How many of you went to church on Sunday with your family when you were little? For most of us it's a familiar memory. Some of us went to Sunday school or children's church, while some of us went to the same serv¬ice as the adults. But no matter how different our experiences were, I'll bet there's one thing that's the same for us all. Before you got into the car, Mom or Dad would give you a nickel or a dime or a quarter (you can measure how long ago it was by how big a coin you got) to put in the collection plate. Now, I can't remember the very moments when my Dad would give me the quarter; in fact, I don't remember if it was a quarter or a nickel. But I do remember putting it in the collection plate. I think I always put it in the collection plate. But I can't be sure about it, especially when I was older, and I was supposed to save for the offering out of my allowance. Did any of you ever put the quarter in your pocket instead?
What kind of kid were you? Were you the kind of kid who always did everything exactly as you were supposed to? and before you answer, ask yourself what your parents would put in a signed affidavit. Did you ever want something so badly that you used this week's allowance to buy it, and promise that you'd put twice as much in the next Sunday? Did you remember to do it? Or did it somehow just slip your mind? Or were you the sort of kid whose last dime would somehow disappear on a Saturday morning ice cream cone? Do you ever remember not having anything left for Sunday morning? Did you ever tell anyone? Did you promise to do better the next week, or did it get easier to forget?
Now a lot of you have children of your own. How many of you give your children allowances, or if they're younger, a little something to put in the offering plate? Please ask yourself the question, how would you feel if you found out that, Sunday after Sunday, your child had been putting the money in his or her pocket to buy comic books or candy with?
I know that we give our children allowances for a whole host of reasons. Some of it is just because we love them, and it gives us pleasure to be generous. But there are conditions attached, because we also give them money to teach them how to use it, to help them learn how to be independent, and to become responsible for some of their own obligations. And part of their obligation is to respect the wishes of the giver, because an allowance is a gift a parent gives, not a debt a parent owes.
To receive a gift is to owe a debt of gratitude, one which we can only repay by desiring to please. If we do not love the giver, the debt becomes too heavy a burden to carry.
Shakespeare's King Lear is a classic tale of ingratitude. Now, being human and foolish, King Lear criticized the wrong daughter for ungratefulness, but that's another story. What he said was true, even if misdirected. He said, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."
Lear was wounded so badly by his children's ingratitude and rebellion that he went mad. the pain was more than he could bear. He wanted them to love him, and so he gave them everything. And when he had given them everything he had, they turned around and said, "I've got what I want. Now get out of my life." the message ingratitude sends is, "You are so great a burden to me that I have to pretend that what I have is mine by right, and that I owe you nothing."
Well, here we are, gathering together on this beautiful fall day to worship God. We’re here. We’re involved in mission. We reach out to our community, we feed them spiritually and physically. What has all this talk about ingratitude have to do with us, of all people?
Because, aside from the fact that it’s less than two weeks from Thanksgiving, I want us to think about how we go about not only spending a day of thanks, but living a life of thanks. I want us to think about the way to live out our gratitude on a daily basis. I want us to take a look at how God wants us to express our gratitude.
Psalm 67 is a hymn of thanksgiving. the Psalmist pours out his thanks to God for Israel's prosperity, and so should our prosperity call forth from us a similar outpouring of praise. But we mustn’t only praise God in words; King Lear's two older daughters did that, while conspiring behind his back to usurp his kingdom. No, our prosperity compels us to do more than that. Our prosperity obliges us to commit ourselves wholeheartedly to the mission of the church, to evangelism, to carrying the Gospel to the ends of the earth. That is the message of this Psalm. And there are three compelling reasons why we must respond.
Th first reason we are obligated is because we are the richest nation on earth. And we're rich because of our agriculture.
Look at verse 6: the earth has yielded its produce.
This Psalm was probably sung as part of a harvest celebration, so it's especially relevant for us, now, at this time of year, to think about what that meant. the Israelites lived close to the land; they knew how important a good harvest was. the harvest festival was the highest point of the year, a time of merrymaking, rejoicing, and often even bawdy revelry. They were giddy with relief that God had saved them from death by starvation. They would now live for another year. They wouldn't have to sell themselves into slavery or watch their children die.
