|
Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
|
||
|
Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity |
||
|
Deuteronomy 26:1-11 St. John’s Gospel 6:26-35 The
year was 1978. I was a
seminary student in Kansas City, Missouri. It was about this time of year
and we were talking about Thanksgiving, and I can still remember this as
clearly, as though it were taking place before me right now.
The professor said, “I have heard many Thanksgiving sermons in my
life. Most of them said,
‘We’re not thankful enough,’ or, ‘We ought to be more thankful,’
or, “God will take away our bounty unless we stop abusing it and become
more thankful.’ There is probably more truth in all of those statements than
we care to admit, but, no matter how true they ring, they don’t engender
thankfulness in our hearts. The
professor went on to say that, in his mind, a Thanksgiving sermon ought to
give thanks rather than arouse guilt.
I was not sure I agreed with him at that time, for I already had my
Thanksgiving sermon ready. In
good seminary form, it had three points; 1.
We’re not thankful enough. 2.
We ought to be more
thankful. 3.
God will take away our bounty unless we stop abusing it and become
more thankful. Of course I am joking, but I, too, have heard many sermons like that, and I have made up my mind that I will not preach such sermons on Thanksgiving. I will preach about giving thanks, and I take for my text the well-beloved Psalm we call the Jubilate Deo, Psalm 100.
This
Psalm has a great sense of joy in it, an almost contagious joy of the
Lord. Make
a joyful noise unto the Lord.” “Serve the Lord with gladness.”
“Come before His presence with singing,” (King James
Version). The service
of God is joyful. Likewise,
the giving of thanks unto Him is a joy to His people.
That is why we make merry on Thanksgiving Day. Some people falsely make a separation between the giving of
thanks and the rest of the Thanksgiving Day celebration.
But, if done properly, we should see the entire day as a
thanksgiving unto God. The
enjoyment of His gifts is in itself a form of giving thanks.
Imagine yourself giving someone a really nice gift.
You choose it carefully, thinking how the person will enjoy it.
You wrap it in beautiful paper.
You lovingly place it in the person’s hands and eagerly watch as
it is unwrapped and taken from its box.
You expect the person to love it.
You expect acclamation and “thanks.” You expect the person to
wear it, or eat it, or play with it, or whatever it is made for.
But the person says a cool “thank you,” puts it away and goes
on about his business. Are
you pleased? Of course not. You want the person to enjoy the gift. In fact, the use and enjoyment of the gift is the best
“thank you” you could desire. Likewise
let us see the Godly use and enjoyment of His gifts, especially in our
Thanksgiving Day celebrations, as a way of thanking God for His blessings.
He wants us to use and enjoy them. The
Psalm calls us to “serve the
Lord with gladness.” Thanks
giving is a form of service to God. Conversely,
service to God is a form of giving thanks. In thanks giving we “show
forth [His] praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up
ourselves to [His] service, and by walking before [Him] in holiness and
righteousness all our days,” (Book
of Common Prayer, p. 19). Giving
thanks includes all forms of service, from the official, formal worship
services of the Church, to living a holy life, to private and family
devotions, to all aspects of life. Our
entire life, faithfully lived, is an offering of thanks giving, and part
of our service to God. Psalm
100 gives us much encouragement to give
thanks to God, but it also gives us good reasons why.
What is it about Him, and what has He done to merit such thanksgiving and
service? Psalm 100 says, “Be ye sure that the Lord he is God.”
He is God. If He did nothing else that would be enough.
You have all heard the saying about the mountain climber who, asked
why he climbed the mountain, replied simply, “Because it was there.”
Likewise, we give thanks to God because He is there.
We thank Him just for being who and what He is.
But
God is not just “there,” God is good.
As the children’s prayer says; God
is great, God is good, And
we thank Him for our food. By
His hands we all are fed, Give
us, Lord, our daily bread. Our
good God has done and continues to do good unto us. He has healed
the sick and raised the dead. He
has gone to the cross for our sins, conquered the grave, given us His
Spirit, provided our homes, our food, and “all the blessings of this
life.” We have not gathered our tremendous wealth and comfort by our own
efforts. Yes, as the hymn says, “We plow the fields and scatter the
good seed on the land.” Yes
we work and study and work some more to earn a living and provide for our
families, but even the abilities we have to work, our strength and
intelligence are gifts from God. And
He blesses our efforts. The
seeds we scatter are “fed and watered by God’s almighty hand.”
If it were not so, it would come to naught.
For these blessings we give thanks, knowing that we can never repay
Him, or even be worthy to gather up the crumbs under His table.
We
thank Him because, “It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.”
The Great One who is entire and complete in Himself, created us so
that we could have the opportunity to experience something of what He
knows and is as God. He
created us so that we could know the joy of existence, the satisfaction of
creating, and of a job well done. He made us to enable us to experience love, and rejection and
happiness and sorrow. He
created us to exist and He created us to know Him.
Knowing this, how can we not give thanks with gladness? We
give thanks to God because it is in our nature to do so.
That is part of why we exist.
We were made to keep His garden, to care for His world, and to
worship Him. “We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” We
seek and serve Him, almost by instinct. We
give thanks to God because His mercy is everlasting. We have all sinned and gone astray like lost sheep.
Even after our conversion we continue to go astray.
When we really consider our sins we are surprised that we are not
cast into hell. If “The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; the
burden of them is intolerable,” how does God feel about them, since He
knows their evil and hurt far more than we? The
surprising thing about God is not that anyone goes to hell, but that
anyone goes to Heaven. “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips,” (Is. 6:5).
“All have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” (Rom.
6:23). Yet God is the Father
of all mercies, who removes our sins as far from us as the east is from
the west. He has crucified
them in Christ, and He remembers them no more.
He has not wrath for our sins, but mercy that is “everlasting.” Finally,
we give thanks because His truth “endureth from generation to
generation.” Pity the poor
soul who believes truth is simply a figment of the imagination.
How can one build a life on such a foundation? It is nothing but sinking sand.
Such an idea saps the energy and will and creativity out of the
soul. It leads naturally to
the conclusion that life is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing.” No
wonder those who believe that want nothing but “sex, drugs, and rock and
roll.” We
who know Christ know the truth which sets us free from the despair and
meaninglessness of nihilism. Because
we know the truth, we are like a ship with a definite course to steer and
a definite port as our destination. We
are not drifting on the tides and prevailing winds. What a blessing it is to know who we are, and where we are
going. We have the “blessed
hope” and the great, unshakable promises of God.
We have the Holy Bible to teach and direct us. We have Christ and we have His Holy Spirit.
We have truth that endureth from generation to generation.
For this we give thanks. And
so, as we gather around the tables, laden with the Lord’s bounty, and as
we consider the great blessings that are our because of our heritage in
this world, and, of course, as we think of all the blessings that are ours
because we are in Christ and because we know this Great God whom the
Jubilate extols, let us give thanks. In
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.
The Anglican Orthodox Church P.O. Box 128 Statesville, NC 28687 The Most Rev. Jerry Ogles, Bishop Metropolitan The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
|
||
Copyright © 2006 Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church. All rights reserved For website information contact: E-mail Webmaster |
||
http://www.holytrinityanglicanorthodoxchurch.org/HolyTrinityHello.htm