Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Let's pray.
Eternal God, your word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.
As you hear your Scripture word today, quiet the noise of our word.
Send your Holy Spirit to illuminate our minds and prepare our hearts so that we may hear your voice, discern your truth and walk in your ways. In Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
Today's Scripture is one from Old Testament, Psalm, chapter one, verse one.
Happy 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.
And from the New Testament, First Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 8.
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning our thought.
Where is the one who is wise?
Where is the scholar?
Where is the debater of this age?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who believe.
For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom.
But we proclaim Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.
But to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.
This is the word of God.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Thank you, Paul. We are in the midst of a sermon series on the Psalms that began last Sunday and today I thought I'd hit the very first of the Psalms, the first verse of which Paul just read. Listen now for the first of the 150 Psalms of our Scriptures. Listen, Listen for God's word in Psalm 1.
Happy 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 they do they pray, prosper.
The wicked are not so, but are like chaff, and the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish May God add God's blessing to this reading of God's Word.
Well, back in 1891, Pope Leo the 13th wrote a powerful encyclical. A papal encyclical is a letter meant to be sent to a number of different Church leaders. But it's become quite the way a Pope addresses a broad audience with some message of urgent importance. And Pope Leo XIII's message was entitled Rarum the Novarum, which means of new things.
Of new things.
This encyclical was given right in the midst of the second Industrial revolution. It was a time when the railroad, the telegraph, electrical power and use of the production line in factories was having a huge impact on human society. Leo XIII didn't criticize these new technologies per se, but he did put point out problems with how they were being employed, how they were used.
He noted a very few were making a great deal of money and a whole lot of others were in misery, a condition he compared to the yoke of enslavement.
He didn't offer some simplistic solution, but he did invite the Church to critically examine the social, psychological and economic impacts of how narcotics, new technologies were employed. And he cautioned against reducing human beings to being mere instruments for another's making money.
He argued every human person is created in the image of God, that they have value, dignity, worth, a soul, a will.
And that encyclical back in the late 1800s had a huge impact on the development of Catholic social teaching.
Well, in recent years, when Robert Francis Prevost was chosen to be the current Pope, he had been so impacted by Leo the 13th encyclical that he chose the name Leo. That's why he's Leo the 14th. And just a little over two months ago, he published his first encyclical. And I know it's meant a lot to many of you because you sent me articles or podcasts podcast about it, alerting me to it. And it is significant.
It was entitled Magnifica Humanitas, or Magnificent Humanity, and it had this subtitle on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial Intelligence.
Leo XIV wrote in the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity's problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice. However, technology is never neutral because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.
Therefore, the primary choice before us is not between a yes or no to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or building Jerusalem, Between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God, to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence.
That's from the Pope's encyclical, Two Paths, Leo XIV sees. One is what he calls a path pursuing a culture of power consumed by war, say, when war and different militaristic elements are automated and can't necessarily incorporate concern for human beings, where people might be reduced to data to be mined or manipulated.
On the other hand, he notes, we can pursue instead a civilization of love founded on justice, dialogue and shared responsibility.
Two paths, Leo XIV argued, One to babble, one to a rebuilt Jerusalem.
Now, to be clear, the Pope is Catholic, and to be clear, I am not.
And I say that because I realize some of you might have come in this morning and thought you were attending a Presbyterian worship service, and you're wondering, what is all this, where the pastor is talking about the popes and cyclicals. And I absolutely get that. But as a Protestant pastor, I find myself resonating with much in the message of Leo XIV's recent encyclical. I resonate with the value Leo XIV, like Leo XIII before him, placed on human life and dignity and freedom and flourishing, the emphasis on the imaghio dei, the image of God in which we were created.
But secondly, I resonate with Leo XIV's way of seeing how even in the midst of complex issues like AI and there are complex issues, there are still just two fundamental paths. If you have eyes to see those two paths, time and again in Scripture, we see God revealing to a people that their journey forward, complex as it might appear, can be boiled down to a choice between one of two roads.
You remember at Mount Sinai, how God gave a people through Moses, commandments, rules, or you might say, signposts as to how they were to live. Not to go this way, to go this way instead. And those were etched in stone and given to the people of God as a gift. And then after all those commandments were listed, God says, see, I've set before you bless blessings and curses, life and death.
If you love your God and obey the commandments of the Lord your God, then you shall live with blessing you and in relationship with the land and your neighbor. But if your heart turns away from God, if you go down another path to bow down to other gods and serve them, then you shall perish.
We see that in wisdom literature in the Bible, time and again, this notion of two paths. Read the Book of Proverbs and you'll find again and again there's a path of wisdom and a path of Folly, one of good, one of evil, one of blessings, one of curses.
