not naive. Understanding our world, knowing what the issues are, knowing why people feel the way they do. 

We need to understand (and I think this is really important) the difference between power and influence. Power just takes what it wants. Power will get what it wants, and then justify its actions by saying, “The end justifies the means.” 

But Jesus had more power in His trouser cuff than the Roman Emperor ever had, or any world leader today has ever grabbed for themselves. Jesus chose instead the way of influence: of coming alongside people, of lifting people up, helping them to discover their worth and discover their own voices. 

Next, we engage with politics in our world the way Jesus did by standing in the path of the righteous. 

Things are bad enough. We don't need to make them worse. And yeah, maybe we (to be honest, I) struggle to respect a person who holds a particular office. But we still are called in scripture to respect the office. 

Watch your tongue. Do no harm. Don't undermine. Resist the temptation to say or to meme or to tweet or to tiktok something that adds to the anger. That feeds the fear. 

Finally, we engage well with politics in our world by sitting in the seat of the loving. 

By empathizing. By seeing the people that the powerful don't see. By seeing the perspective of someone we don't agree with, and saying, “OK, at least I can understand why you think that.” Recognizing their humanity, even though they are very much on the other side of a significant line.  

We sit in the seat of the loving by being a non-anxious presence. By being the person in the room that someone can come to and say, “I am so tired. Let me tell you what's been happening.” We can pray with them. We can empathize with them. Or we can just be quiet and hear what they need desperately to say to anybody who will listen. Be a non-anxious presence and bring down the temperature. 

We engage well with the politics of our world when we speak of hope. When we speak of peace. When we share the good news of Jesus with people. When we listen to people who need to be heard, and when we walk in His counsel, stand in His path, sit in His seat of love. 

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