Sermon video here.
(Third in a Stewardship Sermon Series on Psalm 100, "Make a Joyful Noise")
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Well, it’s not quite November yet, but it’s time for us to talk about thanksgiving anyway. It’s funny, isn’t it, that this term, “Thanksgiving,” brings to mind turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing—that one specific day of celebration—more readily than an ongoing attitude of giving thanks. Scripture doesn’t seem to have the fourth Thursday of November in mind when it talks about Thanksgiving. Verse 4 of Psalm 100 says, “Enter [God’s] gates with thanksgiving and [God’s] courts with praise.” Definitely referring to an attitude and not a holiday.
So, on this Sunday in October, we’ll talk about “thanksgiving” with a lowercase “t”. If Psalm 100 is about “Making a joyful noise to the Lord,” then gratitude is the underlying reason that we should be making that noise. Almost every single English translation chooses to title this psalm, “a song of thanksgiving” instead of “a song of noise” (I can’t imagine why—such a catchy title). Giving thanks is pretty clearly the main theme of this psalm.
Now, the psalmist isn’t dumb; he knows that people don’t generally give thanks just because they’re supposed to, so we’re quickly reminded WHY we should be overflowing with gratefulness: “For the Lord is good; [God’s] steadfast love endures forever.” But even with this reminder, it’s not always easy to feel grateful. Each of us has gone through difficult times when it’s been hard to remember that God is indeed good, and when we couldn’t seem to summon words of thanksgiving to our lips. Even those with the most robust spiritual lives and the most profound faith have felt this way at one time or another.
The ancient Israelites especially knew this about themselves. It was in their very bones. Again and again, throughout the Old Testament, the Hebrew people’s trust in God gave way to fear and doubt. Again and again they offered up accusations and criticism instead of gratitude. So in order to thwart this very human tendency, scripture frequently recounts what’s known as a “Salvation History”—a list of all that God has done in the past, a reminder of all God’s redemptive actions through human history. It’s difficult not to feel grateful in the face of such a resumé, when you remember that God created a nation from Abraham’s children, or led your people out of slavery in Egypt, or brought you to the Promised Land, or made you into a mighty kingdom.
But then came the Babylonian Exile. The Israelites were banished from their homes for 70 years—longer, even, than the unbearable 40 years they spent wandering in the desert post-Egypt. Scattered in foreign lands, among strange cultures and languages, trying to maintain their religious identity and raise their children to know and love a God who seemed to have abandoned them…history might not have been enough to keep them from despair.
This is the context of our reading from Isaiah. Biblical scholars generally understand chapters 40-55 to have been written by someone during the this exile, continuing the tradition of the original Isaiah’s prophecies. We call this ghostwriter “Deutero-Isaiah” or “Second Isaiah”. Whereas First Isaiah’s main theme is of impending judgement (speaking, remember, from before the exile), Second Isaiah contains a message of hope for a seemingly hopeless future. And this message must have been very much needed. Deutero-Isaiah must have known that what had worked in the past wouldn’t be enough to sustain such a broken and wretched people, so he took a different approach: he gave voice not to God’s Salvation History, but to a Salvation Future. “Do not remember the former things,” God says through the prophet, “I am about to do a new thing…do you not perceive it?” With these words, Second Isaiah encourages the Israelites in exile to make a joyful noise of thanksgiving for what God WILL do. When God’s people aren’t able to feel thankful for the events of the past and their circumstances in the present, he tells them to look to the future.
Oh, my friends, is this ever a message that we need to hear! Our communities may not be in the wilderness of exile, but we nevertheless wander in our own deserts even today. Division, shrinking membership across the denomination, budget deficits, conflict…it can be so hard to rely on the successes of the past to evoke feelings of thankfulness! It’s SO important for us to look to the future—a future that God has planned for us—and give thanks for the incredible things to come, even if we’re not sure what they are. To have faith in our Salvation Future.
