"The Great Omission"
To whom should you give thanks?
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 8, 2006
Text: Ephesians 1:15-23
The Rev. Richard Tatum, a minister who lives not far from Chicago had a problem. He and his wife had decided to visit the Canadian Rockies. They went to beautiful British Columbia and Alberta and found it to be one of the most moving and splendid trips of their lives. The only problem was when they came home. While in the Rockies, he'd taken some marvellous photographs, but when his wife's colleagues at work saw them, they all made the same comment: Her husband must have a really brilliant camera.
This upset the Rev. Tatum so much that he said to his wife angrily, “Do you think that when people look at a magnificent oil painting they say, ”˜My goodness, they must have used a high-quality brush to do that?' Do you think that when someone chisels a magnificent sculpture everyone says, ”˜By gosh, that artist must have used one sharp chisel?' Do you think when you see a magnificent building that everyone is in awe of the architectural drawings?' So why is it that when everyone looks at these photographs, I've got a good camera?”
His wife paused and said: “Richard, dear, now you know what God feels like.”
God made the whole world, but how many people stop and say, “My goodness, it was the Creator who was responsible for it all.” It makes you think, doesn't it? Indeed, it seems to me, and maybe I'm just being falsely nostalgic, that the very day of Thanksgiving as we experience it in Canada is waning in importance, and waning in its spiritual standing within our society as a whole.
I've wondered why that is the case. Why is Thanksgiving treated as just another day on the calendar, or an opportunity to close the cottage, or a chance to go for a nice drive, or an excuse for gluttony? Why do we treat it in such a way, I wonder? I compare it to our American neighbours, who still seem to be passionately fond of their Thanksgiving. Why is this?
Probably, it has something to do with Thanksgiving still being inextricably tied to the American meta-narrative of the arrival of the pilgrims in this God-given, great and free land - through manifest destiny they lived in this great and glorious place. Maybe, to some extent, it's a little bit of theology and a little bit of civil religion rolled into one. Or maybe it's due to the close proximity to Christmas and what is known as the holiday season; everyone gets wrapped up in the spirit of Thanksgiving in the same way as they get wrapped-up in the spirit of Christmas. Or maybe it is due to the fact that, unlike Christmas and Easter, which are associated with key events in the life of Jesus - the incarnation and the resurrection and salvation - Thanksgiving seems to have little or no bearing on the life of Jesus. Therefore, for Christians it is something that is marginal at best (although I will come back to that in a while).
Maybe the waning of Thanksgiving is due to the fact that urban people do not have the same sense of connection with the land that our rural forebears did. We simply have everything we need at our fingertips and are therefore disconnected from the land. I do like the sign that Dr. Hunnisett saw in the town of Argyle, not far from here: “Farmers feed cities.” What a shame that that sign has to be put up at all! Sometimes we urbanites take it for granted. Somehow we're not as connected to the land as former generations or people who still live in the country are.
This reminds me of when I was a Sunday school teacher in a sizable town years before I became a minister. I innocently asked the little girls and boys, “Can you tell me who is responsible for making the corn in the fields?”
One little girl put up her hand and said: “The Jolly Green Giant. That's who.”
Of course, she's right. It seems that all you do is open a can or a bag, flick on a microwave and three minutes later: hot corn. It's that simple. We're disconnected from the land and sometimes, we're disconnected from the One who gave us the land. Or maybe it's just due to the fact that we live in a highly materialistic culture that gives little or no thought to the origins of things, or to the Creator of the universe. This culture simply accepts life as it is, as if it is dropped on our laps and here we are. And we're fortunate, but we really don't know who to thank for our good fortune.
Now, I suppose one could respond to a world that treats Thanksgiving with a degree of ennui by becoming legalistic and angry, asking, “Why isn't the world thanking God and why aren't people on their knees and why aren't the churches full on Thanksgiving and why and why.” We could go on ad infinitum, but I would like to suggest that by not giving thanks, people are missing out on something. By giving thanks we take stock of the real values of our lives, we take stock of the things that are most important to us. What you are thankful for will tell you where your heart is; it'll tell you what you value the most.
I also recognize that our values change over life and in the ages that we live, what we give thanks for will alter. A five-year-old and a 15-year-old and a 50-year-old will be thankful for different things. A five-year-old will be very thankful for 20 minutes on a swing-set. A 15-year-old will be thankful for an MP3 player and some massive speakers in his or her bedroom. A 50-year-old will be thankful for some quiet time away from an MP3 player and massive speakers. We are thankful for different things at different stages in our lives. They will alter, they will ebb and flow, they will change. But are there not some immutable things, some things for which we should always give thanks, things that really will give us a true and powerful sense of thanksgiving? I think there are.
