Pentecost 18C/Lectionary 28
October 13, 2019
Stewardship #2 – Giving as an act of thanksgiving
Luke 17:11-19
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
INTRODUCTION
Today’s stewardship theme is “giving as an act of
thanksgiving.” So before we get to the readings, let’s get in the right frame
of mind. Take a moment to share with the person sitting next to you two things
you are thankful for. But here’s the catch: it cannot be your family, friends,
health, home, comfort, or Jesus. Those are great, but I want you to go deeper
than that. Be as specific as you can…
Anyone want to share what you came up with?
I’m not going to give you
a lot of background on these texts today, but I do want to give you some
listening guidance, which is simple: as you listen, watch for the ways
gratitude is expressed in these texts – physically, spiritually, emotionally –
and think about how you do or could express gratitude intentionally in your own
life. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord
Jesus Christ. Amen.
You’re flipping through a magazine or scrolling online and
your eye lands on a picture, an advertisement. It is a picture of several
young, attractive people sitting in a nicely appointed living room with a
fireplace. They are all laughing, and each person is holding a particular wine
glass…. a glass which can be found at Target, for only $4.99 per glass! Your
mind starts to subconsciously form a possibility: if you own a set of these
glasses, this lovely dinner party could happen in your own home, and you could
have all those friends to go with it! Ahh, your picture of what you’d like your
life to look like can be a little closer to your grasp… if only you owned this
set of wine glasses.
Or that car. Or the
newest Apple product.
Sound familiar? If you’ve observed the progression of
advertising strategy over the years, you’ll notice that these days this is
often the approach advertising takes: the goal of an ad is to show you what you
lack. An effective ad transports you to a place that shows you what you wish
your life was like, and convinces you that if you only had this product in your
life, you will be closer to what you think life should be like.
It’s brilliant really, because it feeds into our natural
inclination to view life through a lens of scarcity. We all want to be and have
enough, right? Enough time, enough money, enough energy, enough control. And
yet we seldom think we do have enough. We don’t have enough money or
time, we aren’t strong or skinny enough, or smart enough, or brave
enough, or talented enough. And this is just confirmed by advertisements, and
our peers, and our own negative self-talk – everywhere we look, we are
convinced that we lack.
All of this has spiritual implications as well, and
especially when it comes time to think about stewardship of these resources
which we may feel are lacking. When we consider what we will give to God, our
survival instincts kick in: “I don’t have enough,” we think, “so maybe I’ll just
have to give less to the church. I have greater need right now, so I’ll cut
back on my offering.” Maybe you don’t feel that way… but I know that I do. Even
now, as Michael and I are managing the ever-increasing costs of raising kids,
with daycare and preschool and extra-curriculars, not to mention student loans
and a mortgage, it is very tempting to look at how much we give back to God and
say, “Well, we could probably cut that back a little bit to cover these
expenses.” It seems like a practical choice – our offering is one of the few “expenses”
that isn’t a set amount. But in the end, I realize, it is a choice that comes
from an attitude of scarcity: the myth of not-enough.
That myth is a powerful one. I realize that in terms of
physical resources it is not a myth for you – if you’re on a fixed
income or just lost a job or something – but the overarching attitude of
scarcity is most certainly a myth, because we know that our God is one of
abundance, who gives us many blessings from the breath in our bodies to food on
our table to the people in our lives to the gift of his own Son. God is
abundant in generosity! Yet even surrounded by so many blessings, it is so easy
to slip into that scarcity mindset, that feeling of not-enough.
So how do we break free?
How do we move from an attitude of scarcity, to an attitude of abundance?
“Rejoice in the Lord always. Pray
without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God
in Christ Jesus for you.” These are Paul’s words to the Christians living in
Thessalonica, but they are words that can also speak powerfully to us today,
especially on this topic of scarcity.
