Homily: Thanksgiving Sunday, Oct 7 2012, St. Albans
Rdgs: Joel 2:21-27;Ps 126;1 Tim 2:1-7;Mt 6:25-33
Why do we worry?
I have a confession to make.
Sometimes I find it a challenge to take our Sunday readings and figure
out how they are relevant for us today.
Jesus was after all, speaking to people of a different era, living in a
different culture some 2000 years ago.
But not today. In
today’s gospel it is as if Jesus is speaking directly to us, to our time and
place. “Do not worry,” Jesus says. And he’s speaking to us. There’s a lot of worrying going on in our
world, in our community, in our homes.
So much so that one in nine of us will be diagnosed with an anxiety
disorder at some point in our lives. It
is the most common of all mental illnesses in Canada. We worry a lot, to the point where our
worrying can overcome us. Not only, as
our gospel reminds us, can worrying not add a single hour to our lives, but it
actually has the opposite effect.
Excessive worrying is a risk factor for heart disease, suppression of
the immune system, digestive problems and short term memory loss.
What’s going on here?
Why do we worry so much? It’s not
because we’re bad people. In fact if
anything it’s the opposite. We want good
things in our lives, we want good things for those that we love, for our
families and friends. Parents worry
about their children not because they’re bad parents, but because they’re good
parents. But somehow, we’re afraid that
we may not get all these good things that we want in our lives and the lives of
those around us, and so we worry.
Is there a solution?
What if some pharmaceutical company developed a medication
that if taken daily would reduce your risk of anxiety disorders, enable you to
sleep better and have more energy within three weeks? What if that same drug would also reduce your
risk of depression and eating disorders?
And what if it would help you to better manage stress, reduce your risk
of substance abuse, boost your immune system and increase your overall health? In addition, it would increase your usual
level of happiness by 25% and increase your overall vitality and
life-satisfaction? And best of all, what
if this little pill had absolutely no negative side effects and was available
free of charge?
I think we would call that a wonder drug wouldn’t we? And I’ll bet that there would be a big
line-up to get it.
Well I have some good news for you. It’s available for you right now, right here
in this church this morning. Only it’s
not a pill, it’s something much better.
It is the practice of thanksgiving.
Major scientific studies conducted in the past five years at places like
the Virginia Institute for Psychiatry and the University of California
Now, those of us who are people of faith shouldn’t be so
surprised, should we? After all, medical
scientists and researchers are really only playing catch-up with what our Christian
tradition has been teaching us for thousands of years. Our worship is filled with thanksgiving to
God. This morning our celebration is
called the eucharist, which is in fact the Greek word for giving thanks. The first words we sang together this morning
were “Give thanks to the Lord, our God and King, his love endures forever.” Our scriptures are constantly reminding us
that it is good and right for us to give thanks to God, and not just to give
thanks with our voices but also to show it in our lives.
True gratefulness is the recognition that all that we have,
our lives, our wealth, our abilities, all of this is a gift from God which has
been entrusted to us for a purpose. The
concrete expression of our thankfulness is to be generous and to share what we
have with others. Generosity is how we
walk the talk of thanksgiving. And not
surprisingly, 21st century scientific research has confirmed this as
well: people who practice thankfulness
have been shown to provide more support to others.
So if giving thanks is so good for us, so good for those
around us, and is something that our scriptures and Christian tradition urge us
to do, then why don’t we do it more often?
And if worrying is so bad for us, and something that Jesus tells us not
to do in today’s gospel, why do we spend so much time worrying?
There’s probably much that could be said here, but I’m going
to boil it down to two things this morning:
Priorities and Trust.
What are your priorities in life? What things do you put first, where do you
spend your time and energy? Where do
your priorities come from?
There are many forces in our world that try to set our
priorities for us. You don’t have to
watch television for very long to figure out that there are people out there
trying to convince us that it’s important to have cleaner clothes, or fancy
cars, or another credit card or to consume a whole range of products and
services that people are trying to sell us.
All these ads are designed to create a desire in us for things that we
don’t have. And it works. We buy stuff.
We borrow money to buy stuff. We
even buy lottery tickets. Did you know
that in Canada we spend over $7 billion a year on lottery tickets. That’s roughly the same as the total amount
of all charitable donations each year in Canada. It works out to over $200 per person. And why do we buy lottery tickets? Well, you’ve seen the ads on TV. It’s because if we get lucky and win, we can
have all those good things that we want.
And when our priority in life becomes getting all those
things that we want for ourselves that we don’t have, guess what happens? We spend a lot more time worrying than we do
giving thanks.
In today’s gospel, Jesus calls on us to change our
priorities. In fact the gospel that we
read today is part of a much larger teaching that we usually call the Sermon on
the Mount, and in it Jesus is calling for a radical re-orientation
of how we set priorities and live our lives.
And his teaching is summed up in one of the verses that we heard today.
“Strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness,
and all these things will be given to you as well.”
We need to change our priorities. Instead of being concerned with the things we
want, or even the things we need, our priority must be what Jesus calls the
kingdom of God: living in relationship
with God and practicing justice towards each other.
I am confident that if we were to make this our priority, we
would spend a lot more time practicing thanksgiving and a lot less time
worrying. Because the practice of
thanksgiving is at its foundation relational.
The most common way to express thanksgiving is to use two simple
words: “Thank you”. And by living in relationship with God, we
become aware of the “you” on whom our lives depend. We start to give up any illusions we may have
about self-sufficiency and instead become aware of our relationship with God
and of all the good things that we have been given in our lives. And we say thank you.
But we still need stuff, you say. We still need to eat and we still need
clothes, and we still worry about the future of our children and we’re still
afraid of illness or losing our jobs.
All of that is true.
God knows that we have needs, food and clothing, health, relationships,
a sense of security and so on. And I
think that’s why, in the very same sentence that Jesus uses to re-orient our
priorities, he also makes us a promise.
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and God’s justice, and all
these things will be given to you as well.”
This is the promise that Jesus gives us in today’s gospel, an
amazing promise, a promise that promises to put an end to all of our worrying.
There’s only one problem.
We don’t believe it. We find it
hard to put our trust in Jesus’ promise.
Make your priority the kingdom of God, put your trust in God,
act justly and the rest will be taken care of.
Hard to believe? Don’t
think it’s realistic?
Then, here’s the challenge I’m giving you this week. Give it a try. For this one week, starting today, make the
things of God your priority. Put your
trust in God, seek to know him, enter into relationship with him, in prayer and
in action, striving to act justly in your daily life. And see how it goes. See whether you can learn to have faith in
God and worry less. See whether you get
more or less of the good things of life by seeking God first. See whether your understanding of what the
good things are changes over the course of the week. See whether you say thank you more often.
It is the greatest promise that we’ve ever been given. Can we trust it?
You’ll never know until you give it a try.
Amen.
