Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Psalm 69:30-36
30 I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. 31 This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs. 32 Let the oppressed see it and be glad; you who seek God, let your hearts revive. 33 For the Lord hears the needy, and does not despise his own that are in bonds. 34 Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them. 35 For God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah; and his servants shall live there and possess it; 36 the children of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall live in it.
Philippians 4:4-9
4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
When Leslie and I first started taking classes at the Leland Center last year, our tuition the first semester was covered through a scholarship provided by the school. As the end of the semester approached, we began to wonder how we would be able to return, since there was no mention of the scholarship carrying through to the spring semester. At the end of November, Leslie received a call from Ken Palmer, a member of our church who is in charge of directing the fundraising efforts for the Leland Center’s Hampton Roads Campus. He was excited because he wanted to share with us that someone, a person who chose to remain anonymous, had donated funds specifically to cover our tuition for the Spring Semester, and beyond, as long as we were in school. To this day, that person remains unknown to us. Though we’ve speculated about who that person MIGHT be, we have no idea who he or she actually is.
We almost met in the late spring, if memory serves, at the dinner Thalia Lynn hosted for the Leland Center on the Southside of Hampton Roads, but it never actually happened, or at least we were not introduced to the person as “the one who helped us in that way.” It has been, to be honest, one of the more frustrating experiences I’ve been through.
There’s not so much a sense of obligation to express our gratitude to the person, though that emotion is definitely there, but it is more an as-yet unfulfilled desire to sit and share with them what their generosity has made in our lives – what it did to us as people seeking how to follow God’s direction in our lives. That giving was a catalyst for everything we’re doing today. We are, of course, profoundly grateful, to whoever it is. But it is intensely frustrating to not be able to look someone face to face and tell them how much what they’ve done has meant to you.
It would seem an easy topic to write on; thankfulness. But as I sat at my desk over the last couple of days, the trouble was how to narrow the focus of the issue to bring it into a manageable form.
Sitting there last night, I realized, there’s no need to narrow it down. In fact, we would probably do well to EXPAND the scope of the word!
We’re engaged this week in the observation of the Thanksgiving Holiday. A couple of years ago, I watched the various thanksgiving episodes a few TV shows, and they necessarily diluted … no, maybe that’s not the right word, they reduced the theme of the day to the lowest common denominator: it’s not about the object of our thankfulness as much as it is about the simple attitude of being thankful.
While I do object to that absence, I also believe we need to give credit where credit is due. Being thankful is a virtue, and a hallmark of a moral society. In other words, being thankful sets us apart culturally. It reflects thoughtfulness, an intentional response to a kindness that has been given, or shared. It should be encouraged in any setting; it is of value in its own right.
We send notes to say thank you. Just in the last week, we’ve received 4 or 5 thank you cards for different things we as a church have done. It says as much about the person receiving the gift as it does about the person doing the giving.
Where we, as followers of Christ, differ from the generic thankfulness espoused by the general culture, is that there is an object to our attitude.
The Psalmist is not being thankful in general for having been delivered from his enemies. Paul is not encouraging the members of the church at Philippi to express a general attitude of thanksgiving as a way of filling a silence they may encounter during a meal.
In each case, there is someone to whom each is or should be grateful TO.
The Old Testament practice was, as you know, to offer sacrifices to God as a way of saying thanks. The sacrifices ranged anywhere from a dove, as we read mentioned in the New Testament, to an Ox or a Bull, as the passage mentions.
We need to remember the most famous almost-sacrifice mentioned in the Old Testament – Abraham sacrificing Isaac. The Psalmist is keying in on the same lesson that Abraham learned – a thankful, obedient heart is more valuable to God than any physical sacrifice made.
The passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians echoes that same thought - rejoice in the Lord … one of the most natural expressions of rejoicing is in song. When we lift our voices in songs of thanksgiving, Paul is pointing out that the Lord is near. God inhabits our praise, our Thanksgiving.
What is the lesson of the Gospel for Jerusalem Church in all this?
It is this: through Christ’s sacrifice, we can now approach the throne of God Almighty – Jehova Jireh, as Soozin mentioned earlier in the service – “God who sees to it” – God who provides. In the act of thanksgiving there is communion. We are not giving thanks in a diffused, undirected way. We are giving thanks to ‘The Author and finisher of our faith’ – to the alpha and omega – to the one who has healed us.
There’s a miracle that always stands out in my mind – Jesus’ healing of the 10 lepers. The story goes something like this: Jesus is walking along the road, and a group of ten lepers call to him – they call because they cannot approach him – they had to maintain a prescribed distance from everyone who was not infected with the disease. Jesus heals them all, and they run off to tell everyone they know about it. Can anyone tell me what is unique about that healing? How many of the men return to say thanks? One.
Are we as diligent? Are we thanking God for 10 percent of our lives? Do we only thank God for the good we experience?
Paul says ‘in everything, with prayer and thanksgiving …’ we read elsewhere in his letters what that meant for Paul. Prison, torture, being shipwrecked, stoned, beaten, chased out of cities and synagogues all across the known world.
People ask me how things are going here for me. They want to know about both the pastorate and the Hispanic ministry.
I tell them, truthfully, that it is going really, really well.
It’s not easy. There are challenges, and there have been some difficult events and situations, but I am no less thankful for them than I am for the others. I know that through ALL my experiences here, with you, I am learning more and more about who God wants me to be.
I’d like to open this time up to congregational sharing. Helen did this in the Sunday school assembly time, but I won’t call on anyone. If you have something you’d like to share for which you are thankful for, please share it with us.
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Let’s pray.
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