When I work on a sermon, I like to be clear in my preparation about the main point that I want to make. In order to do that, I usually sit down with all my notes and my thoughts about whatever text I'm going to preach on and try to condense what I want to say into a single sentence. Then I let that sentence guide me as I work through the jumble of notes, to try to make something coherent out of it. This week my sentence is exactly one word long, and I want to set it out right now so it's clear. The message is, "Grow." That's it, "grow." We'll talk some about where and why and when and what for, but don't lose sight of the essential verb, "grow." When you're driving home today and some idiot cuts you off, before you stick your hand out the window to communicate your thoughts, think "grow." When a family member hits you with something callous and hurtful, before you snap back with something equally callous and hurtful, think "grow." When life hands you a raw deal, before you curse it think "grow." When life hands you a great gift, before you simply use it up or store it away, think "grow." Grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. That's the point.

What I want to convey above all else is that there is no standing still in the Kingdom of God. We are living organisms, and if we're not growing, we're dying -- maybe wasting away to nothing, maybe turning to petrified stone. There's no standing still or treading water. We're going forward or we're going back. We're growing or we're dying.

It's often easier to think about a concept, or at least it is for me, if we have an image. So I want to invite you to think this morning about trees. The tree is a symbol of spiritual growth. It is prevalent in Christianity and in a lot of other faiths. The scriptural basis that we get it from in the Christian faith comes from Psalm 1, among other places, in verse 3, where it says, "They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper."

I haven't always been comfortable with the first Psalm. I like very much what it says, but there are parts of it that I've often felt it's difficult to preach about with any integrity. I keep stumbling on the end of verse 3 that I just read to you: "In all that they do, they prosper." The "they" is referring to the righteous. I read that and think, obviously the Psalmist was not living my life or in my world. The Psalm seems to imply that things go well for the righteous and badly for the wicked, when a lot of life's experience seems to show us exactly the opposite. I really like the tree-by-the-water bit, but I didn't know how to stand up and say that righteousness had anything even remotely to do with prosperity, or even happiness for that matter. The Psalm begins, "Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked" -- or in the King James, "blessed are those." Not that God is inherently opposed to happiness or prosperity, but I don't find that either the rest of the Bible or life experience bears out that there's some kind of divine right that we have if we sign on to faith.

So what do we make of Psalm 1? Some have suggested that those references help to date the Psalm to a time in Israel's history to a time that was happy and prosperous. Others just chalk it up to basic ignorance of life, wishful thinking, or naivete. But those explanations didn't really sit well with me either. So I went into more of a study of the Psalm and back to the Hebrew.

As many of you know, the earliest writings in the Bible, those in the Old Testament, were first written in Hebrew. The New Testament is written in Greek. I was a language major in college, so I love this stuff. I really liked Hebrew. I studied it in college before I ever went to seminary, because having languages with letters that I couldn't even pronounce just bugged me. I found that Hebrew is delightfully imprecise, but it's also very rich. It leaves room for all the complexities and the interrelationships of life and gives a depth and a richness to the language. So when I went to the Hebrew of Psalm 1, I expected to find a less confining definition of words like "prosper" and "happy," and I wasn't disappointed.

The word "prosper" in Hebrew implies movement. It means to advance, to make progress. In an economic sense we make progress by improving our standard of living. In a spiritual sense we make progress by growth. An economist would translate the end of verse 3, "In all that they do they prosper." But the sense for the spiritual life is, "In all that they do, they make progress. In all that they do they grow." Nothing that happens to the righteous is wasted. All of it gets absorbed into the tree and is used as an agent for growth.

Armed with that little bit of insight, I went back up to verse 1 to deal with the "happy" or "blessed" dilemma. "Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked." Hello, Hebrew dictionary, can you help me out on this one? "Glad to," says the dictionary. The word means to go straight, to walk, to advance, to make progress. Hot dog! It implies growth here too. In the world of the godly Israelite, life was not as centered on material wealth or outward circumstance as ours tends to be. For them, happiness and blessedness came from making personal progress, from growth, from wisdom, from moving toward a greater understanding of God.

Now just with that little change on those two words, let me go back and read the first three verses again. "Those who make progress and grow are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers. But their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they grow." Grow, grow, grow. To grow in the knowledge and the love of God -- that is happiness, blessedness, delight, and prosperity. That's the true treasure. That's wisdom.

Now that is something that I can relate to, because that has been true for me. The better I know God, the more I grow. And the more I grow, the better able I am to withstand the junk that life throws at me on a fairly regular basis. I stand taller. I lose fewer branches. I'm not uprooted or deeply damaged.

