Thanksgiving
Year C
Rev.
Adam T. Trambley
November
24, 2016, St. John’s Sharon
This
morning’s reading from Philippians gives a focus to our Thanksgivings today.
Paul directs us to an attitude that will abound in thanksgiving to God, develop
in us every other important aspect of our character, and allow us to rejoice
always. The advice is very good!
Paul
starts by just telling us to rejoice in the Lord always, which is great if you
can do it. Wouldn’t we always want to be
filled with joy and be in the presence of the Lord? Well, maybe not. Maybe we really don’t want
to be all about rejoicing in God all the time.
Sometimes we get an emotional payoff by being depressed or emotionally
stormy or off sulking in our corner ignoring God and what God is doing for
us. Often we can even justify those
feelings and attitudes as somehow ethically good by finding reasons why we have
been hurt or had injustices thrust upon us or felt like we had to do more than
50% of work in whatever relationship we are resentful about. But Paul is telling us not to live in those
places. Don’t dwell in our heads and in
our hearts in the separation and isolation of pain and grudges and despair. Instead, he says, “Rejoice!”
Figuring
out how to get to rejoicing can be a struggle, though, even if we want to. So, Paul describes how to move from the
places where we are to the rejoicing we want to do. He says, “Let your gentleness be known to
everyone.” Much of life tells us NOT to
let our gentleness be known. We might be
taken advantage of, or seem weak, or any number of other things. Certainly, we want our gentleness known around
children and puppies, but “known to everyone” can be a stretch. Yet that is what we are asked to do, and if
we want to rejoice always, making our gentleness known to everyone is the next
step. We can’t rejoice if we are putting
on the tough-guy or tough-girl act. We
can’t rejoice on the mountaintop if we are too busy proclaiming ourselves king
of it and worrying about who is going to knock us off. If we are going to rejoice always, we have to
be able to rejoice with anyone that happens to be with us. And if we are going to rejoice with them, we
have to let them in, under our defenses, and let them see our gentle, rejoicing
side. Even if we don’t quite trust
them. Even if we don’t quite like
them. Even if we aren’t quite
comfortable with that idea.
And Paul knows that we aren’t comfortable with this constant gentleness idea, so he tells us next, “The Lord is near.” If the Lord is near, that changes the equation because we can’t be tougher than the Almighty Lord of Hosts. If he has our back, we can really let ourselves be open to everyone. That doesn’t mean that we should be a victim and Paul isn’t saying not to avoid dangerous people and situations. But Paul is saying, “Do not worry about anything.” Instead, Paul says to make prayers and supplications to God with thanksgiving. Instead of worrying about the situation, however good or bad it might be, give thanks to God for where we are and what we need. The fact that we have some need that we are taking to God is cause for rejoicing is and of itself. Instead of worrying about requiring God’s help, or trying to avoid asking for God’s help out of some warped sense of self-reliance, or deciding we can make it without God’s help, we are to ask for God’s help and give thanks that we are in a position of having to rely on God to help us. This attitude does not seem to be the most common advice given on how to run a life – be especially thankful when things don’t seem to be going your way so that you can ask for help. –yet that is exactly what the Bible is saying. And that is the only attitude that gets us to rejoicing always. If we are not in need, rejoicing is not that difficult. But when we are in need, we rejoice in the ability to come before the throne of heaven and ask for what we need, knowing that the Lord is near. Our gentleness helps us see that we need to go ask God, instead of trying to go out and aggressively solve all our problems and meet our needs ourselves.
Then
Paul throws another curve at us. We
might expect Paul to say, “If you ask with thanksgiving and gentleness,
whatever you need will be given to you.”
Jesus makes statements about praying and receiving that sound something
like this. But Paul doesn’t say we’ll
necessarily get what we ask for. He says
that we will get the “peace of God which surpasses all understanding and keeps
our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” I
assume that Paul believes we’ll get what we need because we are children of God
and he knows that God takes care of us.
But he also knows that bad things happen. He himself was beaten, falsely imprisoned,
left for dead, shipwrecked, and a number of other less than pleasant
things. He knows that God’s peace is of
primary importance to us. Why? Because that peace of God will protect us so
that we know we are in Christ Jesus.
That peace of God will allow us to believe that the Lord is near. That peace of God will allow us to bring
before God our needs with thanksgiving and not give up when it is difficult, or
grumble when the answer to prayer doesn’t seem to be what we want, or throw up
our hands and abandon the whole Christian enterprise when we meet opposition,
persecution, or other obstacles. Without
that peace, receiving everything that we might ask for isn’t going to help us
because we will either find that we always want more or that we become anxious
that we will lose what we already have. Paul assures us that when we bring our
prayers and supplications with thanksgiving, the peace of God will guard us.
Then
Paul spends a little bit of time talking about what we need to do to continue
to live in that peace of God. His basic
advice is not to leave it. He says to
keep our minds focused on good things – whatever is true, honorable, just,
pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise, or done by Paul. When we think about these things, we are
focusing our energies on situations and activities that will bring us closer to
God and bring our lives in line with his will for us. We will develop characters that see the true,
the honorable, the just, the pure, the pleasing, the commendable, the
excellent, and the worthy of praise all around us so that we can steer our
lives into them.
Does
this matter? Certainly. There was a
study done recently that said that a huge contributor to keeping marriages
intact and avoiding divorce was kindness.
When people focused on negative behaviors of their spouses or gave them
the cold shoulder and ignored them, they missed the positive things that their
spouse was actually doing. The
difference in their attitudes was a crucial difference in having a happy and
successful marriage. The key difference
was not in changing what was going on, but in seeing the positive pieces of
what was actually going on. When we
focus on these positive aspects of our reality, we are able to see them and we
will be much more able to ask God to fill in the gaps. And we will be able to ask with thanksgiving
because we will be expecting to find the positive even in those gaps.
I doubt
I need to say much about what happens when we decide to focus on the opposite
of what Paul recommends – the dishonorable, the unjust, the impure, the vile,
the base, the violent, the lazy, or the banal.
We start to see only those things around us. Look at the disastrous aftermath of a
political campaign that focused on the negative in all parties. It’s much harder to find peace or
reconciliation or to pray for the very real needs of our nation and its leaders
with thanksgiving. Or evaluate the differences
in our own reactions after watching different movies. If I’ve seen the wrong thing, I get
uncomfortable walking down the street – is someone in that car going to try to
gun me down? Is that little old lady
really a secret ninja assassin in disguise? These things actually go through my
brain. Which is why I feel like I have
to pray or read uplifting things at least as much as I’m exposed to the
fearful. At least so far, I haven’t come
across secret hit-men or had a meteor drop out of the sky on my head, but if
I’m in the wrong headspace I’m not grateful for that, I’m just worried about
the disaster that I’ve conditioned myself to believe is coming. I’m much happier, though, walking around
giving thanks to God and blessing people I encounter, letting my gentleness be
known to everyone as much as I can, than I am being afraid of them.
Rejoice
in the Lord always. Be gentle. Pray with thanksgiving to God. Focus on the
positive blessings of life. And let the
peace of God be with you this Thanksgiving Day and every day!
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