Habitual Thanksgiving

 

November 24, 2022 – Thanksgiving Day, Year C

Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Philippians 4:4-9; John 6:25-35

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 20:50.

Have you ever started your own business? You need to have a vision and a plan and money and lawyers and more money. My father started a hospital systems company when I was in middle school, and I thought the coolest part was the little embosser for the corporate seal that the attorney gave my dad when he signed all the paperwork. All that hard work and money and risk from my father, and that was my favorite part.

Do you remember seeing at a restaurant or another business that framed first dollar that the owners made? A source of pride. A testament to hard work. A reminder of where they’ve been. A statement of gratitude. I don’t see it as much anymore—probably because nobody uses cash these days—but I always get a little sentimental when I see a large, thriving, decades-old business that still has its first dollar framed upon the wall—that hasn’t forgotten where it came from.

Imagine starting your own restaurant. Developing a few recipes in your home kitchen that your friends and neighbors love. Hearing them say, “You ought to do this for living.” Returning to the idea over and over, unable to let it go. Dreaming about how much more you’d enjoy that than your current job. Finally getting serious about it. Scouting out a location. Taking out a loan. Assembling a kitchen. Buying all the supplies. Getting a business license. Hiring a few employees. Passing a health inspection. Testing it out among some close friends. Tweaking a few things. And then, at long last, with your marriage on thin ice and all your savings gone, opening to the public. 

Your first paying customer. Hands you some cash. You take one dollar out of what he hands you and glue it onto the mat that is set in the frame that you already had ready for this moment. You put the framed dollar on the wall while your spouse takes a picture with an iPhone. And then, before you have any time to celebrate, in walks your priest. He looks at you and smiles and says how glad he is that this day has finally come. And then, without warning, he walks over to the wall behind the register, takes the framed dollar bill off the wall, says something about first fruits belonging to God, and then walks out, taking your first dollar with him. 

For my sake and the sake of our stewardship efforts at St. Paul’s, I hope that story sounds ridiculous. But that’s pretty much what Moses tells the people of Israel to do when they get to the land that flows with milk and honey: “When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.” Not the second fruits. Not next year’s harvest. Not what’s left over after you fill your pantry for the winter. But the first produce of your land you will give back to God. 

It almost feels like a punch in the gut—like Don Fanucci, the extortionist from Godfather II, showing up and demanding his cut. After escaping slavery in Egypt. After wandering through the wilderness for forty years. After surviving fire and drought and plague and famine. After crossing the Jordan and conquering the peoples who inhabited the land before they arrived. After learning how to grow crops in a new land. After tilling and planting and weeding and nurturing the plants. Finally, the very first harvest comes in, and God wants his cut. Or does he?

The Israelites’ first Thanksgiving is recorded as a highly prescribed affair. You take the first fruits in a basket to the place where God has chosen to dwell. You go to the priest and hand him the basket and make a solemn declaration of your intent. The basket is then set before God’s altar, and then you have short speech to make: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…The LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction…The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand…The LORD brought us into this place and gave us this land…so now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me.” And then, after finishing your speech, you take the full bounty that God has given you, and you share it with the Levites and foreign residents—those who do not have any farmland of their own—and together you celebrate all that God has done for you.

God doesn’t want our harvest. God wants us to know how much God loves us—loves us enough to give us everything we have. We ritualize thanksgiving in order to remember where it all came from. We roast our turkeys and bake our pies and come to church so that we won’t forget. If we didn’t set aside particular ways to give thanks for all the blessings we have received, we might just begin to think that we were the only ones responsible for our bounty. We might believe that all of this belongs to us—that it doesn’t belong to anyone else—that there’s no reason for us to share what we have with others. 

When I was in seminary in England, I signed up to lead Morning Prayer in the chapel on Thanksgiving Day, which, over there, is just the fourth Thursday in November. My classmates scoffed at the idea that Americans would set aside a day on the calendar in order to give thanks. “Shouldn’t we be thankful every day?” they asked. Of course we should. But gratitude takes practice. And sometimes we need a prescribed excuse to get started. So why not start now?

