By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Pentecost 7, June 23rd, 2013
“…..And
be thankful.” (Col 3:15 NRS)
“True
gratitude or thankfulness to God for his kindness to us arises from a
foundation laid before, of love to God for what he is in himself. ” ----Jonathan Edwards
I think I’ve told you about one of the
German youth, who grew up in communism, but reclaimed his Christian roots during
my missionary work. After making
friends with an American youth, he decided to travel to America to see what it
was like to be in an American Christian home; and of all times, he decided to
visit during the Thanksgiving holiday. Before
he left he told me: “I can’t wait to see how America Christians celebrate ‘Thanksgiving’”. When he returned, he explained how great a trip he had and he
shared how kind and gracious his host family was. But he also said he was somewhat disappointed
with the American ritual of Thanksgiving, being only Turkey and Football. They didn’t even go to church, he
persisted. He just could not understand
how Food and Football were Christian!
At the Psychology Today website, Dr. Michael
Austin rightly says that “Thanksgiving is much more than “Food and
Football---thanksgiving is also a virtue.”
(http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethics-everyone/201011/the-virtue-thankfulness).
You
will not find ‘thankfulness’ on the list of Seven virtues which made official
by the Catholic church, but you will find it in the writing of some of the
great catholic scholars. Austin says
that Thomas Aquinas once wrote that ‘thankfulness’ is one of the most distinct
virtues, because ‘thankfulness’ is a special part of justice. It is a
matter of justice or fairness, and moral obligation, for when a person is
thankful they are doing the ‘right’ and ‘just’ thing---fully understanding the great
debt we owe for our lives---the debt we owe to God, to our parents, and to all and
any who have shown fairness and goodness to us.
The virtue of ‘thankfulness’ was included
at the center of Paul’s list. Thankfulness was also the main theme in one of
the most famous parables of Jesus. What
you might also find interesting, is that even great Greek and Roman philosophers
elevated the virtue of ‘gratitude’ or ‘thanksgiving’ as not just another
virtue, but as ‘the parent or father of all virtues’ . Because the spirit of gratitude is so
important, and the act of thanksgiving is so essential, we must never see it as an afterthought, but
Scripture says it is more like a ‘forethought’ ---as we must start, as well as
finish everything we do ‘giving thanks
to God’ (Colossians 3.17).
So, what is so important about being
thankful, not just on ‘turkey day’ but on any day and everyday? And why does ‘thanksgiving’ make Paul’s list not
just once, but twice, in the middle and also again at the end? What is so ‘special’ about putting on the virtue
of thankfulness in all we do?
IMPORTANT
FOR LIVING OUR LIVES
While I was thinking about this message,
CBS’s Sunday Morning (April 28th,
2013) ran a special show about the Future, as it might happen. They talk about all kinds of futuristic
ideas. They spoke of advances in
medicine, like making living cells with printers---which is already
happening. They spoke about living
longer. They also spoke about how many
futurisitic fantasies did not work out. They
even showed the Jetsons as an example asking, “where’s my Rosie they
Robot? But the one special segment that
most caught my attention was asking whether or not, in the future, Science
might ever discover life on another planet.
In the segment they showed how a the Kepler Satellite, is currently out
beyond our solar system taking pictures of only one segment of 150,000 stars,
looking for life. They have already
found solar systems similar to ours and some quite different, like the one that
has two suns, as it did on Star Wars.
They have also found what they believe to be several ‘goldilocks’
planets, planets that are neither too cold, nor too hot, but are just the right
distance from their sun, so that life might be possible. Then came the question the reporter put to
the scientists, “Do you think that we will find life out there?” The Scientist did not hesitate to say that
surely, microscopic organism must surely be out there if the conditions are as
they appear, but she never came close to suggesting that there might be any
kind of intelligent life out there. Finding life is not a problem; finding
intelligent life, now that’s the miracle no one even dares to suggest---either ‘out
there’ or here on earth, for that matter.
Do you know why no one dares to suggest
the existence of intelligent life anywhere else? Because life, as we know it, in any way we
look at it, either as part of a process of God’s intervention over many expanded
years of evolution---where one day is like a thousand or maybe million years,
or whether the creation of life was a process of more immediate intervention,
the reality is the still the same. Life,
as we know it is nothing less than a gift.
And if it took longer we first believed, or God first revealed to us,
life is even more of a gift. Life is
so much of a unique gift that we can scan the millions and even billions of stars
in the heavens, with the naked eye, or even with the greatest telescopes and
computers, and intelligent, thinking, reflective and spiritual life is only
here, where we live. This is not to say
that it can’t happen, or won’t happen elsewhere, for I believe it will and it
must. But nothing we know, even with all
our advancements of high tech knowledge surpasses understanding and awe for
life expressed in the biblical phrase, “When
I consider the heavens, the works of thy hands….who is this one who is created
just little lower than angels? Why did
God ever think about us?” (Psalm
19). The
Book of Revelation also confirms in the end, just as in the beginning, that
humans have been offered the ‘water of life freely” as a ‘gift’. When you understand this, everything in your
life looks different. It fact, your lift
is never ‘your life’, but it is first and foremost, from start and at the
finish, a gift from God that we should be thankful to have. Life is not a given, here or anywhere; it is always
a gift.
