This is the second of a two-part blog series , “A Four-Week Stewardship Sermon Series on Ps. 50:14..” The sermon series is titled “To Know God Is to Thank God.”
Psalm 50:14: “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and make good your vows to the Most High.”
Week One: Offer to God
Week Two: A Sacrifice of Thanksgiving
Week Three: Make Good Your Vows
Week Four: To the Most High
Last week, I discussed the first two weeks’ themes. To recap, Psalm 50 is a Festival psalm that may have been composed for the Feast of Booths or Sukkot. This festival celebrates the harvest safely ingathered (described in the Book of Ruth). Whether composed for this or another festival occasion, God demands (Ex. 23:14-17) that three times a year the people are to celebrate, and when they appear before God should not arrive without something to give.
I know a power-couple with the highest “Type-A” personalities I’ve ever known. Super-smart, organized, and driven, they speed through their days getting more done in a month than most of us do in two years.
That is, until one member of the couple, in their early forties at the time, got cancer.
And it was a scary, catch-it-late, “don’t know whether you’ll make it” kind of cancer.
Surgeries, chemo, and radiation ensued for months.
And thank God, it worked! He lives to this day.
After his recovery, he was a changed man. More so, they were a changed couple.
Their Type-A-driven pace had crashed into the cement wall of their mortality: life and time is limited, even if you’re young.
It caused them to reevaluate: was working at a breakneck pace really the way God wanted them to spend it?
Grateful beyond measure for their second chance, they slowed down. They divested themselves of many of their business interests to spend more time together. They traveled with their daughter. Their once-a-year obligatory family phone calls became regular connections.
In short, they stopped and smelled the delicious, poignant, technicolor scent of roses—and vowed they would never be so busy again.
This shift from their former high-octane, Type-A lifestyle to a much slower one (maybe down around a Type-H?) lasted about a year. Maybe two.
With cancer check-ups revealing no recurrences, health stabilized, and mortality again relegated to the theoretical instead of the inevitable, their pace intensified back to pre-cancer levels.
When confronted by a worried family member about their “vow” never to be so busy again, the couple could only smile sheepishly and concede, “I know, I know….”
Thanksgiving can be intense in the immediate aftermath of a crisis.
Receiving a reprieve from the impending doom of loss of life, limb, or loved one, and filled with relief and gratitude, a near brush propels us to change our lives for the better.
This gratitude is real. It’s bone, flesh, and gasping-for-air visceral.
Authentic as it is, it may not last because that over-the-top gratitude is too intense to embody at all times and in all places. Eventually the endorphins and adrenaline settle back to manageable levels.
However, that’s not the same thing as taking those gifts for granted.
Nor is it inevitable that we return to our old lives and habits that were harmful to ourselves or others, or to subordinating others’ needs to our own.
Instead, making good our vows to the Most High means to live a life of “appreciative integrity.”
Various English translations of Psalm 50:14 translate “make good” as “perform,” “fulfill,” or “pay.”
It indicates the fulfillment of our side of the relationship in response to God’s constancy to fulfill God’s side.
It reminds me of a different couple than the one alluded to above who sets aside time every six weeks or so to have a “house meeting.”
At that time they go over their agreed divisions of household duties: what’s working, what isn’t, what needs to be adjusted?
By relegating this review to their meeting of two, they aren’t managing (and unintentionally mismanaging) their expectations about the type and quality of duties by the other for the running of their household.
In so doing, it frees them to do the work that they are truly intended to do: love and serve each other, God, and their neighbors.
Think of these thrice-yearly Hebrew festivals as “house meetings.” What did God vow? The covenant. What did the people vow? To love the Lord their God alone with their whole beings.
By reviewing their mutual vows they were freed to do what they were meant to do: love and serve God, each other, and their neighbors.
But without a regular review of agreed-upon vows, it’s too easy to let the relationship drift from actual to theoretical.
Week Three: Make Good Your Vows
Make this third sermon in the series about vows.
Summarize the series to this point.
Why are vows important? Do vows really carry any weight in our modern culture? If so, is it important to review them? Why?
What are God’s vows to God’s people? God doesn’t have to keep them, so why does God? What does keeping God’s vows say about God’s character? What would happen to our relationship if God didn’t?
What are our vows to God and to one another as Christians? Consider our baptismal vows.
What does it mean to make good on them? What does it say about our character as a people and as individuals when we keep them? When we break them?
How does God respond when we keep our vows? When we break them?
Conclude: Our relationships with God and each other are as solid as our vows.
Week Four: To the Most High
Let this final sermon in the series focus on appreciative integrity.
Appreciative integrity means to offer an outward expression of thanks that is commensurate with the gratitude in our hearts.
To be integrated is to be whole. There’s a congruence of mind, body, and spirit. All the parts are connected as one.
To be dis-integrated is to be pulled apart. Mind, body, or spirit work separately, disconnected one from the other. There is a lack of cohesion between what we believe and say and what we do.
Hence appreciative integrity means to give back to God out of sheer thankfulness; not because God needs what we have to offer, but because our gratitude is so acute that we can’t hold it in; the gratitude must be released with a heart-felt expression lest it cripple our spirits!
We may not be able or expected to maintain ebullient gratitude, but noticing, paying attention, and giving God thanks for all that we have and all that we are can be a way of life.
Hold up a bible.
Ask people to name some of their favorite characters and stories.
Now ask them to name some of the people who made sure they knew those stories. Consider family members, Sunday School teachers, friends, and other parishioners.
Next, ask them to consider how many generations of people told these bible stories to ensure those stories reached their ears?
How many of them risked their lives to ensure someone knew those stories so they could pass them on before they died out for lack of sharing?
How many people of faith did it take for them (your listeners) to receive these stories?
And what hand did they (your listeners) have in making sure those stories reached their ears? Answer? None.
Describe appreciative integrity.
What appreciative integrity of their time, gifts, and finances would be a genuine expression of the gratitude in their hearts to ensure others hear these stories after them?
Finally, summarize the entire series concluding with, “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and make good your vows to the Most High.”