Sermon of the Week:
What’s Next?
A sermon preached for The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on November 21, 2021.
Special Music: Simple Things
Hymns: We Praise You, O God
Now Thank We All our God
Keywords: Gratitude, Guilt, Anxiety, Thanksgiving. #pcusa
Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
1 Timothy 2:1-7
and Matthew 6:25:33
Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-733469.
All rights reserved.
It came as a bit of surprise to me when I read the gospel lesson
commended for this year’s Thanksgiving reflection.
This reading before us today from Matthew.
Here it is, Thanksgiving week.
I expected to see something about giving thanks, about GRATITUDE.
Instead, we get the Sermon on the Mount,
and Jesus’ always challenging words,
“Don’t Worry!” “Don’t be anxious!”
“Can any of you by worrying
add a single hour to your span of life?”
What does that have to do with turkey and pumpkin pie?
Well, not so much, you might argue.
I’m betting that you might have heard a Thanksgiving sermon
that goes something like this:
we are blessed, in so many ways,
with material things,
with health, and security,
loving friends and family;
therefore we should give thanks to God for all these blessings,
when so many are not as lucky;
and we should share what we’ve been given with others.
Nothing in there, not really, about anxiety, or worry.
Nothing about our ability or inability to actually be thankful.
In other words, as I’ve heard it expressed,
a thanksgiving sermon
should be about this:
thanksgiving really just equals “thanks” plus “giving.”
Now, I’ve preached that sermon, or some variation thereof, myself.
And all of those things are true:
we are truly blessed, my goodness,
so fortunate are we,
especially here in the United States.
We should give thanks to God for those blessings,
and we should share
what we’ve been given with others.
No question in my mind about that.
I’m just not sure that’s what true “thanksgiving” is about, though,
or what Thanksgiving is for.
I can’t help but hear, and cringe at, all those “SHOULDS”.
What we SHOULD feel. What we SHOULD do. How we SHOULD respond.
There’s a lot of guilt in there.
Somehow, being told what I should do,
makes me feel a bit guilty,
rather resentful, more than a little recalcitrant.
Am I living up to what God wants of me?
What if I am having trouble, this year, finding this gratitude?
Yes, I know I’m fortunate, and surrounded by the bounty of a generous God
But it has been hard,
There’s been so much loss
My neighbors have disappointed me so
And I am tired…
What then? What’s next? Gratitude? Really?
///
Here’s the thing: nothing in church is about guilt.
Nothing: other than God’s forgiveness and God freeing us from it.
Thanksgiving is no different.
I don’t believe that thanksgiving, or as I would call it,
the spiritual practice of gratitude,
is just something we “should” do.
Gratitude is something we “get to” do.
Practicing gratitude, I believe, is one of the most helpful and profound ways
of deepening our relationship with God,
of recognizing God’s presence and activity in our life.
of growing our intimacy with God,
of not allowing our anxieties and our worries to cripple us
from the work we actually need to be about.
And truly,
This is PARTICULARLY important during days like these
Days of anxiety and worry and discord…
Have you felt it, all around you?
I have.
People who are worried about our future, or their safety,
for the very fabric of our communities.
There will be plenty of sermons to come about
How we as people of faith
can spread God’s love and God’s concern for justice
During days like these
And Advent is all about God’s response
To all of that
deep within us…
But Today: Here’s the good news:
We’re INVITED to practice gratitude,
To give it a go,
not because it makes God feel good to be thanked
but because it is GOOD for US, and good for the world.
It transforms us.
It can heal us.
And it prepares us for the work of being God’s people.
///
John Buchanan, the now retired
Pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago,
talked about the importance of Gratitude this way:[i]
Gratitude is, after all, at the very heart of our faith,
the fundamental Christian emotion.
Gratitude, the theologians have always said,
is the basic human RESPONSE
to the goodness and mercy of God
and to grace,
[which is] God’s undeserved and unconditional love.
At the heart of Christian experience and teaching, Buchanan says
is not guilt,
as we have sometimes been taught;
not obligation,
as we occasionally conclude and teach;
but gratitude, pure and simple
—gratitude for God’s grace,
gratitude because all of life, all of it,
is a gift that we did not earn
but [a gift that we] were given.
///
Fair enough.
But how do we get there?
How do we practice Gratitude?
How do we nurture thankfulness, even in these days?
How do we get there without having all those SHOULDs placed upon us?