Habitual thanksgiving prevents misplaced credit. Developing a practice of looking outside ourselves—of being thankful to God, to friends and family, to coworkers and shop keepers, to unseen farmers and migrant workers, to truck drivers and warehouse employees, to kindergarten teachers and cafeteria workers, to medical technicians and housekeepers—helps us remember how much we are loved. So many other people have helped us get to this point. A few of them are people whose names we remember, but far more of them have stories that are not told in classrooms or at dinner tables. But God has held all of us together in order to get us where we are. Everything we have is a sign of God’s abundant love for us. Today is a day to give thanks so that tomorrow we will still remember.

Coming Into Focus

 

November 20, 2022 – The Last Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 29C

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 19:50.

On the scale of Cross to Empty Tomb, where do you like to stand? It is a silly question, of course. We know that one cannot have meaning without the other. The cross is incomplete without the empty tomb, and Easter has no power without Good Friday. But today’s gospel lesson—the crucifixion of Jesus—which we hear on a Sunday when we celebrate the kingship of Christ, asks us to consider more deeply where on that spectrum we look to find salvation.

Sometimes Christians focus so much on the cross that we obscure the significance of Easter. Preachers, poets, and hymn-writers commemorate the sacrifice of Christ with such enthusiastic, bloody detail that the glory of the resurrection feels more like a denouement. In pulpits where that approach is used, Jesus’ death is often described in transactional language—as the means by which the price of our sins was paid. But, when Christians talk about the cross as if God’s Son took our place, we might wonder why we even bother with Easter.

Other Christians, including many preachers from our own tradition, prefer to skip over the cross in order to rush to embrace the victory of the empty tomb. In part that is because the transactional approach leaves us with a depiction of God that we cannot reconcile with the rest of our faith. If God’s wrath can only be satisfied when taken out upon the innocent sacrifice of God’s own Son, where are we supposed to look to find the God who loves us and calls us God’s own? Honestly, the cross raises lots of questions that are hard—if not impossible—to answer. But, when we skip over it because we don’t know how to make sense of it, Easter becomes a victory over what—an historical bump in the road to salvation?

I don’t have the answers to those difficult questions, but today’s gospel lesson gives us some important insights into how to see the crucifixion as the place where Jesus’ kingship becomes most clear. Luke describes a scene in which the one who is killed by powers of this world is also the one who manifests God’s power to them. Hearing this story not on Good Friday but at the end of the church’s year—on the Sunday before Advent—gives us the chance to think about the cross as both the culmination of Jesus’ earthly ministry and the lens through which we anticipate the coming reign of God. 

Jesus himself helps us hear that in the first word he speaks from the cross: “Father.” “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing,” Jesus said, invoking God with the same intimacy that he had used throughout his ministry. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father,” Jesus said in Luke 10. “When you pray, say, ‘Father, hallowed be your name,’” Jesus taught his disciples in Luke 11. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” Jesus said in Luke 12. To call God “Father” is to emphasize the closeness, the oneness, the intimacy, between Jesus and God. And to use that word from the cross reveals that, even in his death, Jesus affirms that he belongs to God.

We often think of the cross as the manifestation of humanity’s refusal to accept God’s will, yet Jesus speaks from the cross in a way that affirms its centrality to God’s salvific plan. In ways that defy our logic and anchor our faith, this moment embodies both. As Jesus confirms the continuity of his relationship with God, he shows us that not even his execution can thwart God work of salvation. The tragedy of Good Friday, therefore, is not an empty accident or an unredeemable mistake but the place in which we see and hear God’s saving love coming into focus.

Luke helps us understand that by recalling Jesus’ words of forgiveness uttered in the midst of his suffering: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Similarly, Luke remembers Jesus promising that one of the criminals who was next to him will be with him that day in Paradise. In both instances, Jesus shows us that his salvific work is not only accomplished through the cross but also proclaimed upon it. It is not only his death that saves us but his love for us generously offered despite his suffering. We need not wait until Jesus breathes his last to see God’s work of salvation being carried out upon the cross.

But, to see that work taking place not only in Jesus’ death but also while he hangs upon the cross, we must allow our understanding of what salvation looks like to change. The leaders scoff at the one who would call himself Messiah. The soldiers mock the one who would call himself King. The first criminal derides him as one powerless to save himself. And yet we must see in the crucified one the fullness of God’s power, the fullness of God’s reign, and the fullness of God’s perfect plan coming together for our sakes. Easter may confirm those things for us, but they are as true upon the cross as they are in the empty tomb, and I think that scares us.