But then…how do we get to that point? And how do we take the next step? How do we take our thankfulness and transform it into a joyful noise? What do WE do? God is in charge, yes, but God doesn’t work alone. No, God’s best work is done through the faithful response of God’s people. Sitting back and waiting for our Salvation Future to happen to us doesn’t generally result in a joyful noise.
God constantly calls people to take their thanksgiving to the next level, to use it as a catalyst for the future that God has planned for us. And there’s no better time to remember that than this Sunday. On October 31, 1517, a monk named Martin Luther hung a list of 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. Luther had entered monastic life 12 years earlier in thanksgiving for surviving a particularly frightening thunderstorm, and he was a passionate and committed monk—he certainly wasn’t looking to undermine the Church or incite rebellion. He wrote his theses hoping to open a dialogue within the institution that he had given his life to. He was genuinely concerned about what he saw as the Church’s divergence from the central principles of faith. He wasn’t looking for schism or destruction; he was looking to reform the Church for its own sake. Luther knew that when you care about something, you’re drawn to take risks and give of yourself to make it the best that it can be. From this perspective, a call to accountability can be a way of making a joyful noise to the Lord just as authentically as applause or praise.
Gratitude has always been a driving force behind the Church’s self-improvement. The apostle Paul planted church after church after church, but that’s not what he’s best known for. He’s better known for the numerous letters that he (and his followers) wrote to those churches, correcting and admonishing and reforming them. And in every letter, Paul is clear that his correction comes from a place of thankfulness: “I thank my God every time I remember you,”[1] he says, again and again and again, in Philippians, in Romans, in Ephesians, in 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and on and on…Paul is a man driven by gratitude.
In his final instructions to the church in 1 Thessalonians, Paul reminds them again of their responsibilities to one another as a community of God (admonish idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, but always with patience and goodness and love). But then, he boils down the life of a Christian to its essence: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” We can’t ignore our sacred obligation to accountability and reform within our communities, but this duty must always be carried out within the larger framework of joy, prayer, and thanksgiving. This is our calling. This is what it is to be a Christian. And this is how we go about bringing God’s kingdom and our Salvation Future into the world here and now: how we make a joyful noise with our thanksgiving.
What would happen if we viewed ALL our actions through the lens of thankfulness? What if we, like Paul, like Martin Luther, were so thankful for our community and our faith that we couldn’t help but try to make it better? Being the Church “reformed and always reforming” doesn’t mean that we’re a community of screw-ups who are constantly going back to the drawing board. It means that we love God’s Church so much that we’re always challenging ourselves to better listen for God’s plans, to better follow God’s will, to better live into our calling. Even if it’s not what we’ve been doing up until now. God is doing something new—do we not perceive it?
The task before us at any given moment is to allow God to work through us as God wills. We’re the vehicles by which God does this “new thing”. And our thankfulness is what allows us—no, compels us—to perceive it and rise to the challenge. God has entrusted the Church—God’s own Church—to us, and although human beings can’t possibly destroy that which God wants to exist, neither can we assume that we have no role to play in its preservation. We’re called to do much more than just not destroy something that belongs to God. We’re charged to be faithful stewards of the Church, reflecting God’s kingdom to the world as best we can.
At the end of the day, that’s all stewardship is, really: deciding the best way to use that which has been entrusted to us. The Israelites did it by preserving and passing on their faith during the exile. Martin Luther did it by reforming that which needed change. Paul did it by patiently teaching early Christians how to be the Church. Each brought us to where we are today by making a joyful noise—some were surprisingly subtle, others sounded more like complaints, still others were communicated in writing, but all reflected thankfulness in one way or another.
So how will we use that which has been given to us? How will we rise to the challenge? Will our joyful noise reflect our thanksgiving for all that God has done, is doing, and will do? Will it echo not only our Salvation History, but our Salvation Future? Are we striving to become the best version of the Church that we know we can be with God’s help?
Or will it be the same old noise that we’ve always made? I hope not. We’re better than that. Amen.