///
The more I thought about this passage from Matthew,
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life….
the more I realized
how much Jesus’ words really do have to do with thanksgiving.
Let me offer two propositions.
The first is this:
Nothing prevents thanksgiving more than anxiety.
When we have anxious hearts, we find it extremely difficult to be thankful.
I’m not talking here about depression, about mental illness
Which demands compassion and medical care and our pastoral care,
And I’m not talking about our honest-to-goodness societal problems
That we all can work on with the cool light of reason and divine love for all.
And I’m not talking about acute grief, either.
God walks with us through that.
God grieves alongside us.
Jesus wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus.
Anxiety, on the other hand, is worry without focus, right,
A fear that in the end it will all go wrong.
I’m talking about our tendency to obsess over everyday worries.
Aches and Pains and Budgets and Relationships. Slights and snubs.
We all can slip into this tendency.
But I’ve noticed that
When we are only preoccupied with what is disturbing us,
It is hard to note the good things around us, too.
It is harder to be thankful.
Someone once said:
“Worry is a species of myopia—nearsightedness.”
When we are worried about these things,
we can’t SEE anything
except THE THING that worries us.
We can’t SEE the big picture.
Indeed, anxiety becomes a vicious cycle for us.
How much truth there is in that old Peanuts cartoon
that shows Charlie Brown looking very grim?
Linus says, “You look kinda depressed.”
“Well,” Charlie Brown replies, “I worry about school a lot.”
Then Charlie adds, “I worry about my worrying so much about school.”
Then, in the final frame
as he and Linus sit together on a log,
Charlie makes a final observation:
“Even my anxieties have anxieties.”
That’s often the way it is with us, isn’t it?
We get so caught up in all the problems of life,
and each one seems to lead to another until we are overwhelmed.
Exhausted. Deflated.
I heard a wonderful story,
first told by Eugene Kennedy,
professor Emeritus of Psychology at Loyola University in Chicago.
Many years ago, there apparently was
a nation-wide government-shutdown in Italy.
One result was that mail began to pile up in all the Italian post offices.[ii]
In one particular central post office,
it was so bad that you couldn’t even walk through the building.
Papers and Packages were stacked up wall to wall.
Something had to be done!
So the postmaster gave the order.
He called a scrap paper company:
They came and carted it all away.
Every last scrap, GONE, to the recycling bin.
Now many of us would find that a TERRIBLE solution!
What about all the important stuff that might have been there?
The Italians, however, had a different view.
They have a great word: ARRANGIARSI (ARRANG-I-ARE-SI).
It means something like, “You do the best you can.”
Oh, sure, there were bills that didn’t get delivered,
and payments that didn’t get made.
There was bad news that didn’t get conveyed,
and junk mail that never got to its eager recipient.
The sad thing is that there might have been poignant notes not conveyed
Important contracts not delivered.
The point, though, for Professor Kennedy, when he told this story
is that the world didn’t fall apart
because all those very important pieces of paper got hauled away.
Italy survived. People survived.
The important documents, many of them, recreated.
Accommodations were made for the national strike.
Worrying about all that mail wouldn’t have gotten you anywhere…
///
There are some big things for us to work on in our land.
That is true.
And none of this is about that.
Truth be told, most of us sweat the small stuff.
The sort of things that turn out to be unimportant in the big scheme of things.
Reformer Martin Luther thought through these things, himself.
In his small catechism, he mentions the following:
“God provides me with food and clothing,
home and family, daily work, and all I need from day to day.
God also protects me in time of danger
and guards me from every evil.”
If we REALLY believe that, then what do we have to worry about?
Focus on the worries, and you simply won’t be able to see the big picture.
And so you’ll find it hard to be thankful,
because nothing prevents thanksgiving like anxiety.
And since we’re talking about Luther,
there is this Luther quote, one of my favorites:
“While I drink my little glass of Wittenberg beer,” Luther said,
“the gospel runs its course.”
What he meant was simply that God is in control.
The course of the gospel didn’t depend on Luther doing everything right,
or working 24 hours a day, or taking care of every detail.
That was all in God’s hands.
Luther could do his work, we must do our work, and there is work to do!
But know that all that is in God’s hands
will be handled just fine.
///
So that’s the first proposition:
Nothing prevents thanksgiving quite like anxiety.
Here’s the other: Nothing tempers anxiety quite like thanksgiving.
Think about that for a minute:
When we have grateful hearts, when we GET TO practice gratitude,
we have the very best immunization against anxiety and fear.
