Vanity vs Blessedness

10th Sunday of Pentecost August 17, 2025

The Texts for this sermon are Psalms 127 and 128 and Luke 12:22-25

We live busy lives. Even when folks retire, they talk about how busy life is. And that’s just the routine stuff--things we do to answer the expectations of our families, our work, our health, our recreation, and those extra measures demanded by our culture.
like, making sure we plant grass and not those untidy wild flowers

and yes, keeping the grass short and tidy;

like, enrolling our children in every extracurricular endeavor available

believing this prepares them for a prosperous adulthood.

We then come to moments when our concerns escalate; when the weight of them bears down on us and panic propels us to grasp at this resource; reach for that remedy. We kick into overdrive, but hard as we try, we are stymied and the stakes are high and what we value or treasure is at risk and we see no relief.

Psalms 127 and 128 address this reality.

Our Passover pilgrims have walked through the awakening that set them on this pilgrimage in the first place (Ps 120); they have looked around for guidance in their uncharted journey and realizing it is the God of their forefathers/mothers they should turn to (Ps 121, 123) have recalled the rescue God brought about for them so have taken heart that God will rescue them now. (Ps 126)

Psalms 127 and 128 now introduce us to how it is we are to live going forward.

While external opponents (Meshech and Kedar) recede from the scene and our attention is now oriented on God and God’s faithfulness, Psalm 127 shines a light on our desire to maintain control and our tendency to veer off with misplaced priorities or drivenness and Psalm 128 tells us what to choose instead. Both psalms speak of blessing.

Psalm 127 begins by talking about building a house, exercising vigilance over one’s security, undertaking excessive work driven by great need and no little anxiety.

Now these three things, shelter, self-preservation, work are all good things. Yet the Psalmist says that vanity can pervert them. The word vain is repeated three times in the first three verses.

According to Webster, vanity is: 1) not yielding the desired outcome; unsuccessful; futile; fruitless: a vain attempt. 2) lacking substance or worth; hollow; idle:  vain talk. 3) showing undue preoccupation with or pride in one’s appearance or accomplishments; conceited. And an arcane meaning for vanity is ‘foolish’ a) as in without effect or avail; to no use or purpose and b) without due respect or piety; profanely (taking the Lord’s name in vain).

The Hebrew word for vain is even harsher. It carries the idea of being desolated, evil, idolatrous and comes from the root word meaning ‘to rush over’ as in a tempest, leading to devastation, desolation, wasteland or storm. [Strong’s Concordance 7723, 7722]

There’s another word the Psalmist repeats: Unless.

Unless the Lord builds
Unless the Lord watches

We’re being told that the provisions for human life and vitality are not secured by frenetic striving but rather, are the gifts of God’s grace and goodness. And one of God’s gifts is sleep.

God gives to God’s beloved sleep. (RSV)

Some translations render this as God gives to God’s beloved even in his sleep. This leads to an entirely different idea that all this that God gives has nothing whatsoever to do with human involvement: that one doesn’t have to do anything but passively await God’s blessings.

So what does it mean when the psalmist says God gives to God’s beloved sleep?

I was laid off once and had a night when I couldn’t sleep because of the great anxiety I had about paying my mortgage. I prayed and was then able to remind myself that no one was coming to take my house away that night. So I could sleep tonight. God gives sleep. Sleep relieved of anxiety and striving.

Now all of these things are the stuff of ordinary life: securing a home, being prudent about safety, working, having children. But we are not to think God isn’t attentive to these basic needs, or that we are to attend to them through anxious worry or frenetic effort. Eugene Peterson in his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction puts it this way:

The curse of some peoples’ lives is not work, as such, but senseless work, vain work, futile work, work that takes place apart from God, work that ignores the unless. (pp 104-105)

Remember, the Psalmist says we are to guard against vain work, work that gives rise to desolation: desolation of the soul and our wellbeing. Such vain work arises from a lack of trust in God. And it keeps one awake at night, when God’s desire is that we sleep like a baby.

Ah, yes, like a baby, and he then goes on to remind his readers–and us–that children are a gift from God. They are, he says, a heritage or provision from God. This entire stanza speaks of relationship: relationship with God, relationship that leads to children, relationship with those children, and relationship with one’s community. 

These ones who come to us are fruit and are a reward—a reward of what? Love. These ones who come to us are to be attended to with the same care as a warrior takes in fashioning his arrows: working that shaft to smooth straightness. Such children as these will recommend the parent to their community. Even one’s enemies will be respectful.

So the Psalmist is talking about all those things that feed hope and animate life. The Psalmist is telling us that we may think we generate and protect all of these good things with our hard, ceaseless work but we do not.

And when we’re tempted, either as individuals or as a congregation to bring a frenetic, panicked disposition to our undertakings, we need to stop and remember that we are in God’s care. To borrow from another of the Psalms of Ascent: we are to be as a weaned child resting on the lap of its mother. (Ps 131:2)

While Psalm 127 opens with vanity, Psalm 128’s first word is Blessed. Some translations use the word ‘Happy’ but while blessedness includes happiness it goes much deeper than that transitory emotion. It speaks of wellbeing. The Hebrew word carries the connotation of ‘being straight, level, right’; of ‘going forward, being honest’. When we think about it, when we are living in a way that is level and honest, we are at peace, we are happy in the deepest sense.

The psalmist tells us that this kind of blessedness comes when we revere God and walk in God’s ways. When we live this way, that which arises from our life is like fruit that nourishes us; nourishes our soul.

The psalmist goes on to describe the extent of such blessedness but he does so using the metaphor of a child-bearing wife and a table surrounded by one’s children. To these ancient people, few things represented God’s blessing better than a large family. Even though our survival doesn’t depend on a large family, we can appropriate the idea here can we not? Can we not sense the effusive lushness of his description, the power of blessing to multiply and bear fruit: children like olive shoots? Olive oil is so central to that time and culture. Those who revere God shall be blessed (v 4). Here the word ‘blessed’ in Hebrew is ‘barak’. It describes what God does as God blesses us with God’s abundant life. When we revere God, we are the recipients of God’s abundant life—blessed abundance embedded in our soul.

Peterson again in Long Obedience says God’s blessing is an “inner strength of the soul and the happiness it creates.” (p 113) It is this kind of blessing the psalmist describes in his benedictory blessing in verses 5 and 6.

The Lord bless you from Zion
May you see prosperity
May you live a long time.
May peace reign. 

When we wake up and recognize where we’re really living and the true state of our soul, and have the courage to embark on a renewed spiritual journey, giving our full, devoted attention to God, God will lead us into rest-filled, soul-nourished blessing and the fruitfulness that arises from this right-relationship with God.

Ponder these psalms this week. Pray these psalms this week. Doing so will prepare us for Psalm 133 on September 7.

Linda Quanstrom, Pastor

Cornelius UMC

Cornelius OR