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)
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