SMC's Thanksgiving Sunday: Resting in God’s Love

I will be a bit briefer this morning than usual. We have time during our congregational sharing for whoever wishes to say something about giving thanks. This is my moment, during which I give my own perspective on thanksgiving.

 

Psalm 136 

Were you at all uncomfortable as we read the psalm responsively? If you were paying attention, you might have been. I certainly was.

 

Give thanks because God created us. That’s good!

Give thanks because God delivered us from slavery. That’s good!

Give thanks because God killed the Egyptians. Wait a minute! Is that good?

Give thanks because God provided for us in the wilderness. That’s good!

Give thanks because God has given us a home. That’s good!

Give thanks because God killed famous kings. Wait a minute! Is that good? Do we want God to kill “Sihon, king of the Amorites and Og, king of Bashan”? I’m uncomfortable.

 

Our discomfort increases when we remember that yesterday was Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada. We remember those whom we dispossessed as God gave us a home here in Manitoba. I have nothing to say this morning about that issue, except to remind us that truth-telling precedes reconciliation. We must tell the stories of relationships between the indigenous people of Canada and those who came later, and we must tell and hear the truth.

 

I am almost certain that some of the early settlers of Canada assumed that God gave them this land to take from First Nations just as God gave Israel the land taken from the Canaanites. We should be uncomfortable with that fact; and we dare not dodge it and assume it means nothing. It requires another round table setting where we dig into it and try to work out what was and is going on.

 

Give Thanks for What? 

You may notice that I took liberties with the text. The psalm does not say, “Give thanks because God killed Pharaoh.” It lists the historical events, which include the death of Egypt’s firstborn and the deaths of kings who opposed God, but it doesn’t say, thank God for those deaths. Instead, the psalm says, “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever.”

 

It is true that the psalmist intentionally lifts up God’s actions in defeating Israel’s enemies as evidence of God’s steadfast love. That still leaves us with a problem. In light of the teachings and example of Jesus, we are to love our enemies, not wish or act for their demise. But my point still stands. The psalmist thanks God for God’s goodness and steadfast love. He may not yet know the teaching, “Love your enemy”, but he does know to thank God for his love and mercy.

 

That’s the key: Thank God for God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s faithfulness. In the New Testament reading, Paul said, “Give thanks in everything.” In Ephesians 5, he says “Give thanks for everything.” I think both passages come to the same thing: Thank God for God’s faithful love in every situation of our lives. Life can be good: Thank God for his faithful love. Life can sometimes be hard and painful: Thank God for his faithful love.

 

This reading makes sense of the repeated refrain: “His steadfast love endures forever.” Just a brief excursion into the word for “steadfast love”. The old KJV said, “He mercy endures forever.” Mercy – love – lovingkindness – steadfast love: The Hebrew word behind them all is Hesed. None of our words gets at the whole, but the basic idea is of an enduring persistent love and mercy flowing from God over all God’s people, indeed, over the whole world.

 

If that is the case, if indeed God loves us all so much, faithfully and persistently, why do we experience so much trouble and heartache in this life? The psalmist does not ask or answer this question, but he does give us an important insight. He references a series of difficult times between the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt and their occupation of the Promised Land.

 

This is not a series of triumphs and joys without any problems. The record of their wilderness wanderings in Exodus through Deuteronomy makes it clear that the people often struggled to make sense of what was happening to them. They grumbled and complained because life in the desert was hard. The psalmist does not give them an easy out and tell them it was really lots of fun. Instead, he says, “Thank God for God’s Hesed throughout every turmoil and trial. Thank God for God’s love and mercy, which was there when people attacked you and when God carried you through. Thank God for God’s steadfast love. God’s love never fails.”

 

Reading the Psalm Today 

We also struggle with life. Sometimes life moves along smoothly, and we are grateful for the blessings of family and home and food and many other good things. But often enough we experience problems. Lois and I carry a concern for our younger son at the moment. He faces a significant challenge this Thanksgiving season: His employer is restructuring their organization such that a month from now he may not have a job. Since he and his wife live in Australia, this danger feels even heavier, due to the distance away they are.

