Grateful, Part 1

 

Service of Worship

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

November 8, 2020

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Let us pray:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is error, the truth;
Where there is doubt, the faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Joshua 24: 1-15

The Covenant Renewed at Shechem

24 Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God.

² Joshua said to all the people, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods. ³ But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the Euphrates and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants. I gave him Isaac, ⁴ and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I assigned the hill country of Seir to Esau, but Jacob and his family went down to Egypt.

⁵ “‘Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I afflicted the Egyptians by what I did there, and I brought you out. ⁶ When I brought your people out of Egypt, you came to the sea, and the Egyptians pursued them with chariots and horsemen^[a] as far as the Red Sea.^[b] 7 But they cried to the Lord for help, and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians; he brought the sea over them and covered them. You saw with your own eyes what I did to the Egyptians. Then you lived in the wilderness for a long time.

⁸ “‘I brought you to the land of the Amorites who lived east of the Jordan. They fought against you, but I gave them into your hands. I destroyed them from before you, and you took possession of their land. ⁹ When Balak son of Zippor, the king of Moab, prepared to fight against Israel, he sent for Balaam son of Beor to put a curse on you. ¹⁰ But I would not listen to Balaam, so he blessed you again and again, and I delivered you out of his hand.

¹¹ “‘Then you crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho fought against you, as did also the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites and Jebusites, but I gave them into your hands. ¹² I sent the hornet ahead of you, which drove them out before you—also the two Amorite kings. You did not do it with your own sword and bow. ¹³ So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.’

¹⁴ “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. ¹⁵ But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Matthew 4: 18-20

Jesus Calls His First Disciples

¹⁸ As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ¹⁹ “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” ²⁰ At once they left their nets and followed him.

A Message

Grateful, Part 1

Friends, this begins a new, 3-part sermon series based on a very popular new release among Protestant clergywomen: Grateful by Diana Butler Bass. This book, and the topic it covers, feels appropriate for this season for so many reasons: the very difficult year most of us have had as the coronavirus pandemic rages on, the outcome of our Presidential election (more on that later), and the holiday season we’re rapidly approaching. The word grateful is one we use a lot on Thanksgiving in particular, and, in general, gratitude is a virtue we extol among Christians. But, for how much lip service we give to this word, how much do we understand it? And, more importantly, how much are we acting on it? Bass explores both pressing questions in her book.

Most of us start to relate to this concept of gratitude when we think of a time that we felt immensely grateful, and many of us have powerful “gratitude stories” that have fueled the fires of our faith. I certainly have one. It happened just over a year ago, when my family was living in a tiny town called Salem, bordering Vermont in the Southeastern Adirondacks. I was leading two congregations, and my first worship service on a Sunday morning was at 9:30am, 20 minutes from our parsonage. One Sunday in August, at 9:28, my phone was ringing, and it was my husband. He would never call me two minutes to the start of worship, so I knew something must be very wrong at home. I answered and Sean frantically asked “Did you take Daniel to church with you this morning?” I told him, “No, I left Daniel with you.” “Oh no,” Sean’s voice broke on the other end, “Daniel’s not in the house.”

Daniel is our oldest son. He’s 6 now, and he’s on the autism spectrum. Like many kids on the spectrum, Daniel has issues with “elopement”, meaning that he’s constantly running off and getting lost. We reinforce rules all the time at home, “You can’t go off without a grownup”. But for Daniel the impulse to take off is too great to ignore, and securing doors (and even windows) is crucial for his safety. That morning, in the two minutes between me leaving for church and Sean putting the chain back on the door, Daniel got out of the house.

And so the search began. Sean looked all over trying to find our son. He asked the neighbors on either side of the house, but they hadn’t seen Daniel. He looked inside my other church, which was right next door to the parsonage, but no Daniel. He went to the playground next door: no Daniel. He went to the library: no Daniel. He went to the school: no Daniel. Every minute that passed the possibilities of where Daniel could have ended up became more and more frightening. Sean came back to the parsonage, hoping maybe Daniel had walked back home, but still, no Daniel.

