Thank you

various

It is stunning and a bit frightening to me how dependent we have become on computers and other electronic devices. This past Monday night, my computer stopped working. When I tried to start it up, it would not get to a screen where I could do anything. I tried it over and over again. I tried taking out the battery and disconnecting it from the electric plug and then tried starting it with just the plug and then just the battery. I tried everything I could think of and nothing worked.

When did I last back up the data on the computer? To my dismay, I realized it had been October 7 when I last backed it up. I have been so busy I haven’t taken time to back it up and now I was going to pay for it.

I woke up Tuesday morning and had breakfast with Karl and Elizabeth Kopf who were visiting (and who send their greetings to those who remember them when they attended our church). While I was waiting for them, I began making a list of the files I would need to recreate and it became an increasingly long list.

Then Annie called and had a brilliant idea. Since her old computer was the same model as mine, why not switch the hard drives and see if my hard drive worked in her computer. So when I came home, it took just five minutes to switch the hard drives and the computer started up and I was able to back up my data and nothing was lost.

I was very fortunate that I didn’t lose any of the files on my computer and everything is now backed up.

That did not end my computer work this week. Caitlin and John had friends visiting who brought over a new computer I had ordered and I spent a lot of time this week trying to get programs compatible with Windows Vista up and running and then trying to figure out how to make these new programs work.

There are still a few things to work out, but I wrote this sermon, printed it out with the printer and researched for it with my Bible software program, all on my new computer. All in all, I am very grateful. I am thankful.

This past week on Thursday, Americans celebrated the number one family holiday in the US, Thanksgiving. Since 1863 the fourth Thursday of November has been designated as Thanksgiving Day. More Americans travel to their family homes for this holiday than any other in the year. In terms of a family holiday, this is the Moroccan equivalent of Aid el Kabir. As a consequence, the airports are crowded, the roads are congested, it is a terrible time to travel and much patience is required.

People begin traveling on Wednesday and by Thursday afternoon, everyone is gathered at the family homes. The centerpiece of the holiday is a big Thanksgiving meal with a large turkey, cranberries, stuffing, gravy and then everyone has their favorite vegetables to go with this meal. This is followed by apple pie and pumpkin pie for desert and then everyone lies down and watches American football games or sleeps. We are unable to move because we have eaten too much. We eat leftovers on Friday and Saturday and head back home on Sunday. It is a great holiday.

But the best memories of Thanksgiving I have were in a church service at our church in Princeton, New Jersey. We met on Thanksgiving Day in the morning before the big Thanksgiving meal which generally starts in the afternoon. We sang some hymns and songs and then people began to share with each other their stories and why they were thankful. This was my favorite church service each year. Year after year I was moved and the stories people told brought tears to my eyes.

What made it so moving is that as people shared, I heard how deeply and lovingly God was building faith in the people I saw in church week by week.

It is possible to come to church Sunday after Sunday and not know the people sitting next to you. We may exchange pleasantries after church but it is rare that any significant discussion takes place. Our relationships in church are far too superficial. When we take time to sit and share with each other what God is doing in our lives, that time stands out as having been significant and special.

A few years ago, at the adult Sunday School class on the last Sunday of the year, we began sharing with each other what had been significant in that last year and that class was one of those special moments that I will always remember. I love our Easter Sunday service when people from the church share their stories of how God has worked in their lives.

God is at work in our lives in deeply significant ways and often it is not until we share with others what God has been doing that we see the deep significance ourselves.

As we share stories with each other, we are moved to a state of awe because of the depth of God’s care expressed in each life.

Sharing with each other is a way of saying, “Thank you,” to God. Sharing our stories is part of being thankful.

Jenny Russon is going to come up to share with us why she is thankful. Just a little later in the service, I will be asking for a couple more volunteers to come forward and share with us. And then we will have the opportunity for you to turn to someone near you and share with them why you are thankful. So begin thinking now. Sharing your story of why you are thankful is an act of service to us. Thank you Jenny for being willing to start us off this morning.

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When I began thinking about a service of thanksgiving, there were two passages of scripture that came to my mind. The first is the story about Jesus and the ten lepers.

This story takes place on the border between Samaria and Galilee as Jesus made his way, with his disciples to Jerusalem.

