Pentecost +21A
29-10-2017
Dt 34 1-12
Ps 90 1-6 13-17 1
Thess 2 1-10
Mt 22 34-36
When we decided that today would be our harvest thanksgiving festival, I wondered whether we’d have to change our readings to a more harvest-focussed theme. But when I looked at the readings set for today, they seemed just right. We’ve just heard them: the first sight of the promised land, the Psalmist’s security in God’s protection, Paul’s pride in the lively new Church he founded in Thessaloniki and Jesus’s gift of the way of love — what more could anyone give thanks for? What more clear direction could we need to inspire us to thanksgiving?
Let’s look at each reading briefly. We’ve finally arrived at the end of Moses’s story. He wasn’t able to enter into the inheritance promised to his ancestors. But he was permitted to gaze on it from the mountain opposite Jericho – Mount Nebo. I imagine he gave thanks for a life-mission accomplished. The people he’d struggled so hard to rescue, to guide and protect — they were with him; they were his harvest. They were free, they were alive, they were all together. And they were a short day’s journey from entering into the promise God had made to their ancestors; very soon they would enter the Promised Land.
Moses had much to be thankful for, and the people he led had much to thank God for too; for providing a prophet-leader who could lead them safely into their inheritance.
God’s provision and care are likewise the theme at the heart of today’s Psalm. Just as the story of the Exodus does, this Psalm acknowledges the sufferings and doubts we people experience along the journey of life. And it ends with a wonderful prayer that our lives might be granted meaning: “May the gracious favour of the Lord our God be upon us; prosper the work of our hands, O prosper the work of our hands!” It’s a prayer filled with the hope of belonging — a confident prayer to the One who has been our refuge for untold generations; the One who calls us ‘children’. That is a hope and a security truly to give thanks for, and we share it this hope!
The Epistle reading is likewise a story of a difficult pilgrimage travelled in hope, and at considerable emotional and personal cost to see it through. Paul and his fellow evangelists are writing a letter which is filled with celebration and thanksgiving for the harvest which the Holy Spirit has enabled in Thessaloniki. They have a living, breathing Church to write to; a Church whose faith in God is the talk of Ancient Greece1 Thess 1.8. And for this thumping harvest, Paul, Silvanus and Timothy can’t stop giving thanks to God!
We are hearing all these wonderful tidings as God’s free people. They remind us that the burdens we might carry and the struggles we endure are the common experience of people of faith. And that means we don’t journey alone — which is something I find to be a comfort and an encouragement. In these ancient experiences of God’s providence to ordinary strugglers, I find the hope and the confidence to lay my needs before this very same God who has been the refuge and helper of my ancestors in the faith. This gives me cause for thanksgiving.
And if we ever imagine that God mightn’t understand our predicament — mightn’t get how hard it is for us to live out the faith we hold to be right — we need only look to Jesus to be reminded; God understands our struggles from right inside.
For some weeks now, we’ve been following Jesus’s disputes with the religious authorities in Jerusalem. Wave after wave of them have come at him with their curliest questions; with case studies to trip the wisest expert. Last week, with their question about paying taxes, any answer he gave was dangerous. He’d either be stoned by his own people or crucified by the Romans. A good, peaceful man attacked like this.
So yes, God understands the struggles that good people have to endure. We are not alone.
Now look at how he answers the latest curly question; he does so with the heart of God’s teaching: the greatest commandment. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
There’s the Lord our God again. We are God’s free people — and some of the most prosperous ever on Earth. Our problems and our struggles are very real, but the resources we’ve been given to deal with them are a gift from God, and so far more than we need — such is God’s abundance to us. Last week, we explored the idea that we are not so much the containers of these gifts as channels of them. And let’s face it, if we tried to contain all God’s gifts, we’d burst anyway — so being a channel is a far more comfortable option.
Today — thanksgiving Sunday — we remind each other to give thanks for the abundant plenty which God has showered out on us. And the great commandment reminds us very specifically how God prefers us to give thanks: with heart, soul and mind, and with a desire that our neighbour should be just as blessed as we are.
Remembering the plenty we enjoy; remembering the way Jesus defined neighbour with Luke’s parable of the Good Samaritan; and remembering the fact that a minor slip in luck or relationships can land us in the same boat as those we serve through Anglicare — marriage breakdown or job loss is now making unprecedented numbers of middle-class, professional women homeless in Adelaide and other Australian capitals.
Remembering all that, our wardens and councillors have asked that today, we give our harvest thanksgiving in the form of goods which Anglicare can use to fill Christmas hampers so our neighbours can enjoy some semblance of the pleasure we so often take for granted. Let’s give thanks to the Lord our God in the way Jesus calls us to do; let’s love our neighbours as ourselves. Amen