11-20-16-sermon-st-pauls-thanksgiving.md

Church

Sun, Nov 20, 2016 St. Paul’s

lectionary

• make us good stewards
• provide for us
• a wandering Aramean was my ancestor
• rejoice in the Lord always
• whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
• I am the bread of life

What we “ought” to do

At a young age I remember being taught that I ought to be grateful – for any number of things. I ought to write thank you notes. I ought to appreciate all that my parents – or teachers – or ?? did for me.

For the most part I don’t think it worked very well.

On the other hand, I am curious to figure out when did I learn actually become grateful? At what point did I exercise gratitude?

Being grateful

It had to be connected with receiving a gift and knowing that I didn’t somehow deserve it. Had earned it or it belonged to me.

When I got good grades I figured I had worked for them. When I got them without working for them – English honors in senior year – I just figured it was something like good luck.

Being lucky isn’t really related to gratitude.

Possibly it was when my first born was raised above our heads by the delivering physician and he asked me what his name was? I cried uncontrollably.

Perhaps it was a little earlier when I was rock climbing and fell. I was caught:

• my friend held the rope
• the piton held in the rock
• the rope held

Perhaps it was the day I received a cash gift at seminary. Someone had known that our family was in need of money, perhaps because of the birth of our second child, I don’t remember. But I can still vividly remember the moment I opened the unmarked envelope I had just picked up at the campus post office. In it was a bundle of cash. No note. No way to send a thank you note. The only thing to do was to be grateful.

It was quite a bit later in life that I learned about a teaching of the Rabbis – the goal of offering 100 blessings / day

Question: I once heard that there is a certain amount of blessings we should attempt to say each day. How many is it, and what is the source of this idea?

Answer: There is indeed such a teaching. We are to recite 100 blessings each day. The Talmud1 extrapolates this from a verse in Deuteronomy:2 “Now, Israel, what does G‑d, your G‑d, ask of you? … to walk in His ways … and to serve Him.”

The Hebrew word for “what,” mah (מָה), is phonetically similar to the word me’ah (מֵאָה), which means 100. In other words, the verse can be understood as saying: “Now, Israel, a hundred does G‑d, your G‑d, ask of you”—one hundred blessings.

chabad.org

Guides

• thanking someone who doesn’t usually get thanks
• Know the value of small things
• learn the value of giving thanks for small things
• Cultivate being grateful
• make it a minimum goal to offer it 100 times in a day

There are countless articles out there touting the value of gratitude. But is that really what’s going on here? Is it – this is good for you – ?

That’s not the reason for doing it.

“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” – Oprah Winfrey

Habakkuk: giving thanks even when the fig tree withers

3:17 Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. 19 God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights. To the leader: with stringed instruments.

“Sing as if no one can hear; dance as if no one is watching; dream as if there are no impossibilities” (Annie)

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” - Meister Eckhart

End of Church year – begin of new

• This Sunday is the last of the church year
• gift of last 50 years, that we get to hear from each of the gospels over a 3 year cycle – this next year gospel of Matthew
• Like other “new years”, it gives us a chance to look back and take stock and to gird our loins for the upcoming year. or
• For all that has been, Thank you. For all that is to come, Yes!
  Dag Hammarskjold

Sun, Nov 13, 2016: St. Paul’s

Church

Sun, Nov 13, 2016: St. Paul’s

lectionary

• Holy Scripture written for us
• I shall build a new Heavens – focus on Jerusalem – no more the sound of weeping
• the wolf and the lamb shall lie down together
• the stones of the temple thrown down – when you hear of wars and resurrection – nation will rise against nation
• they will arrest you

The Bible and the Times

“This past week has been an emotional and turbulent one for many people in our nation.”
We had an election last week. … you probably noticed.
Perhaps the greatest 20^th; c. theologians, Karl Barth, said that sermons should be written with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. He came to that conclusion after watching his German Evangelical Church first support the Kaiser in his war-making effort in the 1^st World War and then much more alarmingly when it supported the rise of Adolph Hitler.

The events of the past week require me to look at the Bible and the newspaper at the same time. And I’m not particularly comfortable doing it. What the newspaper (and all the other venues for news) tell us connected to the political events of the American election of the past week. I have been so cautious my whole ministry to avoid even the appearance of partisan politics in my church speech and actions.
I recognize that the church is “church” for all people, whatever their political persuasion. I recognize that Christ died for all people.

The results of my reading of the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other, however, convinces me that we live in radical times. One of the results of the election I read about in the newspaper is that there have been a number of racist and violent messages in a number of communities. I read that many of our citizens are fearful of what is to come after the pronouncements of the political campaign that we have just witnessed. There have been a number of protests to the election throughout the country. I wonder if there has ever been anything similar in the history of our country?

It convinces me that the message for the church cannot be “business as usual.”

Our times have become exceptional times

• apocalyptic times – like we hear of in the gospel today.

The eschatological images fit the time we live in.

• “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.”

The world we live in is filled with unfathomable images, trends and trajectories, hopes and despairs that seem beyond speaking.

• 9/11
• the melting of the ice caps
• warfare fought in the middle east with ferocity and frenzy that seems to come from a world gone by

But such events have been occurring with regularity throughout Christian History:

• The sack of Jerusalem, expulsion of Jews from Judea
• Nero blaming all his troubles on the Christians in Rome
• Justin Martyr and countless others marched to an amphitheater to be killed by lions.
• The destruction of Rome within a century of it becoming a “Christian” city
• The murder and destruction of Jews, Muslims and Arab Christians at time of the crusades
• the Black Plague when ½ the population of Europe died
• the wars of religion throughout Europe
• 20th c. wars … for example, the matter of deaths caused by war: in the 18th century, about 4 million people died in wars; in the 19th century, about 8 million people died in wars; in the 20th century, nearly 100 million people died in wars.
• the Holocaust, and genocides of the 20th c.

The end times: what is its meaning?

Apocalyptic literature was and continues to this day to be written for the encouragement of those who experience persecution or destruction. It is intended to convey the message that the ruins about us are not God’s final answer.
We, the church, must reflect God’s answer. It is not the case that things will inevitably get better and better for our country or the world. One person said:

There is no biblical basis for a hope in inevitable progress. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that things will gradually get better until at last the kingdom is present, and in fact it is closer to the biblical truth to say that things will get worse before they get better. 1

At the same time, the Bible could not be clearer that we are responsible for our end of things. Bp. Desmond Tutu once put it in the most succinct way possible: God has made us responsible for His reputation.

Exceptional demands are upon us

We are at this moment a nation deeply divided upon itself.

When Luke said of Jesus (back in ch. 11 of Luke) But he knew what they were thinking and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself becomes a desert, and house falls on house.” he wasn’t talking about politics. He was talking about the Kingdom of God vs. the Kingdom of this World.

What would Jesus do about the division in our country?

“What would Jesus do?”

What would he do about the more than ½ of our nation that feels themselves to be under threat from the President elect?

How can we be responsible for God’s reputation in these times?

I am not presuming to tell you the answer to the questions I pose, but I think the times demand an answer from us. Not to answer is itself an answer.

An expository article from Interpretation 1982. “It can be said that Christian life is placed between history and eternity. It takes part, on the one hand, in the history of the world within which it exercises its faith; and it participates, on the other hand, in the power of the resurrection as the token of the new world toward which it is straining."

All of this reminds us that the events of the last week – as polarizing and shocking as they were (no matter your allegiance) – is but the perspective from this side of the Resurrection -- where God made us responsible for His reputation.

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1. St. Louis commentary: ↩