Thanksgiving Sermon 2009

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon

Thanksgiving Service, November 2009

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

We know that times are getting really bad when the economy has hit even people across the world. I heard a story about a lady who’s living in a hut. She’s living with her husband and her two children. And she starts to think about how much room she has and it’s getting a little bit crunched. She’s thinking, “We need to maybe upgrade. We need a little bit bigger hut.” But her prayer wasn’t answered because, as it came about, the in-laws were moving in. They had just lost their house. And they were coming to live with them. And so there were four adults and two children, all living in a small hut. And this woman is going crazy. She can’t understand why all these people have to be in the same hut all at the same time. She gets so upset that she goes to see the village elders and she tries to consult with them. “What should I do about this? I’m becoming so crazy by being stuck in this hut with all these people.” So they consulted a little while and they came back to her. “We’ve decided that what you need to do is take your dog and bring him into the hut with you and then come back and see us in a week.” So the woman says, “Alright. These are smart guys. I’ll go back and I’ll listen to them.” So she goes home and she takes the dog and she brings it into the hut and it’s unbearable. The dog’s running around barking all the time at the kids, at the adults. There’s no room. So she goes back to them in a week and she says, “It’s not good.” They said, “Well, alright. This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to take the chickens you have and you’re going to bring them inside your hut.” So she says, “Okay.” So she goes home. She takes the chickens. She brings them all inside the hut and now the chickens are making a mess. The dog’s barking at the chickens. The kids are going crazy, screaming and crying. So she is going even more crazy. She comes back in a week and says, “It’s even worse. I can’t even believe how bad it is.” They said, “Well, this is what you’re going to do. Take your cow and bring him into the hut with you.” The lady says, “Alright, I’m going to listen.” So she takes her cow. She puts it into the hut. She doesn’t even last a day with the cow in there because everything’s going crazy. The cow is taking up so much room. She can’t even believe it. She can’t move around. All of them are insanely going crazy. So she goes back to the elder and says, “This isn’t working either.” And he says, “Alright, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to take the cow and you’re going to take the chickens and you’re going to take the dog and you’re going to kick them out of your hut and you’re going to put them back outside. And then come back and see me in a week.” So this is what she does. She goes home. She takes them all out. She puts them outside. She comes back in a week and she says, “I can’t believe how much room we have.”

It’s the same situation but the first time she was so discontent with what was happening. She couldn’t believe that they didn’t have a bigger hut. She couldn’t believe that they couldn’t all fit in there. This Thanksgiving, as we think about all the things God has given has, have we become like this woman? Discontent with the things in our life? Discontent with not having enough, not having the space, not having the time, not having the money, not having the things we need? Is this what it’s become?

Tonight as we look at this problem of discontentment in our world, we want to focus on the things that we can be content in. God created us, each and every one of us, to be special and this is what He did: He sent His Son Jesus into the world. That’s how special we were, to save us. And so this Thanksgiving, I want you to be content knowing that you are a part of Jesus Christ. But contentment is not and it shouldn’t be found in the things that we don’t have.

Contentment should never be found in the things we don’t have because contentment can be elusive. Let me explain what I mean. We can be going along one day and saying, “Oh, man, look how happy I am. Look at all the things I have. Look at how everything is kind of aligning up just perfectly.” And then, just like that, you turn around and say, “But it would be better if. . .” So just like that, contentment is gone. You’re no longer content. What was once here is now gone.

I was even talking to my wife about this problem of discontentment. She said, “Alright, so how do we get to be content?” And she’s listening to what I’m kind of talking about and then, all of a sudden, she’s like, “Hey, I think we need some valances over there for the windows.” I’m like, “Did you hear what I was just saying?” And that’s how fast discontentment can come and play in the picture. It’s like a moving target, always comes back around.

There’s always something greater and you know it. We see it all the time. There’s always going to be something greater, something better out there for us to own, to buy. We look at our old computers and we say, “Oh, it’s running just fine but wouldn’t it be better if we had a high speed computer? We can get a lot more done. We can be more efficient if we had a better computer.” Even if our old one’s working just fine.

When you start to think about this, I think we have so much and I think the more things we have, the harder it is for us to be content with it. Some people say they’re used to owning a new car maybe every couple of years. The times are getting bad a little bit so they maybe have to put it off for a year or they have to put it off for a couple of years. And they start to say, “Well, that’s just not fair. I’m not happy with just owning the same thing year after year. I want something new.” Do you see how the focus then becomes on the things we don’t have and not the things that we do?

Think about the things that we consider to be essential in our lives. This came across a couple of summers ago when I was in St. Louis and the power went out. This was in the summer time. 90 degrees plus, 90% humidity, no air conditioning, no fans. And I was miserable. I would wake up at 3:00, 4:00 in the morning and say, “I need to really just go jump in the car, turn on the air conditioning because I can’t live without it.” For me, I was thinking why would somebody want to live without air conditioning. To me, I saw that as a necessity. It’s necessary. But then I started to think about all the other things in life, the microwave, the heat, the cell phones, whatever it might be. We look at all these appliances we have now that they didn’t used to have and we say they’ve become a necessity.

I remember talking to my grandma before she passed away and she would come to visit us and, just as we were smaller kids, sometimes we’d end up complaining. So my grandma would sit us down and she’d say, “You know, when I was a girl,” anybody ever have those conversations? “You know, when I was a girl, we didn’t have. . .” and then she’d kind of fill in the blank with whatever it was we were complaining about. And she’d say, “And this is what we did.” She would always remember back to a time when they didn’t have whatever it was. And there wasn’t a look of discontent but it was with a smile. She remembered back to a time that they didn’t have a television, there was no air conditioning or heat, maybe even no indoor plumbing, all the things that we kind of see now as a necessity in life wasn’t.