Let’s start with the last part, “Give
thanks in all circumstances,” because gratitude is a powerful antidote to
scarcity. One year in November, I saw some people on
Facebook doing something called “30 days of thankfulness,” where they posted
one thing every day of November that they were thankful for – and it had to be something
different each day. I decided to give it a try. At first it was easy. But after
a while, especially on days when nothing extraordinary happened, I had to get
creative so I wouldn’t repeat. So, I was thankful for pumpkin seeds, or for the
softness of my dog’s ears, or for fresh, clean sheets. I had to search
specifically for something to be grateful for. And then I had to articulate it,
sharing it with others. In doing this, something happened: I found my attention
was less on my need and my lack, and more on the many blessings around me. And
when I found so many blessings around me, I also found myself trusting God more
and myself less – because there was no way I could possibly provide for myself
the beautiful color of the leaves, or the feeling of my child’s arms around my
neck, or the relief I get from a huge belly laugh. Those things are gifts of
pure grace, from an abundantly generous God.
We see the power of
articulating our gratitude in our Gospel lesson, too. Nothing here says that
the other nine lepers weren’t also thankful. What makes the one leper unique is
that he was the only one who turned around to say something about it, to praise
God and thank Jesus. In response to that, Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well,”
or sometimes translated, “whole.” And isn’t that true – praise and gratitude
have a way of pulling us out of ourselves, focusing on another, and thus
bringing things into perspective. And so, we do become more whole.
That must be why Paul
also suggests that the Thessalonians “rejoice in the Lord always.” Not now and
then, not when we think of it, not just Sunday mornings, but all the time,
every time we notice a way God has blessed us, given to us, provided for us. If
you struggle to do that, do like I did that November – try every day to write down
something specific for which you are grateful, or three somethings, or even go
crazy with five. Share them with someone else. And say a prayer of thanksgiving
to God for those blessings. I’m sure, if you make this a habit, you will find
over time that your attitude of scarcity begins to dissipate, and you might
also find you become more generous with your resources: time, talent, and
treasure.
Finally, Paul says, pray
without ceasing. And this is really key. One of the things the Celebrate
Generosity stewardship program we are using insists upon is to appoint a
prayer chair, because as the leader book says, “A stewardship program without
prayer is like a Christian church without Christ.” God has entrusted these many
blessings to us, our many resources, and so how can we possibly know how
faithfully to manage them without consulting with God about it? A part of that
prayer may be to name some of your blessings in writing or aloud, and give
thanks for them. A part of it may be to rejoice in what God has given to you.
But a part of it must be to ask God, “What would you have me return to you, for
all your bounty and generosity to me?”
These practices –
rejoicing in the Lord, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks in all
circumstances – are exactly that: practices. They are not things that we
do once and call it a week. They are things that are sometimes very difficult,
and we need to work at them, to practice them. They are all things that, even
if we are good at them, need to be revisited every day.
And I’d like to suggest
that your giving habits can be a part of that practice. There is some giving to
God that should be sort of automatic or systematic. Many of us have set up
automatic giving through Simply Giving or auto-withdrawals from the bank. And
that’s good – it is an important way to support the mission of this
congregation to which we belong, and it is systematic so that even if you
aren’t feeling very grateful on any given week or month, you have something in
place to regularly draw your attention back to God. But giving during worship as
well as online is also powerful, because when you physically put the money
in, you have to think about it. This is our opportunity, in the context of
worship, to say to God, “I love you, I trust you, I praise you, and so I give.”
Today I will add that when we put in that money, we are also saying, “God, I am
thankful to you, for the many ways you have provided and continue to
provide for me… and so I give.” In giving our offering, we physically give
thanks to the Giver of all things. It also reminds us, when we start slipping
into that attitude of scarcity, to trust God to provide, to live instead in a
place of abundance.
Sisters and brothers in
Christ, let me not finish this sermon without saying very clearly: you are
enough. In a world that will try to convince you otherwise, know that you
are, each of you, a beloved child of God, made in God’s image, and dearly
beloved by your Creator. God loves you enough to daily shower you with
blessings big and small. God loves you enough to give you grace upon grace,
forgiveness of sins, life everlasting, even God’s own self. You are loved! May
we every day be grateful for the abundance of these gifts!
Let us pray… Generous
God, you have heaped blessings upon us, though we sometimes only notice what we
lack. Help us to rejoice in you always, pray to you without ceasing, and be
thankful to you in all circumstances, so that we might live with an attitude
not of scarcity, but of abundance. In the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit. Amen.
