Psalm 100
Every family has traditions. Some are generational liturgies arcing back through the mists of time. They are ancient. Carved in stone. No one knows why we do them. We just do it that way. Some traditions are odd. Corn casserole. Green bean casserole. Cranberry casserole. Casserole casserole. Apparently, the word “casserole” was invented in 1706. It comes from the French casse meaning “pan”, tracing from the Medieval Latin cattia, “pan or vessel,” which possibly came from Greek kyathion, “cup for the wine bowl.” Some French ladies were sitting around pre-Revolution Paris wondering what to call a bunch of stuff mixed together and baked in a dish and one of them said, “You know…the Greek word for cup of the wine bowl is kyathion, let’s call this a casserole!” By 1870 or so, some American ladies were sitting around post-Revolution Philadelphia saying, “You know…I have a bunch of stuff I’m not sure what to do with, let’s put it in that thing over there and bake it.” And by 1970, some American ladies were just tired and sitting around a post-Hippie Cleveland kitchen with tangerine Formica countertops wondering how to cook stuff that came in boxes. And now we have casseroles.
A tradition. Why do we make them? No one knows. Most of them are culinary catastrophes. And I love them. They become piles on a plate. We eat a few spoonfuls and store them in recycled Cool Whip tubs in the fridge until Aunt Cathy’s famous artichoke and hazelnut casserole gets lost behind the Brobdingnag bulk of a jar of Costco mayonnaise and metamorphizes into a biohazard we discover when we haul out the mayo to make devilled eggs at Easter.
The Scott Family has our fair share of casseroles. But one of the non-spoonable traditions that never goes bad is the annual reading of Psalm 100 before the Thanksgiving meal. I don’t remember when we started doing this. Sometime early in our marriage I read that Psalm in November and, like the intrepid French women before me thought, “Hey, we should do this”. And so a tradition was born.
Like a spoonful of cornbread dressing, the Psalm doesn’t take up much space. Five little verses create a beautiful structure. The first two verses command the entire earth to shout and shout joyfully to the Lord. Next, we are commanded to serve the Lord, but with gladness. Imagine every created being shouting joyfully and serving gladly. The central verse directs our minds to the central reason of our joy and gladness:
It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.
If there is a quintessential verse to give humans meaning it is this: God made us. We did not make us. I am not reason I exist. God is. This is the core ontological premise of our worldview. Every concept in theology hangs on the reality of God. He is the Creator. We are not accidents. We are not cosmological casseroles, chemical catastrophes thrown together by fate. We were not engineered by aliens. We did not evolve from bacteria splashed into a primordial soup by a lucky asteroid. We are not characters in in a simulation. We are not in the Matrix.
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
God created us and He claims us as His own. He shepherds us. Fights for us. Protects us. Cares for us. Leads us. Disciplines us. Loves us. We are loved. Created. Cared for.
The final two verses are a response to this foundational reality.
Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise
Give thanks to Him, bless His name. For the LORD is good,
His lovingkindness is everlasting, His faithfulness to all generations
Respond to God making you by thanking Him. It’s simple. Beautiful. And we don’t do it enough. At least I don’t. I rarely slow down enough to think about how wonderful it is that I am not an accident. In this big beautiful broken world so many people are lost and wander without hope. They don’t know how loved they are. They don’t know they are made, created, intentional. They think they are accidents. Mistakes. Disasters. Worth less than a casserole ruining in the fridge. But this Psalm tells us who they really are: They are made by God Himself. Immeasurably precious.
Today marks the official beginning of the Christmas season. I’m going to ask God to give me a clear opportunity this Advent to tell at least one person who they really are: Loved. Created on purpose by a Good God. I don’t know who. Maybe you. Maybe our 13-year-old. Maybe the lady selling me a giant jar of mayo at Costco. I don’t know. But will you join me? We have a lot to be thankful for. One of the most joyful ways to express that is to gently speak worth into to a person who cannot yet see how precious they are. Let’s ask God to show us who those people are. And let’s tell them how much they are worth.
