Sermon for Sunday, November 18, 2007

DO NOT FORGET THAT IT IS GOD WHO HAS ENABLED YOU TO PROSPER

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

St. Andrew United Methodist Church

November 18, 2007

Scripture: Deuteronomy 8:7-19

⁷ For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, ⁸ a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, ⁹ a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. ¹⁰ You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you. ¹¹ Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. ¹² When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, ¹³ and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, 14 then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, ¹⁵ who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, ¹⁶ and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. ¹⁷ Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." ¹⁸ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today. ¹⁹ If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.

Pat Hymel is the principal of an elementary school in Arlington, Virginia. Her school is only a few blocks from the Pentagon.

On September 11, 2001, she was taking care of the 400 frightened children who were entrusted to her care after the terrorist attack on the Pentagon. She was especially concerned all day because her husband worked in the Pentagon. She did not learn until the end of the day that he had been killed in that attack.

It would have been very easy for her to have been bitter but here is what she said. Her husband had been a pilot in Viet Nam thirty years earlier. He had been shot down and gravely wounded but he was rescued and recovered and came back and they raised a daughter together. Here is what Pat Hymel said after her husband’s death: “I was lucky. I got him back once and had him for 29 years.”

She did not say that they should have had many more years together even though they both assumed that and wanted that. She did not say that God owed them life as a couple into their twilight years. She said, after he had survived his being shot down and had survived his serious wounds and they had a good life together for a while—she said, “I was lucky.”

I want us to remember that attitude for a few moments on this Sunday before our national day of Thanksgiving in our country—a celebration that we and only one or two other countries in the world commemorate.

Let me tell you another story about feeling lucky and feeling thankful and being grateful for what is and not focusing on what might have been. In the Gospel of Luke we read a story of Jesus when he is on his way to Jerusalem to be killed. On the way he meets a group of ten lepers. Lepers were outcasts and were not even to walk on the same side of the road as other people. Luke tells us that they saw it was Jesus and, keeping their distance from him, they called out to him and asked him to make them well. He told them to go from there and show themselves to the priest—the typical thing they would do to be certified as healed. And while they were on the way to the priest, they were made well.

Do you remember what happened next? One of the ten, realizing what had happened, turned around, went back to Jesus, and, in a loud voice, thanked him and praised God. Jesus said, What about the other nine? Where are they? Why is there only this one, this foreigner/Samaritan who has come back to say thank you?

Why do you think the others did not return to thank Jesus? Did they feel entitled to be well and were thinking to themselves, “It is about time somebody made us well!! Why didn’t this happened much sooner!! After all, everybody should be owed good health and God sure took a long time to get to us. Look at all the time we lost. God owed us our health and we shouldn’t have to go back and thank anyone for something that is due to us. We are entitled!”

Why do you think they failed to say thank you? What do you think God owes you? What do you feel entitled to? Sometimes we say that if something bad happens to us, why me?  Do we think that is part of the arrangement with God, that if we are faithful, we will never be ill or lose a loved one or have perennial success in every business venture and romantic relationship and other endeavors? Does God owe us?

Or do we take a different posture and say, when illness or grief befalls us, why not me? Do we see other faithful followers of Christ getting a free ride or avoiding suffering or feeling life is just completely fair all the time? It would be hard to think that starting with Jesus who was executed like a criminal from a trumped up trial. We could look also at St. Paul, as some of us will when we travel to Greece in a few months to follow the second journey of Paul. Paul suffered in many ways and had a very painful life. He was very faithful and persistent in following Christ, but he still suffered beatings, stonings, being jailed several times, and finally like Jesus, being executed for being a trouble maker.

Why so some have the idea that we are owed a trouble free and comfortable life free from illness or pain? We see that same risky life in another church leader whom we remembered three weeks ago: Martin Luther is seen as the father of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500’s. On October 31 he nailed his list of grievances for debate on the front door of the church in Wittenberg and thereby took on the most powerful institution of the 16^th century—the church. That protest—along with his rebellious act of translating the New Testament into the language of his people so everyone could read their own Bible—caused all sorts of hostility to fall upon him for the rest of his life. He had a difficult life after that including some time in prison. But still he wrote the words we sing in his famous hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God: “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing. Our helper he amid the floods of mortal ills prevailing”; then later, “and though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear for God has willed God’s truth to triumph through us.”

Luther did not believe life would be trouble free and fair but life is good and we are to be grateful because God is with us. 

