Thanksgiving: Big and Small

In Nomine Iesu
Psalm 95:1-7
November 26, 2009
Thanksgiving Day

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

Psalm 95 teaches us that Thanksgiving comes in two sizes: big and small. But unlike the clothes that some of you shoppers will be trying on tomorrow morning, when it comes to thanksgiving, both sizes fit all. It’s not either big thanksgiving or small thanksgiving; it’s both and. For now, just remember, thanksgiving comes in two sizes: big and small.

Psalm 95 begins with big thanksgiving: O come, let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving, let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise. With those opening verses the Psalmist encourages us to be big and bold with the thanks we bring. We are to be assertive and exuberant and unafraid in our thanksgiving to God. And the primary expression of big thanksgiving is singing and songs of praise. And even if you can’t sing, you can at least “make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.”

But have you noticed that people don’t sing as much as they used to? Outside of the singing we do together here in this place, where else do you sing together with others? I think it’s happening less and less. Songs today are all in digital format. Songs today are downloaded. Songs today are listened to privately on headphones. Songs today are watched on Youtube and those links are e-mailed and facebooked and twittered. But if you yourself are opening your mouth to boldly belt out a tune, you stick out and stand out. That kind of big thanksgiving makes people sit up and take notice.

When we Christians unite our voices to sing the praises of our great God, that’s big thanksgiving. That’s why there’s so much singing here for every service. Those who feel guilty have a hard time singing. Those who are ashamed find it hard to carry a tune. Those who are weighted down by fear and anxiety are too timid to sound out their praises to God. But those whose sins are forgiven, they can’t help but sing. Those who’ve been redeemed by Christ the crucified, they can’t keep their mouths shut. Those who have turned over their worry and anxiety to the God who loves them, they’re ready to make music in their hearts. Those who are looking forward to the life of the world to come, they sing with boldness and beauty because they have been led to praise God with BIG thanksgiving.

But we have a reason for the singing we do. And our songs spell out the reason for that singing. We don’t sing to entertain or to be entertained. We don’t make music for music’s sake. Psalm 95 tells us why we sing with big and bold voices: For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. The deep places of the earth are in His hand the strength of the hills is His also. The sea is His for He made it and His hand formed the dry land. Big thanksgiving always declares what God has done. Big thanksgiving is all about Him—that He’s a great God, that everything is in His hands, that He made the sea and the dry land. Big thanksgiving is third-person praise. It’s all about Him and not about me or you.

But we each have an Old Adam who knows the power of song and big thanksgiving. His chief aim is to make the music less about our great God and more about me and you—our feelings, our emotions, our likes, our dislikes, our tastes and preferences. Satan would love to take a congregation full of thankful singers and turn it into a congregation of customers and consumers, all demanding to have their personal tastes catered to. We all have our individual preferences. But it’s the degree of importance we attach to our preferences that can lead down a slippery slope to where worship revolves around me and my fellow customers, instead of around the God who is the Savior of sinners.

Big thanksgiving is bigger than any one of us individuals. And I’m guessing that the biggest thing the Psalmist ever saw was the ocean. The ocean is big and makes you feel small. In fact for most ancient people, the sea was big and scary. Those crashing waves and roaring waters came to symbolize all the things that threaten us—all the things that scare us—all the things that are way beyond our control. Our big thanksgiving might get interrupted today by all the threatening things that loom large over you. I know there’s something that scares you—something that strikes fear and worry in your heart—something that you can’t control or fix.

Psalm 95 remedies our fear with one simple phrase: “The sea is His for He made it.” In other words, the waves that threaten to wash you away, the frightening things, the things that keep you awake at night—know that your great God controls them. If He could make the sea and everything in it—if He could calm the wind and the waves with a word from His mouth, then this day you can shrink your fear and enlarge your thanksgiving to where it’s big and bold and un-afraid.

But remember, thanksgiving comes in two sizes: big and small. And if big thanksgiving is expressed by exuberantly and joyfully singing our heads off, then small thanksgiving must look and sound different. The Psalmist describes small thanksgiving like this: O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our maker. If big thanksgiving involves our voices, small thanksgiving involves our entire body from head to toe. This little verse about worshiping and bowing and kneeling is teaching us about small thanksgiving. Small thanksgiving doesn’t mean unimportant or insignificant Thanksgiving—far from it.

Small thanksgiving happens when we make ourselves small—when we set aside our big egos and our greedy appetites, and seek to serve the needs of others—when we literally do the little things that make all the difference. Let me demonstrate. The Psalm tells us to bow down and to kneel before the Lord. You know what it means to bow down. And you know what it means to kneel. But the word for worship in Psalm 95 makes us even smaller. The Hebrew word for worship literally means to prostrate oneself. To make yourself prostrate means to go down low like this . . . . When I’m lying prostrate I go from about six feet four inches all the way down to about 8 inches. That’s small thanksgiving.

I can tell you that when you get down on your hands and knees—when you make yourself small like that—you get dirty. And getting dirty is the essence of small thanksgiving. Small thanksgiving gets expressed when we aren’t afraid to get our hands dirtied in the nitty-gritty of the vocations God has given us. When you make yourself small to do the hard work that you’d rather not do—when you yourself do the dirty jobs that you’d rather not do—when you bend down to help your neighbor—when you work to forgive the person who has sinned against you—when you sacrifice for your spouse . . . that’s small thanksgiving. It’s small in the sense that no one may even notice—certainly not the way people notice when you sing out loud. But your God notices—sees all that you do in faith and in thanks to Him. And He delights in both your big and your small thanksgiving.

For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. He is yours. And you are His. It’s Jesus who makes that possible, of course. He’s the One who purchased and won you, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death so that you might be His own. And later today, as you do your grazing on turkey and stuffing and potatoes, don’t forget that we are the people of His pasture. The plenty we enjoy is the plenty He supplies. Food and drink, house and home, wife and children—they are all good gifts from our giving God. As the sheep of His hand we know and believe that those hands have nail-scars in them—the deep marks of His deep love for us. Jesus made Himself small on the cross, but He promises to make us big and bold and unafraid in the joy of His resurrection life, which has no end.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.