Come and Sit a Spell

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Matthew 22:34-46

Well, we find Jesus here in the midst of a battle of wits with the top religious and political authorities back then.  He has for all shapes and purposes won the debate.  His opponents are amazed with spiritual awe.  I might even say he’s gloating, but there’s no time this morning to make my case for a gloating Jesus.  This debate occurred the day after he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey while a crowd of people shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!  Hosanna in the highest!”  If you didn’t know, “hosanna” means “Save us now!”  They were welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem as a king; specifically, the King, the Messiah – the Holy Spirit anointed descendant of King David who would be the one to liberate the Jewish people from all their oppressors and set up the eternal Kingdom of Heaven on earth.  When he got to town, he started to establish his kingdom not by challenging the Romans but by cleansing the Temple of the big business money making scam that the priests had made of the sacrifice-based worship Israel practiced.  He upset some people.  

The next day, contrary to what one would expect, Jesus didn’t go challenge the Romans.  Instead, he went back to the Temple not to rally an army but…to teach.  Almost immediately the chief priests and scribes, the powers that be, like mad hornets swarmed him to find out by whose authority he was doing these things.  He certainly wasn’t acting on their “Supreme” authority which to them meant he couldn’t be acting on God’s authority either.  So, they would have presumed he was acting on his own authority and were out to get him. They wanted to trap him into some sort of self-incrimination.  One after another, members of the different “denominations” took their turn at trying to best him in a battle of wits.

What we read today is the last subsection of the debate and here the Pharisees try to trap him with a question on the Law that they hope might get him to put one commandment above the others which would then sound like the rest of the Law didn’t matter.  Jesus does just that but with two commandments and he sums up the intent of the whole Law perfectly – Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and, love your neighbour as you love yourself.  Jesus also did a very good job of exposing what the Pharisees in their jot and tittle legalism were short on – love. 

Jesus ends the debate with a question for the Pharisees with respect to their thoughts on the Messiah.  Be mindful that they would have been considered to be experts on the matter.  Just need to point out here that the Pharisees were one of the groups that were passionately expecting the Messiah to come at any moment and their legalism was based in the thoughts that one, be ready for him and two, the belief that more people keeping the Law would hasten his coming.  These are the experts with the informed opinion on who the Messiah is and when he would be coming.  So, Jesus asked them in their expert opinion about the Messiah and his royal lineage – Whose son is he.  Easy question.  They are, of course, glad to have their egos stroked and with puffed up chests answer, “The son of David.”

So, if we had been sitting in a first century house church listening to a full, one-sitting reading of Matthew’s Gospel, we would probably be rolling on the floor laughing at how Jesus was mocking their ignorance.  Jesus is the Son of David.  Their Messiah standing right in front of them.  How obvious does it need to be?  Just a couple of hours before, the chief priests and scribes were livid because children were following him around in the temple shouting, “Hosanna to the son of David.” From the mouths of babes, I’m pretty sure there was a prophecy to that effect, Psalm 8:2 probably.  When the crowds escorted Jesus into Jerusalem they were shouting, “Hosanna to the son of David.”  The day before that as he left Jericho on his way up to Jerusalem two blind men…blind men…even they could “see” who Jesus is.  They made a nuisance of themselves shouting over and over again at the top of their lungs, “Have mercy on us, Lord, son of David.”  They also called him Lord in clear indication they could see somehow that their God was in him.  Jesus restored their sight.  Not long before that a non-Israelite Canaanite woman came to him begging, “Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David.”  She begged him to deliver her demon-possessed daughter.  Even though she wasn’t an Israelite, she could see who Jesus is.  He cast the demon out of her daughter.  Weeks earlier when Jesus delivered and healed a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, the crowds openly asked, “Can this be the son of David?”  Not long before that, again two blind men were following him around shouting repeatedly and loudly, “Have mercy on us, son of David.”  He healed them.  