The cross of Christ makes us uncomfortable because we know that, if it says something significant about who God is and how God’s salvation comes to the world, it must also become operative in our lives in the very same way. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to suffer like that. I want my faith in God to save me from suffering, but that’s not what it means to be a Christian. Instead, what it means to believe in Jesus is to believe, as St. Paul’s writes, that the crucified one makes us “strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power [that we may] be prepared to endure everything with patience.” In Christ we do not escape hardship. We are given the power to endure it. 

It’s a lot easier to look at the cross of Christ and see the antithesis of God’s will than it is to behold within it God’s perfect love. It’s a lot easier to reject the crucified one as one who has failed to accomplish God’s will than to see in him the fulfillment of God’s salvific plan. It’s a lot easier to skip ahead to the joy of Easter than it is to linger in the shadow of the cross. But those who know real suffering in this world know that the power of God is not manifest in the absence of hardship but in its center. They know what it means to look upon the one who hangs upon the cross and see in him the hope of God’s arms reaching out to them in love. They know that Easter is more than a happy ending just as they know that Good Friday is more than a transactional exchange.

We come to the cross to see something more than our debts being paid. We come seeking more than a brief setback on the road to Easter. We come to behold the one who suffered to redeem our suffering. We come to be near the one whose struggle gives strength to our struggle. We come to worship the King of kings, whose glorious reign comes not on a heavenly throne but on the hard wood of the cross. To that king be glory, honor, and power, now and for ever. Amen.

We (Must) Take Scripture Seriously

 

November 13, 2022 – The 23rd Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 28C

Malachi 4:1-2a; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 22:20.

One year when I was in middle school, our youth group went to Panama City Beach for Spring Break. That might sound like fun, but we didn’t actually go to the beach for more than a few minutes. Instead, we spent the whole time at a renewal conference with other youth groups, listening to overly enthusiastic preachers, amazingly confident small group leaders, and a really loud Christian rock band that none of us liked. Although I don’t remember a lot about that conference, two things stick with me all these years later: I remember feeling pressured to give my life to Jesus publicly because I was made to believe that my private devotions weren’t sufficient, and I remember being asked to use the Bible to solve the “welfare crisis” in this country.

The youth in our small group were split up into pairs, and each team was handed a Bible and a societal problem that they were supposed to solve using biblical values. I don’t remember any of the other topics, but I recall flipping through the pages of scripture, desperately looking for anything that had to do with welfare. We were stumped. When it was our turn to share, we acknowledged that we hadn’t found anything but offered our firm conviction that “God helps those who help themselves.” “That’s not in the Bible,” the small group leader snapped back at us disappointedly, mistakenly attributing our words to Shakespeare. “Second Thessalonians 3:10,” was all she said by way of correction, waiting for us to find and read the verse aloud: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

I didn’t pay a lot of attention to politics back then, but looking back and realizing that a certain former Arkansas Governor was in the White House and that the “Welfare to Work” bill was being debated in Congress, I’m not surprised that we were asked to use the Bible to find a simple answer to that complex problem. I’m not sure what the leaders would have done if we had cited Matthew 25:5—“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat”—or Proverbs 25:21—“If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat”—or Isaiah 58:6-7—“Is this not the fast that I choose:…to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house?”

But what are we supposed to do with today’s reading from 2 Thessalonians? Here, the apostle Paul seems to say unequivocally that those who are unwilling to work shall not eat. Does he mean that? He even gives it as a command, flexing all his apostolic muscle to get his point across. But the Bible rarely offers simple, unequivocal answers to difficult issues, and it might not surprise you to learn that Paul probably wasn’t attempting to winnow down the welfare rolls in Thessalonica. 

It turns out that laziness or, as our translation puts it, “idleness,” wasn’t really the issue. The phrase (ἀτάκτως περιπατοῦντος) translated at the beginning of this passage as “living in idleness” more precisely means “walking in a disordered way,” as in a soldier who is “marching out of ranks.” Translators have a hard time knowing what Paul meant when he used that phrase because this is the only time it is found in the Bible. For a long time, English translations of the Bible kept the original idiom without attempting to explain it. For example, the 14th-century Wycliff Bible used “wandereth out of order,” and the 17th-century King James Version chose “walketh disorderly.” 

