Series: November 2024
Speaker: Bethany Nelson
Today's Sermon
"We Are Thankful"
Psalm 100
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into God’s presence with singing. Know that the Lord is God. It is God that made us, and we are God’s; we are God’s people, and the sheep of God’s pasture. Enter God’s gates with thanksgiving, and God’s courts with praise. Give thanks to God, bless God’s name. For the Lord is good; God’s steadfast love endures forever, and God’s faithfulness to all generations.
I love this Psalm. I especially love it the week of Thanksgiving because it is a great reminder to give thanks. “Enter God’s gates with Thanksgiving, and God’s courts with praise. Give thanks to God, bless God’s name.” May it be so! Perhaps my most favorite part of this Psalm is the Psalmists reasoning about why we are to give God thanks. Some Psalms are rather transactional in nature. God, you have delivered me from my enemies, so I give you thanks. God, you rescued me from the Pit, so I give you thanks. There’s nothing wrong with that! We definitely should give God thanks when good things happen. But, I like that Psalm 100 offers a different reason for giving thanks. Why do we give thanks to God? Because God is good. Because God’s steadfast love endures forever. Because God is faithful to all generations. Yes, we give thanks for specific things and people and circumstances, but we also give thanks to God is good. Because God loves us. Because God is faithful always. Thanks be to God!
I feel like perhaps my spoken words don’t do this justice. They don’t quite capture the depth of our gratitude for the goodness of God. The Psalmist tells us to make a joyful noise and to come into God’s presence with singing. So, let’s take a moment to hear this Psalm in song.[i]
In the midst of our “Who We Are” sermon series, today we proclaim that we are thankful. Now, you might say that everyone is thankful, regardless of their religious affiliation – especially at this time of year. What sets us apart as people of faith is the thanksgiving we offer to God. Yes, we are thankful for family and health and food and a roof over our head, and all the things that we usually mention at Thanksgiving. Those are all very important and we should definitely give thanks for them. And, as Christians, we also move through life thankful to God, giving thanks for God’s goodness.
We are called to give thanks to God both when things are great and we are feeling naturally thankful … and also when things are not so great, and that thankfulness may be harder to acknowledge. For God is good and loving and faithful all the time. Not just when things are going well, but also when life is hard. God continues to be good and loving and faithful throughout all the seasons of our lives, which means that we are called to give thanks to God throughout all the seasons of our lives.
This could take some practice. I appreciate how Barbara Brown Taylor explains it in her book, “An Altar in the World.” She writes, “In the same way that I am willing to thank my husband for a gift even before I have opened it – because I know him, because I trust his love of me, because I have faith we will survive even if he has given me a pneumatic nail gun for my birthday – I am willing to thank God for my life even before I know how it turns out. This is brave talk, I know, while I can still pay the bills, walk without assistance, and talk someone into going to the movies with me. My hope is that if I can practice saying thank you now, when I still approve of most of what is happening to me, then perhaps that practice will have become habit by the time I do not like much of anything that is happening to me. The plan is to replace approval with gratitude.”[ii]
I love so much of what she says there. The act of giving thanks becoming a habit – just something we naturally do – regardless of how life is going at any given time. Replacing approval with gratitude. Giving thanks not because something has gone the way we think it should, but simply because God is good.
This makes me think of our second Psalm for this morning. Our first reading was a Psalm of pure thanksgiving, filled with joy. Our second reading is a Psalm of lament. The writer’s life is not going as planned. He is not happy about it, and he is letting God know. Several of the 150 Psalms in the Bible are laments, and they frequently follow the same pattern. The Psalmist addresses God and lays out his complaint. Then, he makes his request of God. Finally, almost all lament psalms end with an expression of trust, praise, or thanksgiving. In lament psalms, the writer is upset - often mad at God – and still, he ends by praising or thanking God. We give thanks because God is good ALL the time, even when we are mad or upset.
Hear now the first part of Psalm 42 -
As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?” These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise God, my help and my God.
The Psalmist is feeling separated from God. Something has happened in his life that has drawn him away from God. And yet, he remembers those times in his life when he offered glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, and he knows that he shall again offer praise … even when God seems so far away. The act of giving thanks becoming a habit. Yes, we do say “Hallelujah” to God even in our most troubled times, because God’s love and God’s faithfulness never run dry. But again, the spoken word just doesn’t quite capture that gratitude. So let’s hear it in song.
We are thankful – in all times and in all places. Our gratitude does not immediately make everything better, but it does acknowledge that we are not alone. That God is good, all the time, and will continue to walk with us until the light does appear at the end of what can sometimes be a very long tunnel.
In her book, “Help, Thanks, Wow,” Anne Lamott talks about moving through those difficult times of life. She writes, “Most of us figure out by a certain age – some of us later than others – that life unspools in cycles, some lovely, some painful, but in no predictable order. So you could have lovely, painful, and painful again, which I think we all agree is not at all fair. You don’t have to like it, and you are always welcome to file a brief with the Complaints Department. But if you’ve been around for a while, you know that much of the time, if you are patient and paying attention, you will see that God will restore what the locusts have taken away.
I admit, sometimes this position of gratitude can be a bit of a stretch. So many bad things happen in each of our lives. Who knew? Someone deeply trusted succumbs to temptation. We are hurt beyond any reasonable chance of healing. We are haunted by our failures and mortality. And yet the world keeps on spinning, and in our grief, rage, and fear a few people keep on loving us and showing up.
In the face of everything, we slowly come through. At some point, we cast our eyes to the beautiful skies, above all the crap we’re wallowing in, and we whisper, ‘Thank you.’
My pastor Veronica says that God always makes a way out of no way. This means that at some point, often against all odds, we will say, ‘Thanks.’ Now, Veronica is paid to have faith but even I – who am not paid to have faith – know that this is true. I don’t always believe it, but I know it is true.
The movement of grace in our lives toward freedom is the mystery. So we simply say ‘Thanks.’ Something had to open, something had to give, and I don’t have a clue how to get things to do that. But they did, or grace did. Thank you.”[iii]
May it be so. Amen.
[i]We heard two songs as part of the sermon. “Psalm 100 (Enter In),” by Charity Gayle and “Hallelujah,” by MaMuse.
[ii]An Altar in the World, by Barbara Brown Taylor, pg. 184.