Morning Prayer: Tom Lyda Choral Amen Hymn of Gratitude *Let All Things Now Living* Witness of Scripture: 2 Corinthians 9: 6-12 Anthem *All Things Bright and Beautiful* John Rutter. Logos Choir & Chancel Choir Sermon *Essentials: Thanksblessing* David Spain
Recorded on November 17, 2024
If you have ever been a child, or helped raise a child as parent, guardian, grandparent, friend, church leader, then you may recall the wisdom of Proverbs – “Train up children in the way they are to go, and when they grow old, they will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22: 6). Manners are basic training for example—"Don’t hold your sister upside down…don’t smack your brother with noodles…take a deep breath rather than kick the cat…calling somebody a turkey is not a compliment.” Basic civilities that suggest people are higher functioning than animals.The starter set for human civility includes ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ ‘Please, another glass of milk… thank you for lunch.” No one is born knowing these essentials; we have to be taught.
According to Robert Morgan in his book Then Sings My Soul, an English preacher once said, “A grateful mind is a great mind,” and the Bible agrees. By Morgan’s calculation, there are 138 passages of Scripture on the subject of thanksgiving—“Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God through Christ…in everything, give thanks,” which is not to say give thanks for everything, but do everything in a spirit of gratitude.
Before that anonymous preacher said, ‘a grateful mind is a great mind,’ the apostle Paul wrote a letter to the church in Corinth—actually, two or three letters.The church in Corinth was quite a place—dynamic, diverse, challenging, spirited—a church in the nascent days of Christianity doing then what the church 2,000 years later is doing now—trying to figure out what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, as individuals and as a church. We dip into Paul’s letter at the point where he is encouraging the generosity of the Corinthian Church to give abundantly for those who are poor in Jerusalem.From Christianity’s earliest days—and certainly in the Jewish faith before Christianity—caring for the vulnerable and needy was essential in the faith. It still is today. Apparently the church in Corinth had been a little slow passing the offering plate for the poor, so Paul basically says when the roll is called of all the churches caring for those who were hurting, don’t let First Christian Corinth be left off the list.And they responded generously, after which Paul offered several important observations. “Think about the farmers—they sow many seeds and receive many crops. That’s the way God is, sowing abundantly in you so that from the harvest of your lives you may share cheerfully, abundantly with others. God has blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love, and we are very much like God when we do the same for others. Where does that generosity lead—to thanksgiving, to living with gratitude because acts of generosity lead to thanksgiving to God—not a tepid thank you but a cornucopia of thanks.” For Paul, the inability to give thanks suggests a crisis of faith; whereas healthy and vibrant faith is alive with gratitude to the Creator.Paul’s words are very wise—he blends a delightful casserole consisting of grace, blessing, and gratitude…thanksblessing in other words.
Gratitude…thanksgiving comes as antidote to a world tempted toward fear, grievance, and entitlement—has anyone noticed that toxic trifecta in life? It’s been around for a long time and can be exaggerated from time to time. “Be afraid, be very afraid,” and there are various real fears and threats; but when people are manipulated in their fears, when the security color is always deep red, then gratitude is arrested and suspicion rules. “How are you…well okay, some things could be better…well, guess that’s always true.” It’s the murmuring tradition which goes back at least to the our wandering ancestors in the wilderness—“well the manna was nice, and the quail was tasty but after awhile couldn’t we have a little variety in the diet?” Peter Gomes describes this as that ‘low grade grumbling fever, not outright war but an undercurrent of moaning and groaning…nothing worth causing a fuss about yet never quite settled.” (Strength for the Journey, p. 162) It is the fine art of not being satisfied, and gratitude is its casualty. And there is entitlement which tends to come from having too much already, or demanding too much, or expecting too much. Why be thankful—I’ve earned it, deserved it, worked for it. Sure, we work hard and put in the hours and perhaps reap the rewards, but does that mean we aren’t to be thankful? William Morris once wrote, “I’m tired of the fine art of unhappiness,” and poet Denise Levertov has written, “a passionate love of life must be quickened if we are to find the energy to stop the accelerating tumble towards annihilation.” (quoted in Stephen Shoemaker’s GodStories, p. 256)
We consider that gratitude, gift, blessing are closely related, perhaps inseparable.To be sure, blessing is very popular right now. Almost everyday someone will say to me “have a blessed day,” and that’s nice. It’s better than someone saying, ‘have a mediocre day,’ or ‘sin bravely,’ or as was popular 50 years ago, ‘have a nice day,’ accompanied by the smiley face on the bumper sticker. “Have a blessed day,” and that is nice; but it is also important to remember that when religious language morphs into pedestrian pleasantries, it can lose its power. In an age when social rhetoric and basic civility have become offensively coarse, it is vitally important for blessing and gratitude to maintain their sacred sensibilities. So, when people gather at a table, perhaps in 11 days at a Thanksgiving feast, someone might be asked to say grace, return thanks, or offer the blessing. It may be a formality, but it speaks to the sacred connection of grace, blessing, and gratitude.