Ten men with leprosy or some form of skin disease met Jesus. They were likely a mixed group of Jews and Samaritans who were brought together by their mutual suffering and rejection. They had heard about the miracles of Jesus and so called out asking for healing for themselves.

When Jesus had healed lepers in the past, he had touched them but this time he just told them to go to the priests. This was not an easy thing for the lepers to do. Lepers knew the social and religious restrictions on them. To go to the priests with their disease would have resulted in punishment. Lepers only went to the priests when they were healed so they could be declared clean.

But the ten, in great faith, went on their way to the priests and as they went, they were healed. Imagine the excitement and celebration as they looked around and saw that they had all been healed. They must have jumped and hugged each other and then they must have thought about the prospect of being reunited with their families and friends. The faster they ran to the priests, the sooner they would be reunited with their families. And so they raced to go to the priests.

Except one man who turned around and raced back to thank Jesus. There is no reason to suspect that he did not have family and friends he was eager to see. But while the nine others raced to the priests, he raced back to thank Jesus. Perhaps his mother had taught him to say thank you? But his return to thank Jesus was more than politeness.

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.  16 He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

What did he gain from this act of thanking Jesus that the other nine missed?
[Jesus] said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”

All ten lepers were healed, but this one received something the others did not. Your faith has made you well, what does that mean? The implication is that not only did this man receive healing for his leprosy but he also received healing for his spirit.

The nine were healed physically but because the one came back praising God in a loud voice and threw himself at the feet of Jesus to thank him, he received physical and spiritual healing and was brought into the family of God.

All of us in this world receive from God his gifts, whether or not we know it is God who gave us these gifts. Being thankful is recognition that we have received gifts from God and our thankfulness opens ourselves to Jesus who can heal body and soul.

Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe in the early 1700s. The abridged versions strip the Christian content from the story, but the unabridged version is a highly Christians story. Robinson Crusoe is a sailor on a sailing ship that is wrecked off the coast of an island in the Carribean and only he survives the shipwreck. He finds himself on an island and is providentially provided for with contents of the ship that he rescues. After nine months in which he has been able to grow food for himself and fix up a cave into a decent home, he has a dream in which an angel appears to him and announces that because he has resisted the providence of God and repentance, now he will die. This dream leads to the repentance and conversion of Robinson Crusoe. He opens one of the seaman’s chest he rescued and begins to read the Bible. The rest of the novel deals with the lessons he learned about living a Christian life.

One of the lessons Daniel Defoe wanted us to learn from his book is that we need to express our thanks to God who provides us with what we need to live.

When we give thanks to God for the good things he gives us and brings to us, we open ourselves to the spiritual life he offers.

Why do we say grace? Is it wrong to eat a meal without taking time to say thank you to God? Is there an amount of food you eat that requires grace to be said? Can you eat a cracker without saying grace but if you put cheese on it, then you need to say grace? There is nothing magical about saying grace. When we say grace we do not bless the food. We bless God who provides us the food. We don’t have to say grace before we eat. But whether it’s a meal or a snack, pausing to thank God for the food you’re about to eat is one way to remember who is providing you with what you need in this life.

It is easy to say thank you when you sit down to a nice meal in a warm home where you are safe. What do you do when you are in the midst of a storm? How can you give thanks when everything around you is in chaos?

This brings me to the second story that came to my mind when I thought of giving thanks.

In Acts 27, Paul is under guard, being escorted to Rome to present his case before the emperor. The boat on which he was sailing was caught in a great storm in the Mediterranean Sea  called a Euroclydon or a northeaster. For fourteen days they were caught up in a storm so violent that ropes had to be lashed underneath the ship to keep the planking from pulling apart.  Rigging had to be tossed into the sea, along with cargo. Luke wrote in Acts 27:20,
When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved.

This is the stage for Paul’s thanksgiving.
Just before dawn Paul urged them all to eat. “For the last fourteen days,” he said, “you have been in constant suspense and have gone without food—you haven’t eaten anything.  34 Now I urge you to take some food. You need it to survive. Not one of you will lose a single hair from his head.”  35 After he said this, he took some bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all. Then he broke it and began to eat.