And we can give thanks for that. I remember hearing of a fellow a few years ago in Colorado Springs when I was there who did not believe in observing the Thanksgiving holiday because he believed he worked for and had earned everything he had and he had no reason to thank God or anyone else for anything! If you do believe that—if you believe that you do not stand on the shoulders of anyone else who encouraged you and nurtured you and coached you and helped you along the way, then I can see that.  But all of us stand on the shoulders of others, and all of us have received much from God. Most of us just happened to be born in one of the most fortunate places and times in history with enough ability to do well. That was all given to us.

That is the point Moses is making in his speech to the Israelites as they are poised right on the edge of the Promised Land. They have been on their way there for forty years—forty years of wandering around, being prepared by God to enter the land of Canaan and settle there and prosper. God had brought them from slavery in Egypt to freedom and to a good life.

Moses knows they will have a good life, a prosperous life, and he is warning them to remember how they got there. “When you settle here and are successful and have more than you need and you live in fine houses and all that you have has multiplied, DO NOT EXALT YOURSELF AND FORGET THAT IT IS GOD WHO HAS BROUGHT YOU HERE; IT IS GOD WHO HAS GIVEN YOU THE WISDOM AND POWER TO BECOME PROSPEROUS. So remember to thank God and to show that you are thankful to God.”

When you have much, Moses says, be grateful and also show your gratitude. And other parts of the Bible say more: even when we do not have much, still we are to be thankful. That is what Paul says to us in I Thessalonians. Give thanks to God in all circumstances. IN all circumstances; not FOR, but IN. And to believe that. We remember what Paul has been through. He has had little and had much. He has suffered beating and jail time and shipwrecks and physical ailments.  In spite of those travails, he is grateful.

He is like the first Americans who in the fall of 1621 had been in this new land for just a year. They had gone through a terrible winter with little food. Half their number had died of disease or cold or hunger. But they survived. They learned some new things from the natives who befriended them. And in the fall of 1621, after they had harvested, Governor Bradford declared a day of thanksgiving—three days actually! And in spite of the hardship and the grief of losing spouses and children and friends in the past 12 months, they said prayers of thanksgiving to God. They had survived. They were alive. They had made some progress and they had faith and hope in God.

Can we give thanks in the tough times as well as the good times? Jesus sets another example for us. On the last night of his earthly life, he is eating a meal with his friends. It is the Passover meal, the ritual that celebrates God setting the Israelites free from Egypt. He is in the upper room and the meal has been prepared. What does he do? You remember the words from our Sacrament of Communion: “on the night he was given over to be killed, he took the bread and SAID A PRAYER OF THANKS. Blessed are you Lord God, King of the universe who brings forth bread from the earth.”

Last Monday night Judy and I heard that same prayer of thanksgiving said in an unusual setting. We were at the Denver Center Theater production of Anne Frank. I commend it to you. It is a recent play based on the diary of 14 year old Anne and her family written when they were hidden for two years in some upper rooms in Amsterdam in WWII. The family who was hiding them was taking enormous risks themselves because they also might have been killed. After never leaving those rooms for two years, Anne, her parents and her sister, and four other persons who were with them were discovered and taken to concentration camps where all died with the exception of her father.

One thing striking in this magnificent and moving play is that they continued to practice their faith. Even with the scarcity of food, when Hanukkah came, they gathered around the table and said the words in that prayer that Jesus used—a prayer of thanksgiving. A prayer of thanksgiving.

How much do we need to have in order to give thanks to God? Does our gratitude depend on having an abundance or can we be like Paul and Jesus and even Anne Frank’s family—dare to thank God for life and for each day even when we times are difficult and tough?

Theodore Geisel knew that as well. He is better known as Dr. Seuss. In his book, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? He reminds children that when they feel sorry for themselves, they need to remember others: suppose, just suppose you were poor Herbi Hart who has taken his throm-dim-u-lator apart.

And of course, once you get one of those apart, it means you are in for a very difficult challenge. Incidentally, did you know that Theodor Geisel submitted his first Dr. Seuss book to 39 different publishers before someone finally thought it was worth publishing and bought that first story?

It is good to celebrate a national day of thanksgiving when we can eat too much turkey and watch too much football and keep the Alka Seltzer Company in business. But what we are encouraged to do is to cultivate a lifelong attitude of gratitude that celebrates each day and gives thanks to God for each moment of life. That attitude keeps us from thinking we are entitled and lets us say our thanks and show our thanks.

Who do you need to write a thank you letter to this week? What else can we do to show God and to show others that we are thankful?

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