Walking with Jesus

A sermon

(This sermon was originally preached on 17 July 2022 at Christ the Redeemer in Pendleton, South Carolina).

From the time I was in 4th grade, all the way through college, I was involved in theatre. Productions, camps, workshops; you name it, I did it.

When I was in 10th grade, I had the opportunity to specialize in a track. I could focus on musical theatre, Shakespeare, or improv. Given that the high school I went to had a strong connection and history with the Second City company, and because “Whose Line is it Anyway?” was THE hit show at the time, I chose the improv route.

I grew up on the British original…

One of the key skills we learned was how to walk. If you wanted to get a character right, you didn’t start with the words she spoke or the clothes she wore; you started with how she walked. Learning how to walk would shape everything else: the delivery of the words, expressions on your face, emotions, and even how you interacted with the other characters and the audience.

If you were playing a character who was bouncy and bubbly you’d learn to walk lightly on your feet, especially on your toes, and you’d find that the rest of your body movement would then become bubbly. Your hands would swing and bounce. Your head would bounce. Even your words would bounce as you spoke them.

If you were playing someone who was inebriated, you’d learn to trip over your own feet, and be off-balance, and unsteady. To do this, the trick was put your weight on the sides of your feet. This would impact your carriage, so that your whole body was loose and clumsy and slow to react. The clumsy walking would even affect the words you spoke, and give them a tipsy lilt.

If you were playing a strict headmaster of a boarding school, your walk would involved small, deliberate steps, your knees would barely bed. Your back would be ramrod straight, your arms wouldn’t swing much. It was as if you walked with every muscle in your legs, arms, and back clenched. This would then impact even your facial muscles and your words would be short, staccato and sharp. Let me tell you, playing a strict headmaster was excruciating on the body. It would take days for my muscles to unwind.

Walking shapes so much of what we do. It shapes how we carry the rest of our body. It even shapes our attitudes, our outlook, our words, and our reactions to other people.

The Theme of Walking

One of the recurring themes in the Psalms is the image of walking. For the Psalmist, worship is not just a head thing or a heart thing. Worship is not just songs we sing. Instead, for the Psalmist worship is a life of walking. And, since we all worship something, one of the key contrasts that the Psalms explores is what does it look like to walk to God (to worship the one True God) vs. what does it look like to walk to something or someone else (to worship other gods or even ourselves).

This theme of walking is right at the beginning of the book of Psalms. “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night.” (Psalm 1)

Most scholars think that the final form of the book of Psalms was put together after the Exile. The exile happened because Israel’s King, and God’s people, did not walk in the way of the Lord. God’s people, leading up to the exile, regularly rejected God and chose “to do what was right in their own eyes” (Refrain from Kings). They chose to walk like the nations surrounding them, instead of walking in the path that God had laid out for them.

The Israelites were given two paths to follow. In Deuteronomy, as they prepared to enter the Promised Land, after having been brought up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, Israel stood before God to renew their promise to obey the covenant. During this covenant renewal ceremony, God gives Israel two options, “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity in that I command you today to Love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land…So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying his voice, and by holding fast to him…” (Deuteronomy 30:15–20). The way of life, the way of death. Two paths to walk. Choose one.

And we know, what happens after Deuteronomy. We know that God’s people kept choosing to walk the path that leads to death. And this theme of two walking with God or from God is woven throughout the Psalms. To walk with God is to worship God.

The Context of Walking

But it is not just a theme within the Psalms, we also see that walking is also one of the contexts in which the Psalms were prayed/sung. Yes, the psalms were sung in the temple, during services. But we also have a significant block of psalms that were sung on the way to worship. We call these the Psalms of Ascent. Psalms 120 to 134 are psalms that were sung by the people of God as they went to the temple. Jerusalem was a city on a hill, and to go to temple the worshippers would ascend. Their path would lead them up to the temple, to the city of God.

Psalm 15

What about our Psalm today? Our psalm today is Psalm 15:

Lord, who may reside in Your tent?
Who may settle on Your holy hill?
One who walks with integrity, practices righteousness,
And speaks truth in his heart.
He does not slander with his tongue,
Nor do evil to his neighbor,
Nor bring shame on his friend;
A despicable person is despised in his eyes,
But he honors those who fear the Lord;He takes an oath to his own detriment, and does not change;
He does not lend his money at interest,
Nor does he take a bribe against the innocent.
One who does these things will never be shaken. (Psalm 15, NASB)

It is not a psalm of ascent, but it is clearly a psalm about going to worship, about entering into the presence of God. And this psalm opens with two questions:

“O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent?”

“Who shall dwell on your holy hill?”

The answer to these questions is found in verse two and then the rest of the psalm unpacks and describes what this looks like in tangible ways.

The one who sojourns or stays in the tent of God, the one who dwells on the holy hill is the one who walks blamelessly, does what is right, and speaks truth in his heart.

Walking, doing, speaking. Three interconnected verbs. The life of worship is characterized by action. The life of worship is not primarily mental assent, it is embodied and ethical. Jesus summarized the Law as Love God and love neighbour. This Psalm shows us the connection between the two. The one who loves God and dwells with him is the one who loves his neighbour.

Indeed the Psalmist isn’t saying anything new here in verses 3 to 5 as he describes what this person’s actions of walking, doing, and saying look like. What this person does and does not do is simply drawn from the covenant law that the Israelites promised to obey. They said they would live this way as they entered into the covenant with God. They would not slander, or do evil. They would not try to baptize sin as something good, but would recognize that sin is not to be prized but despised. They would honour those who fear the Lord and would not change in their faithful obedience to God. They would not take financial advantage of people. This was all part of the covenant agreement that they made with God.

There is an interesting back and forth in this psalm, between doing and not doing.

V. 2 is in the positive: here is what the person does.

V. 3 Here is what the person does not do.

V.4 Here is what the person does.

V.5 Here is what the person does not do.

And then the last line of v.5 serves as a summary statement, the person “who does these things shall never be moved,” which is both a does and a does not.

The person who lives a virtuous life of walking, doing, and speaking rightly, a person who does these things, does not move. The one who does all of this shall never be moved. I love how the Psalmist plays with the imagery here: The one who walks (movement) shall never be moved (no movement).