And we see these two path framework in the very opening of the songbook of Scripture, the Book of Psalms Psalm.
Well, the Reverend Kevin ha graciously kicked off this new sermon series on the Psalms last Sunday. And I loved how Kevin brought out how the Psalms give voice to the whole gamut of human emotions and invite us to bring the whole person all we have, all we are, all we wrestle with before a God who loves us and embraces us. Kevin preached on Psalm 126, which is one of the psalms of Lament.
Today's Psalm, Psalm 1, falls into a different category of psalms. This is what you'd call a wisdom psalm or a psalm of instruction. It's a psalm that was used as a way of teaching those who sang it, alerting them to something crucial in their life together, something so important that it should be sung that they that we never forget it.
Songs are such a powerful teaching tool. I was thinking in preparing for this sermon, you know, I still remember a song from the second grade.
It was summer, and I was taking a Spanish summer class. It was a small number of students, and often in the background during this class when we do different projects, there would be one particular album that was playing, and it was called A Child's Introduction to Spanish. And I actually, that's what the COVID looked like. A little dated, I think.
But here's the thing. I still remember some of the songs off that album. For example, there was one song that pointed out how similar a number of words in English and Spanish are. Color, color, animal, animal, actor, actor. And I still have the tune going through my head. It's the same eslomismo. It's the same as Lo Mismo. And that's back in the second grade.
Songs are powerful teaching tools and worth singing about what really matters.
Today's psalm is just that, a powerful teaching tool to help people learn and hold something crucial. Psalm 1 celebrates what a precious gift God's law represents and how with that gift, the people now have two paths before them. They have the path of life, one of death, one of wisdom, or one of folly. The word translated today as law in original Hebrew is Torah. And I would argue a better translation of that word is in fact instruction or guidance or teaching.
It's not meant primarily as a kind of rule book or a series of legal precepts. It's instead designed as a way to guide and form, form and shape a people, to lead them on right paths, Torah instruction. It might evoke the Image in Psalm 23 of God as a good shepherd who guides a people, who makes me lay down in green pastures, who leads me beside still waters, who restores my soul, who leads me in right paths for God's name sake. That that's the kind of image that can be invoked in Torah with the commandment signposts meant to point us in the right direction. And as we learn those signposts, we discover God's direction, the path that leads to life.
And we see two paths. And the question, which one will you choose?
Well, for Christians, we believe that Torah or the word, divine wisdom, in fact that kind that was shown to a people at Sinai and etched in stone, became flesh and lived among us.
Scripture proclaims Christ is in fact the good shepherd. And as God did at Sinai, in Christ, God proclaimed a path of blessing and one of curses, one of life and one of death. The path of blessing Jesus noted in Matthew 5 as marked by meekness, purity of heart, mercy, peacemaking, hunger for justice, enduring persecution for righteousness sake. And Jesus outlined too the path that leads to destruction. And he laid out a whole series of woes.
Jesus closes the Sermon on the mount in Matthew 7 by noting this. Enter. He invites his listeners through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road is easy. Easy that leads to destruction. There are many who take it, but the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life. And there are few who find it.
Two roads, they emerge before our eyes, not just at Sinai, not just in Proverbs, not just in Psalm 1. They emerge in the teachings of Christ.
And one of those two roads we read in First Corinthians is marked by the cross.
The Gospel Christians proclaim is the good news that Jesus, life, death and resurrection brings salvation to those who, having united themselves with Christ by faith, have died with him to sin, and with him have risen to new life. This message of our having been made right with God through the cross of Christ, it is, we read in First Corinthians, foolishness. To those on the outside looking on, it doesn't make sense.
But to those who have embraced that narrow gate, who have embraced the call of Christ, those called and claimed by the Savior we see First Corinthians notes that the cross is the very power and wisdom of God.
Johannes Bugenhagen was a German reformer from back in the 16th century, and he looks a lot like Martin Luther. But this is not Martin Luther. This is one of his contemporaries. Okay, Johannes Bugenhagen, and He read Psalm 1 and he saw Christ.
He asked, who does this psalm talk about?
Who is the one who does not follow the advice of the wicked or take the path that sinners trod? Who is the one whose true delight is in the law of the Lord? And on that law this person meditates day and night. Who is the one who's like a tree planted by a stream and yields fruit in the proper time? In all that this person does, they flourish. Who is that person?
Bugenhagen noted, of course it's Christ.
But it's someone else too. He wrote, it's also the person who, having united with Christ by faith, has his righteousness imputed to them, has his life connected to theirs.
For Christ's righteousness is now their righteousness. Christ's way has taken hold of their lives and directs them forward.