 

What does it mean to say, “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good”, when you face the possibility of being unemployed. We have people in this church who have lived that question. In the same way, we can ask what it means to give thanks when grieving the death of a parent or spouse or child. We can wonder how to give thanks when we lose our home to a fire, or when our pastor resigns. Even positive changes are hard, so that we find ourselves feeling the stress of moving from one church building to another even as we thank God for providing the building.

 

I observed earlier that yesterday was Truth and Reconciliation Day. How do we give thanks when we remember the tragedies and abuse of residential schools? How do we give thanks when we remember being forced out of homes in the Soviet Union and migrating across the ocean with only a suitcase and some family members? Life is full of joy and pain, and we need a faith that can embrace the full complexity and ambiguity of life. That’s what the Children of Israel had.

 

Give Thanks Today 

Think of the Psalm as we might write it today:

Give thanks to the Lord for God is good: His mercy and love endure forever.

God was with us when we came to Canada as refugees: His mercy and love endure forever.

God gave us homes in a new place: His mercy and love endure forever.

Our mother died when we were far from home: His mercy and love endure forever.

Our child died and left us behind: His mercy and love endure forever.

God built us a church to worship in: His mercy and love endure forever.

We struggled to find work and God provided: His mercy and love endure forever.

We are separated from family members: His mercy and love endure forever.

God saved us from the terrors of this world: His mercy and love endure forever.

 

We can each write our own version, but you get the point: We give thanks for God’s goodness and mercy and care as we navigate the troubled waters of this life. I remember a speaker at Providence describing us about his own journey following the loss of his son. He told us that his only relief from the darkness of grief came when actively engaged in praise to God. Grief and thanksgiving came to a climax one winter’s day as he cleared the snow from his driveway. A voice inside asked, “Can you thank me for your son’s death?” As he shovelled and cried and wrestled inside himself, he thought of the closeness with God that had come with his grief. Finally, he prayed a response to the voice, “Thank you for my son’s death.” He told us that the darkness lifted, never to return. The pain of loss remained: That never goes away; but the paralyzing darkness was gone.

 

This is not a prescription for everyone, but it illustrates the power of gratitude and the enduring nature of God’s love. A song from South Africa runs like this: “Even though we travel through evil and trouble in this world, we are on our way to Heaven.” God’s goodness and faithfulness is the bedrock of our lives. That is why we give thanks, now and always.

 

Amen.

 

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church

1 October 2023

Texts: Psalm 136 and 1 Thessalonians 5: 12 to 24

 

Focus: God’s faithful love is the one constant in a troubled and difficult world.

Looking Ahead Question: It’s “Thanksgiving”, and life is really hard. What can we give thanks for?

Giving Thanks or Getting into Trouble

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time, although the Covid rituals may overshadow our various family rituals this year. Being dual citizens gives Lois and me the special privilege of celebrating twice. Thanksgiving comes at the beginning of October and at the end of November! We do our best to take full advantage of Thanksgiving.

The Scriptures that we read this morning come from the common lectionary – assigned readings for each Sunday of the year, and they are puzzling and troubling texts for a time of giving thanks. The Children of Israel got in serious trouble when they gave thanks to the LORD through the golden calf, and the religious leaders of Jesus’ day find themselves on the wrong side of Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast, a notable time of thanksgiving.

What’s going on in these passages? What’s going on in our lives? Is it possible to get into trouble for being too thankful? It would seem so. We consider our texts together and listen for “the word of the Lord” to break through into our lives.

Exodus 32

In Exodus, God leads the Children of Israel through the wilderness from slavery in Egypt to their home in the Promised Land. Chapters 19 through 32 detail their encounter with God at Mount Sinai. In chapter 19, Moses ascends the mountain and meets God. He then goes back down the mountain to prepare the people to hear God’s words. Once they have prepared themselves, he re-ascends the mountain and receives the Ten Words and laws that work out what it means to be people living in covenant with God.

I am not clear how chapter 24 fits with chapter 19. Either it describes Moses coming down from the mountain and then re-ascending to receive the rest of the Law, or it is a repetition of his first ascent with some extra details. In both cases, it makes it clear that the whole process of giving the Law was complex and central to Israel’s identity.