It was obvious who Jesus is.  None of these things happened in private.  The Pharisees would have been well aware that the people considered Jesus to be the son of David, and therefore the Messiah.  Yet, he was so much more than just a king in the line of David.  He did things only God could do.  He exceeded the expectations.  He was more than just a son, a descendant of David.  Jesus pointed this out to the Pharisees asking that if the Messiah is the son of David, why does David call him Lord?  He quotes Psalm 110:1 written by David, “The LORD said to my Lord, ‘Come and sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.’”  Jesus was more than just a son of David.  He was doing things that were obviously by the hand of God.  He was at the right hand of God and they had made themselves out to be his enemies in trying to trap him so they could put him to death.  At the end of this debate the Pharisees were clearly defeated.  They are under his feet so to speak!  Is Jesus gloating…quite possibly...maybe…a little? 

Thinking about what this could mean for us today, if you’ve got nothing better to do and want to kill some time, go on to YouTube and in the search box type in a question like “Who do people think Jesus is?” You will find many videos of interviewers stopping people on the street to see how they answer that question.  I did and there is a huge array of answers.  People would say he was just a man or a good man, or a prophet.  Or, he had good teachings that help us to be more civilized.  Or, one woman said Jesus was “a son of God just like Ghandi and Mohammed and really all of us.  Everyone’s a son of God.”  Or, he was a man who lived a long time ago who still impacts our lives today.  There was also this one man sitting on a park bench with pigeons all around him, some roosting on him.  One was right on top of his head.  He said, “If David Copperfield was alive back in that day, they’d have said he was Jesus.”  Of course, there were some churched people who gave more traditioned answers like he was the Son of God who died to save us from our sins.  One woman said she prays to him.  One young man said Jesus was his best friend.

Such a wide array of answers and I could analyze and categorize but that’s not my game.  It’s not my place to judge right or wrong answers from people on the street.  It’s a huge question.  How would you answer it?  That’s a rhetorical question.  You don’t have to answer it.  No matter who’s answering, no one can deny that the man Jesus of Nazareth changed history.  That he came from a people through whom God changed the course of history many times over even outside of biblical times.  The world would not be what it is today had the Jewish people and Jesus of Nazareth never existed.  

Me personally, how would I answer that question?  Well, first here’s a little pre-ramble.  I’d be comparable to one of the priests, scribes, or Pharisees.  I’ve got a university degree, two master’s degrees, and a doctoral degree and a certificate of ordination all in the area of the Bible and Christian Theology and the practical application of said areas in the life of the church.  All that paperwork would indicate that I am recognized by both academic institutions and my denomination as qualified to give a learned opinion on who Jesus is as presented in the Bible and the theological tradition of the Church.  Sadly, these days people don’t want to listen to what a well-studied, experienced minister has to say about Jesus…unless of course I’m one of those who have turned on the church and on him.

Putting my education and vocational experience aside, I will say that I am keenly aware that it is quite possible and likely to know a lot about Jesus but not know him.  I am also quite aware that I can mistake my values, opinions, wants, and will for what I believe Jesus would value, think, want, and will.  I also know that how or what I feel in the presence of another person are my own feelings that may and may not have any basis in reality.  So also, my feelings or lack thereof about Jesus say more about me than they do about him. 

To answer the question, what I actually know of who Jesus is I know because of being pointed in his direction by a handful of people who had a profound trust in him due to life-changing, healing experiences they had had which they believed were done by him.  These people also had a profound sense of his presence with them and that he had an active hand in everything that was going on in their lives.  They were people who were learning how to place their hope for healing and life-direction in his personal love for them during some pretty difficult times in their lives.  

When I went in the direction those folks had pointed me, to Jesus, looking for hope, healing, and life direction, looking for him to be real, well…I felt his presence at gatherings of his followers and it was “good”.  I gained a pervading felt-sense that I am not alone.  He is with me.  I felt the calling to ministry when I didn’t know what else to do in life.  All other career directions just seemed impossible to pursue.  I have found this calling quite fulfilling and that’s coming from someone who is prone to dysphoria.  I had a profound emotional healing experience of having the burden of unforgiveness lifted from me that I was harbouring because of my parent’s divorce.  He brought me to Canada to start a family.  When a very unfortunate side-effect of the antidepressant medication I went on to treat anxiety and depression was what they now call alcohol use disorder, he took away the compulsion to drink that I was powerless over.  Took it away. 