We all know how demanding and distracting life can be…we all live life’s frenzy at some point and some live it at many points. A sense of life’s blessing, grace, and gratitude does not force its way into our lives…instead, it waits to be noticed. In her wonderful book An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor details the importance of awareness, of noticing the sacred and the holy that lives around us all the time. “You can start with anything you like, even a stick lying on the ground…did you make the stick? No, you did not. The stick has its own story. If you have time to figure out what kind of tree it came from, that would be a start to showing the stick some respect. It is only ‘a stick’ in the same way that you are ‘a human’…there is more to both of you than that…What purpose did the stick serve? Did a bird sit on it? Did it bear leaves that sheltered the ground from the hottest summer sun? At the very least it participated in the deep mystery of drawing water from the ground…Is the scent of sap still there…this is no less than the artery of the tree that you are holding in your hand…its tissue has come from the sun and from the earth.” Later, she writes, “I was glorifying in my aloneness when I came to a wash in the trail, where yesterday’s rain had deposited a fresh layer of silt. Looking down, I saw that it was really a guest book, signed with deer hooves, turkey feet, snail trails, and three paws of a racoon.I was hardly alone. I was in the middle of a parade, with life going ahead of me and more life coming along behind me to lay down its print next to mine.” (194-195. 202). I know, who has the time or the artistry of words to notice and express life the way she does. Yet, notice it or not, it is there waiting to be received and given as gift, blessing, gratitude—thanksblessing.
Now, to be sure there are expressions of thanks that are not really gratitude; instead, they are examples of outright arrogance. One time Jesus told a parable—it is so exaggerated in its detail as to be comedic, but its humor renders it no less true. The parable Jesus told was of two people who went to the temple to pray—one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. For all the ways Pharisees have been maligned (and some of them were insufferable stuffed shirts), they did take faith seriously and tried to live it in every detail of life. Tax collectors on the other hand, were generally never recipients of dinner invitations or greeting cards. Rome occupied a country and hired your neighbor to collect money for Caesar and his sycophants. But in this story Jesus tells, both are in the temple which is the first place you expect a Pharisee to be and the last place you expect a tax collector to be.As the story goes, when they pray the Pharisee offers thanks to God that he is not like that terrible tax collector, and then he enumerates his attributes which include how he eats and how he gives…he took his religion seriously. But something went seriously off the rails for him—his attitude became achievement and merit, not grace and gratitude. “Be thou my vision” had become “see now my goodness.” The life-turned in on itself leaves no room for gratitude. And, while not included in the parable but still relevant, we note that the tax collector does not pray, “Well, I’m no saint but thank God I am not a hypocrite like that Pharisee.” Faith as comparative mediocrity is not fertile ground for gratitude.
We know it is less than a perfect world, and there are always serious matters to address. Gratitude and thanksgiving are not license for denial and naivete. And yet at the risk of being utterly simplistic, it does seem that gift, blessing, and gratitude can fill the room with better oxygen. We marvel how Jesus thanked God for bread, sun, rain, the flowering meadows, the sea of Galilee. One of Jesus’ modern day unorthodox disciples, writer Anne Lamott, expresses well the spirit of a well-grounded gratitude. She writes, “ Gratitude runs the gamut from shaking your head and saying ‘Thanks, wow, I appreciate it so much,’ for your continued health, or a good day at work, or the first blooms of the daises in the public park, to saying ‘Thanks, that’s a relief,’ that it is not the transmission, or an abscess, or an audit notice from the IRS…I admit, sometimes this position of gratitude can be a bit of a stretch…we get hurt beyond any reasonable chance of healing.We are haunted by our failures and mortality; and yet the world keeps on spinning, and in our grief, rage and fear a few people keep on loving us and showing up…awful stuff happens, and beautiful stuff happens…in the face of everything, we slowly come through. We manage to make new constructs and baskets to hold what remains, and what has newly appeared. We come to know or reconnect with something rich and okay about ourselves and at some point, we cast
our eyes to the beautiful skies, above all we’re wallowing in, and we whisper, ‘thank you.’”
(Help, Thanks, Wow, pp. 46, 50 – 51) Train up children in the way they are to go…basic training—life: the essential thanksblessing.