Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 18, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So, today we’re marking Thanksgiving in our worship together, and I have a confession to make about that. It makes me uneasy. Here’s why. Every time I think about giving thanks to God I run smack into this question: Thanks for what? I know what the traditional answer is, at least for our national Thanksgiving Day. Coming in late fall our Thanksgiving Day is traditionally a day of giving thanks for the harvest. It stands squarely in a tradition of harvest festivals of thanks that goes back at least as far as the late 7th century BCE, the time from which the book of Deuteronomy comes. Our reading from that book this morning prescribes a thanksgiving festival for the people of Judah. It instructs the people to take some of the “first fruits” of the harvest to the temple as an offering of thanks to God. And it tells the people precisely what it is that they are to give thanks for. They are to recite their people’s foundational story of liberation from slavery in Egypt and give God thanks for the land they possess as God’s gift to them. This passage tells the people to give God thanks for their material blessings, thanks that they possess land that produces food enough for all the people, or at least that did so in the good years.

Traditionally we do the same thing. One of the central symbols of our Thanksgiving Day, besides the sacred football, is the cornucopia, the horn of plenty, that symbol of an unending supply of food, of the bounty of the earth. We remember the traditional story of what we so ethnocentrically call the first Thanksgiving, when the Pilgrims (our Congregationalist forbears, by the way) celebrated their first harvest in the New World. We serve a traditional feast and stuff ourselves as we do on no other day of the year, a symbolic and actual partaking of the great material abundance that is our to enjoy. It is that material abundance for which we Americans traditionally give thanks.

And every time we do, I run, as I said, smack into that question “thanks for what?” And I run smack into the immense problems that I have with the traditional answer that we give thanks for material plenty. It’s not that I don’t feel gratitude for the relative material abundance that I enjoy compared with most of the world’s people. I do; but whenever I contemplate that material abundance, or at least the relative material security that I enjoy, I can’t help but ask: What about all those other people in the world, and in my own country, who don’t enjoy that level of material wellbeing? And what about all of the people in the world, and in my own country, who live in real material want, who don’t have a safe, warm, dry place to life, safe water, and adequate food like I do? Those questions just won’t go away whenever I contemplate the question of thanksgiving.

And another question won’t go away either: Does my relative prosperity mean that God has favored me over them? Certainly, religious people have often answered that question yes, and I suppose that’s why the question occurs to me in the first place. One of the dominant voices in the Old Testament, for example, the voice we hear in the book of Deuteronomy and in many of the Psalms, certainly answers that question yes. That voice insists that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked in this life. It follows, at least for most people who accept that proposition, that those who prosper in this life must be righteous and blessed by God, while those who suffer in this life must be wicked and cursed by God. Our Puritan forbears in the Congregationalist tradition wholeheartedly accepted those conclusions. That theology of Deuteronomy is the basis of the famous Protestant work ethic that those Puritan Congregationalists so embodied.

Answering yes to my question of whether my relative material prosperity means that God has favored me over those who have less than I, and I suppose the corollary question of whether God has favored those who are wealthier than I over me, may be a traditional religious answer; but it is one that I simply cannot accept. I can see no reason why God should favor me over so many billions of others. I know I am not more righteous than most of them. And I know that not all of the people in the world who are wealthier than I am are more righteous than me, although some of them certainly are. The world—and God—it seems to me just don’t work that way. Yet it also seems to me that giving thanks God primarily for our material abundance necessarily implies that the world—and God—do work that way. Otherwise, given how unequally material resources are distributed in the world, what would God have to do with our material abundance? Since I am convinced that God and the world do not work that way, I must look elsewhere for a cause to give thanks.

Fortunately, I don’t have to look very far. A different answer lies in our other Scripture lesson for this morning from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. That passage begins with a famous line: “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice.” Phil4:4 NRSV Paul advises his converts in Philippi to pray to God with thanksgiving. He too knew that thanksgiving is an appropriate attitude for the faithful to have toward God. He also tells them to pray with “supplication” and to make their requests known to God. That sounds like he could be telling people to pray for material abundance, among other things. But what does Paul say is the actual result of approaching God with supplication and thanksgiving? It’s not that you’ll get what you ask for. Rather, he says that when you approach God in this way “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Phil. 4:7 NRSV Paul drives the point home in the next lines. If, he says, you live as I have taught you, focusing on that which is truly commendable in life, then “the God of peace will be with you.” Not the God of abundance, success, or power. The God of peace. The blessing that God bestows on the faithful is peace.

Certainly the peace of God that passes all understanding is a great blessing, but I think that there is an even larger lesson that we can learn from Paul’s words. The peace of God is a spiritual gift, and the gifts of God for which we can truly give thanks are God’s spiritual, not material gifts. Spiritual gifts are the true gifts of God, the gift of peace that Paul mentions but also the gifts of joy, courage, comfort, hope, and all of the other gifts of the spirit. These can all be ours through our relationship with God. And of course the divine gift that Paul most cherished and that forms the basis of all the others, the grace of God. The grace of God that, quite apart from any merit on our part overcomes all separation between us and God and reconciles us and all creation to God.

These eternal spiritual gifts are gifts the world cannot give. The world can and does bestow wealth and power upon some people. God bestows grace upon all people. Not all people have enough material abundance. Far too many people are hungry and homeless. Far too many children have no source of clean water and no access to life-saving medicines. Material abundance is not evenly distributed in this world, not even close; and we Americans are the primary beneficiaries of that uneven distribution of resources. That inequality from which we so benefit makes me uncomfortable giving thanks for material blessings. God’s grace, on the other hand, is evenly distributed to all. It is equally available to all. The gifts of the Spirit are there for all to claim, equally, with no distinction of economic status, race, national origin, or any of the other factors that so determine the unequal distribution of material resources in the world. That free, equal, universal grace is our true cause for giving thanks to God.

So let us give thanks for God’s grace and for all of the gifts of the spirit that flow from that grace for us and for all people. Relying on that grace, let us work for the coming of that promised world when sharing by all will mean scarcity for none. When that promised kingdom comes we will be able to give thanks for material blessings. Until then, let us give thanks to the God who makes the promise that that kingdom will come one day and whose grace sustains us in our quest for its coming. Amen.