Then comes chapter 32. The Children of Israel were struggling with the whole process of waiting for God and Moses to finish. They wondered if Moses were still alive, or if he had died on the mountain. The verses read in a matter of fact manner, but I suspect that they were in real distress. They wondered not only if Moses were still alive, but even if God was still with them.

Aaron responded by drawing on the images of God that surrounded them. He took their offerings of gold and made from them what we often call “the golden calf”. The golden calf has become a symbol in Christian thinking for an idol that draws us away from God. Notable in this picture is the way that this idol draws on local culture and on the people’s offerings.

God tells Moses what has happened and declares judgment on the people. They will be destroyed. Moses pleads with God not to destroy them, but rather to save them. In a stunning reversal, God agrees with Moses and spares the people ultimate judgment. The chapter ends in judgment, but here we have at least the promise that the judgment will not destroy the people.

Matthew 22

The parable in Matthew 22 is both like and unlike the parallel passage in Luke 14. The king prepares a banquet for his son’s wedding. The invited guests refuse to come and kill the king’s messengers. (In Luke 14, they simply refuse, giving their excuses.) The King responds by killing them in their turn and sending his servants out into the main streets to gather guests of all kinds in for the banquet. (In Luke 14, the master sends out his servants to gather all kinds of people from “the highways and the byways”.) Here follows a twist that is unique to Matthew’s account. The King sees one of these wedding guests who is not properly attired. He rebukes him, and then he has his servants throw the rascal out into “outer darkness” – a reference to the final judgment.

An obvious question is, “What is the wedding garment that the guest failed to put on?” The King’s own servants had just plucked him off the street and planted him in the banquet; one might wonder what the King expected him to wear. The question illustrates the danger of trying to make every element of a parable fit into a neat realistic story. Jesus is saying something important about invitation and judgment, not giving instructions on how to run a wedding.

If you want to fit it into the story in a logical way, you could say that the King provided appropriate apparel for all of the unexpected guests, and that this guest decided not to put his wedding suit on. He acted as though he was already good enough, perhaps assuming that they were lucky he agreed to come.

Whatever you decide the missing wedding garment is – faith, justification, God’s righteousness, and so on; the point is clear. God invites everyone to faith, but some sort of response is required. God gives us what we need, but we have to put it on. Acting as though we are good enough on our own is deadly and undermines everything else that has happened.

John Calvin puts it this way (quoted in Richard Gardner’s commentary on Matthew in the BCBC series):

There is no point in arguing about the marriage garment … All Christ wants to say here is that we are called by the Lord under the condition that we be renewed in our spirits into His image, and therefore, if we are to remain always in His house, the old man with all his blemishes is to be cast off and we are to practice the new life so that our appearance (habitus) may correspond to our honourable calling.

This passage comes in the middle of portraits of Jesus in conflict with the religious authorities of his day. They thought that their status as devout Jews and as religious leaders ensured their right standing with God, when in fact they were guilty of usurping God’s place in their own lives. Jesus warns them that only God’s grace can bring them into God’s presence. They had nothing in themselves to fit them for the wedding feast of God. Neither do we.

Back to Thanksgiving

I asked earlier if it is possible for us to be too thankful, or to be thankful in the wrong way. Based on these two passages – the experience of the Children of Israel in the desert and the parable that Jesus tells – I think we must say that we can indeed by thankful in the wrong way. Consider where both the wedding guest and the Children of Israel went wrong.

The Children of Israel wanted to worship God, but they were not willing to wait for God to do God’s full work in their lives. In their hurry and impatience they reconstructed God in the image of their own minds, replacing God with an image drawn from the surrounding religion. God tolerates no rivals. If it had not been for Moses’ intercession, they would have been destroyed. (This divine violence is a great mystery, which requires a separate conversation. I will not pursue it here.)

In Exodus 32, then, the wrong way to give thanks is impatiently, replacing the God who is King of the Universe with a divine figure drawn from our own thoughts and culture. On this Thanksgiving Sunday, we give thanks to God, revealed to us in the person of Jesus the Messiah.

