Sermon 10/23/11
Genesis 8:6-22
Gratitude: The Steward and the Ship
This Sunday is Gratitude Sunday in our Stewardship focus. And
we will continue with Noah and his story to look at exactly what gratitude
means. So today we pick up with Noah where we left off last
week. He and his family had built and boarded the ark and taken with them sets
of seven of some animals, pairs of others. The floods came, and it rained for
forty days and nights. Maybe that in itself doesn’t seem so bad until we
realize from the passage that Jerry read today that they actually had to stay
on the ark for ten month while the flood waters abated from the earth. Noah
keeps sending out a dove to check for dry ground until it finally returns with
an olive branch, a symbol of peace. And finally, he and his family and these
animals can leave the ark.
The first thing Noah does when he
gets off the ark is build an altar and make sacrifices – gifts of animals – to
God. Noah makes an offering. And the scent, we read, is pleasing to God, and God
promises never to destroy creation again. I think this is a pretty profound
action on Noah's part. Maybe we think nothing of it – Noah just survived with
his family a natural disaster of epic proportions – of course he is thankful!
But he also just lost everything he knew about his life and world. His home,
his city, any family outside of those listed in the scripture – his immediate
family. His neighbors. Whatever livelihood he had before ark-builder. A way of
life that made sense to him. If you had lost
all of that, could you still have gratitude be your first response, even if you walked away with the gift of life?
Cultivating a life of gratitude is
developing the practice of looking at what we have and seeing the abundance and
giving thanks. It isn’t always easy, for sure. But what do we see when we look
at what we have? Our situations? What we experience? A couple of weeks ago we
talked about joy – deep joy – as being more than something that just made you
happy or entertained – but that deep God-given contentment that rests in your
soul – joy. I think gratitude is similar. I have a pet peeve that is a peeve
against myself. I have picked up what I consider the annoying habit of
responding Yup when someone says thank you. Thank you. Yup. It doesn’t quite
work, does it? But I think it might reflect that culturally we don’t let our
thankfulness go very deep. Is giving thanks just something that we go through
the motions of? Is it too inconvenient to give thanks, and are we not really
even thankful? I love the beauty of many languages, but I have to say English
has it all over French or Spanish where the standard reply to Thank You is – It
was nothing. In English, we are supposed to
say You’re welcome. Short for you are well come here. In other words – it is a
good thing, a pleasing thing, that you are here. Such a genuine response, isn’t
it? Thank you. You are welcome. Gratitude – a thankful heart.
Are you a grateful person? And
again, like with joy, gratitude doesn’t mean closing your eyes to the serious
and real painful situations you experience. But when you look at the whole of
your life – are you thankful? Deeply? What do you see when you look at your
life? Is the glass half full or half empty? Or can you see that God has filled
it to overflowing? And how do you
show your gratitude?
Here is what I think is the crux of
it: We have gratitude only if we see what we have as a gift. If I go out and
buy myself a pizza – I am not going to be grateful to you for it no matter how nice and thoughtful you are – because you
didn’t get me the pizza – I did! But if you buy me a slice – not even a whole
pie – just a slice – well, then I am grateful to you – because you gave me the
gift. I am grateful for the gifts I receive. The question, when we come to
faith and stewardship, then, is this: What do we see as a gift from God? Of
course, we talk about everything
being a gift from God. God gives us life, is our creator, sustainer, redeemer,
giver of all good things. Everything is from God. But I wonder how much we really
believe that? Or live into what we believe?
Everything is a gift. Last week, I gave you
three homework assignments – a spiritual gifts survey, a time study, and study
of how you spend your money. And I asked you not to change your habits to get
the answers you wanted, but to honestly assess where you were. How did it go?
Any surprises? Any eyes opened? Or just what you expected? Were you happy with
what you saw? Talents, and time, and treasure.
I think we are most easily grateful
for the talents – the spiritual gifts – we've been given. But in this case, we
have to be convinced that we have them. Over the years, in all my
congregations, I am always amazed at how unwilling people are to believe or see
that they are gifted. Friends, admitting you are gifted isn’t saying that you
are all that. It isn’t bragging. Saying you are gifted is quite simply saying
that someone – in this case God – has given you a gift. And denying it – well,
that is basically saying that God hasn’t given you anything! Not discovering
and using your gifts is like refusing
to open a present from God. Kind of rude, isn’t it?! And it when it comes to
showing gratitude for your talents, the best way to say thank you is simple – use them. Use your gifts. If you aren’t
sure how to use them, we can talk. I am sure
I can find some ways to put your gifts to use. But you are gifted.
What
about time? What did you learn about using your time this week? Are you
thankful for your time? I suspect that a record of how we use our time would
reflect that we aren’t always appreciative of it. We often say that we wish we
had more of it. We don’t have enough of it. But sometimes I wonder if God
doesn’t think our requests for more time are like asking for second helpings of
food when we haven’t yet finished what is already on our plate. Are we asking for
more time without even really using what we have? Oh, of course, it ticks by.
It moves on with or without us. But what are we doing with it? Growing up, one
of the worst things to say to my mom, but especially
to my grandmother was: I'm bored. My grandmother was a depression-era baby
and she just had no use for boredom. Saying you were bored was the ultimate
form of ingratitude. And it would surely get you assigned a task or chore you
would really rather not do. Rest is good – God rested, and asks us to rest, to have
holy rest even! But wasting time is a
whole different issue. We want more time? Are we really using what we have in a
way that warrants such a bold request? Time is a gift. And unlike our talents,
we always use it up completely. But how
do we show we are grateful for it? Sometimes the way we use time is like taking
our best linens and using them to wipe the floor. Using our best stationary as
scrap paper. Wasting something precious. You have time. Show me time well spent, and you show gratitude for God's
gift.
Our money is a gift. Here I think we
struggle a bit more to agree. Because we get a little confused. Didn’t we work hard
for our money? Didn’t we earn it? And
if we earned it, isn’t it ours to spend as we please? Isn't it our right to do
so? Sure, we put in work. We are
laborers in God's vineyard. But friends, the vineyard always still belongs to God,
and we may be the best stewards in the world, but we are always still stewards.
If we earn money, I guarantee that we
had to use several gifts from God in order to make what we have. If you find
yourself thinking a bit too much about how hard you’ve worked, try to trace the
source of what you have. For example: Did you get a good scholarship to college?
How did that happen? Did you do well in school? You needed some intelligence
for that. Where did that intelligence come from? Is it not from God? How do you
earn your living? What gifts do you use that convince someone else to give you
a paycheck? For example – I have learned to be extremely grateful for the gift of
music I have. Carrying a tune, for the most part, isn’t something you can
learn. Most people can either carry a tune, or they can’t. And while you can
refine your voice with training, without something to refine to start out with,
you can’t do much. Singing is a gift God gave me, and it has been more useful
to me in my ministry than I ever anticipated. It helps me in my life work – and
so what a build up to support myself from my ministry – it all belongs to God,
and is shared by God with me. I try to use it well, but I know who it all belongs
to.
Are you grateful? We can only be grateful
if we can look at all we see and see it all as gift. Our talents, our time, our
treasure, our lives, our world, the love we share – all gift. And to show our thanks, we do what we are always trying to
do – be more like Jesus. Follow his example. Do what God does. Give, give, give.
To God. To your loved ones. To God's house. To strangers. To enemies and
friends alike. Give, and give thanks. Thanks be to God for all our gifts. Amen.
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