A Thanksgiving Sermon

Into the More

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

November 22, 2015

Scripture: Matthew 6:25-33

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.

Happy Thanksgiving! Yes, I know. Our country’s official Thanksgiving day isn’t until next Thursday, but I suppose it’s better to mark it in church early rather than late. Besides, next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, and we’ll want to focus on that change of the church season next Sunday. So today Thanksgiving it is. We Congregationalists like to think that Thanksgiving is somehow especially our holiday, what with all the stories of the Pilgrims celebrating what we call the first Thanksgiving. I’ve heard some things recently that suggest that those stories are mostly made up and aren’t real history, but never mind. Thanksgiving it is. Thanks be to God.

Now, for most of my life I have loved Thanksgiving. That’s partly because I love the traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and gravy. Especially the gravy, although frankly I can do without the cranberries. But there’s more to my old love of Thanksgiving than that. For much of my life my late wife Francie and I would take our two children to my parents’ house in Eugene for Thanksgiving. We’d stuff ourselves full on Thursday, then on Friday we’d leave the kids with their grandparents and go spend Friday and Saturday on the Oregon coast as a little personal get away time together. We’d come back to Eugene on Sunday, pick up the kids, and drive home. The traffic was often horrendous, but otherwise we always looked forward to that break every year. Those were some very good times.

So yes, I have loved Thanksgiving, but there’s something I need to confess to you. This year I’ve really been struggling with the notion of giving God thanks for the blessings in my life. It’s not that I’m not grateful for those blessings. I am. Here’s what I’m struggling with. How can I give God thanks that I have a dry, warm home, plenty to eat, a good education—more education than anybody has any reason to have actually, good health care, a safe community to live in, good work to do, a loving family, and so many other blessings when I know that so many other people in the world don’t have all of those things, or may not have any of them? Maybe all the images of those Syrian refugees who have lost everything makes that question especially poignant for me this year. When I give thanks for all of the blessings I enjoy it feels to me like I’m somehow putting myself above all those other, less materially fortunate people, or worse, that God has put me above them. I find that feeling very uncomfortable. I don’t think God loves me more than God loves anyone else. I don’t think that God has somehow chosen me for a blessed life and chosen others for a difficult or even impossible life. When I thank God for my blessings I just can’t help thinking of all of the people who don’t have those blessings. The homeless. The mentally ill. The physically ill with no access to health care. The lonely. The hungry. The refugees—these days especially the refugees. The victims of violence—these days especially the victims of violence too. So many other ways in which people’s lives are difficult or even impossible while my life is neither difficult nor impossible. I’ve really been wrestling with my difficulty with Thanksgiving this year. I have, fortunately I guess, had some thoughts about how to resolve my difficulties with Thanksgiving, and that’s what I want to share with you this morning.

I think the reason I have so much trouble with Thanksgiving is that I’ve thought that Thanksgiving is about giving thanks for the wrong things. I’ve thought that I was supposed to give thanks to God for all of those material, earthly things in my life that I think of as blessings, but as I’ve wrestled with the very notion of Thanksgiving this year I’ve come to the conclusion that those things are not what Thanksgiving is all about; and it was our reading this morning from Matthew that led me to that conclusion. In that text Jesus tells us precisely not to worry about the material things of our lives. He says “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.” He’s telling us those things are not the things we’re supposed primarily to be concerned with. Not that those things don’t matter at all. He tells us in our passage not to worry about what we will eat, drink, or wear and says “indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.” Yes, we need them, and other things as well. Jesus fully recognizes those realities of human life. But he’s telling us here they aren’t the most important things. They are not primarily what God wants for us. They’re necessary. God knows they’re necessary, but they sure aren’t what God want us to focus on. I think we can say in this Thanksgiving season that they are not the things for which God most wants us to give thanks.

So what does God want us to focus on? For what does God want us to give thanks? About all he says about that here is: “Is not life more important than food…?” He is telling us, I think, that life is more than its physical requirements. Life is more than we usually take it to be. Jesus here is inviting us into that more, into the more that life can be, the more that God wants our lives to be. So if that’ what Jesus is doing here, and I think it is, he presents us with a bit of a problem, doesn’t he. He presents us with a pretty significant question: Just what is the more that life supposedly is? Just what is the more that Jesus is inviting, or calling, us into?

Again, he doesn’t really answer that question here as directly as we might like. Jesus has a really annoying habit of presenting us with questions that he never quite answers. He does that on purpose, of course. He does it because he wants us to be active participants in discerning what the life of faith is for us in our time and place. He doesn’t want us to be merely passive recipients of prepackaged answers. He invites us on a quest, a quest for what he usually calls the kingdom of God, which we can take as a metaphor for the way God wants life on earth to be. He says life is more, then invites us to figure out for ourselves what that more is.

Of course, he doesn’t leave us on our own to do that. Jesus is our access to God’s grace. Jesus is our access to inner peace. Jesus is our access to spiritual strength and the courage to face whatever life throws our way with trust in God’s love and solidarity with us every step of the way. That inner peace and strength is what he’s talking about in this passage. He tells us to look at the birds of the air. He says that God sustains them and will sustain us too. He tells us to look to the lilies of the field, that grow and flourish in God’s grace just as we can if we will, as he says here, just stop worrying. “Do not worry,” he says. “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour” to his or her life? It’s a rhetorical question of course. He means that none of us can. “So do not worry,” he says. “Do not worry about tomorrow,” he says. That’s the message that comes through in this passage. Don’t worry. Trust God. Focus on the “more” of life, on the deeper things, on spiritual health more than physical health, on spiritual riches more than material riches, on God more than on the world.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have to confess that I find those instructions often difficult if not impossible to live by. Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m a bit of a worrier. I tend to fuss about things more than I should. Perhaps some of you do too. Maybe that’s why I find this passage from Matthew so powerful. It’s telling me something I really need to learn. It’s telling you those things too. Don’t worry, it says. Trust God. God will see you through whatever you have to face in life. You are safe with God, even when you aren’t safe at all by the world’s standards. God cares about you and for you, and that’s the most important thing you need to know. Those are powerful words indeed. Words of comfort in times of troubles. Words of strength when we feel week. Words of courage when we are afraid. Words of solace when we grieve. I may find them hard to remember and to live by. Maybe sometimes you do too, but there they are. We can always turn to them. We can always find what we need in them. Thanks be to God!

Thanks be to God indeed. See, we can give thanks for material things I suppose, as long as we always remember to pray and to care for those who lack the material things they need. But these words are what we can truly give thanks for. They are so much more important than mere material things, and they are God’s words to everyone not just to us. They tell us that God is always there for us, caring for us, loving us, and holding us always in God’s unfailing arms of grace. For that I truly say thank you God. Thank you for coming to us in Jesus Christ and showing us your unfailing grace and love for all people. These things of God are the “more” into which Jesus calls us, and for that more we can truly give thanks.

So this week as we celebrate Thanksgiving, lets remember what we can truly be thankful for. Let’s remember the more of life. Let’s remember the more of God. Let us appreciate the earthly benefits we enjoy and give thanks for them, but even more than that let us enter into Jesus’ more. Let us remember God’s grace and the spiritual gifts God offers all people. Then we can truly be thankful in the way Jesus calls us to be thankful. Thank you God. Thank you for being who you are. Thank you for showing us who you are in Christ Jesus. Thank you that you are always there for us and for everyone. For that more than anything else, thanks be to God. Amen.