My final answer to that question is “Jesus loves me, this I know.”  I now find myself living with the daily struggle that in the face of some pretty difficult stuff I must rest in the reality that he is present with me and I must place my will and hope in the fact that he loves me and will work the things of my life out according to that love.  I just need to sit prayerfully at his right hand and follow his guidance.  

Learning to have hope in a very real and present God and his love is something new we encumber when we encounter Jesus.  That’s part of the biblical definition of faith.  Faith isn’t the opposite of doubt.  Faith isn’t just believing there’s a God when he can’t be seen or scientifically measured. Faith is what comes about in us when we begin to realize and trust God’s love for us and we place our life’s hopes in that direction.  I want what God in his immeasurable love for me wants for me.  Placing our hope in God’s love and waiting for God to act in our lives for us according to that love…that’s what I think of when I think of this passage here where it says, “Come and sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”  So, come and sit a spell.  Amen.

Empty Your Pockets

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Matthew 22:15-22

Jesus is in a predicament here with how he answers this question; the question of whether or not to pay the Census Tax to Rome or not.  The tax in question likely originated the year Jesus was born when Caesar Augustus ordered a census be taken throughout the Empire so that people could be registered or counted in order to be taxed.  Joseph and a very pregnant Mary had to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem so that Joseph could register his family in his hometown.  The tax was likely in the amount of a denarius which was the amount of the average worker’s daily wage.  Thus, one day of your life every year was dedicated to paying Caesar for roads, mail service, a stable government, and the safety of military protection.

One day’s work for all those benefits may not sound like a bad deal, but…the reason you have those benefits is that your nation was conquered by Rome.  Your people were enslaved to build those roads.  The government officials were imported pawns and were corrupt.  And, that military protection amounted to nothing more than thugs who like beating people up and steal their stuff.  It gets worse.  The Romans also like for you to worship their gods and particularly they liked for you to worship Caesar as a god.  One of the Roman Emperors went as far as to have a statue of Zeus put in the Temple.  Another of them had a statue of himself put in the Temple to be worshipped.  That did not go over well with the Jews known to be fiercely devoted to their one God.  And so, the land of the Jews tended to be a problematic backwater region of the Empire that was prone to rebellion against Rome and the Jews’ loyalty to the one true God was always a big part of the reason.  It made them extra-zealous.  

So, Jesus is here on the spot.  He’s in a double-bind.  If he outright says pay the tax, that gets him in trouble with the majority of those who are following him who are mostly poor and for whom the tax is a burden.  They are also the ones most mistreated by the Roman military because they are vulnerable.  If he is the Messiah, why would he say pay the tax.  Why not just go ahead and overthrow the Romans.  On the other hand, if he outright says don’t pay the tax, that puts him in the camp of the militant revolutionary elements and gets him in trouble with Rome.  The Pharisees and Herodians could then arrest him and turn over to the Romans and have him tried for sedition which carried the death penalty.  There is no good way to answer the question.

Well, there are three classic blunders this unlikely cadre-coalition of Pharisees and Herodians are unaware of and they are about to fall victim to one.  The most famous blunder is, of course, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”.  Less famous than that is “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”  And maybe less famous than that is “Never try to trap Jesus on things that you might be guilty of.”  Like Mr. Collins, the Obsequious minister in Jane Eyre’s Pride and Prejudice, they butter Jesus up on how he’s so knowledgeable and of good judgement on matters and then in mock innocence, they ask his humble opinion on whether or not to pay taxes to Caesar. 