I will not consider the first part of the parable of the Wedding Feast but ask only how the badly dressed wedding guest failed. I assume that a wedding suit was made available to him and for his own reasons he chose not to wear it. In his case, he wants to participate in the wedding feast, but he does not want to change who he is. He wants God’s gift of salvation, but he does not want God’s gift of righteousness.

Such false thanksgiving – accepting the gift of salvation but rejecting the giver of the gift – such false thanksgiving brings down a harsh response. Again, the divine violence that consigns the guest to “outer darkness” is a further problem of its own. I will not develop here, but we can talk about it more thoroughly in the Going Deeper time. For now, I note simply that it is possible to thank God and not mean it, and we see that God does not accept gratitude that simply covers up our continued life of rebellion.

Holistic Faith

So what? How does this understanding inform our giving thanks this Thanksgiving? Let me suggest a way to hold these two passages together. In Exodus 32, the people give thanks, but their impatience leads them to replace the true God in their hearts and minds with a false figure of divinity – the golden calf. We might say that the story reminds us of the importance of right belief, what we sometimes call “orthodox Christian faith”. What we believe matters, because what we do flows from what we believe. Exodus 32 makes it clear that worshipping God rightly is important.

Matthew 22 picks up the other side of the equation. Just before this parable, Matthew writes, “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.” Just after this parable, Matthew writes, “Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.” The Scribes and Pharisees, along with the priests and other religious leaders, were as orthodox in their beliefs as you could get. You might say that “Orthodoxy” was their middle name. Yet Jesus makes it clear that they are in rebellion against God. Why? Their lives did not measure up to their beliefs. They could say the right words, but when the Messiah Jesus came, they did not accept him. In spite of their orthodox beliefs, they wanted to be in charge of their own lives. They needed a new life. They needed God’s grace to make them right with God. Right beliefs were not enough; they needed God’s righteous living – what we might call “orthopraxy”, right living – to go along with right beliefs about God. That righteousness, that right living, could come only from embracing Jesus.

In fact, right beliefs and right living go together. God wants us to have both. We worship God alone, and we live only for God. We thank God for God’s grace and mercy in our lives, and we show our thankfulness by the way that we live. As the old hymn puts it, we “trust and obey”. Trust (or faith) is not enough. Obedience is not enough. Trust that does not obey is not trust. Obedience that does not grow out of faith is not real obedience.

Obedience, right living, shows what is really inside of us. As John put it, “If you don’t love your brother or sister, whom you see, how can you say you love God, whom you don’t see?” The wedding guest’s failure to put on the wedding garment reminds us that response to God’s grace unlocks God’s grace in our lives. We are changed people, and we live like changed people.

An Example

Consider a simple example from my own experience of being married. Lois might listen to my words, and it is important for me to speak my love for her and to state my concern for her well-being. You might call that “orthodoxy” – right thinking about the marriage relationship. At the same time, nice words are not enough. When she is under pressure to finish a particular project, my willingness to provide support is vitally important. You might call that “orthopraxy” – right acting within a marriage relationship.

In fact, if I do not show my love with the way we relate to each other, my spouse begins to disbelieve my words. I teach a course in cross-cultural communications. There are many ways that we communicate, not just in words. One author counts 12 different signal systems, from words to tone of voice to body language, and so on. Some of these signals are conscious and intentional, and some of them are sub-conscious – we use them without being aware of them. When we tell someone something, if our conscious communication with words is contradicted by the subconscious signals we send off, the other person will believe the subconscious communication every time. As the old saying puts it, “What you do speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you say.”

Conclusion

How might we give thanks badly? How might we actually offend God by expressing gratitude? By pretending to be thankful when we are only impatient. By saying “Thank you” when we our lives show our lack of gratitude. We should be like the wedding guests who put on “the garments of righteousness” when the King invited them to the wedding feast, not like the ungrateful guest who insisted that he was already just fine, thank you. We need God’s Spirit, and God with infinite grace and mercy gives us the fullness of God’s Spirit to live the way God wants us to live. Paul puts it like this in the New Testament reading that goes with the passages we read in the lectionary:

⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵ Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. …. ⁸ Finally, beloved, 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. ⁹ Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

Remember that this is an invitation. If this call to right thinking and right living becomes a requirement for entering God’s Reign, it is a burden too heavy to bear. If it is an invitation that we can respond to, it is good news beyond belief – in the words of T.S. Eliot, “A condition of complete simplicity, demanding not less than everything.”