[1] Philippians 1:3Well, it’s not quite November yet, but it’s time for us to talk about thanksgiving anyway. It’s funny, isn’t it, that this term, “Thanksgiving,” brings to mind turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing—that one specific day of celebration—more readily than an ongoing attitude of giving thanks. Scripture doesn’t seem to have the fourth Thursday of November in mind when it talks about Thanksgiving. Verse 4 of Psalm 100 says, “Enter [God’s] gates with thanksgiving and [God’s] courts with praise.” Definitely referring to an attitude and not a holiday.
So, on this Sunday in October, we’ll talk about “thanksgiving” with a lowercase “t”. If Psalm 100 is about “Making a joyful noise to the Lord,” then gratitude is the underlying reason that we should be making that noise. Almost every single English translation chooses to title this psalm, “a song of thanksgiving” instead of “a song of noise” (I can’t imagine why—such a catchy title). Giving thanks is pretty clearly the main theme of this psalm.
Now, the psalmist isn’t dumb; he knows that people don’t generally give thanks just because they’re supposed to, so we’re quickly reminded WHY we should be overflowing with gratefulness: “For the Lord is good; [God’s] steadfast love endures forever.” But even with this reminder, it’s not always easy to feel grateful. Each of us has gone through difficult times when it’s been hard to remember that God is indeed good, and when we couldn’t seem to summon words of thanksgiving to our lips. Even those with the most robust spiritual lives and the most profound faith have felt this way at one time or another.
The ancient Israelites especially knew this about themselves. It was in their very bones. Again and again, throughout the Old Testament, the Hebrew people’s trust in God gave way to fear and doubt. Again and again they offered up accusations and criticism instead of gratitude. So in order to thwart this very human tendency, scripture frequently recounts what’s known as a “Salvation History”—a list of all that God has done in the past, a reminder of all God’s redemptive actions through human history. It’s difficult not to feel grateful in the face of such a resumé, when you remember that God created a nation from Abraham’s children, or led your people out of slavery in Egypt, or brought you to the Promised Land, or made you into a mighty kingdom.
But then came the Babylonian Exile. The Israelites were banished from their homes for 70 years—longer, even, than the unbearable 40 years they spent wandering in the desert post-Egypt. Scattered in foreign lands, among strange cultures and languages, trying to maintain their religious identity and raise their children to know and love a God who seemed to have abandoned them…history might not have been enough to keep them from despair.
This is the context of our reading from Isaiah. Biblical scholars generally understand chapters 40-55 to have been written by someone during the this exile, continuing the tradition of the original Isaiah’s prophecies. We call this ghostwriter “Deutero-Isaiah” or “Second Isaiah”. Whereas First Isaiah’s main theme is of impending judgement (speaking, remember, from before the exile), Second Isaiah contains a message of hope for a seemingly hopeless future. And this message must have been very much needed. Deutero-Isaiah must have known that what had worked in the past wouldn’t be enough to sustain such a broken and wretched people, so he took a different approach: he gave voice not to God’s Salvation History, but to a Salvation Future. “Do not remember the former things,” God says through the prophet, “I am about to do a new thing…do you not perceive it?” With these words, Second Isaiah encourages the Israelites in exile to make a joyful noise of thanksgiving for what God WILL do. When God’s people aren’t able to feel thankful for the events of the past and their circumstances in the present, he tells them to look to the future.
Oh, my friends, is this ever a message that we need to hear! Our communities may not be in the wilderness of exile, but we nevertheless wander in our own deserts even today. Division, shrinking membership across the denomination, budget deficits, conflict…it can be so hard to rely on the successes of the past to evoke feelings of thankfulness! It’s SO important for us to look to the future—a future that God has planned for us—and give thanks for the incredible things to come, even if we’re not sure what they are. To have faith in our Salvation Future.