When we can take what comes in stride
And set about the business of celebrating our gifts and using them
In ways that feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted
Challenge the unjust, welcome the stranger
When we get to do THAT…how much more will we have to celebrate!
Nothing tempers anxiety quite like thanksgiving.
You can see this in the very origins of this national holiday of ours.
There are many versions of how we
first began to celebrate Thanksgiving as a national holiday,
complex and conflicted though it may be,
but I’ve always liked this description by G.B.F. Hallock:[iii]
When the New England colonies were first planted,
the settlers endured many privations and difficulties
and used constantly to lay their distresses before God
in days of fasting and prayer.
Continual meditation on such topics tended
to make them gloomy and discontented,
and disposed to return home.
At last, when it was proposed to appoint still ANOTHER day
of penitence and humiliation,
a common-sense old colonist said
he thought they had brooded over
their misfortunes quite long enough,
and that it seemed high time that they should remember
all God’s mercies to them…
He proposed, therefore, that instead of a fast,
they should keep a FEAST of thanksgiving.
And FEAST and CELEBRATE and offer THANKS they did.
When you can focus on what wonderful blessings God has given you,
then it is hard to find room for anxiety.
When your heart is full of gratitude, then there simply less room for worry.
///
Nothing tempers anxiety quite like thanksgiving.
That’s a message we can all take to heart today:
Thanksgiving enables us to bear all things, endure all things, hope all things.
Gratitude is a gift from God, a way of life.
Did you ever think of it in that way—that gratitude in itself is a blessing?
Something God offers us, for our good, if we just make room for it in our lives?
Indeed, it is one of the greatest of God’s blessings,
because when God grants us grateful hearts,
then God grants us at least a little reprieve
from anxiety and worry.
When God gives us grateful hearts,
we get to be thankful for everything God provides.
Poet George Herbert put it rather beautifully:[iv]
Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more—a grateful heart:
…
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart
whose Pulse
may be Thy praise.
///
This letter to Timothy suggests one place to start all of this
Is with the simple act of Prayer.
At its core, Prayer is a posture.
I don’t mean that literally.
It’s not about folding your hands or
Raising them up to the rafters.
It is a posture of turning our spirit toward God.
Prayer is seeking to be open to God’s presence.
It is opening a line of communication, connection,
through our words and feelings about life.
First of all, then…says Timothy
I urge you to pray for everyone.
Supplication. Intercession. Thanksgiving.
Did you hear that?
Lift up everyone,
Yes those in high places, for sure,
But for everyone, yourself, your family, your friends, your neighbor,
That guy that mows the lawn at 9 in the evening or 6 in the morning
The classmate that doesn’t like you
The coworker that wronged you
The friend that you said something hurtful to
The family member who you fear has subscribed to conspiracy theories
The person you don’t talk to no more
Prayers made for everyone.
God can handle those prayers.
Along with your prayers, my prayers, of grief, of anger, of worry.
God can handle those prayers
And can help us work it out
Trust that God’s got this
That we can be, nevertheless,
agents of good, of truth, of love
In this brokenhearted world…
That we can see God’s kingdom coming
And smile
And know that God’s world is all about the healing of the world…
And we,
We get to be a part of that.
Alleluia.
Pray, says Timothy.
For everyone.
And you can find thanksgiving there
Hope, and possibility.
///
On this November Sunday morning,
for gifts of life, of family, natural or chosen,
gifts of church, of community, of friendship,
the gift of falling leaves,
of quiet reflection, of loud singing,
of delight, of wonder,
of prayer, of peace, of grace, of hope, of faith,
the gift of those who cry for justice,
and who work to put communities that are falling apart back together again…
we have SO MUCH to be thankful for.
So many signs of God’s kingdom bursting through our ordinary
If only we have eyes to see it
And to make it our own,
And then to share it in love.
May we keep space in our hearts for gratitude
Knowing that it opens within us an awareness of so much more going on
An awareness that God holds us close, and loves us fiercely
With a love that will never let us go.
And may that awareness temper our worries
So we can live and love fully in return.
May it be so.
Amen.
——
Image: Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Thankful Poor, 1894.
[i] From his sermon “Thanksgiving,” delivered at Fourth Presbyterian Church on November 21, 2004.
[ii] Citation for this story has been lost.
[iii] From Christian Work: Illustrated Family Newspaper, Volume 57, November 15, 1894.
[iv] https://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/Gratefulnesse.html
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