Texts

Exodus 32:1-14

32:1 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” ² Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” ³ So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron.

⁴ He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” ⁵ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.” ⁶ They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.

⁷ The LORD said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; ⁸ they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’”

⁹ The LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. ¹⁰ Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” ¹¹ But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? ¹² Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. ¹³ Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’”

¹⁴ And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

 

Philippians 4:1-9

4:1 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. ² I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. ³ Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.

⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵ Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. ⁶ Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

⁸ Finally, beloved, 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. ⁹ Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

 

Matthew 22:1-14

22:1 Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: ² “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. ³ He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. ⁴ Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ ⁵ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, ⁶ while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them.

⁷ “The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. ⁸ Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. ⁹ Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’

¹⁰ “Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. ¹¹ “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, ¹² and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. ¹³ “Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ ¹⁴ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church

11 October 2020

 

The Law of Reciprocity

Introduction

Thanksgiving Sunday. Each year at Thanksgiving we remember the good gifts we have received and say, “Thank you.” We thank God for the gift of life, physical and spiritual. We thank our parents for home and family. We thank those in our lives who have helped us and made our lives possible. We express our gratitude in word and in deed, thanking those who have blessed us, and seeking in turn to bless others around us in their lives.

In Canada, Thanksgiving Day celebrates what the English might call a harvest festival. The primary focus of our thanks, then, is the bounty we receive from the earth through the annual harvest. We thank God for God’s good gifts, and we receive those gifts primarily through the annual harvest of crops. Most of us do not live closely connected to the land, in the way that our forebears did when Thanksgiving Day in Canada began, but on this day at least we remember our connection to God’s good gift of the land.

Deuteronomy 8:7-18

The passage in Deuteronomy reflects this connection. Moses is speaking to the people. He says, “The Lord has given you a good land, full of all that you need. When you are prosperous, you will be inclined to think that you have earned your good fortune. Don’t believe it! God has given this to you, and you must remember God and serve God.”

One of the themes running through our passage is found in verses 14 to 16, which recognize God’s providing power in the desert. The Children of Israel knew God as God of the desert, God of the sandy dry waterless places, able to keep them in the space between Egypt and the Promised Land. But Canaan has its own gods, especially Baal, the god of the storm. Some of them may have wondered if their God, Yahweh, could take care of them once they entered the Promised Land. There was the real possibility that the people would turn to Baal rather than to God once they were established in the land. This possibility lies behind the temptation to take credit themselves for their future prosperity. God says to them, “Don’t do it!” God is God of the whole earth, and God has given them the land. They are to thank God and give their allegiance to God, not to take credit for themselves or to worship any other god.

God’s warning is serious business. Hear the verses immediately after the passage we read: “If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God.”

I think of our own lives today. We worship the god of pleasure and power – you can call this god (in the title of a book by Richard Foster) “money, sex, and power”. We take credit ourselves for the wealth we have accumulated and the material blessings of our lives. God warns us: “Don’t do it!” All that we have comes from God. As the words of the old hymn put it, “Naught have I gotten but what I received.”

We turn to Luke 17:11-19

This is an interesting scene, and a bit puzzling. It begins with the ten lepers acting together—Jews and a Samartian, bonded together in their shared need. Aware of their need, they seek Jesus’ help. Jesus responds with the simple command to act as though they have already been healed.

The basic procedure was that the priests diagnosed leprosy, and that those so labelled had to avoid contact with those not affected. They were “unclean” and therefore separated from the larger society of those who were “clean”. We do not think in these categories today, but they are common in shame and honour cultures. To be right within society and right with God is to be clean, and any impurity is unclean. Leprosy, a disease that disfigured the skin, made one unclean, cut off from the rest of society. If one was healed and therefore cleansed, the priests again were the gatekeepers who had to ratify the change in status. The action of the priests reflects the category of clean and unclean, a religious rather than simply health-related category.

All ten responded in faith—seen in their obedience to Jesus when they went to see the priests. They presented themselves and were pronounced clean and thus restored to society, socially and religiously. Only one, the outsider Samaritan, returned to Jesus to say thank you. Jesus said that his healing came through his faith, expressed in his gratitude. The other nine were also saved by their faith, but they did not receive commendation from the Messiah. They were restored, but did not follow through in faith to relate more closely with the anointed one of God.