I turn to this morning's text from the Book of Ephesians. Paul is writing to second-century Christians who are being threatened with martyrdom. They've been persecuted, many of them have been locked up. The church at the time of Paul's writing was undergoing incredible persecution. Part of it was because the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Romans and Roman power and authority was crushing Jews and Christians alike. There was a heavy-handed imposition of Roman rule and power that was frightening for the early Christians. By the time the second generation of Christians in Ephesus had come along, they were concerned that they weren't going to have a future.
They were wondering if their faith was resonating with the world; many of them formed what were known as “house churches,” because they were frightened to meet publicly, lest they be found out by the Roman authorities. Likewise, all the temples around them were filled with what the Apostle Paul called, the “atheoi,” the godless people. People who would turn churches into places of pagan worship. Because of that, the Christians were concerned that they would have no place to be and no standing in society. The godless ones had taken over.
All this, under the umbrella of Roman power and authority. Paul writes to these people in words that I think speak to every generation. He says, “I have never stopped giving thanks for you and I think of you every day in my prayers.” Throughout the whole Book of Ephesians, even set against the backdrop of martyrdom and suffering and oppression, there is this constant theme of praise, the constant recognition that the people whom he had helped found the church in Ephesus are still there, that God is still protecting and caring for them, that the world, though seeming to be in a state of disaster, is nevertheless loved by God. It's a marvellous, marvellous passage about the unity of humanity, the power of God and the overwhelming victory of grace.
In it there are some clues, some thoughts that inspire our hearts and minds this Thanksgiving. The first is this sense of what we call in Greek, “doxa” or glory. We sing the doxology every Sunday after we have heard the words of forgiveness. For the Apostle Paul there is this profound sense of doxology, of glory, that works all the way through this book. He starts by giving thanks for the thing that is around him the most, the thing that he cherishes the most: the people of God - the church.
I think it behooves us on Thanksgiving to begin our thanksgiving with a recognition and a thankfulness for the church. I don't just mean the beautiful building that we have here at Eaton Memorial. I don't just mean the changes that we've made to the atrium and the elevator and all that. I don't just mean the beautiful cornucopia that makes this such a lovely spot in which to sit on a Sunday morning. I don't just mean the magnificent music. Most of all, I mean a recognition of the very existence of the Body of Christ, the believers who share a common faith.
So often, we take the church for granted. We think that it's just going to exist, just be there, rather than to give thanks for the God who gave us the fellowship of one another. It's a powerful thing, so powerful that Paul says this church is something for which Christ died. By the church, I mean the worldwide Body of Christ. We need to give thanks for the church, because it is the church that is going to proclaim the goodness of God and the power of his grace in Jesus Christ.
We also have to give thanks for the creation around us. There is an invisible force, an invisible power that makes and sustains this world. It's amazing, you know, that 50 years ago we thought the world was made up only of protons and neutrons and electrons, but over time we've come to see that there are invisible forces at work behind the created order. There are quarks and gluons and all manner of things that even scientists cannot see or perceive. There is even something called “quantum uncertainty” - a kind of ordered uncertainty. There are things in the universe that we cannot always comprehend.
Just recently I have been reading the great scientist and theologian John Polkinghorne, who used to be president of Queen's College at Cambridge University in England. He was considered one of the world's most eminent scientists, as well as being an Anglican priest. In his writings, he maintains that there is a role for theology, there is a role for believers to say that in this created order, there is a value and a purpose. Creation is not just an accident, but has something behind it that has power and gives it meaning. I quote from this eminent scholar: “We live in a world which is the carrier of value at all levels of our meeting with it. Only a metaphysical account, in other words, only an account beyond the physical, which is prepared to acknowledge that this is so can be considered at all adequate.”
In other words, this creation that we have is not an accident, it is a divine gift. How much more then, it seems to me, are those who believe in that Creator supposed to struggle and care for this creation? How can we possibly take a step back from the crisis that creation faces and pretend that it doesn't matter when it is the very hand of God who created it in the first place? The “how” and the “why” will probably be a mystery for all time, certainly for now, but it is something that people of faith must tell the world: Be thankful because it is a God who has given it great value and who has created it.
