“Shout for Joy!!!”
Psalm 100
A year ago, this past March, a couple of guys and I at East Ridge United Methodist Church, felt the call to start a Food Pantry.
All we had to work with was $2,500.
A year later, my buddy and I were walking through the Food Pantry.
There were hundreds of people standing outside the doors waiting for it to open.
Inside between 40 and 50 people from 8 different churches in the East Ridge area were busy getting everything ready, working together.
A Publix Grocery Store which had opened up near Hamilton Place, was now giving us all their meat, bread, pastries—you name it—as soon as they took it off their shelves.
We didn’t have enough freezers to store all the food.
And we had $20,000 in the bank, to boot.
As we were walking and looking at what had occurred in just one year, we said, “Can you believe this?
Neither of us had ever run a food pantry before.
We had no idea what we were doing.
And yet, one year later—look at this!!!
This food pantry is feeding over 1,000 people a month!!!”
When something like that happens, your faith increases, and you feel as if you are in the midst of a miracle.
It’s like the loaves and fish.
And you know God is in complete control—there is no other explanation.
I can’t help reading Psalm 100 without picturing just how happy and excited the Psalmist was.
You can almost feel the intensity of his emotions: “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.”
This psalm is exciting.
It is filled with life!!!
It is written by someone who is head-over-heals in-love with God.
“the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.”
This Psalm is written by someone who has experienced the goodness of God, the mercy of God, the love of God and the faithfulness of God.
This Psalm is written by someone who is walking in relationship with God—in a daily hand-in-hand relationship with “he who made us”!!!
And there is nothing more exciting!!!
Have any of you ever seen the movie “The Cross”?
It’s a documentary about a guy named Arthur Blessitt.
He’s an evangelist who felt God call him to make a giant cross, and carry it across the country, witnessing to people along the way about Jesus.
But just before Blessitt was about to leave on his journey, he was hospitalized with a brain hemorrhage.
And the doctors told him that he was going to have to have surgery or else he would die.
And it was going to take a long time to heal from the surgery.
So, Arthur was laying in his hospital bed, dumbfounded.
And he was having a conversation with God.
And he said “God I don’t understand. I know you called me to make this cross and carry it across the country.
And I know you called me to leave on this journey in just a couple of days.
Now, I am not going to be able to do this.”
And as Arthur lay in that hospital bed he had an epiphany.
And so, he took all the tubes out of his arms and he got up out of that bed and got that cross and started his walk.
And the epiphany was that Arthur realized he would rather die within the will of God than live outside of it.
40 years later, Arthur Blessitt had carried that cross to every continent in the entire world, and he is still alive today.
There is nothing more exciting than living within the will of God.
It is living in a miracle.
And you experience, up close and personal what the Psalmist is writing about in our Scripture passage for this morning.
“The Lord is good…”
“The Lord’s love endures forever…”
“The Lord is faithful…”
And it makes you want to “Shout for joy!!!”
A friend of mine once told me about the church he grew up in—in Norfolk, Virginia.
He said that, when he was a kid, that church had a membership of over 1,000 people.
But, he added, “Mostly all it did was Sunday stuff.”
It didn’t reach out to the community.
It was very inwardly focused, kind of like a country club.
Eventually, the church lost members and got to the point where it almost had to close the doors.
But, he said that turned out to be a good thing because the church is now more “alive” than it ever was.
They now have feeding events for their community every week.
They are known in their neighborhood as a church which is filled with joy, racially diverse, friendly, open to all, non-judgmental, loving, and a place where people can find help.
My friend said: “That is what church is in my view.
That’s what it means to follow Jesus and be the Body of Christ.”
And I agree with him.
Last Thursday morning, I was driving to the 8 a.m. weekly prayer meeting I attend.
It was 38 degrees and pouring rain.
You remember that morning.
In any event, for some reason, I thought to myself: “Wow, I sure am thankful I am driving in a nice warm car rather than having to walk in this weather.”
And that made me think of the many folks who don’t have cars; who can’t afford cars.
It made me think of the persons who were walking in that mess of rain and near freezing temperatures.
And it made me think about how unfair it seems.
Later, at the prayer meeting we got talking about Thanksgiving—and what that really means.
I told my friends about what I had been thinking on the car ride over there and then I added, “There is a dichotomy in Thanksgiving.
For instance, I am thankful that I am in this nice warm room drinking a hot cup of coffee.
But, while I sit here in my comfortable space, not far away there are homeless men and women who are out in the rain, hovering under bridges and in soaking wet tents, with rotting teeth and the tooth aches—the terrible pain--that goes along with that.
And that makes me want to do something.
That makes me want to help the folks who in such dire straits.”
Being thankful makes us want to do something.
I mean, it’s like, who am I to be warm and dry while others are cold and wet?
What did I do to deserve this?
What makes me any better than anyone else?
And the answer is a resounding: “Absolutely NOTHING!!!”
German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a great understanding of what it means to give thanks to God.
He said that God’s grace comes to us as a free gift, but it’s not cheap.
He said that “Cheap grace is grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system.”
In other words—it looks good on paper.
But REAL grace, although it’s free is like the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great price…
…it is “the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciples leave their nets and follow Him!”
It is experienced.
It is exciting.
It is lived out, and it completely changes our lives.
We give thanks to God by loving one another.
We give thanks to God by serving one another.
We give thanks to God by giving a cup of cold water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, clothes to the naked, and by visiting those who are sick and in prison.
We give thanks to God by giving back to God through loving and serving others!!!
Giving thanks to God is putting our faith into action.
We live in a time when Jesus is being turned into a good luck charm or a measure by which to judge others.
Jesus is used by some to gain power and manipulate people.
He is used to get votes.
He is used to make money.
And because of this, people are turning away from Christianity and the Church in record numbers.
So, children grow up with no real knowledge of Who Jesus really is.
And the darkness grows.
And the sadness increases.
And love turns cold.
And the violence escalates as hopelessness takes over our land.
We see it in the mass shootings which have become a nearly daily event.
Last week, a young lady came to our church building in desperate need.
She is a single mother with a young child, and she had no food.
I invited her into my office and called my friend at the East Ridge Community Food Pantry.
I asked him if he had time to meet this young woman and load her up with as much food as her car would carry.
He said, “Sure.”
As she was leaving my office the young lady was crying.
I asked her if she was okay.
“Yes,” she said, “It’s just so wonderful to know that SOMEONE cares.”
That’s about the greatest compliment a sinner such as I could ever receive.
It makes life worth living.
You all are doing amazing things for the children in this community.
You would be greatly missed if you were gone.
And there is so much more to do.
There are so many people who are in desperate situations, and they need thankful Christians to help them.
Jesus said, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did it for me.”
Psalm 100 says that God “made us, and we are his; we are the sheep of his pasture.”
God made everyone.
Every human being has been created in God’s image.
And God is in such solidarity with human beings, that when we do something for someone else, we are doing it for God.
Jesus has come into this world and paid the ultimate price for our sins.
He died for you; He died for me.
He gave His life so that we may live.
So, “enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.”
And do it by serving and loving Him through serving and loving others.
If we hold true to this—we will be shouting for joy to the Lord in the streets.
And we won’t be the only ones!!!
Have a very, very Happy Thanksgiving!!!
Amen.
