Title: An Appropriate Response
Date: 2007-11-18
Reference: I Chronicles 16: 7-12; 28-34
Santa has been at the Mall of America all last week. Christmas decorations are already up in our city. Stores are playing Christmas Music. What about Thanksgiving? Coming between Halloween and Christmas, Thanksgiving can get lost in our lives as quickly as it does in our stores. It’s our choice. Thanksgiving can be an intrusive interruption or a special time of Thanks leading to service.
The act of giving thanks is so important. A wise man once said: “If the only prayer you ever say in your life is thank you, that would suffice.” Thanksgiving is so much more than a bountiful feast. This Summer we hope to visit the restored village at Plymouth Massachusetts where the Pilgrims struggled through a devastating Winter. During that first bleak Winter in a new world, these hardy adventurers buried almost half of their friends on Cole’s Hill, and at any one time, only six or seven persons were well enough to attend to the needs of the sick and bury the dead.
Yet in 1621, at the end of the first harvest season in a new and strange land they enthusiastically untied in a festival of Thanksgiving. Years later in 1863 during a terrible Civil War President Lincoln issued a proclamation of Thanksgiving. Finally in 1941, as another War approached Congress made Thanksgiving a National Holiday.
This special day calls us to look back and remember our precious heritage with genuine gratitude. Thanksgiving is rooted in our faith tradition. Three thousand years ago King David called for a time of thanksgiving. David’s proclamation was included in today’s Scripture reading.
The day was set aside to recognize God’s goodness and to express gratitude for the blessings the people of Israel had so generously received from God.
We know that in very good times and in more difficult times we have been recipients of an abundance of blessings from God. Our response must always be one of gratitude.
Someone sent me a Thanksgiving Parable entitled “An Attitude of Gratitude.” A man dreamt he went to heaven and was being shown around. The first stop was a large workroom filled with angels, the receiving section. Here all petitions said to God in prayer were received and sorted. The next section was also very busy, the packaging and delivery section. Here the graces and blessings the people asked for are processed and delivered to the living persons who asked for them. There were many angels working in the first two sections because of the large number of requests and the large number of blessings sent back to earth. Finally they reached a very small station. Only a few angels worked here. This is the Acknowledgment Section. As hard as it is to believe, many persons after receiving the blessings they asked for, don’t bother to send back an Acknowledgment. Few stop to thank God. The Southland of America is experiencing a terrible time of drought. In Georgia, this last week, the Gov. Sunny Purdue, a person I admire very much called for a time of prayer. He called people to intentionally pray to God asking for relief. And to everyone’s amazement the rain came. Rather than thanking God one group challenged the right of people to pray on the capitol steps. Columns were written noting how naive it was to believe the prayers of the people had anything to do with the coming of the rain. Why is it so hard to give God credit and to thank God? Today we say: Attention Acknowledgment Department.Thank You Lord. We are thankful for all of life’s blessings. Thankful for trouble that passed us by. One day this last week I was dropping my son off at school. I took my eyes off the road for just a brief second and almost smacked the car in front of me. I am grateful I was spared that experience.
Gratitude is the first born child of Grace. Gratitude is the appropriate response of the blessed. So appropriate that it’s absence surprises God. Once God was listing his grievances with the people of Israel. He said: “In addition to all your other faults, you are thankless.” This was a serious lapse on the part of the people noticed by God. On one occasion Jesus healed ten men of leprosy. These ten men were literally given their lives back to them. They were healed. They were no longer shunned. They were able to return home and to work. Only one of the men thought to come back and thank Jesus, and he was a foreigner. This blatant ingratitude hurt, shocked, and surprised Jesus. Jesus said: “I healed ten men. Where are the other nine? Only this foreigner came back to say thank you.
I love this Thanksgiving Holiday. I love everything about it, and so it bothers me to skip past it and go straight to Christmas. I know Thanksgiving must be more of an attitude than an observance. More of a way of life than a day set apart. More of a habit than a holiday. More of a spirit of gratitude than a time for feasting. I also believe Thanksgiving, in order to be genuine must take some concrete form. This is especially true in terms of God and our relationship with Him. Stewardship and Thanksgiving are always linked together.
We believe the giving of our time, tithes, talents and abilities to help others are all expressions of our gratitude.
We acknowledge our gifts and that is very important. And then we seek to become channels of blessing sharing our good fortune with others around us. God gave us this gift of life. But we were not created just to consume resources to eat, breathe, and take up space. God designed us to make a difference with life. Many best selling books offer advice on how to get the most out of life. But that’s not really the reason God created us. We were created to add to life on earth not just take from it. God is at work in the world and God wants each of us to join Him. This assignment is called mission. God’s plan is that we have a ministry in the church and a mission in the world. Our ministry is our service to others in the church. For instance this morning, at four a.m. while we were snug in our warm beds, a crew was already in the church kitchen preparing the meal we will all enjoy later this morning. They have been there all morning because they love God. They are grateful to God. And they want to serve God and others in ministry. Our mission is our grateful service to the world around us. We have just taken up an offering to be used in our mission in the world.
God put each of us on earth to make a lasting contribution. The Bible says: “God made us what we are and long ago God planned that we should spend our lives in helping others.” (EPH.2) I sometimes wonder what could happen if just 10% of Christians in the world, in our church, were to get serious about our role as servants. Imagine all the good that could be done.
The late Pope John Paul II used to say: “We are in this together. And none are so poor that they have nothing to give.and none are so rich that they have nothing to receive.”
More often than not the theme of Thanksgiving is guilt. We are made to feel guilty because we are not more thankful to God for all of our blessings seen and unseen. We are told of people who have far less than we enjoy and who seem to be much more thankful than we are. But the naked truth is: we aren’t as grateful as we could be and should be. God has given so much.
As we look at our lives we see God’s blessings everywhere. We thank God for experiences of each day we live. For the traditions and customs of our home. For books, pictures, and small possessions. For work attempted and achieved. For trees, grass, flowers, clouds, hills mountain streams. The gift of laughter and music. For obscure and humble saints who were so gladly. For the image of Christ in ordinary people. For the gift of faith which alone makes hope possible. We forget to acknowledge our blessings. The victim of our forgetfulness is the source of our blessings.God who makes thanksgiving possible. Again because we are created in the image of a giving God, the only way we can find completeness is to become grateful givers ourselves. Our giving and service are always an act of love and gratitude.
We gather to give thanks. An important part of this holiday is giving. Sharing what we have been blessed with. We must move past our entitlement mentality. We are not entitled to anything. Rather we are called to be very grateful recipients of all God has provided.
We are also called to be ready, willing, and able to share these blessings with the world around us. The Bible instructs clearly: “Be ready. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” (Heb. 13:16)We should give to God and to others as God has given to us, with joy and with generosity.
Thanksgiving is Thanks living. The best way to show our thanks, to acknowledge our blessings is by the way we walk. One deed, one kind word, is worth much more than countless good intentions.
God has given each of us 86,400 seconds this day. May we be intentional in using a few of them to say Thanks.