Two paths God offers us in Christ. One where divine wisdom is at work in our lives, shaping, molding, directing us. And we have Jesus as guardian, guide and friend.
Another without the blessings Christ affords.
I thought of how crucial guides can be when, whether through signs, signposts, in fact, like the Commandments, or through a person.
As I was skiing one day and glimpsed right before my eyes a path that literally led to destruction.
If you've ever skied in Europe, and I know some of you have, you know that there is not the obsession with signage that you find on many US Slopes.
You know, in US Slopes, there's a lot of warnings like this one, don't go that way or you'll fall off a cliff.
Europe, not always so much. Not quite so litigious out there, so you might not get a sign.
So I was studying in Berlin, Germany. It was my junior year of college, and one of my best friends at the time, someone I'd met during that year, was a fellow named Hans Christian from Norway. So I got to know him. He had a friend, another Norwegian friend, come to visit. The two were planning to go to the Swiss Alps to ski. They invited me to go along. What was I going to say? No, of course, I went.
Now, once we were skiing at the Alps, I noticed a few practices of these particular Norwegians that, how shall I say, caused me some concern. I love these guys. But they had a habit right before starting the ski day of drinking not one, but several beers.
They called it cooling down.
And I would call it, well, something other than wisdom.
I also noted that this pair would just fly down the mountain, not necessarily with the highest level of control. Couple that with beers and you've got an issue. I would say so initially in the trip, I'd try to keep up with them. I'd be right behind them. I didn't care how fast they were going. I didn't want to lose them. And so I would barrel however fast it took, right behind them. But one particular day, early on, they'd gotten far ahead. There was a fork in the ski slope, one that went right, one that went left. I saw that they went right. I followed after them. I don't recall seeing any other sign. I'm trying to keep up with them, but they've disappeared from my view. Still, I know they took that path to the right. I look over, and there's a ridge in front of my eyes.
Now, I have to say, ordinarily, I was college student. I was. I'm the kind of skier who would, not necessarily as fast as these Norwegians, but quite quickly barrel over that ridge and assume, hey, if there was a problem, we'd be warned.
No, I get right up to the edge of this ridge, and I still don't know what it was. I like to think it was the hand of God that just alerted me. You know, I think I'm going to check what's on the other side of this ridge before going over it. And I get right up to the ridge, look over, and it is a sheer cliff.
Now, I probably wouldn't have died, but I would have come away with serious injury. So I'm looking over this ridge, and I'm noticing over to my right, sitting on the side of the trail, are these two Norwegians, one of who's been my good friend. And they're having a smoke.
They're having a smoke. They weren't even there to warn me.
There's a ridge leading over a cliff. At that moment I realized, okay, not necessarily going to follow these guys quite so closely. We had a great ski trip, but sometimes I would go one way and they'd go another. It is so important in certain occasions, like skiing and often in life, to have the right kind of signage to direct us forward on a path that leads to life and not death, and to have the right guide. Thank heaven, friends, we have that in Christ. And get to discern Christ's direction. Listen for the leading of God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Together combing the scriptures and listening for how they would apply to our lives today. The gift of God's wisdom is seeing the two paths and how on one of those paths God leads us with commandments and with Christ and the other path, we don't have that.
So I know that for you right now, if your experience is anything like me, it often seems like there are not two paths, but 40,000 paths.
What event should I attend and what shouldn't I attend? What activities should I be a part of? What shouldn't I be? What school should I or my child attend? What shouldn't we if you're thinking about a job, Lord have Mercy on LinkedIn, or indeed there is a myriad of job opportunities, go to a grocery store and not only are there different options for what to get in terms of food, but different brands. And I'll tell you, after the 2025 wildfires, I think many of us who had to rebuild wardrobes and think about where we would live were faced with a whole gamut of new options.
Rebuild? Don't rebuild. Get clothing. Okay, what clothing? Pants. How many pants? Where to get the pants? How do we make that myriad of decisions? And it can feel overwhelming. It can just paralyze sometimes.
So thank heaven. Thank heaven for a core decision, a core path that can guide every single decision afterwards. Thank heaven for the Word made flesh, for God's guidance that we get to have to cheer us, encourage us, direct us in the way of justice, mercy and peace.
Thank heaven for guidance, and thank heaven for a path that can direct every path to come.
I was grateful for Pope Leo XIV's words reminding us we have two roads, not just as Christians, but as a human race. Do we pursue the goal of the common good, or do we choose a culture of domination?
Do we embrace a life immersed in love of God and neighbor, or one consumed with concerns for me and mine? And I'm grateful for a biblical framework enshrined in song, that there are two paths and one, thank heaven, leads to life.
Do you see the two roads? Do we see them?
May we see the road ahead, and may we dare follow through that narrow gate. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen.
