Psalm 100 Commentary

Recently when the Lectionary featured Psalm 23 as the Year A lection, I took note of the fact that for all its fame as a psalm, the 23^rd psalm is actually very short, quite compact.  This week we are led to Psalm 100 and it also is among the better-known songs in the Hebrew Psalter.  But when it comes to brevity, this psalm outstrips even Psalm 23.  Depending on how you count, it clocks in at under 40 Hebrew words.  Translating to English requires the addition of words and so the NIV for instance has around 80 words.  Still pretty brief.  As a preacher I can assure you that I have seldom had even a sermon introduction that was this short!

Yet like Psalm 23, so also Psalm 100 manages to pack in a whole lot of theology in very short and swift strokes.  That may be part of why it is well known (that and the fact that its short length makes it a target for Sunday school or Christian day school memorization by children.  I know I memorized it in either Kindergarten or 1^st Grade.).

Broadly speaking Psalm 100 fits as a Psalm of Ascent—the kind of song sung by pilgrims as they made their way to Jerusalem and up to the Temple.  The talk about entering through the gates and into the courts fits that sub-genre of psalm pretty well.  But of course the scope and target of this song is much wider than the typical Psalm of Ascent.  Because it is no less than the whole world that is called upon to join Yahweh’s choir of praise.  Many psalms are not the least bit shy in terms of having a very ambitious scope, calling upon all the earth to recognize that God is the Creator of every one of us, we all belong to God as the sheep of God’s pasture, and for this reason God deserves every shout and song of joy we can muster.

But it’s not just that we are God’s creations but also the very character of God that is presented here as among the top reasons God deserves all the praise and the glory.  God is said very simply to be tov, to be good.  God is good.  We say this a lot.  Some of us remember the early childhood prayer, “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for this food.”  (I was never sure if “good” and “food” were supposed to rhyme since you would have to pronounce one or the other pretty weirdly to pull that off!)  Sometimes this becomes a call-and-response in worship services.  The leader shouts “God is good!” and the people respond “All the time!”

Being good or the quality of goodness seems so simple on the surface.  Among all the more majestic things we might ascribe to the God of the universe, “good” seems comparatively tame.  It is like when in Ephesians 2 the Apostle Paul claims that our salvation stemmed from the “kindness” of God.  A surprising way to put it.  When someone does you a kindness, it is usually a relatively small thing—they open the door for you, they let you go first in line at the buffet, they send you a thoughtful note at a moment when you needed a boost.  Good can be seen that way too.  “Be good today” a parent says as their child heads to the bus stop before school one day.  And by saying that the parent is not hoping the child will perform some moral breakthrough during the day or some heroic act of self-giving love.  No, it just means be polite.  Talk nicely with the other children.  Don’t do or say something mean.  Listen to the teacher and don’t talk back.  Be good.

It would seem that for any divine Being worthy of the title of God, being good is the lowest bar that needs to be cleared.  And yet perhaps when it comes to God, the quality of goodness gets magnified along with the Being who possesses that quality.  We want a good God.  We want a God who within God’s own self defines good, sets the standard for goodness on a cosmic scale.  We want this God to be the inspiring source of all subsequent human goodness.  Being good may turn out to be the bedrock on which all other morality or virtue is founded.  People who serve in noble ways, people who risk their lives for the sake of others not to mention those who sacrifice their lives for the good of others: none of that would come about from a person who is finally a bad or selfish person.  A person would need to be good on a fundamental level if they were ever likely to go on to behave in other virtuous ways.

Good people want to be kind people.  Good people want to be forgiving and gracious people.  Good people want to look for the good in others and treat them with respect as themselves bearing the same divine image we all share.  So also maybe God created the whole cosmos out of the goodness of the divine heart, a goodness that wanted to share divine Life and Love with a whole universe of creatures.  This same good God would be invested in salvaging that same creation when it went off the rails.  Perhaps it is a shorter leap from God’s being good to God’s being gracious than we think.

God is good.  That says more than we know most of the time.

But then in verse 5 we get the second big reason: God is faithful throughout all generations.  And yes, this is the Hebrew word chesed.  As we have noted so often in the past, this is a loaded Hebrew word that resists getting boiled down to a single English word (or a single word in most any language).  It is faithfulness but it is also lovingkindness, grace, mercy.  Chesed as a word is like an overfilled water balloon, bursting at the seams with positive and heartwarming resonances.

In Scripture and especially in the psalms, this fundamental disposition of Yahweh is the #1 reason God both receives praise and is worthy to receive praise and worship forever.  This is what kept God from scrapping the whole project of creation already in the Garden of Eden.  This is what made God decide that sending a Flood ever again was not going to be the way forward.  This is what caused God to covenant with Abram and what caused the Son of God to become incarnate of the Virgin Mary, humble himself, and go all the way to a bloody cross of sacrifice to achieve New Life for the entire universe.

Again, for all its concise brevity and its tight economy of words, Psalm 100 hits a bevy of theologically vital themes.  If there is hope for our lives, hope for this world, hope for something better even when times are bleak and it seems like all the wrong people are getting ahead in this world, then the goodness and the lovingkindness of God are why.

So yes, Psalm 100, yes: you are right to call us to enter God’s courts with thanksgiving and praise.  For God alone is worthy.

Illustration Idea

Scripture is suffused with pastoral imagery.  In the Old Testament the people of God are routinely compared to sheep and its leaders to shepherds.  This may have been in part because Israel’s first king, David, had grown up being a shepherd.  Moses has also spent 40 years shepherding his father-in-law’s flocks before transferring to become the shepherd of God’s people Israel to lead them out of Egypt and then for another 40 years in the wilderness.  Psalm 100 is one of many places where we are called the sheep of God’s flock and pasture.  And of course Jesus told parables about lost sheep and he himself being the Good Shepherd as well as the Gate to protect his flock.

Of course, thinking about sheep and shepherds is pretty foreign to most of us today.  How many of us have actually ever met a working shepherd?  Or touched a real sheep?  What’s more, in societies that prize individualism and personal achievement, people may bristle at the very idea that they are owned and led around by someone else.  Not a few people today would find that very concept and image insulting, offensive.

Yet biblically this is always presented in a positive light, as something that is good and that all things being equal should be desirable for us all.  Perhaps it takes the power of the Holy Spirit in our baptisms to make us understand this and in particular why recognizing Jesus as our Good Shepherd leads to a multitude of good things the likes of which we can scarcely imagine.