Psalm 136:1 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Thanksgiving Wednesday, November 25, 2020 “For His Mercy Endure Forever”
Twenty-six times. I counted. I am not sure whether any of you were counting. I will even admit, I wasn’t totally sure how well it would go over, and how people would feel about saying the same phrase over and over for a total of twenty-six times in our worship service this evening: “For his mercy endures forever.” That is the Psalm. Psalm 136 is twenty-six verses, none of them particularly long, and all of them ending with the very same refrain, “For his mercy endures forever.” There is a lot that we don’t know about how exactly Psalms were used—the particulars of the music or the accompaniment, for example, and even the precise pronunciation of the Hebrew words as the ancients would have said them. But there is no mistaking the structure of this Psalm. The first verse is common to many Psalms: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. For his mercy endures forever.” But no other Psalm takes the last portion of the verse and repeats it again with every single verse that follows. It makes many assume that this Psalm would have been sung by antiphonal choirs, one choir on one side singing the changing, sometimes almost narrative portion, the first half of each verse and another choir on the other side singing the refrain again and again. We at least got a sense of that as we read it together responsively this evening. So, is it too much to repeat that line twenty-six times? Did you get an uneasy feeling somewhere around verse three or four wondering just how many times you would be asked to say it? Did you want at some point to just stop and say, “I think I get the picture; we don’t have to keep repeating ourselves”? I understand. We have certain attention spans and preferences and (yes, I need to mention it) sinful natures that don’t agree with so much repetition. But repetition itself is a message, isn’t it? It makes a point. It drives it home. This Psalm has a clearly enunciated focus that would be almost completely impossible to miss: “For his mercy endures forever.” And interspersed with those refrains are lines and verses that lay out a number of reminders of the mercy of God, specifically his mercy as he showed it to his Old Testament people. At first the Psalm addresses creation. It recounts how God made the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon. It reminds us of his wisdom and understanding. It reminds us that he created the world for his people and for their benefit. The sun rules the day. The moon rules the night. The cycle continues predictably and allows us to work and to rest and to depend on it and other cycles, like the seasons, that allow people to grow crops and raise animals. What mercy God shows all people in creating and preserving his incredible creation. What mercy he shows in giving people physical blessings. As we think about and as we celebrate a national holiday of Thanksgiving, I think this is what most people associate with that holiday. We celebrate in the late fall as a recognition of the harvest that has come in all over our country. We pause and count our blessings, and physical things are probably the blessings that come to mind most readily. What are you thankful for? I am thankful for food and clothing, my home and family, my friends, my toys, my money. And it is good to be thankful for those things. It is good to realize and acknowledge that all of those blessings come from God, a fact that is not recognized by many who celebrate this holiday. God created everything in the universe around us, the things that we see and notice and the things that we do not. He set the pattern of days and weeks and seasons and years for our benefit, the cycles of cold and heat, the moments for planting and for harvesting. He gives us the ability to work and earn a living. He gives us the wisdom and the talents that we use in our lives and livelihoods and relationships. We have much to be thankful for. Having some sort of warm feeling about thankfulness and appreciating what we have is not the same as thanking the Lord and Creator of the universe for the blessings that he has given us. That’s what we intend to do this Thanksgiving. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. For his mercy endures forever.” Another section of Psalm 136 speaks about the history of God’s people, Israel. Specifically, it is a recounting of how God brought them out of slavery in Egypt and ultimately gave them their own land, a land that centuries earlier he had promised to give to them. It recounts God striking down the Egyptian firstborn children, the last of ten plagues. It revisits the Red Sea that was divided in two for the people to walk through as they escaped Pharaoh, Egypt’s ruler, and his army. It recites how the people traveled through the wilderness, defeating kings
who opposed them, and came safely to the new land. It talks about God rescuing his people and giving them safety. But maybe you noticed that some of these verses sound a little strange. “To him who struck Egypt by killing their firstborn, For his mercy endures forever.” “To him who made his people travel through the wilderness-For his mercy endures forever.” These were challenging, even gruesome times. Yes, we understand that the whole story is a good news story about recue, but the details sometimes seem at odds with the refrain about God’s forever-enduring mercy. Or say it another way: if God’s mercy endures forever, why were his people slaves in the first place? Why the wanderings in the wilderness? Why the difficulties and challenges? Take an example from another of our readings also: why did God allow the ten men to suffer from leprosy in the first place (Luke 17:11-19)? Well, the fact of the matter is that they, and we, because of sin, deserve far worse. Every difficult time, every unfair situation, every unreasonable circumstance, every challenge that we face can be traced back to sin as its cause. Now, in some cases it may be clear that the pain is a result of our own sin. Sometimes we suffer because of the wrong other people have done. Sometimes we can’t even trace the particular origin or cause of the pain, it’s just from sin in general, the fact that we live in a sinful world. Sin, including our own, has earned and deserved death and destruction and hell, not to mention suffering and pain right now. The fact that God rescues us from any of it is a testament to his mercy and his love for us. And that mercy, as you said 26 times, endures forever. In other words, there is much more to it than providing physical blessings like food and drink, house and home, health, wealth, or happiness. None of those blessings last forever, but God’s mercy endures forever. God gives us spiritual blessings. He sent his Son to die for us and to live again. He forgives our sins. He gives us eternal life in heaven with him. He blesses us in ways that do last forever. Our Psalm says, “Who remembered us in our low condition…and tore us out of the hands of our oppressors. For his mercy endures forever.” While that certainly was true of God’s Old Testament people, it is also true of us. God has torn us out of the hands of the devil and sin and even death. It’s not because we earned it or deserved it. It is only because of his great mercy and love. His mercy endures forever. And so we give thanks. With the refrain echoing throughout the Psalm, the Psalm both begins and ends with an exhortation to give thanks. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good…Give thanks to the God of the heavens.” That is why we gather together this evening. That is why we as Christians celebrate Thanksgiving Day in a way that is so much more meaningful than those who do not know the God of the heavens. Give thanks to him. Sing his praises. Give your offerings in response to his love and mercy. Tell about the wonderful things he has done. Be like the one leper out of ten. Do you think the other nine were happy? Of course they were; they were cleansed, too. Do you think they appreciated what Jesus had done? Of course they did. But they didn’t fall on their faces at the feet of the one who had shown them mercy. But the one, the Samaritan, did. His faith moved him to glorify God, to give thanks. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. For his mercy endures forever.” This may well be an unusual Thanksgiving for you. It is an unusual Thanksgiving for many. We are hearing warnings about gathering together, perhaps in the way that you are accustomed to. Maybe you are worried about friends and loved ones. Maybe you lost a loved once since last Thanksgiving. Maybe you aren’t worried, but you just don’t know what to think or what to do. It doesn’t sound like the ideal Thanksgiving. It doesn’t sound like the ideal time to say “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. For his mercy endures forever.” That is exactly what makes it an ideal time to do exactly that. God’s mercy has not promised that every Thanksgiving will be happy or normal or easy. It has not promised that suffering or pain will disappear in this life. It has not promised that death will not bother or frustrate or annoy us or make us sad for now. God’s mercy has given us all we need. It has rescued us from our enemies, as certainly as it rescued Israel from Egyptian slavery and the Samaritan man from leprosy. God’s mercy has promised us that one day our suffering will end, our pain will cease, and our uncertainty will disappear. God’s mercy has assured us that the perfect joy of heaven will never end. It has given us every reason to give thanks. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. For his mercy endures forever.”