Not so with the wicked, says the Psalm. And I think that's true too. The wicked are not like trees securely planted. They are the chaff. In an agricultural society, the image of the chaff is the image of the threshing floor, where the grain is tossed up in the air. The full heads of grain are heavy enough that they fall down. But the husks and the shells are blown away by the wind. The grain that can't be used has no substance.

That's a very rich part of this Psalm also. The wicked here are not defined by certain acts that they do. They're defined in a negative way, by what they're not. There are the blessed and the not-blessed. And remember that the blessed here are the ones who are making progress, the ones who are growing. Evil is, in the end, a state of non-being. It's a lack of fullness, a lack of wholeness, like the empty shell of the grain that can just be blown away. Evil is the absence of God, like cold is the absence of heat or darkness the absence of light. And when the wind comes, the empty shells are simply blown away. What's real and what's full remains.

When I read the word "wind" I always want to look back to Hebrew for one of my favorite words, ruach, which is what this word is. It means wind, breath, spirit. It's the word ruach that Genesis 1 talks about hovering over the waters at creation and bringing things to life. It's the ruach that God breathed into Adam and Eve, giving them life. It was the ruach that brought life to Ezekiel's valley of dry bones. The wind that blows away the chaff and leaves the mature grain is the breath of God. Notice that it doesn't single out the wicked for fiery breath. It doesn't breathe especially easy on the righteous either. The same ruach blows across the threshing floor of the full heads of grain and the empty ones. But the wicked haven't grown. They haven't matured. They have no substance. They are merely shells, and when that wind blows, it blows them away.

The last verse of the Psalm says, "For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. That's the NRSV translation. As I was looking at the language stuff I couldn't figure out how they got "watches over" the way of the righteous. I think the King James comes closer. There, the word is to know. "The Lord knows the way of the righteous." It deals with knowledge, understanding, and revelation. The breath of the Lord on the threshing floor makes obvious the difference between the righteous and the wicked. The righteous stay put, the trees stay in the ground, the wind comes, the mature grain stays, the rest of it is blown away. If you have issues with the wrath of God, and notions of God condemning the wicked and lifting up the righteous, thinking of it this way can sometimes help. It's that same breath of God that comes over all of it. But for those who haven't planted their roots, for those who haven't grown and matured and developed, it's very easy for the wind to just blow them away because there's nothing there. The ones that put down roots remain. They maybe bend, they maybe lose a branch, but they remain.

The message of this Psalm is, grow. Don't just let life act on you and eat away the head of grain. Don't let yourself just become a shell or an empty husk. Plant yourself by the water. Stick your roots down deep. Grow and stand tall. Produce fruit. And then the breath of God will prove your substance and your beauty.

How do I do that? How do I grow spiritually? Verse 2: "Their delight is in the law of the Lord and on His law they meditate day and night." Does this mean you have to read the Bible morning, noon, and night? No. Reading it some would be a start. But I see this verse as very close to what Jesus labeled as the Great Commandment, and what the Jews have called the shema from Deuteronomy 6: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength." The things of God become your delight. Another way the New Testament puts it is "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and God's righteousness, and then all these things will be added to you." To meditate on God's law day and night is the same message that I preached a few months back on looking at life through the lens of God. Let God be a part of every moment of your life. Waking, sleeping, let your thoughts drift toward God. Imagine in the morning that God gets up with you and walks through the day with you. Read the messages that life sends you during the day as maybe coming from God.

It's a God-consciousness that pervades every step that you take. But getting to that takes intentional effort. It's not going to happen just because you come and sit in a pew on Sunday morning. That helps, but it's something that you have to take with you through the week, Monday through Saturday, also. That's where Bible study and things like Disciple come in. The books of the Bible were written to reveal God to us. Jesus came to earth to show us God in the flesh. God reaches out to us through scripture and prayer, through Christian fellowship and the people we meet every day, trying to speak to us, trying to love us, trying to teach us, trying to help us grow into trees planted by streams of living water that produce fruit, resist drought, and stand strong against the storms. Grow. If you're not growing, your dying, and the grain is withering away and there will just be a shell left. And when the wind of God blows, you won't be able to fall back down to the floor. You'll just be blown away.

No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, whether you've been walking with God 60 years or 60 minutes, we all need to keep growing. There is no standing still in the Kingdom of God. I invite you, as we start this new school year, to find ways to grow. I need your help to grow. You need me. We all need each other. We all need God. Don't put off your spiritual life. There's a beautiful tree hidden somewhere in the seed of your soul. Get it to some water.

Amen.

(c) 2000, Anne Robertson