Last Sunday we said “good-bye” to Matthew’s gospel for now as we prepare for the new lectionary cycle coming up. Advent and Christmas are a mixed bag of reading sources but once we settle in with Epiphany we will be reading mainly from Mark’s gospel – so, good-bye Matthew. At least that’s what I thought last week before I checked to see what I had scheduled as our Thanksgiving reading this year – and discovered it’s Matthew. It’s not the lectionary reading, just one I chose because it fits our theme.
Matthew 6:25-33
“I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you?
So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ Your heavenly Father knows you need these things. But first seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and then all these things will be given to you as well.
Not quite as done with Matthew as I thought we were -- but I had chosen this reading over the lectionary choices because it really is my idea of giving thanks for what we are given.
What does it mean to be thankful – to be filled with thanks? I suspect it has to start with being aware that we are blessed – that God is caring for us and guiding us every day.
There are hundreds of things that can leave us feeling grateful – we could list them off for days -- family, friends, shelter, a comfortable home, nourishing food as near as the kitchen cupboards.
Are there anxieties and worries and griefs? Of course there are – this is life here on earth – not paradise. While we here in the west live largely in relative comfort and safety there are millions of others who are terrorized and brutalized by the selfish greed of others. It’s not a tidy life we are given. So how do we take the blessing and deal with the suffering?
Our biggest blessing is that God is in charge of all of this. Not God as Santa Claus crossed with our Fairy Godmother, handing out blessings and fixing all our worries for us by waving a magic wand while we do nothing, but God as Creator and Teacher. God as the one who loves us enough to include us in our own creation. God who calls us to play a part in the creation of the just and beautiful world they envision for us.
This God saw the people who lived in this beautiful world, and saw them struggling -- saw their unhappiness, and their worry, and their striving to be above each other -- so God sent them a teacher to show them how to live at peace together – with each other, and with themselves – as God has always wanted all of us to live.
So, a man called Jesus was born and lived among the people. And he taught them with words from the ancient prophets, words of justice and caring for each other. And he taught them by living, himself, as one at peace with others and even more importantly, at peace with himself because he knew who he was, God’s own beloved. And the lesson he sought to teach the people – then and now – is that God is enough.
God is enough, and if we have God, and if we share what we have instead of being afraid we won’t have enough, then everyone can have what they need. More than enough.
That is the message of our reading today – that most of our fears and worries are self-generated. They exist because we have allowed ourselves to believe we deserve things we don’t even need, in the mistaken belief that “if we want it, we should have it”. Individuals think this way; whole countries think this way. Every war ever fought ultimately began when someone decided they had a right to something that was not theirs, because what they had was “not enough.”
It’s somewhat ironic that this is a Thanksgiving message and, in this country at least, we celebrate a time when people from one continent – who believed they didn’t have enough – came here and simply ‘took’ this land from those who were already living here. And they justified their actions by announcing that God “gave” this land to them.
Blaming God for our greed and hunger for power is one of the oldest stories: Kings have a “divine right” to rule, everyone else; light-skinned people were “created” to rule dark-skinned folks; the ones with the biggest weapons “deserve” to conquer because God obviously gave them the victory.
God never said or did any such thing. That was people, presuming to speak for God.
Jesus reminds us to pay attention to how generously God cares for all creation – in all its beauty and its variety, and asks us why, then, we worry so about how God will care for us. Aren’t we part of this same creation? Do we listen to God? Do we hear God telling us to not be afraid?
There is enough. There is enough because God is enough – always and forever, God is enough, and more than enough. Seek God first ... and all the rest falls into place.
Thanks be to God.
What does it mean to be thankful – to be filled with thanks? I suspect it has to start with being aware that we are blessed – that God is caring for us and guiding us every day.
There are hundreds of things that can leave us feeling grateful – we could list them off for days -- family, friends, shelter, a comfortable home, nourishing food as near as the kitchen cupboards.
Are there anxieties and worries and griefs? Of course there are – this is life here on earth – not paradise. While we here in the west live largely in relative comfort and safety there are millions of others who are terrorized and brutalized by the selfish greed of others. It’s not a tidy life we are given. So how do we take the blessing and deal with the suffering?
Our biggest blessing is that God is in charge of all of this. Not God as Santa Claus crossed with our Fairy Godmother, handing out blessings and fixing all our worries for us by waving a magic wand while we do nothing, but God as Creator and Teacher. God as the one who loves us enough to include us in our own creation. God who calls us to play a part in the creation of the just and beautiful world they envision for us.
This God saw the people who lived in this beautiful world, and saw them struggling -- saw their unhappiness, and their worry, and their striving to be above each other -- so God sent them a teacher to show them how to live at peace together – with each other, and with themselves – as God has always wanted all of us to live.
So, a man called Jesus was born and lived among the people. And he taught them with words from the ancient prophets, words of justice and caring for each other. And he taught them by living, himself, as one at peace with others and even more importantly, at peace with himself because he knew who he was, God’s own beloved. And the lesson he sought to teach the people – then and now – is that God is enough.
God is enough, and if we have God, and if we share what we have instead of being afraid we won’t have enough, then everyone can have what they need. More than enough.
That is the message of our reading today – that most of our fears and worries are self-generated. They exist because we have allowed ourselves to believe we deserve things we don’t even need, in the mistaken belief that “if we want it, we should have it”. Individuals think this way; whole countries think this way. Every war ever fought ultimately began when someone decided they had a right to something that was not theirs, because what they had was “not enough.”
It’s somewhat ironic that this is a Thanksgiving message and, in this country at least, we celebrate a time when people from one continent – who believed they didn’t have enough – came here and simply ‘took’ this land from those who were already living here. And they justified their actions by announcing that God “gave” this land to them.
Blaming God for our greed and hunger for power is one of the oldest stories: Kings have a “divine right” to rule, everyone else; light-skinned people were “created” to rule dark-skinned folks; the ones with the biggest weapons “deserve” to conquer because God obviously gave them the victory.
God never said or did any such thing. That was people, presuming to speak for God.
Jesus reminds us to pay attention to how generously God cares for all creation – in all its beauty and its variety, and asks us why, then, we worry so about how God will care for us. Aren’t we part of this same creation? Do we listen to God? Do we hear God telling us to not be afraid?
There is enough. There is enough because God is enough – always and forever, God is enough, and more than enough. Seek God first ... and all the rest falls into place.
Thanks be to God.
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