For us the message is simple: We receive health and life from God’s hands. All of us receive these blessings, whether we say thank you or not, but only those who turn in gratitude to God receive the further gift of spiritual life. All are restored to health, but only this one is saved.

[The word “heal” and the word “save” are the same in Greek. I am not sure that the text itself intends the difference I have suggested between “healed” and “saved”—Luke uses two different words: in verse 15 it uses iamoai (to be healed physically or spiritually), and in verse 19 he uses sozo (to heal or to save). Both words carry the double meaning of physical healing and of spiritual salvation, and I think my reading is in tune with the spirit of the passage.]

Finally, 2 Corinthians 9:6-15

We turn to Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians.

Some background: Paul was a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee, committed to the primacy of the Law of Moses. Through his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road outside of Damascus, his primary focus changed from the Law to the gospel of God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ. One of his most important insights was that God has opened the door to all people to enter into the realm of God, Jew and Gentile alike. That theme is basic to his letters to the Romans and to the Galatians. We are saved not by keeping the Law of Moses, but by God’s grace active in our lives through faith.

Some early Christians thought all of this meant that Paul had rejected his Jewish identity, but that was not the case. He valued his heritage, and he looked up to the Jerusalem church as the mother church. So it was that, when the Roman Province of Judea experienced famine, and the mother church was suffering from the effects of the famine, Paul undertook to collect money from the Gentile churches he had planted to take to Jerusalem to help them in their plight.

Acts 21 tells how Paul took the gift to the Jerusalem church, and then, in order to allay people’s fears that he opposed the Law of Moses, he entered the Temple to worship in full accordance with the Law. While he was there, some Jews from Asia accused him of breaking the Law, setting in motion the events that led to Paul being taken to Rome to appear before Caesar.

Our passage this morning refers to this collection for the church in Jerusalem. Paul was collecting from the Gentile churches in general, and here he appealed to the Corinthians. In summary, Paul says that there is a fundamental law of life that we receive what we give. You [Corinthians] have given generously, and so you will receive from God all that you need. God gives us grace, and we extend grace to each other. This is what I am calling the law of reciprocity (or the law of interdependence).

This passage takes us further than the first two. Not only do we express gratitude to God for God’s good gifts, we show our gratitude by being generous to others. So verse 11 (for example) states: “You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.” (Compare also verse 6.) You are blessed, so that you can bless others. This is the law of reciprocity at work in the Corinthians. This law of reciprocity is at work in our lives also.

Our Context Today

I grew up with the hymn, “Make me a blessing.”

Out in the highways and byways of life,/ Many are weary and sad; Carry the sunshine where darkness is rife, Making the sorrowing glad.

Make me a blessing, make me a blessing,/ Out of my life may Jesus shine;/ Make me a blessing, O Savior, I pray,/   Make me a blessing to someone today.

The intent of the song was to state this truth: God has blessed us, and we in turn bless others. Today this sentiment appears antiquated and out-of-date. The stronger sentiment in our culture is captured in the phrase, “Look out for number one.” We hear this whenever we fly. The flight attendant tells us what to do in event of an emergency and then says something like this:

Oxygen and the air pressure are always being monitored. In the event of a decompression, an oxygen mask will automatically appear in front of you. To start the flow of oxygen, pull the mask towards you. Place it firmly over your nose and mouth, secure the elastic band behind your head, and breathe normally. Although the bag does not inflate, oxygen is flowing to the mask. If you are travelling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your mask first, and then assist the other person.

This instruction is good when you are flying: Take care of yourself first, but in our society it has turned into a kind of individualism that cares only about the self, and not about the other at all.

The fact is that the hyper-individualism of our culture has led us into chaos and threatens the breakdown of our society. Consider the mass shooting this past weekend in Las Vegas. We do not yet know why the shooter took the actions he did. We do know that he was almost cut off from the surrounding society. He was an individual, living almost in his own little bubble. He may have had a few friends somewhere; authorities refer to something almost like a double life, which we do not yet understand. But for the most part he was isolated from community.