Then the parsonage landline rang. It was a woman named Sandy. Sandy’s husband had recently passed on, and I officiated the funeral service. The night that I went to Sandy’s house to meet with her family and plan details, I took Daniel with me because he wanted to play with Sandy’s grandsons, who had introduced Daniel to baseball and were therefore the coolest kids on the planet. Sandy explained that Daniel walked over to her house, rang her doorbell, and politely asked to watch Star Wars with her. It was an offer she couldn’t refuse. “He’s just sitting on my couch watching Return of the Jedi. Do you want him back home?” Sean replied: “I’ll be there in 20 seconds.” Daniel was perfectly safe the whole time, and Sandy sweetened the deal by sending Daniel home with a copy of The Phantom Menace. Sean interrupted my service by texting to say Daniel was home again, and just fine.

This is gratitude. It’s such a complicated array of emotions. It so often meets us on the other side of intense fear, distress, sadness, even horror. But it leaves us in awe, surprise, relief, elation. It’s different for every person and every situation.

Yet so many of us don’t associate gratitude with these wonderful feelings. In one way or another, we associate gratitude with “the system”. If someone does something for you, you owe them a debt of gratitude. If I give you a present you owe me a thank you note. If someone holds the door for you, you owe them a thank you and possibly a few minutes of awkward small talk with a stranger. If someone treats you to lunch, you owe them a meal next time. The last example is where we end up with this phrase meant to warn us about these debts: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Some of us are very conditioned to fear the strings we find attached to the gratitude system, maybe without even realizing it.

Both of the audiences in this morning’s scripture readings felt similarly. The Hebrew people that Joshua addressed in our Hebrew Bible passage were used to a system of religious gratitude that hinged upon polytheism. There was a god responsible for every single thing in the world and beyond. If the sun shone this morning it was a gift because you did something to please the sun god. You owed the sun god an offering or the sun god would turn on you and you’d live in darkness. If the rain fell on your dehydrated crops you owed the rain god, who would punish you with a drought if you didn’t meet his demands. The whole world worked like this, as far as the Hebrews had ever known. Joshua was blowing their minds with a whole new idea. They owe all their thanks and praise to just one God, YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. YHWH created an open system where every blessing that exists in the whole world comes your way at one point or another just because God loves you and wants you to see beauty and splendor. Joshua asks his people: will you serve this God? Don’t say yes if you don’t mean it, because whomever you serve in this life, you have responsibilities toward. If you serve our God, you have a Church to build.

In a similar vein, in this morning’s Gospel reading we see Jesus call his first four disciples, all fishermen. They lived in a system where you owed your Caesar taxes, land, surplus crops, and fealty in exchange for his military protection in times of war. This was gratitude. To break this system literally got you named an “ingrate”. Jesus came to break that system and create a new one in its place. Jesus is our King of Kings. He freely hands out all the blessings he can get his hands on—healing, mercy, teachings, wisdom, food, drink, and abundant love—while accepting absolutely nothing in return. He had one outfit and instructed his disciples to travel light, he had no money or riches, he was voluntarily homeless, and wouldn’t even accept companionship, as he frequently went off from the crowds that followed him to go pray alone. Rather than ever repaying him for all he does for us, Jesus invites us to a faith with one rule: fish for people. Or, in more modern words: pay it forward. Receive all these blessings from the hands of Jesus, and then go out and be his hands for someone else. Go share the love.

In today’s world, we have a multitude of experiences of gratitude, if we open our hearts to see them. Last Saturday, when the results of the Presidential election were finally announced, and Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner, some of us experienced profound gratitude. All around our country, and even internationally, there were reports of people dancing in the streets. You might have been one of those people. Or maybe not. Maybe you met that news with anger, or sadness because you voted otherwise. Maybe you met that news with a qualified “Well…let’s just see how this goes.” At best, this news can only be one first step in a very long process of healing a deeply wounded country.

So, in the words of Joshua: choose this day whom you will serve. Will you serve Democrats? Or Republicans? Or Independents? All those entities will expect things from you. Will you go bigger, and serve New Yorkers? Or Americans?

Or will you open your mind and heart to divine gratitude, and, rather than looking Right, or Left, or earthward, look heavenward? Because all the blessings that rain from above that have the true power to heal a hurting people come only from God. So, choose this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Amen.

And now I invite you to receive the benediction:

Our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, will guard our going out and coming in, from this time on and forever more. And as all of God’s people, both nearby and out in the vast reaches of Cyberspace, we say together: Amen.