We may be a bit more aware of the harvest here in Minnesota than in other parts of the country, we’re still an agricultural community. But many of us, even farmers, often don't notice how rich we are as a nation, because our economic conditions aren’t as good as they were a few years ago, and many places are suffering from drought. There’s a lot of uncertainty out there. But America is a very wealthy country indeed, and we are rich in large part because of our agriculture. All of America's prosperity is based on the earth's yield. Do you realize that less than five percent of our people produce enough food to feed not only ourselves but a good proportion of the rest of the people on earth? And we're not even producing at full capacity? All the rest of our economic activity rests on that incredibly productive five percent. Many of the other countries of the world are struggling at barely subsistence level because most of their resources go just on getting fed.
How much of your income do you spend on non-food items? We spend less of our income on food than any other country in the world, including the other industrialized nations. Well over half of the individuals in the world spend around ninety percent of their income just to eat, and that's for food most of us wouldn't touch, and that's when their country isn't suffering from famine. But here in America, if you're average, not more than about twenty percent goes for food. The rest goes on what would be considered unimaginable luxuries in the rest of the world: luxuries like traffic lights, toothpaste, and toilet paper.
I'm on practically every mailing list in the United States, some of them twice. I get mail order catalogs every day, and most of them get thrown out. But sometimes I look through them first. A couple of weeks ago I got one that contained nothing but Christmas paraphernalia. It was quality stuff, classy, tasteful, and expensive. For some reason one item in particular caught my eye, a set of flatware for six, with handles designed in poinsettias and holly. It cost, I think, $60, and I thought about buying something to eat with at only one short season of the year, when somewhere in the world children are staggering on stilt-like legs to feeding stations, to eat plain rice with their hands.
Do you have a picky eater in your family? Isn't it wonderful to have so much that you can afford to let your children have likes and dislikes? Oh, we are rich.
And most of us never ask ourselves, "To what or whom do we owe our prosperity?"
Th answer to that question, and the second reason we are obligated to missions, is that God is the source of our wealth.
Look at the second half of v. 6: God, our God, has blessed us.
Israel knew who got the credit for the harvest. Now, sometimes they figured they deserved it when they didn't, and often their worship was shallow or perfunctory, if not actually idolatrous. But they knew that it was God who made the rain fall and the sun shine, who kept the locusts under control and, in fact, who made the wheat and barley, the grapes and the olives grow at all.
But we know better, right? We know how germination works and how nutrients are taken in from the soil and how the sun through the process of photosynthesis turns those nutrients into forms our bodies process as fuel. We know what fertilizers we need and how to irrigate and how to milk the government subsidy programs for all they're worth. God? What does God have to do with it?
But even when we do give God credit for the fact that natural laws work in predictable ways that made it possible to develop modern agriculture, most of us figure it's really our hard work that we have to thank for our prosperity. We deserve our good fortune, don't we?
Yes, in many ways we do deserve credit. And God delights in blessing his children. But why should we be the ones whose labor is rewarded? Do Americans work harder than Bolivian tin miners? or Haitian seamstresses? Why should we be so lucky? That's a question that the Apostle Paul asked: "...who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? and if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?" [1 Cor 4:7] That's a very good question. Why are we so lucky?
(1) Well, part of our answer is that we picked the right ancestors. Whatever your own ethnic background, America was largely founded by a bunch of fanatical Puritan work-ethic diehards. As a nation, we have benefitted from a system that sees work as ennobling, even though there's a downside to it, in workaholism and materialism. The belief that labor honors God was basic to America's development as a nation, and it came straight out of the Bible.
(2) A second reason for our agricultural abundance is science, and the technology we've built on it. The Western history of scientific enquiry stems from a Biblically grounded confidence in the inherent rationality of God and his creation. For most of our history there has been no conflict at all between science and religion. Scientific giants whose names we revere, such as Galileo, Pascal, and Newton all viewed "their investigation of nature as a sacred duty and a privilege." John Calvin, the great Reformer, was very much in favor of scientific inquiry, and said of astronomy that "it is not only pleasant, but also very useful to be known; it cannot be denied that this art unfolds the admirable wisdom of God."
(3) But the third element, and probably the most important, is the amazing, vast, bountiful richness of the land itself. We cannot possibly claim credit for our land. In fact, we are going to need to account for our misuse of far too much of the land that God has entrusted to us. For it is his land. In every possible way, our habits of life, our habits of thought, and our resources, America's wealth can be directly attributed to the extravagant generosity of God.
