GOD: THE REASON TO GIVE THANKS!

(Preached on Sunday, November 23, 2003)

But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.                                                    -Matthew 6:33

 

We often have great difficulty with thankfulness.

As a result, we usually trivialize it.

One reason we have so much trouble with thankfulness is the psychological dimension involved.

Sincere thanks is like saying to someone, “I love you.”

It comes from the heart and places both parties in vulnerable positions.

Honest communication always affects a relationship significantly, often taking it to a new level of commitment.

The truth is, we tend to live our lives in the shallow end of the pool.

But honest communication always takes us to the deep end.

It also binds us together in new ways — affirming a relationship that is there and even attaching new mooring lines to connect us even tighter.

It adds a new and deeper level of responsibility to our relationship.

Like “I love you”, “Thank you” implies a deeper commitment on my part to our relationship.

 

The other reason we have trouble with thanksgiving is that it implies a certain sense of being “beholdin’”.

As the self-made Americans that we are, we don’t like to think that we owe anyone anything.

After all, it our hard work and our attention to our jobs — often on the part of two partners in a household — and our careful handling of our finances, that has provided all the comforts and goods which we possess and enjoy.

Such bounties are not gifts; we have earned them ourselves.

Very rarely did we receive a hand-out or even a hand-up so that we consider that we have achieved what we have achieved through our own hard work and diligence.

 

Such a view is just a natural extension of our economic view of capitalism, our political view of democracy, both of which have lead to a strong view of individualism, along with our modernistic scientific view of the world.

We modernistic people have largely divorced God’s working from the realm of nature.

To be sure, most of us believe that God created the world in the beginning, but now we think the world operates automatically by itself.

All the processes of nature proceed on the basis of natural law, and God has nothing to do with them.

Nature is a closed system, proceeding according to the laws inherent in it, and there is no place where God interferes with that process.

Should God do so, we would call it a miracle.

But customarily miracles do not happen.

Nature operates by itself.

It is devoid of the working of God.

Is it any wonder we have trouble really feeling thankful?

Is it any wonder we have trouble finding energy and excitement for worship?

 

But the whole of scripture contradicts our secular views.

In this passage from Matthew, Jesus never once mentions “thanksgiving.”

But his entire teaching is reminding us that God is the source, the ongoing, continuing source, of life.

His point is not to discourage legitimate concern for necessities of life but to indicate that anxiety with regard to such matters is debilitating.

God provides, for the birds, the flowers, and for us.

Everything that we experience in life comes from God, whether plenty or want, bounty or lack, and there is really nothing we can do about life by “worrying” about it.

 

Not only Jesus, but all the scriptures, are constantly pointing out that the natural world and all its processes were created and are continually sustained by the action of God.

It is God who causes the fruit trees for bear and the vineyards to bring forth their grapes.

It is God who sends the rain upon the earth and causes the grain to grow.

It is God who causes all plants to grow after locusts have stripped the land bare.

Without the action of God, such bounty would not be given.

The Bible is quite convinced that there continues to be a round of the seasons, because God promised that “while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” — and God always keeps promises.

Hundreds of texts affirm that God controls the appearance and movement of the constellations and other heavenly bodies, just as God con change the earth’s very geology, or control the wind, the rain, and all the elements.

The order of the natural world in all its parts, is dependent on its Creator, and were God not to sustain that order, the world would return to chaos.

 

Today scientists are confirming what the scriptures take on faith.

With the marvelous tools of scientific inquiry we are discovering today the marvelous patterns and the wonders of the universe.  (Share flier about two books.)

Our own bodies are some of the most surprising things.

It never ceases to amaze me that my body both produces and destroys 15 million red blood cells every second.

Fifteen million!

That’s nearly twice the census figure for New York City.

I am told that the blood vessels in my body, if lined up end to end, would read around the world.

Yet my heart needs only one minutes to pump my blood through this filigree network and back again.

It has been doing so, minute by minute, day by day, for the past 47 years and still keeps pumping away at 100,000 heartbeats every 24 hours.

Obviously, this is a matter of life and death for me, yet I have no idea how it works and it seems to work amazingly well in spite of my ignorance.

I wouldn’t know how to give instructions to the 35 million digestive glands in my stomach for digesting one piece of turkey; fortunately, they know how to do their job without my advice.

When I think of this, as I sit down to eat, my heart brims with gratefulness.

As the Psalmist proclaims, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

 

We are in fact dependent creatures living on a dependent planet that would not exist and whose order would not be sustained were God not to create and sustain us and our world.

Because we daily experience that common and unmerited grace of God that causes “the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust;” because we are surrounded on every side by a world overflowing with beauty and wonder and vitality; because God feeds the birds and clothes the lilies of the field in a glory exceeding that of Solomon; and because God gives us our daily bread and lavishes on us more care than is lavished on all creation, we can “be glad and rejoice, for God has done great things.”

So much around us in the world today is frightening and overwhelming.

Watch any newscast, read any newspaper, and you will find ample reason to fear waking up in the morning, walking down the street, or eating something.

And yet; and yet, we have all the reason we need for being thankful for life and living without fear, but with a constant attitude of gratitude.

God.  God is the reason to give thanks!

Not what God has done or will do.