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Psalm 51:10; 2 Corinthians 9:15
A Sermon for the end of the Season of Pentecost
We are in the final phase of the church year, harvest season, when we celebrate the bringing in of the crops and giving thanks for the bounty of the earth.
There are glorious hymns for this season: “Praise and Thanksgiving,” “Come, You Thankful People, Come,” ‘Now Thank We All our God,” and many more which direct our hearts and minds to giving thanks.
Which raises the question for today: How can we produce a thankful heart?
Let us count the ways.
Of course, the first way to have a thankful heart is to count your blessings. Make a list of all the things you are thankful for. An older woman who has a lot of conflict in her family, also has a battle plan. In her sewing room, on the wall above her sewing machine, are yellow post-it notes stuck on the wall. When she thinks of something she is grateful for, she writes it on a post-it note and sticks it on the wall. She says that doing that keeps her from ruminating on problems she can’t fix.
The bounty in which we all live is remarkable when we start to think about it.
At the same time, there are times when even counting one’s blessings doesn’t work to produce a thankful heart.
Moreover, even when we pray: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” in our heart of hearts we think: “My kingdom come, my will be done.” The heart wants what it wants, and as Jeremiah 17:9 says: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt.”
Second, in this liturgical year as we have gone through the Gospel of Luke, we note many texts that deal with thankfulness. The best known one is in Luke 17 about the ten lepers and only leper turned around to say “Thank you.” The story is called a parabolic miracle, and it’s really the same as the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. In fact, instead of calling the leper account the story of the ten lepers, we really should call it the story of the Thankful Samaritan. Ten were healed. Only the Samaritan turned to say “Thank you.” Thus, in Luke we have the stories of the Good Samaritan and the Thankful Samaritan.
We who come to church regularly think that the churches should be overflowing every Sunday because people should be thankful for all that God has given them. But the fact is that most are content to enjoy the bounty of this world without ever saying “Thank you” to the Lord of all creation.
We can fall into the problem of the Pharisee in the account of the Pharisee and the publican (tax collector), a story which is also in Luke (18). Remember two men go to the temple to pray, The Pharisee prays: “I thank thee, Lord, that I am not like other men, extortioners, adulterers, and even that tax collector over there! I tithe; I volunteer . . .”
Whereas the tax collector prays: “Lord, I am a sinner. Forgive me. Have mercy.”
We are the good ones who show up on Sunday morning, and all those people who didn’t come to church today, they’re not. We can be caught in pride, rather than grateful that we are here where there is the Word, the water, and the foretaste of the feast to come.
It is also true that having a thankful heart is about remembering to say: “Thank you.” We all need to be mindful of that. Children need to learn to say “Thank you.” When a child receives a present from someone, there is often a parent in the background who whispers to the child: “Remember to say, ‘Thank you.’” Kids need to be coached.
A grown man tells of how grateful he was that before his father died, he, the son, had the opportunity to thank his dad for all that he had done for him.
And what about table prayers for every day and especially Thanksgiving? One family has the Thanksgiving tradition that before eating, every person places a kernel of corn on the table and names one thing they are grateful for. Then they sing the Benediction together.
How can we get a thankful heart?
That brings us to a third way. If you want to mindful of your blessings, no matter what your situation is, go to the children’s hospital, and there you will see these little ones who because of illness or accident are in terrible situations, and yet they rejoice at little things and are thankful for their families, nurses, and doctors who take care of them. I suspect that for most of us, our troubles don’t begin to compare with theirs.
At the same, regardless of our circumstances, we are struggling, too, each with our own troubles.
And we’re not innocent either. There’s a dark passage in the Book of Proverbs, Proverbs 30:16 about greed and envy as a fire which never says ‘Enough’—it always wants more. We, too, always want more. We never have enough.
To be sure, there are times we, too, are awestruck at the good that comes our way.
There’s a preacher’s story, and it goes like this: In a little town on a Saturday afternoon a young couple showed up at the pastor’s house, wanting to be married. They had a marriage license. They need witnesses. The pastor said: “Sure,” and called over some neighboring parishioners, and the young couple were married right there and then. The groom said to the pastor: “How much do I owe you?” And the pastor said: “How much is it worth to you?” And the groom said, “I could never pay you that much.”
Matthew 7:7 goes: “Ask and it will be given you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. . . . What man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him? How much more?
Romans 8:32 says: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all [good] things with him?”
Paul then gives a list of seven things that might separate us from the love of Christ: Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and the sword.
To his list we can add pain and loneliness.
Then Paul answers with an emphatic NO: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).
This means that it’s not up to us to produce a thankful heart or have “the right feelings.” He does it. He carries us in faith even when we feel flat or don’t feel anything at all. That’s what salvation is about, how the Lord conquers sin and death, what the Lord gives, not what we have to produce.
The Psalmist says: “Create in me a clean heart and give me a new and right spirit” (Psalm 51:10). He does it. He will take care of that, too.
In 2 Cor 9:15 Paul writes: “Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift” – that is, the gift which is beyond all that we ask for think. That’s how it is translated in the King James Version, but this is changed in the RSV to: “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift.” That’s an acceptable translation.
But the beauty of the KJV’s version: “Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift” – is that it captures the awe of being caught up in his holiness, of being rendered speechless at the sheer glory and joy of his victory and kingdom to come.
Amen