So then, Jesus unleashed the power of his wit on their wealth of stupidity and asks them to show him the coin used for paying the tax…and they fell for it.  With ready enthusiasm, they supply him with a denarius, the Roman coin for the amount of a daily wage, the amount of the tax.  They don’t seem to realize they have just had the tables turned on them.

Any Jew carrying Roman coinage, especially a Pharisee, could quite easily be accused of idolatry for carrying such a thing.  Roman coinage typically had an image on it of Caesar or one of the other gods.  Denarii found from that period of time had an image of Emperor Tiberius on it with the inscription, “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, Son of the Divine Augustus.”  In essence, Tiberius is calling himself the son of a god.  Romans believed that when an Emperor died, he ascended into the heavens and became a god.  A few of the Emperors even claimed to be gods when they were alive.  Tiberius’ father was Augustus and was believed to have ascended to become a god.  Thus, Tiberius was the son of a god in popular opinion.  

So, let’s do the math.  First, the conversation is taking place in the courtyard of the Jerusalem Temple which Jesus had just cleansed of Roman coinage the day before.  Second, the Pharisees who were the legalists and moralists of the day and the most popular of the religious “denominations” at the time, they are the ones who provide Jesus with the denarius which in essence is an idol.  Roman currency was not to be allowed in the Temple because they had images of Roman gods on them.  The Pharisees, the ones trying to trap Jesus, have for all shapes and purposes brought an idol into the Temple. 

Jesus, points this out to them.  “Whose image is on the coin? And what does the title say.”; i.e., the idol you just brought into the temple.  They respond with the obvious, “Caesar’s.” and they are smart enough not to recite the title to him in which Caesar claims to be the son of a god.  There’s some irony here with respect to the matter of who is the true son of God. 

If we were living in the first century and sitting in the main room of somebody’s house listening to a dramatic reading of the whole of Matthew’s Gospel, we will have noticed that Jesus himself had already been identified as the Son of God five times.  Satan called him that twice when tempting him in the wilderness. “If you are the Son of God…”  When in Gennesaret where Jesus cast 1,000 demons out of a man into a heard of pigs, the demons called him Son of God.  When Jesus walked on a stormy sea water to his disciples who were in a swamping boat and calmed the storm, they called him Son of God.  It will happen two more times.  When Jesus is on trial before the Jewish authorities, the High Priest put him under oath and ordered him to tell them if he was the Son of God or not.  Finally, as Jesus was dying on the cross, those mocking him shouted, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross”.  The irony is that the true Son of God is holding these Pharisees accountable for carrying images of the pretend to be son of a god into the Temple.

When Jesus then states, “Give, therefore, to the Emperor the things that are the Emperor’s and to God, the things that are God’s”, I don’t think he’s talking about taxes anymore.  He has just very skillfully exposed where lay the loyalties of the Pharisees and Herodians…with Caesar, the god of empire power.  The image on the coin is the image of the god of those who wish to have the power to rule the world by whatever means, cruelty and corruption not excluded.   Jesus has caught them pants up (it’s not a pants down kind of scandal) but their pockets are full.  They are owned by the god of powerlust.  

The real question in this passage isn’t should the Emperor’s Tax be paid.  It is whose image do you bear.  Here was a coalition of the most popular religious group and the hoity-toity of Judea’s politicians standing in the Temple in front of the true Son of God and they are not bearing the image of the God in whose image they were created and who called them to be his people.  But rather, they are bearing a coin (wealth) with the image of Caesar on it.  

Matthew says they were amazed.  That word “amazed” in Greek is the word for religious wonder.  When Jesus calmed the storm, his disciples were amazed.  The crowds who followed Jesus were amazed at all the healings and exorcisms he was doing...and his teachings.  Those were things only God could do and Jesus was doing them.  Here we see Pharisees and Herodians, enemies of Jesus, amazed at how profoundly he had turned the tables on them.  They could see there was more to this Jesus in the God department than they were giving him credit for.  But…they left him.  Walked away.  Instead of confessing their idolatry and acknowledging their powerlust, they walk away and we know how the story ends.  They crucify him.

