Epiphany 6 (2/11/07): “Seeing the World Right Side Up”

Psalm 1

Back in 1961, a New York woman decided to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art one Sunday afternoon. It was an exhibit featuring the work of the French impressionist Matisse. This woman was not an expert; she was a stockbroker, and was really only marginally interested in art. But it seemed like a pleasant enough Sunday jaunt.

One of the paintings in the exhibit really bothered her. She thought something was wrong with it. She mentioned it to a guard, who laughed at her and told her she just didn’t understand impressionism. But she was convinced in her own mind. That week she bought a cheap book on French impressionism, one with tiny, poor quality reproductions. The next Sunday she returned, and showed her book to the guard who had laughed at her. He suggested she call the curator. She did so, and the curator hurried on down to the Museum. At once he confirmed her suspicion: this priceless painting was hanging upside down. It had been that way since the exhibition’s opening, 47 days before; more than 116,000 people had visited the exhibition in that time, including the son of the artist. No one had noticed.

Does it ever feel to you like the world itself seems to be upside down? We certainly get that sense in a variety of ways in today’s lessons. Our gospel lesson gives us the Beatitudes and Woes, where Jesus seems to turn the values of the world completely on their head. Our epistle lesson talks about life coming out of death—certainly a reversal of our usual concept. There is a line in the first lesson that haunts me even more: Jeremiah says that “the heart is devious above all else.” He seems to suggest that our own heart can turn things upside down, so that we don’t even see clearly what we think or feel.

For me, our singing this morning of Psalm 1 is a wonderful balance to these other lessons. That Psalm, as much, perhaps, as any other, teaches us how to see things rightly in this world, and in our hearts. It shows us how to find an anchor in a world that tosses and turns so relentlessly. I invite your attention to the Psalm—perhaps you’d even like to hold it in front of you as we walk through it together.

The Psalmist begins, “Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seats of the scornful.” Notice the progression the Psalmist makes, especially the verbs. Happy is the one who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners, not sat in the seats of the scornful. Walked, lingered, sat. The progression suggests someone who first listens to the ungodly, then rather likes what he has heard so he lingers, and then finally sits down and takes full part. What the Psalmist is saying is that when we begin to listen to the values of the world, soon we are captivated by them, and then we settled down with them.

In San Francisco’s science museum “The Exploratorium,” there is a fascinating exhibit where you sit in a booth with a set of headphones on. Each side of the headphones is telling an entirely different story. You sit there and fiddle with the knob that allows you to make each side louder or softer, and the challenge is to find the point where you can listen to both stories simultaneously. You can’t do it! You can make one side get louder and louder, and soon you find you are listening only to that side and not the other. It isn’t possible to listen to both at once; one always becomes just background noise.

That’s the way it is with our values in life. We can listen to the values of Christ, or the values of the world—but not both at the same time. When we live by the values of the world, the teachings of Christ become nothing but background noise. That’s what the Psalmist is saying here. He says that the way to put things right side up in your life is to listen to the values of Christ, to pursue the values of Christ. When we do otherwise, then we find ourselves distracted and interested and then soon we can no longer hear Christ at all.

I have a little book in my library entitled Finding Grace at the Center. It is about prayer, but I confess I bought it primarily because of the title. You see there is, for each of us, a center, an innermost place where we are truly who we are and where we meet God. The Psalmist is saying that to put things right side up in our lives, we must live from this center. We must have a certain sense of balance.

You’ve seen a toddler learning to walk. Her sense of balance isn’t very well-developed, and so the distance between point A and point B very often isn’t a straight line. She toddles this way and that, perhaps she falls flat on her bottom and sees the world turning upside down. As she grows, that sense of balance becomes better and better, and soon she is the picture of grace. That’s how it is with us spiritually. When we are spiritual toddlers—and that stage can last a good bit of our earthly life!—we aren’t very well balanced. The world gets turned upside down a lot for us! But as we learn to walk with that sense of centered grace, we begin to see things as they are.

Next comes a wonderful phrase. “Their delight is in the law of the Lord, and they meditate on his law day and night.” By “law” here we should understand, not the legal system of the Old Testament, but simply the instruction of God. The person who delights in God’s instruction, and meditates on it day and night, is the one who sees things right side up.

Luther has an interesting insight here. First he points out that “meditate” means more than “think.” To meditate on God’s word means to “muse in the heart” about God’s word. It means to consider the Scriptures, not just intellectually, but in the heart, in the depth of the soul. And then he goes on to say that we might understand the phrase “day and night” to be a metaphor for times of joy and prosperity, and times of sadness and trouble. Now this idea comes alive! The one who sees things right side up is the one who meditates in the heart on God’s word, God’s will—not just when things are going well, but when things are difficult. If your delight is in the law of the Lord, and you keep that focus in your heart, then external circumstances—the things the world thinks are so important—really will be quite insignificant to you. Whether you are thought well of or now, whether you are rich or not, whether you are successful or not—these things will not matter because you are looking at the world right side up.

Then finally there is this wonderful image of the tree. When you see the world right side up, you are like a tree, planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season. Why are trees planted by streams of water so productive and healthy? Because of their roots. There is plenty of nourishment, plenty of water down there so that their roots can transmit that refreshment to the tree. Whatever may happen on the surface—heat, even drought, storm, cold—it is the roots that bring health.

When I was a teenager, we used to sing a song at summer camp that had a wonderful verse:

Thereby itself like a tree it shows

that high it reaches as deep it grows,

and when the storms are its branches shaking,

it deeper root in the soil is taking.

When we allow our souls to take deeper root—when we focus on the center, and look for strength at the center—then we see the world right side up. That sense, you see, comes from within, from that center, from that root of God’s word. It comes when our focus is on Christ, our rootedness in Christ. When we have that sense of the center, that sense of balance, that ability to see things as they really are, right side up, then, Jesus says, we are blessed—blessed, yes, and in the words of our translation of Psalm 1, we are truly happy.