November 23, 2003
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Over
these Sundays in November we have thought about what it means to be faithful
stewards. We began by considering what it means to be stewards of our
relationships. Then we gave some thought to what it means to be good stewards of
good attitudes. Last week, on our youth and consecration Sunday while we
committed our resources of talent, time, and treasure to this congregation we
love, we considered what it means to share stewardship of our future.
Today,
on this Thanksgiving Sunday, as we get ready to enter the four or so weeks
between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I want us to think about what it means to be
stewards of gratitude.
Expressions
of gratitude, thanksgiving, and praise are what people of faith do. Scripture
bears witness to the ways people have offered thanksgiving to God:
“Offer
to God your thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High” (Psalm
50.14).
“Enter
his gates with thanksgiving and courts with praise. Give thanks to God, bless
God’s name” (Psalm 100.4).
“You
will say on that day, ‘I will give thanks to you, O LORD, for though you were
angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me. Surely God is my
salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD is my strength and
my might and has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the
wells of salvation’. And you will say on that day, ’Give thanks go the LORD,
call on God’s name, make known God’s deeds among the nations: proclaim that
God’s name is exalted’” (Isaiah 12.1-3).
We offer
thanksgiving for friends:
“First,
I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is
proclaimed throughout the land” (Romans 1.8).
“I
thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in everyone
of my prayers for you” (Philippians 1.3).
Now
thank we all our God. But
even today some will ask, perhaps even one or two in this room for why should we
be thankful? You know all the reasons why thankfulness is not a good idea right
now. After all, we know that there are personal reasons not to feel particularly
thankful. Too many bills, and too little money. Relationships either do not
happen, or turn out badly. We live in a world with too much dis-ease and two
little security. People, some of whom we know suffer on a daily basis. They are
in ill-health, they are ill-fed, ill-clothed. The
nightly news tells of bizarre acts by people who surprise us with their reckless
behavior. Random acts of assault and violence come against us mind and body. In
too many parts of the world, war rages in our streets and too often in our
homes. Our parents are declining in heath, our adult children refuse to grow up,
and our own well being is out of whack. For what reason should I be thankful? How
about because we are alive? How because we are grateful to God for every day
that we are able to show somebody that we love them, and to hear that we are
loved. How about because thanksgiving is an act of faith? Yesterday, I was at
the memorial service for a 55 year old woman who died from cancer several days
ago. At her request, the last song the choir sang was “Everyday Is A Day of
Thanksgiving”. “Every day is a day of thanksgiving. God’s been so good to
me, God keeps on blessing me, he gave me victory. Every day is a day of
thanksgiving…”. If a woman near the end of her life on this earth can give
thanks, surely we can. We
can become stewards of gratitude because appreciation is just good manners. One
of the first lessons children learn is to express gratitude by saying, “thank
you”. It is an acknowledgement that a good deed has been done for you. You
have received a gift, you are the recipient of a random act of kindness, some
thing or some one has unleashed a flood of good feelings in you. Say thank you. This
is your turn, for what are you thankful today? [THEY TELL ME] Today,
I am grateful for friends of a lifetime, for the parents who raised me and who
by their service in it, taught me to love the church, and who taught my sisters
and me to share chores and so learn responsibility. I am grateful for books that
make me think, cartoons that make me laugh out loud and baseball. I
am thankful for a congregation that models hospitality and compassion, and that
cares for each other and offers its ministries to homeless families and the
children of parents in recovery. I am more grateful than I can say for the
privilege of serving this congregation, and for the vision God has given me of a
people who matter and of ways we can change that are good, positive, growth
producing, and redemptive. I believe that we can do it. We can change attitudes
and a small group of us will spend a good bit of 2004 planning ways to do just
that. I
am thankful for many things. But I am especially thankful that we have been
exposed to a source of power that helps us know that we can show gratitude to
God for the one who is the first object of our thanksgiving and who helps us to
be grateful even when times get hard. That is the kind of gratitude John wrote
about on the island of Patmos. I
know the book of Revelation makes us nervous. But that is because it has been
misrepresented and misinterpreted. It is not a book about scary images designed
to scare us into believing in God. It is not the story of demons, doom, and
destruction. Nor is it for us to read its coded language in order to see which
20th century political figure is the newest anti-Christ who will
battle the only Christ for rule of the world. The
book of Revelation begins with these words: “The
revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to his servants to show what must
soon take place” (1.1). The book ends with these words: “The
one who testifies to these things says, ‘surely I am coming soon’. Amen.