We must also give thanks for ourselves - yes, ourselves. I know, we wake up in the morning and we are not often completely thrilled with who we are. I know when I get up a six o'clock in the morning, every little bone grinds, every bit of cartilage seems to slip, every tired organ needs caffeine to get it going again. It seems like an imperfect body that we've got and an imperfect creation that we live with. Sure it is. But we are nevertheless, as the psalmist said, “wonderfully made.”
What a great gift it is just to get up in the morning, and what a gift it is to see the sun and to feel its warmth, and what a gift to meet with other human beings on this journey of life! If we do not give thanks for ourselves, then we are committing the ultimate sin, for we exist because of the divine hand of a Maker who gives us this life. We need to give thanks for Jesus Christ. We need to give thanks to the Author and finisher of our lives. We need to give thanks for the One who died for us. We need to give thanks. Paul says, “The height, the depth, the breadth, the love of Jesus Christ” is something that is unfathomable, but for which we should give thanks every day.
What happens when life throws us something dangerous? What happens when we are confronted by the ultimate evil, or the ultimate illness, or the ultimate depravity? What happens when we're hungry? What happens when there is a catastrophe? How do we still find within our hearts and our souls the possibility to give thanks? It's not so simple to say you may be coming back to me. We thank God for the church and for creation and for ourselves and for Christ, but what happens when we're in the pit - in the darkness and all does not seem like it is worth giving thanks for?
Remember the Ephesians: Paul gave thanks when they were at their lowest. It seems to me that when things are at their lowest, our thanks for what we do have should be all the more poignant.
I was reading back copies of the Cape Times not long ago. A story from Cape Town appeared on the front page a couple of years ago. A man was robbed. Nine robbers broke into his house. He managed to grab the last robber and threw him into the swimming pool and when the robber sank like a stone, he realized that the robber couldn't swim. What a dilemma! What do you do?
The man thought about it, said a quick prayer and determined that he couldn't let the man die even though he'd robbed him. So, he dove into the pool and hauled the man out and gave him CPR. No sooner was the man revived, no sooner had he regained his composure than he reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. He demanded money again - from the man who'd just saved his life. What did he do then? He threw him back into the pool and the man began to sink once again, the bubbles diminishing on their way to the surface, and he prayed again, “Oh, Lord, what am I to do?
So he dove in a second time and pulled the robber out, and laid him out on the ground. He pumped his chest and out poured the water, and he resuscitated the man. But the man was in a partial coma and just lay there. A reporter from the Cape Times asked him: “Why did you do it? Why did you save this man's life?
He said: “Because, honestly, I couldn't live with my God if I didn't.”
When this robber had not been thankful for having his life saved, twice the response of the man to the one who wasn't thankful was to save him anyway and to show him grace. I think that is what God is like. He knows that there are moments when our lives are dark and difficult, he knows where our hearts are, but by his grace he always gives us other opportunities to say “thank you.”
Nowhere has this been demonstrated more than in the events in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania over the last week. Who among us has not been absolutely appalled, dismayed and frightened by the execution of these young girls. Yet, in the midst of what would seem to be one of the darkest things that could ever happen to human beings anywhere at any time, there was this incredible light of grace - the grace of Christ - that came from the Amish people.
When a representative of the Amish community went to the widow of Charles Carl Roberts' - the man who killed those children - to invite her to the funeral so that she might experience forgiveness, was this not the power of God's grace at the very darkest moment? Or, particularly, when the grandfather of one of the little girls went into the kitchen of the father of the man who was responsible for this heinous crime and hugged him, and the father of the man who killed these girls said: “God met me in my kitchen today,” is that not a sign of God's grace in the midst of the darkest moments of life?
There will always be those who are deranged. There will always be those who, like Roberts, have twisted, bent, bruised and ruined minds. But it is those who knowingly forgive, who embrace, and who still give thanks who are the ones we should remember.
In 1636, after the dreadful Thirty Years War and the plague, there was a German pastor called Martin Rinkhart, who had been burying 15 people a day from his parish. He, himself had lost everything: his church was destroyed, his flock was dead. But at the end of it all, when he sat down to say grace with his children, he said these words that you are going to sing in a few moments:
Now thank we all our God,
with heart, and hands, and voices,
who wondrous things has done,
in whom this world rejoices;
My friends, that is thanksgiving. That is the spirit that arises in the darkest of moments, that takes the great omission - people who have not given thanks - and turns it upside down and gives us our reason to live. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.