November 18, 2007 Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Thanksgiving and Neighbor in Need Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 96; Philippians 4: 4-9; Matthew 6: 25-33
How can we be grateful when there is so much sorrow and stress and
trouble in our lives and in the world around us? This is a problem not just once a
year at Thanksgiving. The ability to feel grateful is essential to both surface
happiness and deep peace. It is essential to a right relationship with God. So how
can we become grateful at those times when life makes it difficult?
There is a tried and true method that takes a two step or two level approach.
Jesus and Paul both describe it in today’s scripture passages. The first level is
summed up by Paul’s straightforward advice, “Think about these things.” No
matter what you are going through, turn your mind away from your trouble and let
it dwell on what is true, what is honorable, what is just, what is pure, what is
lovely, things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Think about what you have
learned from the most spiritually centered people you know, and seen them do.
Think about these things, and the God of peace will be with you—or better, you
will be with the God of peace. To set your mind on what is of God is to set your
feet in God’s realm and open you eyes to God’s presence. Just that shift of mind
can open us to receive the Spirit’s grace.
Jesus offers a similar teaching. He wants us to turn away from our worries
about the material life and look at the way God works in nature, providing what
the birds of the air need, and giving growth and health and beauty to the lilies of
the field. Think about them, Jesus says, when you find yourself worrying about
your life.
We need to remember the context of these two men, Jesus and Paul, before
we dismiss them as being Pollyannas or cock-eyed optimists or downright naïve.
Jesus was surrounded by people who were poor, sick and oppressed, and he
immersed himself in the world of their suffering. He was living in a land occupied
by the Roman Empire, whose soldiers and officials were constant visible
reminders of his nation’s lack of freedom. Earlier in the same Sermon on the
Mount he had said, “blessed are the peacemakers,” because the society he lived in
was violent; “blessed are the merciful,” because his society was unjust; “blessed
are you when you are persecuted,” because those who protested how far their
society was from God’s realm would be attacked by the people whose wealth and
power depended on violence and injustice. In other words, the world of Jesus was
much like the world of today.
Paul was writing his letter to the Philippians from prison. He had been
imprisoned when he was in Philippi, too, and had been flogged there. He had
suffered terrible things at the hands of the Roman Empire and Jewish
establishment, and like Jesus, he too would be executed in the end. He, too,
healed the sick and comforted the oppressed in his ministry. He was no stranger to
hardship. If anyone had the right not to be grateful because of the world they lived
in and how they were treated by it, Jesus and Paul had that right.
That is why we cannot dismiss their teaching. They found the way through
suffering to gratitude and rejoicing. Part of that way is to change the way we
think. Today Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps many people do just that. It
follows Paul’s first piece of advice, to think about what is true. Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy helps us see how we have exaggerated the negative in our
lives through distortions in our thinking. It grounds us in the truth and helps us
look at things in a more balanced way. It helps us not to worry when we are
anxious. It helps us move toward a place of rejoicing when we are depressed. It
does not always transform us entirely in the most severe cases, but it can help.
One of the results of thinking as Jesus advises us, or as Paul does, or as
Cognitive Behavioral Therapist do, is that we increase our trust. Trust is essential
to gratitude. Trust is essential to a life focused and dependent on God, rather than
anxious or compulsive about material things. Jesus is right; going out into nature
can reduce our worry and increase our trust. Paul is right; focusing on what is true
or good can increase our trust and give us peace.
Trust is also essential for the second step of the method that Jesus and Paul
recommend for gratitude and serenity in the midst of hard times. Paul said,
“Rejoice always….God is near. Do not worry about anything, but ask God for
whatever you need, giving thanks at the same time. And the peace of God that
passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ.” In
other words, besides setting our minds on what is true and good, we should look
beyond those things for God’s presence near at hand all the time. Trusting in God
can lead to gratitude and peace even before we receive what we need, even when
we cannot see anything true or honorable or just. Just the trusting and turning to
God changes our frame of mind.
Jesus taught about this second step, too. He said that we should strive first
for God’s realm and everything else we need would come to us as well.
What Jesus and Paul are telling us to do is to learn to go through life
operating on two levels at once: the level of our thoughts and all the material
things on which our thoughts tend to dwell, but then this deeper level of God near
at hand, a real presence at work within and around us. On the first level of
thoughts and material things we should train ourselves to see the qualities of God
in the surface of things—to see what is true and good, or to see the reassuring
ways that nature works, and fill our minds with light. But at the same time, we
can learn to be aware of a deeper level of reality beneath the surface, like veins of
water flowing underground.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a powerful tool, but when Rev. Nancy
Kilgore of this congregation teaches it, she combines it with a mindfulness
spiritual practice that opens the heart to this deeper level of reality that is within
and around us all the time, what we can call the realm of God. It is like a vast,
luminous, always present land that we come to see through the lens of a wide-
open, watchful heart. The combination of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and
mindfulness practice combines the “think about these things” step with the “strive
for the realm of God” step.
If we can learn to go through life aware that we are not just what we think,
we are not just what we feel, we are not just our bodies, that we exist in the realm
of God right here right now, we may find the grace we need to live in gratitude
even as we suffer the worst of what life has to offer. This is the power that people
saw in those Nazi death camp inmates who were able to keep up their courage and
compassion and keep their souls alive, who kept their integrity and dignity even as
they were led off to be killed. This is the grace we see in people who are dying
who have a deep connection to God, people whose gratitude and serenity shine
through their equally visible struggles with pain and loss.
Keep on doing what you have learned and heard and seen the people do
who manage to dwell in God’s realm even through their hard times, and the God
of peace will be with you as it has been with them, and you will be able to give
thanks and rejoice always in all circumstances. And if you are not there yet, or
cannot feel gratitude this Thanksgiving, at least think about these things:
remember that God is near; that gratitude is not too far from you; that some around
you feel it even now in their hard times; and you can trust that you will feel it
again yourself. If you can feel thankful for nothing else, give thanks for a world in
which, in spite of everything, gratitude is still possible when we think about all
that is true.
Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 11/18/2007