This passage often comes up in discussions about the separation of Church and State.  The Church shouldn’t run governments and governments shouldn’t run the church...and so churches don’t pay taxes.  History has demonstrated quite well what happens when the two get emmeshed…evil happens.  We have here a false trinity consisting of populist religious power, the Pharisees, and of political power, the Herodians, and of wealth, the coinage, coming together to trap Jesus who is the image of God.  It’s too bad we are not presently in the midst of an election and could see firsthand how false trinities of religious powers, political powers, and wealth will form to endorse candidates whom they put forth as saviours near equal Jesus. Beware when that happens.

As we are not in the midst of an election, we can take a moment to consider the One in whose image we are made…the Trinity and be ready for when we are deluged with those who have come to serve.  The image we bear is of the loving communion of God the Father Son and Holy Spirit.  Three relational persons giving themselves so completely to one another in unconditional, selfless, even sacrificial love that they are one.  Do we as a congregation and as individuals look like that?  

That might be a confusing concept and question. In Colossians Chapter 3 Paul states pretty clearly what we who bear this image should look like.  He writes: “Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.  And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:12-17).

Finally, when election season comes around…well, good trees bear good fruit and bad trees bear bad fruit.  Look beyond the party and the platform and look at the character of the candidate.  If they don’t bear the image of unconditional, selfless, even sacrificial love, then ask them to empty their pockets.  You’ll be surprised if not shocked by what you find.  Amen.

Appropriate Wedding Attire

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Matthew 22:1-14

How to dress for a wedding is a complicated matter.  For me, as a minister officiating it’s usually no big deal…either dog-collar and suitcoat or dog-collar and robe depending on what the couple wants in their pictures.  On the other hand, the last wedding I went to as a guest a few years back was a bit more complicated.  I had to go buy a shirt with a button-down collar that actually fit me.  That shirt untucked, some khakis, and some uncomfortable shoes was all I needed as it was a casual outdoor thing.  It was a good thing it wasn’t something I needed a suit and tie for.  I don’t own such things and wouldn’t have bought one for those folks.  I don’t think you really need a suit anymore as the definition of appropriate wedding attire has changed.  When I was a kid, it was almost always a suit, but now…It’s different?

Seriously, what is appropriate attire for a wedding these days?  I don’t want to sound like a prude, but I always thought that the bride was supposed to be the most beautiful and most beautifully dressed woman at the wedding; meaning, it’s about her.  But…for every wedding I’ve been to the last twenty years, the modesty memo must not have been circulated.  Apparently, when you go to a wedding these days, the dress code is dress like you want to leave there with somebody, wink, wink.  And, it’s not just the gals, it’s the guys too.  Why is it people can’t just come to a wedding to celebrate the love of the two being married instead of looking for love themselves.  And for me, the minister, it’s difficult to enjoy a wedding when I’m having to either stare at the ceiling or at the floor lest I get accused of being “that minister” who keeps staring.  Needless to say, I have been to more than a few weddings where I think some of the guests should have been asked, “How did you get in here dressed like that?”

Well, enough of my prudish, uptight, obsequious minister rant.  I just want to say how we dress at a wedding is something we should pay attention to.  We don’t want to upstage the bride and groom and we don’t want to look like we’re going barhoppping.  The last time I checked, a wedding is a celebration of something that deserves our respect – God’s very good gift of the love and commitment that leads to family which is the cornerstone of human community.  Okay, I’m ranting again.

Anyway, this parable is about a king who was throwing a wedding feast for his son and the topic of proper attire eventually comes up.  Maybe a more appropriate analogy for this sermon would have been to talk about dress protocol for a royal wedding, but the last one of those was more than a handful of years ago now and from what I saw of it, it seemed that the dignitaries and especially the celebs missed the memo about not upstaging the bride and groom.  …and talk about your guest list problems.  When the Duke and Duchess of Sussex married, the primary problem with those invited was the father of the bride, but in our parable it’s the whole dang list and the king chooses a horrific way of handling it…Well, let’s talk about it.

