Psalm 100 - A Psalm of thanksgiving.
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness;
come into his presence with singing.
Know that the Lord is God.
It is he that made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him, bless his name.
For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
You know that a couple of weeks ago I was blessed to get to see and hear author John Pavlovitz. He is one of my favorite writers and I’ve followed his blog for quite a while. He is also, by the way, the author of the Advent meditation book we’re using this year, so be sure to pick up your copy before you leave.
I’ll come back to Pavlovitz in just a minute, but first – today is, according to the church liturgical calendar, the last Sunday of the year, Christ the King Sunday or the Reign of Christ Sunday as it’s now known, though I think that’s a really clunky way to phrase it. However, I think we cover the “Humble Jesus / Lord of the Universe” thing pretty much all year round, so that I prefer to deal with today as Thanksgiving Sunday.
I don’t think we can ever be reminded too many times to be grateful for all that we are given – and given – and given. We have all, in this life, loved and been loved. We all live in comfort. Even for those whose bodies are getting pretty creaky, those same bodies have given us years of good, faithful, active service. We are free to go to church as we please, or not.
We have all experienced grief and loss, certainly, but in order to feel grief we must have first known love. When we exist as part of a time-limited species we are always saying good-bye to someone and hello to someone new. We may not like it, but it’s how our lives are set up.
To be honest, we live pretty good lives – and we are grateful, even if once in a while we forget to remember that.
Okay now, back to John Pavlovitz – I have titled my message today “Blessed are the Damn Givers,” taken from one of John’s most popular blogs, written about a year and a half ago, which has this same title. It may sound a little odd theologically, and may not be what you think of as “church language,” but his point, I’m pretty sure, is Blessed are all those who care enough about others to give a damn if they are being treated fairly or not.
I’m reading John’s book, Hope (and other superpowers) right now. It’s my ‘last-thing-before-going-to-sleep-at-night’ book so I’m deliberately reading it very slowly, to let each point sink in. A couple of nights ago the point offered in the reading was that we tend to view the ugly things happening in the world around us now as a struggle between good people and bad people.
His view is that the battle is not so much between good people and bad people – it’s between open-handed people and close-fisted people. Between people who do care, but only about themselves and those closest to them and those who care about the woes of total strangers as much as the people they dearly love at home.
These last are those he refers to as the Damn Givers, and in his view, and mine, it is infinitely better to be a Damn Giver, than not. Damn Givers care about homeless people sleeping out in the cold, whether they personally know any or not. They care about migrant children torn away from their families and tossed into cages even when their own children are safely tucked in at home. They care about workers who work for slave-wages because that’s all that’s available to them. They care about sick people who can’t afford their medications because of the unending greed of pharmaceutical companies. All this caring comes from loving – the loving that God first gives to us – and love is the only thing that will one day heal our hurting world. Love and a lot of faithful hard work and caring.
And I believe all this relates to Thanksgiving Sunday expressly because we are a blessed people. And I believe that blessed people are required to be Damn Givers. Required to be, as Pavlovitz puts it, those whose lives yield compassion and mercy, whose actions welcome in peace and usher in justice, those who care for others as much as they care for themselves.
Not “required” by some Eleventh Commandment God snuck in when we weren’t looking, but required by the simple dynamics of "how things work." How can we call ourselves truly grateful if we aren’t completely aware that the blessings we receive have nothing to do with our deserving them and everything to do with God’s limitless desire to give? And if we receive them without particularly deserving them shouldn't everyone else have a right to the same?
Damn Givers want all the blessing we have to be shared by everyone else out there. And they care enough to speak out for them. To write letters, to show up at town meetings, to vote. To do whatever we can do to tell the close-fisted that theirs is not the world God wants (and that all these blessings are there for them as well.)
It’s good to be a Damn Giver because the damn givers will one day right-side the world -- turn this strange upside down world we live in back right side up. Blessed are the damn-givers for they will right-side the world.
Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Damn Giving.
I’ll come back to Pavlovitz in just a minute, but first – today is, according to the church liturgical calendar, the last Sunday of the year, Christ the King Sunday or the Reign of Christ Sunday as it’s now known, though I think that’s a really clunky way to phrase it. However, I think we cover the “Humble Jesus / Lord of the Universe” thing pretty much all year round, so that I prefer to deal with today as Thanksgiving Sunday.
I don’t think we can ever be reminded too many times to be grateful for all that we are given – and given – and given. We have all, in this life, loved and been loved. We all live in comfort. Even for those whose bodies are getting pretty creaky, those same bodies have given us years of good, faithful, active service. We are free to go to church as we please, or not.
We have all experienced grief and loss, certainly, but in order to feel grief we must have first known love. When we exist as part of a time-limited species we are always saying good-bye to someone and hello to someone new. We may not like it, but it’s how our lives are set up.
To be honest, we live pretty good lives – and we are grateful, even if once in a while we forget to remember that.
Okay now, back to John Pavlovitz – I have titled my message today “Blessed are the Damn Givers,” taken from one of John’s most popular blogs, written about a year and a half ago, which has this same title. It may sound a little odd theologically, and may not be what you think of as “church language,” but his point, I’m pretty sure, is Blessed are all those who care enough about others to give a damn if they are being treated fairly or not.
I’m reading John’s book, Hope (and other superpowers) right now. It’s my ‘last-thing-before-going-to-sleep-at-night’ book so I’m deliberately reading it very slowly, to let each point sink in. A couple of nights ago the point offered in the reading was that we tend to view the ugly things happening in the world around us now as a struggle between good people and bad people.
His view is that the battle is not so much between good people and bad people – it’s between open-handed people and close-fisted people. Between people who do care, but only about themselves and those closest to them and those who care about the woes of total strangers as much as the people they dearly love at home.
These last are those he refers to as the Damn Givers, and in his view, and mine, it is infinitely better to be a Damn Giver, than not. Damn Givers care about homeless people sleeping out in the cold, whether they personally know any or not. They care about migrant children torn away from their families and tossed into cages even when their own children are safely tucked in at home. They care about workers who work for slave-wages because that’s all that’s available to them. They care about sick people who can’t afford their medications because of the unending greed of pharmaceutical companies. All this caring comes from loving – the loving that God first gives to us – and love is the only thing that will one day heal our hurting world. Love and a lot of faithful hard work and caring.
And I believe all this relates to Thanksgiving Sunday expressly because we are a blessed people. And I believe that blessed people are required to be Damn Givers. Required to be, as Pavlovitz puts it, those whose lives yield compassion and mercy, whose actions welcome in peace and usher in justice, those who care for others as much as they care for themselves.
Not “required” by some Eleventh Commandment God snuck in when we weren’t looking, but required by the simple dynamics of "how things work." How can we call ourselves truly grateful if we aren’t completely aware that the blessings we receive have nothing to do with our deserving them and everything to do with God’s limitless desire to give? And if we receive them without particularly deserving them shouldn't everyone else have a right to the same?
Damn Givers want all the blessing we have to be shared by everyone else out there. And they care enough to speak out for them. To write letters, to show up at town meetings, to vote. To do whatever we can do to tell the close-fisted that theirs is not the world God wants (and that all these blessings are there for them as well.)
It’s good to be a Damn Giver because the damn givers will one day right-side the world -- turn this strange upside down world we live in back right side up. Blessed are the damn-givers for they will right-side the world.
Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Damn Giving.
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