So a little gratitude would seem to be in order. And I don't mean stuffing ourselves with turkey and pumpkin pie once a year, either. I mean developing a really thankful spirit, one that wakes up feeling sort of awed and humble and warm and lucky every morning. We need to develop the kind of attitude that the Paul says should be the hallmark of every Christian. In Col 2:6-7, he tells us that living in Christ means to be strong in faith, "and overflowing with thankfulness." This is something that doesn't come naturally; our culture teaches us to be acquisitive, even greedy. It's hard to be grateful for a battered Ford Escort when your daughter's 18-year old boyfriend picks her up in a new BMW. Counting our blessings has an almost embarrassingly old-fashioned ring to it. But developing a grateful spirit, learning gratitude, is a spiritual discipline as serious and important as prayer, and much more fun than fasting.
But how do you learn to be thankful? It isn't just learning to say "thank you." It's learning to see God in your life. and you start by finding one thing - just one thing - each day, for which you are truly thankful. Not just that you know you ought to be thankful for, that just breeds resentment, but something that you really are thankful for. That can be different for everyone, as different as a hot cup of coffee is from a perfectly balanced financial statement. But find it, and then think about it. Think about the fact that it is God who gave it to you, because it was, and think about what kind of God he is, who gives you the ability to enjoy it.
I spent a whole summer a few years back being grateful for trees. I used to walk through a little square on the way to work, and every morning I would look at the trees, and focus on what a miraculous sort of invention trees are. Not just their beauty, which is amazing in itself, but the marvelous technological complexity of their inner workings, and their connection to all the other living things that surround us. It got me through some of the worst few months at work I've ever had, and taught me a lesson about the nature and generosity of God I will never forget. Developing a sense of gratitude makes it possible for us to carry our possessions lightly, and to give them up when it becomes appropriate. And it is what will give you the kind of spirit that really wants to do something special in return. But what, I hear you say? What shall we do?
The answer to that question is another question: "What does God want in return?"
And that answer, and the third reason we must commit ourselves to mission and evangelism, is that God wants everyone to know Him.
Please look with me at the second half of v. 7. Some translations put it this way: “Let all the ends of the earth revere him.” But the New American Standard version says: “That all the ends of the earth may fear Him.” Now, I won’t go into all the translation issues that go into dealing with trying to put Hebrew into English - but when I don’t want poetry but am just looking for the most accurate possible rendition, I go to the NAS. And the imperative is implied even in our translation. God has blessed us in the past, blesses us now, and will bless us in the future for reasons far beyond our own well-being: it is in order that that all the ends of the earth might fear him.
God's purpose in choosing and blessing Israel was so that they would be advertisements for His power and grace. Throughout the Old Testament, God repeatedly adds to his promises of blessing and deliverance, "So that they will know that I am God." Everything God did for Israel had that one over-riding purpose, from his first promise to Abraham through their return from exile.
As members in the new covenant we have inherited Israel's blessing, and we have inherited their purpose. We are, if you will, elected to serve. Think politicians for a minute, if you can stand the thought. We elect them to serve us. Now do you feel when they throw away our money? How do we feel when we find out that they've been lining their own pockets?
Think about yourself for a minute. Have you been earning your salary? Or did you vote yourself a pay raise one night when you thought God wasn't watching? Think about it seriously, as if you were your own supervisor. What's your performance rating?
I don't want to make anybody feel guilty for living in America, or for being prosperous, as if we personally were responsible for grinding the faces of the poor in Honduras or Zimbabwe. But I do want us to recognize how very, very fortunate we are. God blesses us because he loves us; that is true. And I don't believe that the Bible teaches that hard work shouldn't be rewarded with some measure of ease. But he loves the people who don't know Him just as much. And the best way we can show our gratitude to God is to roll up our sleeves and start getting to work at the job He's assigned us to, of making sure that other people know Him, and through Him learn how to live, both in this world and the next.
We can't salve our consciences by pointing to how much we pay in taxes, and then to how much our government gives to the poor, both here and abroad. That'll do for a guilt offering, but it won't do for a thank offering. You can't delegate gratitude. Having the government take care of your debt to God is about as appropriate as paying someone else to show up at your kid's birthday party. It is not good enough. It is not Caesar’s job to enforce the Great Commandment. And furthermore, whatever goes out to the needy from Uncle Sam, no matter how much good it does, doesn't go out in God's name, and does nothing to advance the His cause. God wants the hungry to be fed, yes - but he also wants his name to be known, and feared, and praised, from the inner city to the remotest reaches of the earth.
I'd like to challenge you to ask yourself three questions. First, do you practice gratitude on a regular basis, as a spiritual discipline? Second, do you express your gratitude to God with more than words? And third, how do you help spread the Good News?
