Psalm 1; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26

In Psalm 1 we read of two distinct ways to approach life; a way within God’s wisdom and a way without. In Psalm 1:1-2 we read that the key to a happy life, a blessed life, the sort of life that other people will envy you for, is a life guided specifically by grounding in scripture and tradition. People who stay close to God and seek God’s wisdom as they make plans for life will grow in strength and purpose: like trees planted by streams of water says the psalmist in Psalm 1:3. They will be prosperous, they will be fruitful, they will be steadfast and constant, and the evidence of their blessing will be there for all to see. This is why they are happy and to be envied. So here is a “prosperity gospel” for you, not that if you tithe twenty-five percent of your pre-tax income that God will give you a new Mercedes C-Class, (although if you give 25% our treasurer might give me a new Mercedes C-Class), but that if you heed the wisdom of God you will always make the best decisions.

Prosperity is found in the application of wisdom and the prosperous will bear fruit, which is to say that they will share their bounty. However, as Psalm 1:4 reads the wicked are not so. Two things are going on here: the first is that the blessed listen to God and are guided by God’s wisdom whereas the wicked do not listen and fall into disaster and error; the second is that the blessed make a conscious effort to avoid the way of the wicked, whereas the wicked make a conscious effort to avoid the way of God. The wicked then are not only deaf to God’s word of guidance, ignorant of what the blessed have prior warning for; but also that they prefer this way and shut out any chance of even accidentally overhearing God. Prosperity, the fruits of heeding God, is normal. Again this is not to say that God will shower money on you if you come to this church, but that an attentive life and a well-instructed life will always be more comfortable and less stressful than a wayward life. Trust in God and obey God, hope in God, and things should go well with you: God will never lead you astray even as God is leading you through a fallen world.

It is quite a shock, with this assurance from the Hebrew Tradition, to read where Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:17, [i]f Christ has not been raised your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. That is not a message I want to hear, or read, or believe. I do not want to still be in my sins, I do not want my faith to be futile, I do not want that Christ has not been raised. I want the assurance of God’s steadying influence and wise advice that the Psalmist promises. And it gets worse, in 1 Corinthians 15:19 where we read [i]f for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. We can read that it two ways, according to the commentator I read with this week, who knows Greek a lot better than I do:

1. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. In other words if our hope in Christ has only been for this life, and we do not have hope in Christ for the next life, we are of all people most to be pitied because what happens in that (next) life without hope in Christ? The sermons of Jesus will have been fruitless, and your present weeping will not lead to your future happiness at all (Luke 6:21b): you are not blessed, you are pathetic; indeed you are the amongst the wicked described in Psalm 1:4.
2. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. In other words if our only hope in this life was in Christ, and if Christ was not raised then we have hoped in a lie, and we are of all people most to be pitied because we have wasted this life hoping in the wrong thing. If there is only this life then we wasted it in our self-denial and our costly piety. If you were hungry in life there is no filled belly in death (Luke 6:21a), just the fleeting memory of wasted opportunities to feast and then you die. If there was no resurrection there is no true motivation to live the Christian life. Or think that there is a next life which does not depend on Christ but on some other hope (which we did not hope in because we hoped solely in Christ), aren’t we then also lost? Just as much as we believe those who die without Christ are lost, if there is no need for Christ then it is we who are lost. I mean, what if the Pharisees are right and Christ is a false Way? What then, asks Paul. Well, again, you are the amongst the wicked answers the Psalmist in Psalm 1:6b.

If Christ was not raised then the gospel which says that he was, is a lie. If Christ was not raised then we who die will at best be in the same place as any Jew who dies without having been through the rituals of the temple, since we did not believe in the Temple and we refused to practice kosher and circumcision. If Christ was not raised then we who die will at worst be eternally dead with no afterlife at all, or in Hell with every Gentile left out of God’s sole covenant, the covenant made only with Israel through Isaac and Abraham. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died promises Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:20. Ignore what you have just heard, scrap the bad news forecast, the good news is true and Christ was raised.

In today’s reading from the Jesus Tradition we find the summary of what Paul and the Psalmist were saying; perhaps from different directions but each pointing to the life of blessing found through obedience. Jesus is speaking on the plain to a multitude, in a sermon that Matthew 5-7 locates on a mountainside with a handful of Jesus’ early friends, and he reverses the common perception of Psalm 1. Blessed, happy and to be envied are you who are poor, hungry, weeping, hated and excluded. Conversely, woe to you, the wretched and to be pitied, who are wealthy, well-fed, laughing, and beloved and honoured. Wow, so what is going on there? Matthew doesn’t include this woe section so close to the encouragement around blessing, so maybe Luke’s version is from a different sermon, as in Jesus preached a similar topic more than once, to a different group and in a different place each time. I see Jesus addressing the prosperity of the wicked here, the good things that happen to bad people; the fact that even with the wisdom of God as your guide you can still get ripped off by a crooked shopkeeper, landlord, or politician; and prostitutes, drug-dealers, and Melbourne supporters can win big on the ponies (which you never will because gambling is a sin).

So I guess both are true: the Psalmist says that the righteous will prosper and the wicked will fail, while Jesus suggests that in this life at least the righteous may suffer persecution and a pair of slapped cheeks, while many who are wicked will booze, flooze, and schmooze it up on extorsion money and the ill-gotten gains of their crimes. This is not a contradiction; it is reality and we have all seen it in this life. There are some wonderful Christians who are generous with their multitudinous wealth, while others live content in borrowed houses and enough food on their tables but little else. There also some absolute toe-rags with loads a’ dough and not a single moral scruple. The fruit therefore is not best seen in a person’s cashflow but in their faithfulness to God.

This is where we get to the testimony part: in what have you placed your hope? If your hope is primarily in money and reputation, and you live in such a way that you make that a priority, then you may live a comfortable life but it will ultimately be meaningless. Your money cannot save you. However; if your hope is in the empty tomb and the man who walked from it, then you will heed the wisdom of God when it is revealed, and even if you are never counted amongst the millionaires in this life you will be secure in the love and over-watch of The LORD Godself. You are released from both the punishment of your sins (which went to the cross), and the consequences of your sins (because you’re foolish less often now that you are following God’s advice), and with those psychological burdens lifted you are freed to live a life of blessing.

The question I have is whether you are heeding God’s wisdom. Regardless of your property, financial, academic or any other portfolio, is it God’s Word in whom you trust or is it in some other source? Even as a Christian, especially as a Christian, it is possible to lean…on your own understanding which the writer of Proverbs 3:5 suggests you not do. If you’re a Christian with a Sunday school faith, you know all the facts and characters, you have prayed the sinner’s prayer, and you have a fish sticker on the back window of your car, then why would you need to pray for direction? Do you already know what God wants because you are a Christian and you have a conscience and you have The Bible on your phone as well as two on your bedroom shelf? Or is your hope still in God; do you listen for God in prayer, read with an open ear in scripture, sit with an open heart in church?

Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians 15 were to Christians; not to people who disbelieved the miracle of the empty tomb, but to people who received Christ as risen and who built metaphors about it which described their life in the end-times. No, says Paul, there is no metaphor here: the risen Christ is your only source of hope and the only way through which God can empower and direct you. Don’t make myths, pay attention to facts!

To be steadfast you need to be attentive, and to be attentive you need to actually pay attention in the Present and not live in the assumptions of the Past. Keep listening to God, continue to invite God to speak to you and to direct your plans even at the planning stage. Then it will go well for you in the land, then you will be a fruitful tree, and then the nations will gather to seek The LORD for themselves, The LORD for whom you have been the sign.

Amen.