Oh Yeah? What's It To Ya?
David C. Myers
November 23, 2008
Thanksgiving Sunday
Deuteronomy 26:1 - 11
Luke 18:9 - 14
Text: "So now I bring the first fruit of the ground that You, O Lord, have given me." . . . Deuteronomy 26:10a
Years ago, when I was but a mere pup, when Howie Dyum would come up to me and call me a name, I, as any self-respecting pre-teen boy would come back with another name, He might call me a "twerp", and I would retort that he was a "dweed". Then he would come back with "you're a mommy's boy", and I would tell him, "Oh yeah? Well, your mother wears combat boots." Then he would come up with one more insult that would really hit below the belt - "you're a wimp", and . . . I had run out of comebacks, so in my inadequate sense of self, unable to be original or equally as biting, would shift into the offensive, snub my nose and say, "Oh yeah? So what's it to ya?"
Somehow, my final defensive retort is the issue today as we celebrate both Thanksgiving Sunday. "Oh yeah? So what's it to ya??" Not that God has been calling us names and we are left with no response; but that "Oh yeah!" God has abundantly blessed us, and . . . well, "so what's it to ya?" What is our response to such abundance and blessings?
Let's face it Thanksgiving season is wonderful! There are holidays to take time off, there are sales, family get-togethers, and of course, the piece de resistance - the food! And even if we don't pause to give thanks for all we have, this is the season that emphasizes that we are abundantly blessed - especially in this country!
But just how do we, in this country and culture, give thanks? It gives me pause to consider that one of Jesus' most biting criticisms was for a prayer of Thanksgiving, the one given in Luke 18:9 - 14, by of all people, one of the pillars of the religious communities, a Pharisee! As Kirsten read it, you will note that the Pharisee added up all his blessings, his personality traits, and the fact that he wasn't like other repugnant people - and concluded that he was truly a very good person - it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy! And we nod our heads and say, yes, this was braggadocio over the edge by this egotistical Pharisee. After all, through 2,000 years of Bible Study we have been conditioned to think of the Pharisees that way.
But, . . . don't we offer similar prayers of thanksgiving with our country - "O Lord, we thank You that we are not like other countries, terrorists, communists, run by despotic dictators. We are a religious nation and give much aid to foreign countries."
Well, rather than get into a political sermon on the world wide effects of American foreign policy - which in my wiser moments I realize I am ill-equipped to do - I want to get back to how the societal setting helps determine our understanding of Thanksgiving, and how we express it on a more personal level.
You see, giving thanks on Thanksgiving is nice, but a life of thanksgiving, a life of gratitude is something else all together. Somerset Maugham once wrote that "gratitude is not a virtue that comes easily to the human race." And I suspect that is true about our society. Gratitude, or thankful living, is a character trait rare in our society. By in large, as a society we feel entitled, and when people perceive themselves as entitled instead of gifted, greed predominates.
Entitlement nicely accommodates the Pharisee's whole notion of Thanksgiving. You remember his speech, "Lord, I thank You that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, and even this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of all my income." It's as if he does a ledger sheet in which he adds up all his blessing of health and prosperity to determine how thankful he should be.
And such a notion is rotten to the core!
What about the person who is staring down this Thanksgiving day unemployed, in grief, with poor health or facing divorce? What about life's setbacks, disappointments and frustration - are these to be subtracted from our gratitude to God?? Of course not! The true source of our thanksgiving is God's love and grace which sustains us no matter what the circumstances in life.
A Biblical sense of gratitude comes as judgment upon our individual self-righteousness and nationalistic pride. During World War II, Landon Gilkey, later to be a professor of theology at the University of Chicago, was imprisoned along with some 1,450 "enemy nationals" by the Japanese in a missionary compound in the Santung Province in China. The prisoners lived with hunger as a daily reality, but one beautiful day 1,500 food parcels arrived from the American Red Cross. Since only 200 of the 1450 prisoners were Americans, the parcels were technically theirs. Bitter disputes broke out immediately as to how these food parcels would be distributed. Shockingly, most of the Americans insisted that each prisoner receive 7½ parcels while the prisoners from other countries received none.
