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Praise the Lord. I will praise the Lord. I will praise the Lord all my life. I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. Don’t put your trust in human leaders. Don’t trust in people who can’t save you. When they die, they return to the ground. On that day their plans come to nothing. Blessed are those who depend on the God of Jacob for help. Blessed are those who put their hope in the Lord their God! The Lord rules forever. The God of Zion will rule for all time to come. Praise the Lord (Psalm 146:1-5, 10).

Yesterday, Pastor Anthony offered us a wonderful meditation, A Litany of Praise, based on Psalm 145. Today’s psalm follows a similar theme. In fact, this theme, “offering praise to God”, rounds out the psalter. The final six psalms are a huge exclamation mark. As Eugene Peterson frequently told us, the psalms must shape our lives. We must live them. Only living them, can we truly begin to understand them.

So, do something crazy, like, “Praise the Lord!”

Pastor Anthony included these words, “God’s people are constantly doing this work of telling out the faith to one another because God remains faithfully present and active in new ways in our lives. Through this simple act of witnessing in response to what God has done: the faith is passed on. So, how will you join this litany of praise that passes on the faith? What story of God’s praise do you have to share? How will you tell it out to the next generation?”

It seems to me that we ought to use the same kind of language when speaking of evangelism. I’m not sure if this word ever had good resonance within the church. For most of us, it just sounds scary. One of the reasons we fear evangelism (and any sermon on it) is that we think of it as separate from the rest of the Christian life, from the rest of our faith. We go on retreats in order to learn how to do it right. In my first congregation, we paid a some folks to come for a weekend to train us in evangelism. They were quite unsuccessful, in that, no one joined the church because we were better evangelists.

Many of us feel woefully ungifted in this work; moreover, we feel mighty guilty for not having racked up a list of converts. And there in lies our great difficulty. Evangelism is seen as Christian work. It’s a manner of assessing our success at being Christian. The more converts, the better we are. In the end, we leave it to the experts and retreat into our Christian ghettos.

I don’t think there is merit in such formulas, or such guilt. They are rooted in the assumption that somehow, we need to convince people to become Christians, to somehow prove that the Christian religion is better than all others. This seems to be rather misguided. There is no injunction in scripture to do such a thing. Rather, Psalm 146’s, “Praise the Lord”, echoes throughout Scripture.

When a church is a gathering of people who begin and end their days with praising God, and doing it again in between, evangelism occurs naturally. In such a setting, techniques, and clever strategies for marketing the church do not have to be taught. Rather, individuals, like the psalmist, communicate the message of God's kingdom with their very lives. They never cease communicating this message, even when tragedy strikes (as it inevitably does) or boredom afflicts. People who genuinely praise God while they are hurting are remarkably good witnesses to God.

Evangelism is a weird word which is not found in the Bible. In the good Book, we are told to be witnesses, to tell the stories of God in our lives. When the word evangel does appear in the Bible, it connotates the telling of good news. Like the women, telling the male disciples that Jesus was risen. That is all.

No one really wants to talk about the 2022 season of the Hamilton Tiger Cats. There is nothing good to tell. But what if, instead of playing their usual dismal games during the playoffs, they had won game after game until they hoisted the Grey Cup. Then people would want to talk. Fans would love to tell others about the season, especially those last games. They would not need to convince others that the Ti-Cats had become a great team in the end, the Cup would tell the story.

The same is true in the Christian life. Telling the stories of God saving us and others is what the Bible tells us to do. We don’t have to do the convincing. We can leave that up to God. As the psalmist says, “Blessed are those who put their hope in the Lord their God!” This is also true in witnessing. We don’t have to make converts. The Holy Spirit does that. Praise the Lord!