But then…how do we get to that point? And how do we take the next step? How do we take our thankfulness and transform it into a joyful noise? What do WE do? God is in charge, yes, but God doesn’t work alone. No, God’s best work is done through the faithful response of God’s people. Sitting back and waiting for our Salvation Future to happen to us doesn’t generally result in a joyful noise.
God constantly calls people to take their thanksgiving to the next level, to use it as a catalyst for the future that God has planned for us. And there’s no better time to remember that than this Sunday. On October 31, 1517, a monk named Martin Luther hung a list of 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. Luther had entered monastic life 12 years earlier in thanksgiving for surviving a particularly frightening thunderstorm, and he was a passionate and committed monk—he certainly wasn’t looking to undermine the Church or incite rebellion. He wrote his theses hoping to open a dialogue within the institution that he had given his life to. He was genuinely concerned about what he saw as the Church’s divergence from the central principles of faith. He wasn’t looking for schism or destruction; he was looking to reform the Church for its own sake. Luther knew that when you care about something, you’re drawn to take risks and give of yourself to make it the best that it can be. From this perspective, a call to accountability can be a way of making a joyful noise to the Lord just as authentically as applause or praise.
Gratitude has always been a driving force behind the Church’s self-improvement. The apostle Paul planted church after church after church, but that’s not what he’s best known for. He’s better known for the numerous letters that he (and his followers) wrote to those churches, correcting and admonishing and reforming them. And in every letter, Paul is clear that his correction comes from a place of thankfulness: “I thank my God every time I remember you,”[1] he says, again and again and again, in Philippians, in Romans, in Ephesians, in 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and on and on…Paul is a man driven by gratitude.
In his final instructions to the church in 1 Thessalonians, Paul reminds them again of their responsibilities to one another as a community of God (admonish idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, but always with patience and goodness and love). But then, he boils down the life of a Christian to its essence: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” We can’t ignore our sacred obligation to accountability and reform within our communities, but this duty must always be carried out within the larger framework of joy, prayer, and thanksgiving. This is our calling. This is what it is to be a Christian. And this is how we go about bringing God’s kingdom and our Salvation Future into the world here and now: how we make a joyful noise with our thanksgiving.
What would happen if we viewed ALL our actions through the lens of thankfulness? What if we, like Paul, like Martin Luther, were so thankful for our community and our faith that we couldn’t help but try to make it better? Being the Church “reformed and always reforming” doesn’t mean that we’re a community of screw-ups who are constantly going back to the drawing board. It means that we love God’s Church so much that we’re always challenging ourselves to better listen for God’s plans, to better follow God’s will, to better live into our calling. Even if it’s not what we’ve been doing up until now. God is doing something new—do we not perceive it?
The task before us at any given moment is to allow God to work through us as God wills. We’re the vehicles by which God does this “new thing”. And our thankfulness is what allows us—no, compels us—to perceive it and rise to the challenge. God has entrusted the Church—God’s own Church—to us, and although human beings can’t possibly destroy that which God wants to exist, neither can we assume that we have no role to play in its preservation. We’re called to do much more than just not destroy something that belongs to God. We’re charged to be faithful stewards of the Church, reflecting God’s kingdom to the world as best we can.
At the end of the day, that’s all stewardship is, really: deciding the best way to use that which has been entrusted to us. The Israelites did it by preserving and passing on their faith during the exile. Martin Luther did it by reforming that which needed change. Paul did it by patiently teaching early Christians how to be the Church. Each brought us to where we are today by making a joyful noise—some were surprisingly subtle, others sounded more like complaints, still others were communicated in writing, but all reflected thankfulness in one way or another.
So how will we use that which has been given to us? How will we rise to the challenge? Will our joyful noise reflect our thanksgiving for all that God has done, is doing, and will do? Will it echo not only our Salvation History, but our Salvation Future? Are we striving to become the best version of the Church that we know we can be with God’s help?
Or will it be the same old noise that we’ve always made? I hope not. We’re better than that. Amen.
[1] Philippians 1:3
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