The justifications went all the way from a lawyer who wanted to preserve the "legal principle" of the rights of all Americans, to a missionary who wanted to preserve the "moral quality" of each American deciding what should be done with his or her 7½ parcels!
That is a haunting story - for the reality is that our world is a Shantung Compound in which we Americans control a disproportionate amount of the food parcels. When we put it on a smaller scale such as a prison camp we cannot ignore how inhuman it is for us to be concerned only with our welfare. In this Thanksgiving Season, can we really just thank God for our food and be done with it??
There is, of course, another way of showing Thanksgiving. It is based in the Deuteronomy passage Kirsten read earlier about the instructions for that original Hebrew "thanksgiving".
"'So now I bring the first fruit of the ground that You, O Lord, have given me.'" You shall set it down before the Lord Your God and bow down before the Lord Your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given you and to your house."
When I read this I have a much greater understanding of our own holiday of Thanksgiving, and especially, of the roots from which it came back in the 1621 in Plimouth, MA. As I said in my Thanksgiving letter, that first Thanksgiving did not happen because they were abundantly blessed, but rather because they had survived. Many died during that previous harsh winter, the food was scarce. But they were none-the-less thank you because God had blessed them with their lives.
When President Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving in 1863 as a national holiday, he said: "The year that is drawing to a close has been filled with the blessing of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensitive to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of unequalled magnitude and severity, . . . peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed . . ."
Thanksgiving born out of hardship, and thanksgiving born out the end of a devastating Civil War. When I reflect on this is helps me be grateful.
Some of you have children. If you are like the Myers household, perhaps your children don't always like what you prepare for them to eat. Let me tell you a story about the early days when Deb and I tried to get our children, Nate and Sarah, to eat in a healthier manner. I was tired of hearing my kids complaining about the food put before them. As you all know by now, I take a certain (translate, rather large) degree of pride in my culinary abilities and it is deflating to my ego to hear them complain about the bounteous goodness (I have) prepared just for them. So when they complained, I would start my speech - it was number 38 in my parental discipline guide. "I should take you kids to Nicaragua for a couple of weeks. After three days you would be thrilled to see beans and rice on your plates. Maybe then you'd gain some appreciation for all that you have." And I was just warming up. "Look at how many toys you have, look at how many clothes you have, . . ." A glazed over look went across their eyes, and. With a great sense of failure, I realized that all they were hearing was, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
Well, I don't know if that helps our understanding of Thanksgiving. Sometimes I feel that way about my sermons; they are so much "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
Maybe that's because an attitude of gratitude is so hard to uphold in our society where entitlement and material gain is at best the basis of so much of our values. And if we don't believe that let me share with you statistics I came across in Time Magazine, some 10 or so years ago - it actually became the basis for a stewardship article I published entitled "Why the Poor are More Generous". The statistic was simple - in Mississippi, the state that is the 49th wealthiest in the country found that its people gave 2.9% of their incomes to charity. Massachusetts, on the other hand, the 7th wealthiest state in the country, only gave 2.2%. And I don't have to remind us of the kind of wealth that is in our own community. Indeed, as Somerset Maugham said, "Gratitude is not a virtue that comes easy to the human race."
To live a life of gratitude will take a change of heart, a turning around, a conversion. It has to do with changing attitudes, moving beyond entitlement, and learning what the abundant life is all about - even in the midst of difficult economic times. It will lead us to a spirituality that understands we have a theology of abundance, not one of scarcity, one that causes us to live a life of giving thanks.
At this time of year, I think most of us realize the abundance of God's blessings. We remember the words of the Deuteronomist who said, "A wandering Aramean was my father . . ." "And we cried out to the God, and God delivered us and brought us to this good place."
Indeed, God has delivered us, and we have been brought to this - a very, very good place.
Today you have an opportunity to truly be a people of gratitude. In a moment you will have a time of silence to make out your pledges. What you pledge will be, perhaps in the words of my childhood, another way of asking the question could be, "Oh yeah? So what's it to ya??"