 The first people this king invited, the who’s who of power and wealth, the first time they were summonsed to come, they blanketly refused.  The second time, some said they just had better things to do and walked away and the rest of them beat and murdered the messengers.  So, what’s a king to do?  He sent in the troops and permanently took them folks off the guest list. 

This response is problematic.  If this Parable is about the kingdom of Heaven which is supposed to be so wonderful and peaceful, why is the king killing people?  That’s not what the Kingdom of Heaven is supposed to be like, is it?  It might help to know that Matthew’s Gospel was written after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD.  Most scholars will say this parable has within it an attempt to explain how God could have let that happen or even made it happen – the political and religious powers of the Jewish people who refused Jesus and his Kingdom and persecuted and killed his followers and in turn sought power for themselves through revolutionary means, brought it upon themselves.  

Returning to the parable, having a wedding feast ready and there no longer being invitees, the king expanded the guest list to include everybody and anybody, good and bad.  He sent his servants out into the streets of the town to gather whomever they could.  They did and they filled the hall.  Of course, you will have surmised that this represents the work of the early church apostles, missionaries, and evangelists welcoming anybody and everybody to come and be followers of Jesus, citizens of his kingdom irrespective of race, status, wealth, sex. 

The wedding feast in this parable, of course, is also an analogy for something.  I like to think it represents the loving fellowship that is found in groups of Jesus followers; fellowship marked by people relating to each other according to a profound love that , is evident and felt among them because the presence of God, the Holy Spirit, is dwelling among them.  It’s also a wedding feast marked by abundance – abundance of unconditional love which spills over into there being abundantly enough food and such for everybody.  One picture that the first few chapters of the Book of Acts gives us of life in the early church, particularly the first few years, is that their fidelity to Jesus expressed in their love for one another blossomed into an elimination of poverty in their midst.  

The wedding feast is present in the church, so to speak, but not the religious institution called the church that we have in our culture that carved its niche as definer and enforcer of public morality and the societally preferred venue for the public worship of something called God.  The church that embodies the wedding feast is likely to be found among small gatherings of people who are loyal to Jesus above all other loyalties, who strive to live the way of self-denial and unconditional love that he lived, who are more concerned about how they are getting along and how they care for one another than they are even about worship.  The fellowship of love embodied among Jesus’ people is the wedding feast.

Looking at the parable, how one dresses for this feast matters.  This parable has two strikingly difficult things to deal with – the king annihilating the invited guests for their refusal to come and their abuse of his servants; and, this king kicking out one the guests for not being dressed appropriately.  How to dress for the wedding feast deserves our attention?  

There’s something we need to know historically speaking; it was likely the practice in the culture at the time that at such a shindig the person hosting the wedding feast would have likely supplied a robe for everybody to wear.  Talk about your expensive weddings!  It’s like getting a “Been there, Done that” T-shirt made for everybody.  That there would be somebody there not wearing the supplied “special souvenir toga” would have been a surprise and likely an insult to the host and would get you kicked out.  The meaning of the robe in the parable is that in the Kingdom of Heaven everybody is given the appropriate attire, the Holy Spirit who is evidenced in the way we get along. 

This parable puts me to mind of a passage out of Colossians 3 that uses the imagery of the clothing change that took place at baptism.  The person to be baptised would take off their old clothes, step into the water and be baptised, when they came out they were given a new white robe to wear.  The baptism symbolized dying and rising with Jesus and the clothing change was metaphorical for divesting yourself of the old broken selfish self and putting on the new self who by the work of the Holy Spirit is coming to be more and more like Jesus.  

Colossians 3:12-15 reads: “Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.”

When God the Father looks at fellowships gathered in the name of the Son in whom his own Spirit dwells, he is looking for compassion, kindness, meekness, patience, bearing with one another, forgiveness, peace, thankfulness, and most of all love.  If God doesn’t look at us and see “the robe” in the way we relate to each other, well then…I’ve seen, worked with churches in which there were people who weren’t wearing the robe and on a couple of occasions it was the minister who wasn’t.  They stuck out like sore thumbs in the midst of some peaceful, thankful people beautifully attired in love shown forth in humble, selfless service to each other.  