How about you? I heard somebody say that cell phones are a necessity. Somebody told me that. A necessity? A need versus a want, we always get into that but somebody said it was necessary that they have a cell phone. And I am kind of guilty of that. I have mine and I carry it everywhere. But if you think back even a century ago, all the things they didn’t live with that we call a necessity today. Could you live without your microwave, your air conditioning, your heat, your cell phone?

We start to look at the things we don’t have and it makes us a little bit more discontent. How can we be thankful when we’re filled with discontent? When we think about Thanksgiving, how can we give thanks when we’re filled with discontent? Do you think it’s funny or ironic that on Thanksgiving Day, you crack the newspaper and you find all of the ads for the things that you don’t have? There’s maybe even a tradition that you sit down and you make out your list for what you want for Christmas. And this happens on the one day a year that we’re supposed to stop and give thanks for the things we have by looking at the things we want. Does any of it sound familiar to you? Family traditions, even sitting down and listing out the things that we need?

Tonight as we’re going to go over discontentment, I want to tell you that contentment doesn’t really happen until you kind of take stock in the things you have. Let me explain. Do you remember Lou Gehrig, one of the greatest baseball players of all time? You know, before he was struck with his illness, before he retired from baseball or actually right after he retired from baseball, he gave a speech and it was a pretty famous one. He said, “I consider myself to be the luckiest man in the world.” Some people would look at him and say, “Lou Gehrig, I know he was playing baseball but he was cut down by this disease. He was going to die. How can you consider yourself lucky? How can you consider yourself blessed?” Lou Gehrig stopped to kind of assess the things he had in his life. He looked at his family. He looked at being able to play baseball as long as he possibly could. And that’s when he made the statement, “I’m the luckiest man in the world.”

How often do we hear people complain about the things they might have or that they don’t have? I think people across the world would continue to still look at us and probably just laugh because they would really be content with having three meals a day and drinking clean water.

What I would suggest this Thanksgiving Day as we’re sitting down with maybe a large group of family, maybe it’s just a small group, but to really go over the things that we have in our life. Take an inventory. Maybe the big things, maybe the small things, maybe the big things like salvation, maybe the freedoms that we enjoy here in America, your income, your safety. And then look at the things we often neglect to take into account, like our possessions, like the things we have around us, like the sources of entertainment, movies, whatever, your friends. These are the things we often don’t take into consideration when thinking about the blessings God has given us and yet they’re there for you.

But there’s something else we have to learn about tonight as we look at that letter that Paul talked about to the Philippians. He talked about contentment but what he said was, “I’ve learned to be content.” This is what it says in Philippians 4 if you remember, as we just went over it, “I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” So do you have the secret tonight of being content? It really is no secret at all. Paul wasn’t saying that he had some kind of secret that no one else knew about. He’s just saying that not everybody was living it. The letter he was talking about, people were talking about how anxious they were, how disappointed they were or how troubled they were with the circumstances of their life and this is what Paul said. He says, “Don’t be anxious. Look at the things you have. Look at who you are connected with, Jesus Christ.” And with that, you can be content.

Paul was focusing on the things that could never be taken away from him. Throughout this book of Philippians as he continues to give thanks in everything, “Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again, rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all.” And then the key verse is what we’ve looked at tonight, he says in Verse 13, “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.” So he doesn’t just rejoice because he figured out a secret from a guy he knew. He doesn’t just say rejoice because you got something greater, greater blessings, greater things in your life, greater possessions but he says, “Don’t be anxious. Don’t worry because through Christ you have strength.” This is something that can’t be taken away, that can’t be stripped. You know, we hear it probably by heart Romans 8 but I’ll say it again, “Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No. In all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us, for I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” Paul was holding firm to that which cannot be stripped from him. Nothing can take away the love of Christ and this is where he finds his contentment. This is where he finds his joy, in the things that can’t be taken away. So we can say, after the love God has given, everything else is kind of a bonus, our family and our friends, our houses, our cars, our possessions, anything else is just a bonus on top of the love God has for us.

In the Jewish tradition, they have this Passover feast. They have a word that’s often repeated again and again as they kind of go through these verses. And what this word means is it would have been enough for us. And what happens in the Jewish tradition, in the faith is what they’ll do is recite something God had done and then they’ll say this word which means “it would have been enough for us.” So after each act, after the parting of the Red Sea, after God had given them the Sabbath Day, after the completion of the temple, they continued to repeat, “It would have been enough for us. It would have been enough for us to place our faith in God in that one small act. It would have been enough.”

We think about it today when we start talking about contentment. It would have been enough for God to send His one and only Son, Jesus, into the world. It would have been enough to see Him and His miracles and His words. We see the deaf receive hearing. We see the blind receive sight, the lame walk. It would have been enough. It would have even been enough just to see Jesus go to the cross and to die because that’s an innocent man, God hanging on the cross for us. That would have been enough but Jesus rose again for you and for me. And that would have been enough. God continues to love and to sustain who we are and what we are.

And this is what we learn this Thanksgiving. We find contentment in the things that can’t be stripped from us. We no longer focus on the things that we don’t have but we take stock in the things that we do. And once we can learn to be content in the things that can’t be taken away, then we can truly be thankful for the things we have. And once we can be content, we can truly be thankful. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving.

Please rise and pray with me. May the peace that surpasses all human understanding keep our hearts and our minds on Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.

Copyright 2009 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church