|
Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
October 21, 2024
The Invitatory
The earth is the Lord’s for he made it: O come, let us adore him.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
Reading: Psalm 100
1 Be joyful in the Lord, all you lands; *
serve the Lord with gladness
and come before his presence with a song.
2 Know this: The Lord himself is God; *
he himself has made us, and we are his;
we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
3 Enter his gates with thanksgiving;
go into his courts with praise; *
give thanks to him and call upon his Name.
4 For the Lord is good;
his mercy is everlasting; *
and his faithfulness endures from age to age.
Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones
Often in the staff’s weekly Liturgy meeting, we reflect on how engaged the congregation is in our worship. Perhaps we should distribute this portion of Psalm 100 widely just to demonstrate how engaged a worshiping community might be! It seems that the directive here is to shout it out! If in your upbringing you were taught to do just the opposite: “Keep your voices down.” “Don’t raise a ruckus.” “Be polite.” Often as we gather for dinner on Wednesdays the staff is asking the children to keep their voices down. But when it comes to worshiping Yahweh, Psalm 100 directly invites us to turn up the volume. These five verses roar with praise, employing a series of imperative verbs: shout, worship, enter, praise, and bless. Together, these commands compel the community to participate in an important liturgical activity, namely, singing in a grand procession into God’s temple.
Throughout Christian history, this psalm has been employed to summon the community together in robust praise. A famous example is Ralph Vaughan Williams’s arrangement of “The Old One Hundredth Psalm Tune,” the processional hymn for the coronation service of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey in 1953. It’s a big, bold, and stunningly beautiful piece of music. (Here is a link to it : (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3Wwc3TI07M)
What we very much hope to achieve in worship, to elicit from the congregation, is worship that is compelling and arouses the community’s participation so that the worshippers, “know that the Lord is God,” that is their grasp of God’s identity is not merely an intellectual acknowledgment. It is a deep and intimate awareness of God’s identity as revealed to them in particular. They arrive at and embody an understanding of God through their full participation in all the aspects of their worship.
The images that this Psalm employs may seem remote to many of us who are now more urban/suburban than rural dwellers. We might resonate with the notion of pasture arousing our feelings about beauty, nature and agriculture (perhaps less than the other two.) Consider, though, that In a drier climate as in the biblical world, pasture may evoke an image of terror, rather than one of abundance. There were rich and lush regions in Israel that supported sheep, goats, donkeys, cattle and camels, as well as serving as home for wild animals lions, bears, jackals and deer. The allotment and quality of pasture was essential to those living in the ancient Biblical world. It’s a matter of survival and when one does, that is a moment for praise and thanksgiving.
Again the image of the gate has a more distinctive meaning for the Israelites. For us it is simply a structure for ingress and egress - admitting and retaining. In the ancient world it offered protection against external threats such as attacks and intrusion of unwanted strangers. Their use had to be protected and regulated.
Here, as part of the worship the gate symbolizes the people’s entrance into the very presence of God. Imagine having that sense as you walk through the door into the Church here. Bear in mind that now you have come into the presence of God. Imagine such an experience. Feel this experience! Similarly our liturgy builds from the processional into God’s court with praise. We give thanks and call upon God in our prayers. This Psalm and our worship evoke an experience that is intimate and personal.
Prayer Before Worship
O, Almighty God, who poorest out on all who desire it, the spirit of grace and of supplication: Deliver us, when we draw near to thee, from coldness of heart and wandering of mind, that with steadfast thoughts and kindled affections we may worship thee in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
| 