In every gathering of Jesus followers there is a wedding feast going on and everybody gets a robe to wear, which is a personal taste of God’s presence that changes them.  There are those who’ve been invited but don’t come and some of those get rather belligerent towards the host and those who serve him.  The invitation is open to everybody.  It’s a banquet of abundance.  If we let the robe have its full effect, and one day it will, all the ills humanity can be healed in the loving presence of God.  Come to the feast and wear the robe.  Amen.

Be a Gift of Kindness

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Deuteronomy 8:7-17

It has been said that if gratitude, being thankful, were a pill, everybody would be taking it.  The positive health benefits of gratitude are so indisputably panaceatic, that, truly, if it came in pill form, we all would be lining up to buy it in bulk and probably trying to overdose on it if possible.  (Panaceatic is a word I made up.  It comes from the word panacea which means a “cure-all”.)  Of course, I am exaggerating here a bit to make my point.  But the fact still remains that study after study has indisputably shown that gratitude is remarkably beneficial to physical, mental, and relational health. 

Chemically speaking, the science community has found that making a practice of being grateful, which is finding things to be thankful for, will cause increases in two important to feeling good brain chemicals, serotonin and dopamine.  These chemicals are associated with happiness and pleasure.  If the levels of either or both are out of whack low, you will be suffering some form of depression.  Practicing gratitude can have the effect on us that antidepressant medications have.  They’ve also found that the practice of being grateful reduces the level of stress hormones in the body.  

The result of this bettered brain and body chemistry is astronomically as well as gastronomically good.  Making a practice of finding things to be grateful for has been shown to reduce anxiety and depression and improve overall mood.  Being grateful just makes you feel better – more energetic, positive, contented and so on.  The reduction in stress hormones brought about by practicing gratitude lowers blood pressure and inflammation throughout the body.  Reducing inflammation leads to a happier digestive system, less pain throughout the body, and fewer trips to the bathroom.  Less indigestion and less pain and fewer trips to the bathroom would make everybody happy.  Practicing gratitude also promotes better cardiovascular health giving you more energy and reduced risk of heart attack and stroke.  If you go to sleep thinking on things your grateful for rather than ruminating on the negatives, your sleep is so much better.  More and better sleep is a major physical and mental health benefit.  Thinking of things to be grateful for before stressful tasks will increase your ability to focus on the task by short-circuiting the “stressing out over it” mental mechanism which can be so debilitating.  

In the area of self-worth, being grateful and expressing gratitude when people do nice things for you increases self-esteem by helping you to realize that people care about you enough as to want to spend their time and resources on you.  Being grateful makes you an easier person to be around, more positive, patient, and relaxed.  It aids the formation of humility.  In the long-term, the intentional practice of being grateful can rewire the brain so that you are more resilient when life makes you swallow those bitter pills.  Gratitude in the face of adversity is a major component of personal strength.

So, having established that gratitude is overwhelmingly good for us, we should now wrestle with why we have to work so hard at being grateful; why it doesn’t seem to come naturally for us.  Being grateful is a switch that we have to turn on.  We have to discipline ourselves to be grateful - make a practice of it.  All of us have plenty in our lives to be thankful for, but for some reason we have to stop and remember to count our blessings.  Here’s a few reasons. 

There are some negative mental behaviours that come easier to us than gratitude and they are quite soul-destroying.  Envy – Instead of being satisfied with who we are and what we have, we desire the traits and possessions of others.  Materialism – rather than just being satisfied with what we have, we think that having more of the latest and greatest stuff will make us complete.  Cynicism – the cynic thinks that everybody else is only in it for themselves and never sees the good in anything.  Finally, there’s also that rare gift called narcissism where we think we are entitled to everything.  We can’t see anything as a gift, because we think we deserve to have it all.

