Reigning Thanks

Psalm 100; Ezekiel 34 11-16, 20-24; Matthew 25:31-46

If I were simply to speak the title of today’s sermon, “Reigning Thanks,” your ears would probably tell your brain that it is “raining thanks,” as in “raining cats and dogs.” That is certainly an impression that the listener might get from listening to the images the psalmist uses in Psalm 100. Thanks are raining down in torrents.
• Shout triumphantly
• Come with shouts of joy
• Enter God’s gates with thanks
• Enter his courtyards with praise
• Thank him [exclamation point]
• Bless God’s name
Thanks are all over the place. Thanks are teeming everywhere.

The homophone for “raining” is “reigning” – r-e-i-g-n-i-n-g – as in a monarch reigning. That is also an appropriate hearing of the word for today, which is the last Sunday in the yearly cycle of remembrance of God’s activity in and for the world, all for God’s glory. This is “Reign of Christ” Sunday, when we reflect on the promised eternal reign of Christ at the right hand of God, “when everyone in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11).

We are on the bridge between the yet and the not yet. Jesus told his listeners at the beginning of his ministry, “Here comes God’s kingdom!” (Mark 1:15). In other words, it is here, right now. We only see hints of it. But God’s eternity is breaking into the chaos of our lives just as God’s eternal creating breath broke into the chaos of the nothingness at the beginning of what we call creation, poetically described in the opening verses of the book of Genesis.

Psalm 100 is an introductory psalm. On one level it introduces the ones reciting it into the presence of God, as when physically entering the Temple worship space. But the psalm also introduces the worshiper into the very nature of worship. There is physical as well as spiritual movement. Offering the psalm is an act of praise and thanksgiving. The psalm is both the thanksgiving and the act of praising thanks.

The psalm describes the character of praise. The initial actions are those that belong to the approach to a king. Subjects greeted the king with a shout of acclamation. To serve the king is to have him as sovereign. To call oneself a servant of the king is to acknowledge dependence upon and subjection to the king. Serving the king or “Lord” is the alternative to serving other lords or kings. Joshua had challenged the people to choose whom they would serve, the gods of the land beyond the Euphrates, the gods of Egypt, the gods of the Canaanites, or the Lord.

On the mount of Jerusalem, two major buildings existed side by side. One was the palace or house of the king and other was the palace or house that represented the divine king, the Temple of God. The prophets sought to represent the heavenly ruler to the kings in the line descending from David. And they were often resisted, even severely. The early church sought to proclaim “Jesus is Lord” in their worship in an empire which required people to say “Caesar is lord.” Politics and theology have been on opposite sides much of the history of God’s involvement with humanity.

The worship which Psalm 100 inaugurates is “confessional in purpose”(1). The people of God assemble in public worship to declare that the one whose name is the Lord is indeed god, the only god, the one to whom the name “God” [capital G] belongs exclusively. Think of it as early trademark protection. No one else can use that name. “He made us; we belong to him” is shorthand for the salvation history of election, deliverance, and covenant by which Israel was brought into existence as the people of God – God’s flock, God’s pastured sheep. But it is more than just the people uniquely called of God. Without the slightest embarrassment the psalmist calls the whole of the earth to recognize as king and God the Lord, the One who creates and cares for his people.

It is that emphasis of God’s call to the whole world that sets the context for the parable that Jesus told of the final days, of the judging of the nations. The call of the psalmist has been to the inexpressible joy of being in relationship with God, The very presence of God is joy. With God in the midst of the people, there is enthusiastic and authentic worship. God is seen as Savior, God is for the people. God is a loving, empowering, ennobling power for good, not a stern taskmaster bent on abasing people. Worship is good, worship is joy because as far as time runs, from forever ago to forever from now, time – past, present, and future – is ruled by the loyal love and faithfulness of the Lord.

The problem highlighted in Jesus’ parable is that some people refuse the call to praise and thanksgiving. They refuse to acknowledge that the Lord is God, the eternal ruler, the king beyond all kings, the divine king. Like treacherous and disloyal fiefs, they ignore and snub the Lord. When the path of life divides for the palace of the world or the house of the Lord, they head for the palace of the world. They think only of themselves, they forget the rule of creation that all people were, are, and will be created in the image of God, thereby making no one being better or worse than another.

These people are aghast when they find out that they didn’t recognize Christ in neighbor or immigrant, as if Christ was supposed to wear a special uniform or have a tattoo recognizable by anyone in the know. They fail to understand the power and authority of Christ who gladly and willingly set aside the perks of divinity to become totally human, to fully experience human life as human beings experience it, and to completely save humanity in the face of all that charms, entraps, and lures us away from God.

The others who did recognize Jesus in neighbors and immigrants were those who understood that integrity is doing what is right when no one is looking.

Elaine Pagels(2) calls Jesus words the foundation for a radical new approach to society based on God-given dignity and the value of every human being. Human beings are not to be abused, tortured, humiliated for a very simple reason. “Whatever you do to someone else, you do to me.” So whether we are talking about Ferguson, Missouri, or Homs, Syria, Pyongyang, North Korea, or Monrovia, Liberia, how people are treated by other people is how Jesus is treated by those same people. “Because they do it to us” is an excuse that doesn’t carry weight with Jesus.

Jesus’ words are a statement about God. Jesus’ God, the psalmist’s God, our God is not a remote supreme being on a throne high above the clouds or in a galaxy far, far away. Jesus said, “God is here,” in the messiness and ambiguity of human life. And just because people shout, “God is great,” while they commit horrible atrocities, it does not mean they do God’s work which Jesus never did or speak God’s word about things that Jesus never said anything about. Whatever is done is done to Jesus. Whatever is said is said to Jesus.

Most importantly, God is interested in us. Not a nameless, faceless us, but you and me, each one of us, personally, eyeball to eyeball, on a first name basis. God wants to save our souls. God wants a reign of thanks to so fill our lives that we enter the house of the divine with every thing we do, with every word we speak, with every breath we take. We breathe in, “Thank you,” and we exhale, “Lord.” “Thank you, Lord”; “Thank you, Lord”; however many times a minute, an hour, a day, a lifetime.

Hymn 647 in Glory to God is written by Henry Smith. Its words are simple:
“Give thanks with a grateful heart;
give thanks to the Holy One;
give thanks because we’re given Jesus Christ, the Son.
And now let the weak say, “We are strong”;
let the poor say, “We are rich
because of what the Lord has done for us!”
Give thanks. Give thanks.”(3)

May Thanks reign now and forever from now. Amen.

(1) James L. Mays, Psalms (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994), p. 318.
(2) Cited by John M. Buchanan, “Matthew 25:31-46 – Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), Year A, vol. 4, p. 334.
(3) Henry Smith, 1978.© 1978 Integrity’s Hosanna Music (admin, EMICMGPublishing.com) CCLI #1869873.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.