Come Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all the saints”
(22.20-21). Revelation
is the story of the risen Christ, and of how people kept the faith in a time of
suffering and persecution. It is a letter written to the congregations of
Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyratira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Hear
John’s words of encouragement to them as a word to us. Then congregations were
called on to keep the faith in a time and place in which to be a Christian was
to be a criminal. To give allegiance to anyone other than the emperor was
considered an act of treason, and Christians gave their allegiance to Jesus
Christ above all others. I
doubt that anyone will burst in here and haul us away for practicing our faith.
In fact our issue is not whether gathering here is an act of treason, but rather
the issue is are we relevant. There are so many people around us who do not go
to church, do not know God, have no concept of who Jesus is, and of how faith in
him can save our souls. They do not know and they may not care. But they, like
you and me, have a hunger in their spirit for what can connect them to something
greater than ourselves and at the same time gives our lives meaning.
They might be interested in the church if they believed it made in
difference in their lives or in the world. Does
what we do here matter to anyone but us? I hope it does, because if we are here
only for ourselves, we are shortchanging ourselves and we are insulting God and
the Christ we confess. Jesus called
his disciples to gather for worship, to sing and pray and share in communion. It
is a story worth telling to people who can be changed by it, even some of us who
have been in the church for a long time. They can come to know him as Savior and
friend, and to help them find a church, I prefer this one, in which they can
build up their relationship with God and with the people they encounter. He
also called them and he calls us to help people as much as we possibly can by
going into the world and telling his story. What story is that? It
is the story of Jesus who trusted God so much that he was able to stand before
the authority of Rome even at the cost of his own life. “I faced them, and you
can too” he says to the churches confronting Roman occupation. “I stood up
for the God who sent me into the world” he says to us, we can too. It is the
story of the first born of the dead, the one who shows us what resurrection
looks like; it is the story of the risen Christ. We
are encouraged to tell the story of the one who rules even over the rulers of
this world. He reminds us that while we respect civil authority, presidents,
prime ministers, governors, and mayors are not the ones we call Lord. Jesus
Christ is Lord. The church in the days when Revelation was written was
persecuted because they would not say when asked, that ”Caesar is Lord.”
Their proclamation was that “Jesus Christ is Lord.” What
is our story? It is the story of people forced to worship in secret who are told
that they are in fact priest, protectors and leaders of worship – and it will
be so. We can tell the story that the day will come when the risen and
victorious Christ will come in such a way that even his opponents will have to
declare that he is who he has said he is. He is not only the truth Pilate tried
to figure out, he is the way when we are lost and the light when darkness is all
around us. We
will tell the story of the one who is the Alpha and Omega, the A to Z, the first
and last. Amen. Let it be so. That
is the story we will tell. It is the proclamation we will make. But our
proclamation will be empty if we are content with only telling the story. John
as he writes to the seven churches wants them and us to know that there is
ministry for us to do. One writer puts it this way. “John
understands the church to be a prophetic community, and he here declares it to
be a royal and priestly community. As a prophetic community the church mediates
the word of God make known in Jesus to the world. As a priestly community the
church mediates to the world God’s reconciliation of the world in Jesus, the
Sacrificed Priest, and instead of sacrificing to the emperor on the Roman altar,
the church sacrifices itself on the true altar of God. As a royal community, the
church represents and signifies the rule of God as already present in the
world” (Interpretation Series. Revelation.
M Eugene Boring. Louisville: John Knox Press, p. 78). We
are art of the Christian story. We are here in this place God has given us and
it is our privilege to serve God and God’s people including ourselves in this
place. We
are on a daily basis able to offer our own prayers of praise and thanksgiving,
lament and concern to the one who is timeless and bound neither by time nor
eternity. God
has given us minds to think, eyes to see, ears to hear, nerves to feel, and a
nose that allows us to be aware of the scents around us. Our senses may be
dimmed a bit, but here we are. And with all that we are, for all that we are, we
give thanks to God. So
today, on this Thanksgiving Sunday, we can thank God that among the ministries
given to us is the ministry of stewardship that helps us value relationships,
and develop positive attitudes. We can with great appreciation believe that
there is a future before us that can be as meaningful and glorious as is our
past and we can commit to supporting it. And for all that we have been given, we
can become stewards of gratitude. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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