Psychologists say we have a negativity bias which means we tend to more readily take notice of and dwell on negative rather than positive stimuli and events.  We remember traumatic experiences better than positive ones.  We take insults to heart and downplay if not ignore the praise receive.  We think about, ruminate upon, negative possibilities more readily than focusing on the possibility of good outcomes.  That’s called worry.  We tend to let the negative rather than the positive events of our lives be more formative to who we are and how we see the world.  We are so negatively biased that from a performance review we will remember that one negative bit of helpful criticism rather than the myriads of praises just sung about us.  I don’t think I need to go into the harmful effects that this negativity bias has on mental, physical, and relational health because it’s pretty much at the heart of what’s wrong with the world today.  But since we are talking about, I will say practicing gratitude has the effect of short-circuiting our negativity bias and in the long run can rewire our brains to be more inclined to see the good and be hopeful and inclined to make a difference.

So anyway, it’s Thanksgiving Sunday.  This is to be an opportunity in which we take a moment to be thankful and to remember the God to whom we ultimately owe our thanks for everything.  We should also note that God has called us to live in a particular way as to demonstrate our gratitude.  The core message of the passage we read from Deuteronomy is simply let’s not forget the one to whom we owe our thanks and the way we to remember this God is to live in that particular way he’s given to us so that we reflect his image.  In ancient Israel, that way was prescribed in the Law of Moses and for us it is the Way of the Cross, the Jesus Way.

Thankfulness is more than a feeling.  It demands a response.  There will probably be a myriad of articles in lifestyle sections of newspapers this Sunday morning doing just what I did at the start of this sermon in laying out the benefits of being grateful.  Yet, none of those articles are going to offer a suggestion as to whom we owe our thanks.  The advice is going to be to just basically conjure of feelings of gratitude and reap the benefits.  Gratitude truly is a pill we should all take for the benefit of our physical, mental, and relational health.  But it is also something that deserves more from us than just feeling grateful and saying thank you.  It must be put into practice.

As I pondered the topic of gratitude is these last few days, one thing I’ve had a hard time coming up with is what exactly gratitude is.  Most definitions I found called it an emotion.  It’s feeling thankful.  I’m not satisfied with simply calling it a feeling, an emotion.  It’s more than that.  I compare it to being sorry.  One can feel sorry for hurting another, but feeling sorry doesn’t make amends.  It’s not enough.  The better way to express remorse is to work at never doing it again and addressing the issues of why you did it in the first place.  That’s putting the feeling into practice.  Example, the only sincere apology an alcoholic can give for the damage done is to never drink again, work to understand what was driving the drinking and all the while daily working to be a better person.  So, it is with gratitude.  It is not enough to simply feel grateful; we must strive to understand what drives our ingratitude and all the while strive to live in such a way as to ensure that our presence in the lives of others will be something they are grateful for.  

A good thing to do this year at Thanksgiving in addition to counting our blessings would be doing some soul searching and asking ourselves an interesting question: Am I being a presence in the lives of others, particularly those closest to me, for which they are thankful.  Usually, it is a gift of kindness that arouses thankfulness in us.  Therefore, we must ask ourselves “Am I living this life that God has entrusted to me in such a way as to be a gift of kindness to others, particularly those closest to me?”  To be a gift of kindness requires humility, patience, self-giving, selflessness, unconditional love, forgiveness, meekness, honesty, courage, and self-control...all those qualities that the Holy Spirit forms in us.  

The odd thing about gratitude is that it is one of those things in our make up as humans that points us to God.  Once you set about noting the people and things and events in your life that you’re grateful for, you soon start to realize that there is someone in your life, an unseen presence greater than yourself, who has been a gift of kindness to you.  God, out of his love and kindness has given us each so much to be thankful for.  It’s humbling when you realize and it leaves you feeling beloved.  This God revealed himself as Jesus who has shown us the way to live in response to God’s kindness.  We must at all cost live as a gift of kindness to others, live the Jesus Way.  Amen.