Reason to Give
Thanks
Lessons:
Jeremiah 31:7-9
Psalm 126
The collect for
today begins with these words: “Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us
the gifts of faith, hope, and charity.” Those three gifts are outlined most
beautifully in 1st
Corinthians 13, where charity, or love as it is now translated, is said
to be the greatest gift of all. This beautiful chapter from the epistle is
often read at weddings. Because my mother was the most complete embodiment of
the text that I had ever encountered, I asked to have 1st
Corinthians 13 read at her funeral.
In his letter to
the Corinthians, Paul is clearly defining what it means to be a mature
Christian. Verse 11 famously states: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child,
I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put
an end to childish ways.” Ultimately, according to Paul, it is love, and the
wisdom of love, that sustains believers through their lives, even through the
most difficult of times. To quote
again from the passage: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things.” God’s love for us (and our love for God and for one
another) gives Christians hope and strengthens our faith. Paul’s beautiful
words again: “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or
arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way…Love never ends.”
In today’s lesson
from Jeremiah 31, the prophet has shifted from his usual voice of lamentation
to one of praise and thanksgiving. After years in exile, their punishment for
faithlessness and disobedience, the children of Israel have reason for hope.
Jeremiah proclaims the faithful remnant will be rewarded. God promises to make
a new covenant with the remaining people of Israel and to restore them to their
land. Who are the people among this faithful remnant? Are they the wealthy, the
powerful, the members of the king’s family? As Jeremiah sees them, they are
“the blind and the lame, those
with child and those in labor.” They are “the meek, who will inherit the earth”
in the words of Christ. These are the ones who, having little else, are kept
going by their love and kindness, by their humility and faith, by their hope in
God’s mercy. Faith, hope, and love.
Through Jeremiah, God promises to be their father and to offer them the
long-awaited consolation. In return, God asks only for gratitude. As Jeremiah
puts it: “Sing aloud with
gladness, proclaim, give praise and say, ‘Save O Lord your people, the remnant
of Israel.”
If Jeremiah’s
words are the call, then Psalm 126 echoes the appropriate response: “When the
Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our
mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was
said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has
done great things for us, and we rejoiced.”
Why is the gift of
rejoicing borne of gratitude such a potent thing? This kind of joy has to
commence from recognition, from the moment of awareness that one’s life
is blessed. As we might all agree,
the moments when we see ourselves as blessed are too few and often far between.
This is not to say that our blessings are few—far from it. If we choose
to see our lives in the light of blessedness, we can find something to be
grateful for at any given moment.
When we do turn our hearts in gratitude to God, we know that the Lord is
always present with us, as present as our many blessings. This affirmation,
always available to us in gratitude, reinforces our faith, hope, and love.
When times are
tough and our days feel shadowed by worry, fear, or relentless gloom, it can
be hard to recognize the ways we are blessed. I think of the gifted
spiritual masters of the Middle Ages and wonder how they held onto faith, hope,
and love. The Middle Ages have also been called the Dark Ages, beset as they
were by ignorance, superstition, plague, and war. The beloved mystic Dame
Julian of Norwich survived the plague and her own life-threatening illness. As
she was recovering from illness, she had a series of visions from God, recorded
by her priest and known as The Revelations
of Divine Love. Wishing to serve and worship God in a way unique to the
Middle Ages, Dame Julian spent many years as an anchoress, literally walled
into a tiny room attached to her church. Having no doors, her room had only two
small openings, too small to be called windows, one to the outside world and
one to the church. Through the opening to the church, she received communion.
Through the opening to the outside world, she received food and water. Through
that same small opening, she counseled the numerous pilgrims who sought her out
for spiritual advice. Today, we remember Julian from the words revealed to her
in her vision of divine love: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and
all manner of thing shall be well.” Blessed assurance!
Meister Eckhart
was a German theologian, philosopher, and Dominican priest whose writings may
have influenced Dame Julian. Also considered a mystic, Eckhart made a
profoundly simple statement about prayer that is widely quoted today: “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was,
‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”
Gratitude is the key to happiness. If you don’t
believe that is true, consider all of the people you know who constantly
complain because something always seems to be going wrong in their lives. From
where we stand, these people may be blessed with comfortable homes, good jobs,
and loving families. Still, they complain. Maybe that’s why Meister Eckhart
emphasized the value of a simple “Thank you.”
First on our list of things to be grateful for
might be the gifts Paul outlined in 1st Corinthians 13: faith, hope,
and love. Since these intangible gifts may be hard to define, easy to slip from
our grasp, and often out of our field of awareness, they may not seem all that
important. But they are all we need to get by.
Amen.
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