Someone who is genuinely in community would have found it much harder to take such an action. You may have heard the African proverb, popularized by Bishop Desmond Tutu, “A person is a person in and through community.” This means that we become fully human through relationships with other people in our community. The isolated unrelated individual becomes less human and more susceptible to the evil that lies within each of us.

Healing our modern condition comes through relationships, through community, through having other people mediate God’s presence to us, and then mediating God’s presence to others in our turn. Reciprocity is a law of life. We give and we receive. We receive as we give.

At the beginning of the school year at Providence, our President, David Johnson, played a TED talk to us. The talk was by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks of the United Kingdom, entitled, “Facing the future without fear, together,” dated April 25, 2017. His basic theme was that we need to stand together, rather than fight with each other, in order to face the future without fear.

In making his basic point, he closed with an exhortation to go through the software of our minds and do a search and replace. Wherever we find the word “self”, he said, replace with “other”. It’s a good idea! Consider the following:

·         “Take care of yourself” becomes “Take care of each other.”

·         “Look out for number one” becomes “Look out for your neighbour.”

·         “Self-help” becomes “other-help”, and “Self-esteem” becomes “other-esteem”.

Rabbi Sacks is an Orthodox Jew. He is not trying to present Christian teaching, but he echoes the teaching of Jesus and of Paul quite precisely in Philippians 2: 1 to 4.

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

“Not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of the others.” Wow! This cuts against our larger society as directly as possible. The old hymn, “Make me a blessing to someone today”, is not out-of-date. It is as contemporary as possible. It is exactly what God wants us to do here and now.

Conclusion

Today is Thanksgiving Sunday. We celebrate Thanksgiving by practicing the law of reciprocity. We bless as we are blessed. But what does it mean to bless each other as God has blessed us? What is a blessing? Let me give you a closing word study on “bless”, using a little bit of the Ndebele language from Zimbabwe. In Ndebele (or Zulu), the verb is a simple word like hamba. If I say ngiyahamba”, it means “I am going”. “Hamba” means  “go” or “walk”. (Those who have sung “Siyahamba ekukhanyeni kwenkosi” have used this word before.) When you add the suffix –isa to a verb, you change it to what we call a causative. So “hamba” means “go, and “hambisa” means “cause to go”, that is, “send”.

This rule works with the word for bless also. Consider the root of the word “bless” in Ndebele. The root word is “busa”. Once again many of us here have heard this word. Remember “The Lion King”? In the closing song the animals all sing, “Busa Simba!” That means, “Rule, Simba!” Simba is now the king, so Simba will rule: iyabusa. Now take “busa” and add the suffix –isa: Busisa. “Busisa” means “bless”, so I can say to you, “Nkosi likubusise” (“May the Lord bless you”).

Do you see what has happened? In Ndebele, to bless means “to cause to rule”. When we say that God blesses us, that means that God has caused us to rule in our lives, that is, God has given us self-control, the internal safety of self-control even in the storm. There is profound truth here: Being out of control is one of our society’s greatest fears. We are lost, adrift in a chaotic and dangerous world. When Jesus rules in our lives, he makes us part of the realm of God. We become ‘slaves of righteousness”, in Paul’s language. When Jesus rules in our lives, he gives us the gift of ruling ourselves. Remember that “self-control” is the final element listed in the fruit of the Spirit (Ephesians 5).

Similarly, to bless others is to help them take control of their own lives. Being blessed does not mean being wealthy, or strong, or more fortunate than others. It means simply, being in control: As Paul puts it, “I have learned in whatever state I am to be content.” Blessing others then means that we do not try to control them. We may provide various kinds of physical and mental help, but more importantly we walk with them as they also discover the resources to be in control of their lives. The gift of self-control comes only through the presence of God’s Spirit, so we introduce them to Jesus and seek God’s presence together. When Jesus reigns in us and in them, we are blessed indeed.

Grace Bible Church

8 Oct 2017, Thanksgiving Sunday

Texts (the links are to biblegateway.com, using the NIV-UK version)

          Deuteronomy8: 7 to 18

          Luke17: 11 to 19

          2 Corinthians9: 6 to 15