Thanksgiving, Anyway!

            Thanksgiving Day is a time to reflect on what it is that we have and to thank our God for the goodness that there is in this world.  It isn’t always easy to see the goodness.  Sometimes we get hit in the face by the things that seem to be so wrong around us.

            I don’t really know what to say in the wake of the lack of an indictment in Ferguson, Missouri this week.  I must say that the cynic in me didn’t expect that there would be an indictment.  That was borne out in the belittling comments made by the county prosecutor when he announced the Grand Jury’s findings.  I wasn’t surprised that there were demonstrations and anger on the part of the people in the community.

            Of course, it would be better if we could curb the violence and take these things that happen in their stride; but in light of the way that the races have been treated in this nation, that is profoundly impossible.  It is certainly important that the citizens of the community tell the officials how they feel.  It is important also for the officials to listen to them, which seems not to be happening.

            I also have to tell you that I have never particularly liked the mythological story that undergirds our Thanksgiving tradition.  The idea of the black-hatted Puritans receiving food from Squanto the Indian and then a relatively few years later taking his land for their own is unnerving to me.  I’m not sure it really happened that way, but that isn’t important.  What matters is that we understand something of the need that we all have to give thanks for what we have received; and to know that our God is the source of what we have been given. 

            That also isn’t always easy to see.  We are constantly reminded that the rich have inherited the earth.  The one percent seems to control just about everything.  We can’t even have elections that are fair because money from super PACs pour into them and affect the outcomes.  We seem sometimes to be stuck in an unyielding political morass that just won’t yield, and give us the fairness and justice that we yearn for.

            But we have our families.  That is the source for most of us of our comfort; and this parish family is a source of comfort for many people who have no other place to turn.  That is what we have to give thanks for on this day. 

            Our scripture lesson for this holiday is the account of what Moses said to the people when they were about to enter the promised land that God had provided for them after their forty year sojourn in the wilderness.  Moses tells them that God is giving them a good land that will take care of all of their needs and will provide them with great wealth.  He then tells them that after they have created this wealth, not to forget that it is God who has provided it, not themselves.  This is a lesson that we still haven’t quite learned today.  We think that we are the source of all of the good things that have been provided to us; and that we, not God, are the great providers.  We see this in the so called one percent who have all of the wealth and continue to build it on the backs of those who have nothing, or who work for small wages while their providers continue to get rich.  This is what makes our thanksgiving difficult. 

            We need to remember to give thanks for small things.  When Jesus healed the ten lepers who cried out to him, only one, a Samaritan, came back to give him thanks.  Jesus asked, “were not ten made clean?”  But he closed the moment by telling the one who thanked him; “go, your faith has made you whole.”  That is what we always need to remember.  It is our faith in our Holy God that continues to make us whole.  Even in the face of all of the things that are oppressing:  Grand Juries that refuse to indict; rich who refuse to compensate their workers; police who can’t seem to curb their racism, we still, like that Samaritan leper need to give God continual thanks for what it is that we have received:  families who love us; churches who continue to serve the needy and all of the wonderful goodness that exists in the world, despite humanity’s continuing difficulty with understanding who is really in charge. 

           
God bless us all on this glorious day and remember to continue to love one another.  That is what our God continually asks us to do and when we do it, the world works well.

Sheep and Mission

            There is a lot of reference to sheep in the scriptures.  Ezekiel quotes God as saying that he will come and gather up his scattered flock and give them good pasture on the mountains of Israel.  Psalm 100 tells us that the Lord is God and we are His people and the sheep of his pasture; and then there is that powerful passage from the 25^th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, which I think is the crowning teaching of Jesus to the people of this world.  He tells of the final judgement, when the Son of Man will come with all of his angels and sit on the throne of his glory.  He will separate humanity into two groups: the sheep and the goats.  To the sheep he will promise everlasting life and glory because when he was hungry and naked, in prison or sick, they provided for him.  The people ask when this happened, and the Son of Man tells them that whenever they did this for the least of His people, they did it for him.  Then to the goats, He says: depart into the flames prepared for you because you never took care of the needs of my people.    

            I can’t imagine a better summary of the teaching of Jesus while he was in his ministry, travelling through the countryside caring for all of the need that he found in his path.  He healed, he comforted, he visited, he fed and he did this constantly.  There is that momentous time after the death of John the Baptist when Jesus simply needed to get away and grieve, but the people followed him, eager to hear him speak.  He took the time to speak to them and when the hour got late and his disciples told him that the people needed to go somewhere and get something to eat, Jesus told them: “give them something to eat yourselves.”  They were stunned until he asked them what resources that they had and they told him of the young man who had five loaves and two fishes.  Jesus asked that they be brought to him.  He blessed them, broke the bread and there was enough for all of them to eat with twelve baskets left over.  That is what Jesus was asking of his disciples.  Take what you have, even though it doesn’t seem like much and make do with it and feed and take care of the people before you. 

            That is what we are still asked to do in this world.  That is a quick summary of the mission of the church.  We work on mission statements, we craft them and make them sound very good, but this twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel is what it is that God expects from all of us: to feed, clothe, visit, comfort and care for the people in our path.  After all of the theologians have their say, after all of the evangelists proclaim their salvation story, this is the command of our God that we love and take care of one another.  There is no higher calling than this.