IMPORTANT
FOR OUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS
What difference does that make? The true question is what difference does it
not make, when we view our lives as not our own, but as a wonderful gift full
of potential, possibility and blessing? Well,
it makes a difference not only to us, but when we gain this perspective of having
gratitude for our lives it also makes a difference in our relationships with others.
When Paul wrote about ‘being thankful’
to the Colossians, it was not unique.
Paul speaks of being ‘thankful’ in most every letter he writes. Even to those Corinthians Christians who
gave the most trouble, Paul wrote: “I
give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been
given you in Christ Jesus, (1Co 1:4 NRS).
To the church at Ephesus, where Paul suffered so much he writes, “I have heard of your faith in the Lord
Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason, I do not cease
to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. (Eph 1:15-16 NRS). Even when he wrote about his fear of the end
of all things to the Thessalonians, he wrote, “We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our
prayers…(1Th 1:2 NRS). For Paul, in
his own life and in his relationships with others, giving thanks was not an
option. It was part of his continued
experience of God’s grace and goodness.
We too need to be thankful for each
other, and never to take our relationships for granted---be it our relationship
with parents, children, with others, and also with God. Giving thanks is part of what it means to
live with others in healthy and happy relations. Speaking of those closest to us---those we
might most likely take for granted, there is a saying I read many years ago which
most graphical suggests the importance of teaching thanksgiving to our own;
saying that ‘sharper than a serpents
tooth, is the tongue of a thankless child’. Thankfulness needs to be the continual lesson
we teach our children and the constant virtue we model before them with our own
visible and verbal expressions of thanksgiving for our lives and for others. Nothing is sadder than a young person loses
their wonder of life and appreciation of others---losing both the joy of living
and being alive in the world and the joy they find in the relationships they
have in love and in life.
Who of us will forget those suicides
that should never be, or those relationships that didn’t make it, or the families
broken up through divorce? Vigilance in
thankfulness as we work against self-centeredness enables us to hold life and loves
together with those we are most thankful for.
THANKFULNESS
IS CRUCIAL IN KNOWING GOD
The major single lesson Jesus illustrates
concerning ‘thankfulness’ appears in his well-known parable about the healing
of ten lepers. We know that Jesus always touched the
untouchable while having pity on them, but this does not mean that Jesus didn’t
challenge them or become exasperated with them as well. In his story about the healing of the ten
lepers, only one of the ten came back to express thanks to Jesus for his
healing. Where did those other lepers
go? Why were not thankful? And if they were thankful, and probably were,
how do we know they were thankful to Christ for their new life, if they did not
return and give thanks to God. How else
would we know? Actually, what we do
know is that only the one who returned was made ‘whole’---which means literally,
that he was the only one who received the fullness of God’s salvation. It was his attitude of gratitude that made
his ‘healing’ worth having.
In Jesus’ parable, thankfulness and
gratitude is the proof that God’s power to save has actually been received into
our lives. How else do we know? How else can we be assured that our faith in
Christ is real, unless there is a response of continual thanksgiving and
gratitude? How else do any of us know
we are really connected to God, or to anybody, unless our responses of
thankfulness and gratitude are actual and real? As the old saying goes, 90% of everything we
believe and do is realized by just showing up.
Showing up is the most important way that this one leper revealed inward
thankfulness to God.
How do you show up---ready for work, ready
for living, ready for caring, and ready to live a life that worships and brings
glory to God? Are you show up, or a no
show? Are you casual hearer, or a
careful receiver of the healing power of God’s grace---so careful that you are
ready to give thanks, not just with words, but with deeds with every fiber of
your being? Not long ago, I
experienced a really interesting story of fiction about a British scientist who
was asked to bring the sport of Salmon fishing to the desert of The Yemen. A
wealthy oil Sheikh invested missions of dollars to make the impossible possible
in his country. But this did not come without fierce opposition. Once, while fishing in
Scotland, some Arabs in opposition to the whole project attempted to kill
him, but the Scientist saved the Sheikh’s life and foiled the murder
attempt by his skill with a hook on a fly reel. “I will never forget what you
have done for me,” the Sheikh responded.
And in my land,” he continued, “when we way it, we mean it”. Sure enough, when another assignation
attempt came, as a dam was sabotaged and everyone was swimming for their lives, the
Sheikh risks his own life to save the Scientist from drowning. The proof of his thankfulness came, not just
in heart, but also in real life.
This is also where our thankfulness to
God should show up. We should be thankful
to God, not just for what God has done, but we should be thankful for who God
is within himself, as Jonathan Edwards has said. In this way, thankfulness should not just be
an afterthought to what we have been given, but it should also be a fore thought to how we should live each day because
of who God is in giving us his gracious gift of life.
Amen.
No comments :
Post a Comment