Psalms 100:1-2

Three verbs open this psalm and every one of them is loud. Shout, serve, come before him with singing. There is nothing private here.

That is a corrective worth noticing, because most people's instinct about worship is that it is interior — a matter of the heart, and therefore properly quiet. This psalm assumes a crowd, a building, a noise, and bodies going somewhere. It was written for people physically walking into a courtyard.

And the address is not to the faithful few. All you lands — the whole earth, everyone. A psalm sung at the Jerusalem temple, by one nation, addressed to the entire world as though the invitation had never been restricted.

Gladness is the word in the middle, and it is attached to the least glamorous verb. Serve Yahweh with gladness. Serving is work. It is the ordinary, repetitive, unremarkable part — and the psalm asks for gladness there rather than only at the shouting.

The reason arrives two verses later: he made us and we are his, and his loving kindness endures forever. The joy is not worked up on the way in. It is a response to something already established about who is inside.

And the heading in most Hebrew texts is for the thank offering — a specific sacrifice, brought voluntarily, by someone who wanted to and did not have to.