Does this surprise you that Paul gave thanks to God before breaking the bread and eating it? (Obviously, his mother never told him to wait an hour after eating before swimming.) Maybe it is not a surprise since it is in a crisis that people often pray the hardest. But when people in a crisis pray, it is usually the prayer of Peter who after walking on water to Jesus sank and began to drown, “Help me Lord.” What is surprising about Paul giving thanks is that it was not a “Help me Lord,” prayer but a prayer giving thanks to God for the bread they were about to eat.

The night Jesus was arrested, knowing he would be taken and crucified, knowing he would suffer and die, Jesus gave thanks.

Paul, who suffered so much, wrote in I Thessalonians 5:16-18
Be joyful always;  17 pray continually;  18 give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Peter, when he wrote to Christians experiencing persecution encouraged them:
I Peter 1:3-6
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

In every situation, in every circumstance, we are to give thanks. Even when facing death we can be thankful. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 15:56-57
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We can be thankful in every circumstance because no matter what happens to us in this life, no matter what horrible event we suffer, we will be victorious through Jesus our Lord. This is not trite religious truth. This is bedrock truth that has enabled saints throughout the history of the church to stand up for Jesus and endure suffering.

Regardless of our circumstance, we are to be thankful.

Expressing thanksgiving opens us to the spiritual work of God in our lives. We are to be thankful regardless of our circumstances and this leads me to a qualification about being thankful.

Our thanks we offer to God needs to be authentic. It needs to be genuine, not artificial.

In the first few years of my Christian life, in Boston, I knew people in other Christian groups who followed the teaching of leaders who instructed them to praise the Lord in all circumstances. So they went around with smiling faces, always saying, “Praise the Lord!” and always being thankful. To not have a smile on the face and not be thankful was a sign of a weak faith.

How can you argue with this? Paul taught that we are to be thankful in all circumstances. But I did not like the way this teaching was applied.

“My wife and kids died in a car accident, I lost my job, my friends have deserted me, I have no money, but “Praise the Lord!’” How authentic is that?

When tragedy hits or when we are overwhelmed with struggles, it is OK to grieve, OK to weep, OK to be angry at God. We need to be authentic as Christians and this means we need to deal honestly with the emotions that come with difficult circumstances.

It is inappropriate to stand in the midst of suffering and put on a happy face and say, “Praise the Lord!” when that is not where your heart is.

There has to be room for authentic response to tragedy and suffering. It cannot be a rule I follow, to praise the Lord in everything. It must be a genuine, authentic response to suffering. I suffer, I grieve, I reflect, I pray and then I conclude that despite the suffering I will give thanks because there is a reality beyond this one.

When something bad happens I need to genuinely, authentically react but at the same time I can be thankful. Not thankful that the bad thing happened, but thankful that whatever happens in this life, it is not the end of the story.
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The reality is that most of us spend far too little time thanking God for the good things in our lives. We take for granted that God provides for us, takes care of us. Or we may decide that we are frustrated that God does not do more for us than he does.

In your devotional time, when you pray, how much time do you spend thanking God for his care of you and provision for you?

Why not try putting more of a focus on being thankful when you have your devotional time. Pray and talk about all the things for which you are thankful that day. When you read the Scriptures, read the passage and then go through it again, thanking God for what happened or was taught.

Some of you may be naturally good at being thankful, but I encourage the rest of you to put an emphasis in your time with God on being thankful. Build up this part of your spiritual life. Each morning think of five or ten things for which you are grateful and then thank God for them.

If your ship is sinking this morning, if you are struggling in your work or some relationship, don’t forget to be thankful. Take time to sit down, push to the side your frustration or pain and be thankful to God for whatever you can be thankful for.

If you are suffering in some way, it is OK to grieve. It is OK to be angry. It is OK to be angry with God. But don’t stop there. Don’t get comfortable with your grief, frustration or anger. Move past this and come to the point of authentic thankfulness for what God has done and for what he has promised to do in the future.

Being aware of blessings will help you to be grateful, help you to be thankful. Make a list of the five or ten things for which you are thankful and then think of what it would mean in your life if any of the things on your list were taken away from you. Do this and you will realize how grateful and thankful you should be.

Be thankful.