Thanksgiving is Our Dialect
This is a difficult time and a blessed time - all at the same time - for our church. It is a difficult time because there is incredible strife in the world around us, and no small amount of strife within the church.
People are struggling around us, watching their jobs disappear, watching their retirement savings dwindle away to nothing; they can’t pay their mortgages, they can’t afford health care. And while we’re currently enjoying low gasoline prices, we can never be sure that the price won’t go sky high again tomorrow.
The upheaval of a global financial crisis is layered onto all of the other uncertainties of the future of our country and our world. People all over the world are still starving. And the Golden Valley is not immune to this strife.
There are people standing at death’s door, and they’re not sure about where they will be when they have passed from this life. They aren’t sure about their salvation. And then, most unfortunately, there are those who don’t even stop to think about the subject.
There are people in and out of the church who are convinced that they are righteous and saved and at no risk at all of spending their eternal future in hell. They can’t stop to think about that, because they are busy piling up strife around their selves and others.
All the things we fear as Christians, war, famine, disease, corruption, and hatred, are looming over us in a cloud that won’t leave us alone. We call out to God for assurance, for comfort: some of us find that comfort and feel God’s loving hand on us. Others don’t feel Him at all, can’t find His hand, and can’t find peace.
Still others can’t waste their time searching for God and for his guidance in their lives - they’re too busy trying to tear each other down, believing somehow that they can actually continue to do that without risking the complete destruction of the church.
It is a truly difficult time. And it is a truly blessed time. It is a time for Thanksgiving.
You may ask, “How do you get to that conclusion? How can these worrisome times and chaotic circumstances lead to the conclusion that it’s time for Thanksgiving? And I say, God’s own word says so! In fact, it is the very existence of God’s holy Word that is the only reason we need for Thanksgiving. If that’s a confusing thought, then hold on and listen carefully.
For all of the times when Jesus talked in parables and spoke in metaphors, which makes so much of what he said sound mysterious, even confusing, there were many passages in which He spoke in perfectly plain and understandable terms.
My favorite one of these kinds of statements is, as I have pointed out before, the passage I most frequently find myself discussing with members of this church: it is Christ’s instructions on dealing with conflict between Christians in the 18th chapter of Matthew. You may already be tired of hearing these words, but until we actually start to face the reality of Christ’s simple instructions and DO WHAT HE SAID TO DO, we will continue to struggle to be a Church.
So hear the words of Jesus Christ himself one more time, this time in the beautiful prose of the Message version of the New Testament:
15-17"If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. If he still won’t listen, tell the church. If he won’t listen to the church, you’ll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God’s forgiving love.
18-20"Take this most seriously: A yes on earth is yes in heaven; a no on earth is no in heaven. What you say to one another is eternal. I mean this. When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there."
“What you say to one another is eternal.” “When two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.” Wow! Those have to be among the profoundest statements Jesus ever made. When the Son of God makes you a promise like that, what is there to say to Him but “Thank You.”
But, sadly, many people read those words and nod their heads and acknowledge the wisdom of Christ’s procedure for dealing with the hurts we inflict on one another, only to turn away from the word saying, “I can’t do that - I won’t do that.” And by standing firm on their refusal to be obedient to the word, they start the snow ball rolling down the hill.
You know that snow ball - you’ve seen it a hundred times in cartoons. It starts out with a single snow flake, and gravity causes it to roll over and over itself, piling on more snow with every revolution, until inevitably there has to be a collision with something. When the collision occurs, people get hurt, things get smashed, and anger erupts.
Please hear this: refusing to obey Jesus’ instructions - all of his instructions - ALWAYS leads to calamity and anger. And unresolved anger ALWAYS harms someone. When it’s in the context of a church, refusing to obey the word and allowing anger to go unchecked ALWAYS divides, and sometimes destroys, the church.
Paul addressed this kind of thing head-on in Ephesians 4:25 - 5:4, again from The Message:
25 What this adds up to, then, is this: no more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In Christ’s body we’re all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself.
26-27 Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.
28 Did you use to make ends meet by stealing? Well, no more! Get an honest job so that you can help others who can’t work.
29 Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift.
30 Don’t grieve God. Don’t break his heart. His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don’t take such a gift for granted.
31-32 Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.
5:1-2 Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
3-4 Don’t allow love to turn into lust, setting off a downhill slide into sexual promiscuity, filthy practices, or bullying greed. Though some tongues just love the taste of gossip, those who follow Jesus have better uses for language than that. Don’t talk dirty or silly. That kind of talk doesn’t fit our style. Thanksgiving is our dialect.
There it is: there’s the reason it’s time for Thanksgiving! Because, as Eugene Peterson has so beautifully put it, OUR ENTIRE LANGUAGE is supposed to be words of thanksgiving. The words of the same passage as we read them in the Revised Standard Version are no less beautiful: Where Eugene Peterson translates “Thanksgiving is our dialect,” Paul says “Let there be no filthiness, nor silly talk, nor levity, which are not fitting; but instead let there be thanksgiving.” And in the King James Version his words are translated, “Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.”
Do you see it? Do you see the progression from sinning against each other, that too often leads to the refusal to obey Jesus’ instruction on dealing with sinning against each other, which in turn leads to anger that is dangerous and destructive, to the absolute necessity of Thanksgiving?
No? You don’t?
Well of course you don’t! To borrow a phrase, “It don’t make no sense!” In real, human terms it just don’t make no sense to me, yet right there it is in Scripture. But then Christ’s love is like that.
In the past week Eva and I have watched two movies that clearly illustrate how God’s kind of love made no sense for a time. We saw “The Passion of the Christ” which some of you have seen. Because we are Christians, we can watch something like that and realize that Jesus’ love for his accusers made no sense to the vast majority of the people who heard him say, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.” It did make sense to those who REALLY understood Jesus. His love for the Pharisees and Romans who murdered him made sense to the thief who asked for forgiveness as he hung from his own cross.
We also watched a movie about Saint Anthony, entitled “Anthony: Warrior of God.” Anthony was a student of St. Frances of Assisi. Anthony was willing to risk being murdered for the sake of defending the poor in medieval Italy. To all those who surrounded him, his risk-taking made no sense - he even dared to offend the Pope by pointing out the materialism of the Church in his day. To all who watched and worried that he would be martyred,he appeared foolish. But he loved the way Christ loved, and his love prevailed over evil.
So maybe, at the end of it all, it makes no sense for me to say “It’s a time for Thanksgiving.” But if you love Christ, if you understand His love at all, you know that it makes perfect sense. It is time to give all praise, all glory, all honor, and all of our love to the one who made us, for the one who saves us. By his Holy word.
