"Choosing Gratitude" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday October 13, 2019 (Thanksgiving Weekend)

Scripture:  Philippians 4:4-9

It’s Thanksgiving Weekend.  A weekend when many of us set aside a bit of time to say “thank you.”  A weekend that usually involves turkey at some point.  A weekend that usually involves some sort of gathering with biological family or with chosen family or with friends.  A weekend when hopefully the fall colours are at their peak and we can reflect on the beauty and glory of God’s creation.

The question I want to ask though, is who are we giving thanks to, and why?

For some things, we might be giving thanks to God – thank you for the beauty of creation; thank you for my family and loved ones; thank you for making the crops and gardens to grow this year so that we can enjoy this feast.

We might also take time to say “thank you” to the significant people in our lives.  Thank you for your friendship; thank you for inviting me over for dinner; thank you for helping me out when I came home from hospital.

And when things are good, it is easy to say thank you.  When we have full bellies, when we have good health, when we are surrounded by beloved friends and family members, it is easy to give thanks.  But what about the other times in our lives?  How must Thanksgiving feel when we are grieving, when we are facing a serious illness, when we are barely hanging on by a fingernail?  How can we be asked to give thanks when it doesn’t feel like there is anything to give thanks for?

And we all go through periods of time in our life like this, for different reasons.  For me, it was the months after my mother died – a time when I couldn’t pray and I couldn’t sense God’s presence. If I had been told to give thanks for everything that I had and for all of God’s blessings, my response probably would have been something along the lines of “Why? I just want my mother back.  How can I feel thankful when what is going on sucks.”

This is a time when clichés and platitudes just don’t work.

“Everything happens for a reason.”

Well, if you know the reason why don’t you enlighten me because I sure can’t see why this is happening.

“God brought you to it, so God will bring you through it.”

Well, I don’t think that I want to worship a god who would make such a horrible thing happen.

“God needed another angel.”

Well, I’d rather have her back here on earth.

“Well, at least you can be thankful that you had so many years with her.”

But I wanted more.

It is so hard to be expected to give thanks when it feels like there is nothing to give thanks for.

But then I turn to the Apostle Paul.  Paul, who never met Jesus when Jesus was alive, but who encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus.  Paul who was converted from a persecutor of the early church to one of it’s chief evangelists.  Paul, whose story is written in the Book of Acts.  Paul, who wrote so many of the books of the New Testament that we call the Epistles, the Letters – Romans, First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, Philippians and others.  Paul, whose name was so famous in the early church that other Epistles or Letters written by other people were attributed to him in order to give the words authority such as Ephesians, First Timothy, and Second Timothy.

Paul didn’t have an easy life.  He turned away from his family and community of birth after his conversion; and yet he was never fully accepted by the church people either since he had previously been one of the primary people persecuting the early church – almost like they didn’t quite trust him.  Paul made several journeys, each one lasting many years, through southern Europe – modern-day Turkey, Macedonia, Greece, and Italy.  When his message wasn’t well received, he was sometimes run out of town and sometimes thrown into prison; all the while being asked to account for his activities to church headquarters back in Jerusalem.

The letters that we have from Paul that are contained in the New Testament are letters that he wrote to the churches that he had started.  As he traveled around, he would search out people who were sympathetic to his message of resurrection and hope, he would teach, he would organize a gathering of Jesus-followers who would often meet in the home of one of their number, and when the group was well-established, he would move on to the next community, wherever the Holy Spirit led him.

But he would continue to correspond with the churches that he had founded.  Today we heard part of his letter to the church in Philippi, a bustling Roman city located in what is modern-day Greece.  Paul had founded this church on one of his voyages in the home of Lydia, a prominent trader in purple cloth.

Now at the time when Paul was writing this letter, he was in prison.  The dating of this letter is a bit uncertain so we don’t know which imprisonment it was written in – possibly from an imprisonment on one of his journeys, or possibly from his final imprisonment in Rome before he was killed.  But no matter when or where, Paul was writing from a place of uncertainty.  He was in prison, and he didn’t know what was going to happen next.  Maybe he was going to be released, or maybe he was going to be killed, all because people felt threatened by the message of hope and love and peace and resurrection that he was preaching.

Can you imagine yourself into Paul’s shoes?  You know that you are in prison because of what you have been preaching; you know that you couldn’t have done anything any differently; you know that you were in the place where God sent you by the Holy Spirit; but now you might not live to leave your prison, or to preach again.  If it were me, I would probably be angry at God, I would probably be afraid for my life, I would probably be wishing that I had never taken that road to Damascus so that maybe Jesus wouldn’t have been able to find me in the first place.  Why me?!

But as we read today from Paul’s letter from prison, that’s not the attitude that he takes.  Instead, from the precarious place of uncertainty, Paul is able to write, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.  Let your gentleness be known to everyone.  The Lord is near.  Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

I sometimes have trouble feeling thankful; and there is Paul, in prison, uncertain if he will live to see tomorrow, writing these words – rejoice, thanksgiving, peace.  How can he do it?  How can he be so… joyful… when I can’t even feel gratitude for everything that I have?

I have to wonder though – I wonder if gratitude, if thanksgiving, is a choice rather than a feeling.  I wonder if it is a choice to focus on all of the things that God has given to us – things that we haven’t earned, things that we don’t deserve – rather than focusing on the things that we have lost or the things that we don’t have.

I can’t make a seed out of nothing.  I can’t make the small hard thing that I put into the ground sprout roots and sprout a stem that reaches up towards the sunshine.  I can’t make rain fall from the sky.  I can’t keep the planets in motion so that the sun rises in the morning, warming the earth.  These are all things that God has given to us, free gifts to sustain life.

I can’t speak creation in to being in the way that God does in the book of Genesis – “‘Let there be light,’ and there was light”; “‘Let the earth put forth vegetation:  plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of very kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And it was so”; “‘Let us create humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” So God created humankind in the image of God.”  And God saw that it was good.

Even the very best surgeon can’t create life where there was none, or restore life after it is gone.  Everything that we have, and everything that we are, is a free gift from God.  And so even when we can’t feel thankful, even when we feel angry or sad or frustrated or lonely – even then, like Paul, we can choose gratitude.  We can choose to thank God for all of these things.

Once we realize that we don’t inherently deserve anything that we have, then the gratitude can pour out of us.  We can thank God for the air we breathe and for the breath of life with each breath that we take – we can’t create life, and so we choose gratitude.  We can thank our neighbour or our brother for the cup of tea that they bring to us – we aren’t entitled to it, and so we choose gratitude.  We can thank our family member for the Thanksgiving meal that they prepared – it isn’t our right to be invited for dinner, and so we choose gratitude.

Gratitude is more than a feeling – it’s a choice.  And so my challenge to you today is to continue to choose gratitude, even when Thanksgiving weekend is long past.  Let gratitude flow from you, even when you don’t feel it.  And in doing so, we will be living in God, we will be living in the love that is God, we will be living in the flow of grace, that free unmerited gift, we will be living in the peace that surpasses all understanding that comes only from God.

And may it be so.  Amen.

The Autumnal Colours this week, looking up Milkish Creek

(Kingston Peninsula, New Brunswick)