By the middle of the twentieth century, however, things had begun to shift. Translators wanted to provide more context, perhaps to be sure that overly literal interpreters didn’t think the problem in Thessalonica was Christians who couldn’t walk in a straight line. For example, when the American Standard Version, originally published in 1901, was updated in 1971, the phrase went from “walketh disorderly” to “leads a disorderly life.” But other translations wanted to go even further in the name of contextualization, borrowing (perhaps unfairly) from the surrounding text, changing “disorderly walking” to “living in idleness,” and Christians have been confusing what Paul had in mind ever since. 

It could be that the disorder or misconduct that Paul had in mind was sheer laziness, but reading the rest of the passage or, even better, the rest of First and Second Thessalonians is an important step to figuring it out. Whatever Paul wanted to convey, we see that he based his argument on the time he spent in that community: “For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not [disorderly] when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone's bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you.” 

You’d be hard-pressed to call Paul lazy or idle, but you could say that he was too busy doing important things like preaching and teaching to earn a living. You could say that an apostle like Paul shouldn’t have to pay for his own meals but should be entitled to live off the generosity of others. But Paul didn’t want to set that sort of disorderly example. He didn’t want other would-be apostles to take advantage of their authority, so he always paid his own way. 

If you took time to read the rest of First and Second Thessalonians, you’d discover that the overarching problem Paul was addressing in that community wasn’t lazy Christians, who expected others to feed them, but pretend-apostles, who expected the Christian community to treat them like royalty, hanging on their every word and providing for their every need. But you’d never know that if the only verse you ever read was 2 Thessalonians 3:10. Thankfully, we belong to a Christian tradition that takes the Bible more seriously than that.

“Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning…” We prayed those words in the collect for today, acknowledging the God-given gift of not only the scriptures we like to hear but of all the scriptures. When Thomas Cranmer, the author of the first Book of Common Prayer, wrote those words, he was implicitly criticizing the dominant religious institution of the day not only for insisting that worship be offered in a language that the people could not understand but also for breaking up the reading of scripture with so many feast days that most of the Bible went unread during worship. Today, the dominant Christian culture does much of the same, prioritizing translations that reinforce their opinions and proof-texting select verses to fit their arguments. But the Word of God will not be weaponized like that.

If you want to know what the Episcopal Church believes about something, the right place to look is in our prayers, and today’s collect tells us what we believe about the Bible. We believe that God caused all holy scriptures to be written, not as a literal, factual record of history but as a divinely inspired gift that was written for a particular purpose—for our learning. We believe that God helps us do more than memorize the words on the page. We believe that God enables us to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them until they become a part of who we are. We believe, as the Rite I version of the collect puts it, that it takes patience—time and repeated encounters with God’s Word—to receive the full benefit of the comfort that God’s Word provides. And we believe that immersing ourselves in the richness of that Word will help us embrace and hold onto the ultimate hope that God has given us, which is everlasting life. In short, we believe that the whole Bible is God’s gift to us and that, when we study it deeply, it helps us maintain our hope in what God has promised us.

But Cranmer’s vision of a rich, scripture-fueled hope wasn’t to be accomplished by coming to church once a week and paying attention when the lessons were read. He imagined a church in which all people—clergy and laity—were committed to reading the Bible every day. In the preface to the first Book of Common Prayer, Cranmer wrote that, by coming to church and hearing the scriptures read every day, “the people…should continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of [God’s] true religion.” Though it may sound like something you’d find in another denomination, there is nothing more Anglican or Episcopal than reading your Bible seven days a week. That’s why we offer Morning and Evening Prayer most days and encourage you to read the Daily Office on your own.

Throughout Christian history, isolated verses of scripture have been used to do terrible things—like defend slavery, perpetuate misogyny, dehumanize the poor, demonize individuals because of their sexuality, excuse abusive behavior, and justify genocide. But the whole canon of scripture tells a very different story—one of God’s persistent love for the world, preference for the poor, vindication of the oppressed, and redemption of the lost. We are a part of that story, and, if we want to tell that story that is good news for the world, we must take the Bible seriously—seriously enough to read the whole thing and to read it every day until it takes hold of our hearts and minds and shapes our lives into lives filled with hope.