February 27thPsalm 100
The Old Hundredth
Before there was music, there was praise. Before there was worship, there was praise. Before there were preachers, there was praise. Before there were liturgies and hymnals; before there were sanctuaries and choir lofts and pulpits; before there were prayers and creeds and theologies, there was praise.
The baby in your house knows that, doesn't she? Lying there in her crib, some time yet before you are fully awake, she gets up with the first rays of morning light. She doesn't know her own name; she doesn't know the name of God; she cannot walk and she cannot talk; but she knows even at that early age that -- with the beginning of dawn -- the only appropriate thing to do is to sing a baby song. . . a babble of praise.
Before anything else, there is praise. Scripture says so, too… As early as the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, there is that soaring poetry about creation. Of light and darkness, of earth and sky, of waters and plants and animals and finally people. And, at the end of all of this creative activity, as a kind of epilogue to it all, there is attributed to God's very self nothing other than a burst of praise. "God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good." (Genesis 1).
AN INVITATION TO RADICAL GRATITUDE
OUR PSALM begins with three imperatives:
On your feet now—applaud God!
Bring a gift of laughter,
sing yourselves into his presence.
This is a psalm of trust which reorients our lives. That is the very best news of all. It is God that made us; we are his. You and I belong to God. Our identity is not dependent on anything external. We are not cogs on a wheel, units in a political process; we are not a market, consumers, targets for advertising. We are not a product of the money we make, our jobs, the schools from which we graduated, the clubs to which we belong. We—at the very core of our being—belong to God. We are God’s people, the sheep of his pasture.
Praise is essential to who we are as humans. When we fail to praise we fail to live fully human lives that God intended.
RADICAL GRATITUDE IS POLITICAL
Know this: God is God, and God, God.
He made us; we didn’t make him.
We’re his people, his well-tended sheep.
We are not self-made. This hymn asserts a covenantal identity of Israel with God. It asserts positively that this shepherd has been found utterly reliable, looking after the interest of the sheep.
But ... The world is not an easy place in which to live as a people of praise. One only needs to attend a football game, rock concert, or political rally in order to witness levels of adoration and praise that are difficult to distinguish from worship.
Obviously our world is at the edge of insanity, and we with it. In-humaneness is developed as a scientific enterprise. Greed is celebrated as economic advance. Power runs unbridled to destructiveness.
In a world like this one, our psalm is an act of sanity, whereby we may be "reclothed in our rightful minds."
‘To praise is to reject alternative loyalties and false definitions of reality,’ writes Walter Brueggemann. There are other modes of world-creation: advertising, ideology, propaganda, education. For Christians, however, these are not decisive.
RADICAL GRATITUDE IS THE MUSIC OF HOPE
Enter with the password: “Thank you!”
Make yourselves at home, talking praise.
Thank him. Worship him.
For God is sheer beauty,
all-generous in love,
loyal always and ever.
Praise is an act of hope for it promises and anticipates a hoped for world
which is beyond present experience. When we are re-created, we sing.
The African-American slaves of the deep South knew this.
Freedom is Coming - All God's Children Got Shoes
YouTube·NewOrleansJazz NHP·Feb 18, 2014