            Sometimes, I get tired of the church.  We spend a great deal of time arguing over small things like whether or not women can be ordained, or whether people of the same sex can be married, or participate in our common life.  We have a constant bombardment of moral issues that we are expected to comment on and decide for the rest of society.  It is interesting that the English church just decided that women can be bishops.  I think that we already knew this.  The Roman Catholic Church is trying to come to terms with a raft of changes in society.  The Pope seems to be trying to effect changes that will be far ranging.  I wish them all well.  These things are really on the fringes of what we are called to do. We focus on them because it takes our mind off the mission that we have been sent to accomplish.  We are the agency created by our Lord to make the Gospel come alive in the world; to take care of the needs of those who are left out by the rest of society.  That is why we have soup kitchens, clothing drives, chaplains in prisons and hospitals and do all of the things that we do to make life better for those who have nothing at all.  We all live with the need every day.  That is why there is so much violence on our streets and in our homes.  We are constantly trying to find solutions to these things.

            Religion isn’t something that we say with words.  It is something that we do with our lives.  When people see the goodness that we are able to create when we care for those who have nothing, they see our religion.  They see the hand of God working in this world.  We are the hands of our God.  That sounds awesome to me when I say it; but it looks awesome to me when I see it at work. 

           

            We are in the stewardship season of the church, when we appeal to all of our people to be generous with their contributions.  The reason that we do this is because the church is a place with limited means.  It has always been a place of limited means.  But our limited means are not an excuse for doing nothing.  We are called to use whatever we have for the sake of the Gospel.  That is the only measure that we need to apply to what we do as the people of God.

How Can We Use Our Talents

            There was a story reported this past week about how some people in Fort Lauderdale, Florida were arrested for feeding the homeless because the community had passed a resolution making it unlawful to do that.  Among those arrested was an Episcopal priest and some others from the religious community who commented that they were just doing what was required by their faith.  The mayor of the city replied to the criticism that followed that he was sorry that this had happened and that the city was not trying to keep those without food from being fed. 

            This was another example of how our political process sometimes trumps our faith; but that is certainly nothing new.  Religion has often been something that stays on the sideline until it is needed to bolster somebody’s idea of how we ought to live. 

            The story that we can take away from this is don’t fool around with what God has asked of all of us. God knows what we need and what God wants.  And God will have his way in the end.  That is what we are being told in the parable of the talents in Matthew’s Gospel.

            The master gave various amounts of his property into the hands of his slaves.  To one he gave five talents, to another two and to a third, he gave one.  He then went away.  Two of the slaves invested their talents and doubled them.  The one with one talent was afraid and buried his in the ground.  When he master came back, he wanted an accounting of his property.  The two who had invested the talents gave back the talents and the profit.  The one who had hidden his talent confessed of his fear and returned the one talent.  The master was furious with him over this and ordered him to be thrown into outer darkness.  The message is that we are to use what we have been given and not be afraid.  This is not a story for those in need, it is a story for those who have been given much. The master in this story is God and the people in need are the object of the story.

            I know that the people on the street living homeless who have to struggle every day just for essentials are those who need our help.  Helping them is how we, who have much more, are to use the talents that we have been given.  To restrict our use of what we have been given to us with foolish law is, I think, to laugh in the face of God.   But this isn’t the end of Matthew’s Gospel.  He goes on in the last part of this chapter with the most eloquent statement of God’s command to all of us; how we are to feed, clothe and house one another when we have nothing, and when we do this, we do it for Our Lord.  That is what we are about in this life: taking care of those in need because we are commanded to by our God. That is what investing our talents means. It is why we are given what we have.  It isn’t for us, it is for all of us in community to share because the Love of God makes us the hands of the Almighty, and we can make a powerful difference in this world.

About Death and Dying

            Death is something that we all know about.  For some people, it is something that seems to follow them every day.  People who live on the street, who don’t have much of the support of society; who seem to have none of the things that we all know that we need, such as food, shelter and clothing, sometimes have the sense that death is not far away.  Many of you know some of these people and how difficult it is to live like this.

            Grief is that thing that comes to us when we have a loss.  It isn’t easy to deal with and sometimes causes extreme pain.  I have been with a lot of people when they have experienced the death of a loved one.  Sometimes it seems to go easily; but more often there is racking sadness, tears, anxiety and pain.  I have felt all of these things myself.  When my parents died, I grieved.  It wasn’t easy getting through those days.  I needed the support of my wife and my kids.  It was great to have someone close who understood how I felt.  My experience of this heightened my concern of people who grieve but have no one to share that grief with.  

            I know that is one of the reasons that we have a church community.  When our church community suffers a loss, every member is involved in it.  The grief isn’t only individual, it is something that everyone experiences, and it isn’t easy.  When Princess Diana died, I watched on television people on the streets of London fighting tears for a woman that most of them knew only as a newsworthy person of the realm, with whom they had little personal contact.  These tears were decried as “crocodile tears” by one correspondent who had little understanding of what grief can mean to a community.  I don’t think that grief is something that we can write off lightly.  It comes out of the relationships that all of us form and that we value.  What is terrible is when our grief isn’t valued and we are belittled for it.  

            When Jesus died on the cross, his mother and a few disciples stood by and wept.  When Jesus rose from the dead, one of the first things that he saw was Mary Magdalene standing by the grave weeping.  Weeping is something that comes naturally to all of us at our time of grieving and it needs to be understood and accepted.  We are not weak because of our tears.  We are simply giving our love an outlet when it is lost to death.  Wouldn’t it be a terrible world if we didn’t cry over what we have lost?  It would diminish the lives that have been lost and make our grieving meaningless.  I value the tears that I have seen shed by those who have lost a loved one.  I know that they come from a time of great love.

            In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he speaks to them of what death means.  He says:

      We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.  1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18  

            But we don’t often think this way.  We approach death as something to be infinitely feared and at all costs to be avoided.  We worry when we contemplate it.  But the reality is that death will come to all of us.  What is important though, is as Paul says, we don’t grieve as others do who have no hope.  We have the certainty of eternal life that has been promised to us by our Lord Jesus.  That is a life beyond that which we know here, safe in the loving arms of our God who created us and will sustain us forever.