I can't believe it's already June and this is the first time I'm posting about my star word for this year. This tells me two things: 1) I disliked this year's word so much that I've almost entirely disregarded it, and 2) I am still wrestling with depression and in some ways with God.
The word that I drew out of the basket of words at church in January is "gratitude." The concept is great. It's just so obvious. I preach about it. I pray about it. I share daily thankfulness with my husband and one of my long-time friends. I can recite scriptures about thankfulness from memory.
I guess I was hoping for a more challenging word.
A colleague suggested to me that it's ok to just coast sometimes. I don't seem to be very good at doing that for very long. I take days off. I take naps. I'm set to take all my vacation and continuing education this year for what may be the first time since I became a pastor. I even had a three-month sabbatical last year. Gratitude should be a nice, easy coast.
Except that sometimes it's not. I've had some days when my mood was quite bad and gratitude was extremely hard. I can always say I'm thankful for my coffee, but when I say it I want to really mean it.
I don't like the memes that say "there's always always always something to be thankful for." It's true, but sometimes what I need more is to be allowed to be angry or sad or frustrated. There are bad days. Sometimes they happen for no good reason, and that makes them even worse. Sometimes there are reasons and those reasons are awful. Being thankful on those days feels horribly hypocritical, and it took me months to allow myself to skip the thankfulness on those sorts of days.
So that's probably why it's taken me till June to write about the word I got in January.
There's another reason, too. The person who continually encouraged me to write blogs moved away in January and died in February.
I know other people read them. Thank you for reading!
Most of all I'm thankful that I know that God is infinitely patient with me about all of this, as God is patient with us all.
Thanks, God.
. . .
P.S. I just scrolled back through past blogs and it turns out gratitude was last year's word! Sheesh. I don't even know what my 2025 word is. When I figure it out, I'll post again.
If you follow me, you've probably noticed that I write about star words twice a year...at the end and at the beginning. (One year I recapped all my star words here.) This year I'm a bit late, and I don't have my new star word yet, so here's what I usually write at the end: a recap of my year with my 2024 word "gratitude."
As usual, I wasn't thrilled with this word when I got it. Hadn't I already spent enough time talking and thinking about gratitude? I've even been processing the idea of toxic gratitude. When depression is hitting hard, do not tell me that "there's always always always something to be thankful for." There were many years during which I would agree about being always thankful, and probably even quoted Paul's letter to the Thessalonians which says to "be thankful in all circumstances" (1 Thes. 5:18). If I ever did that to you, I'm sorry.
Unfortunately, Paul's words have been overused and abused, and I don't think the average white middle-class American has much understanding of the kinds of circumstances Paul had encountered, anyway. I know I haven't experienced war or jail or shipwreck or whipping, and I hope I never do. But I also hope I'm better at having empathy than I used to be, and better at just listening.
It may have happened this year that I got in the habit of ending blog posts and sermons by saying, "Thanks, God." So I guess the gratitude has found its way in at least a little bit.
I used to be somewhat religious about writing thankfulness lists in my journals, and writing thank-you notes to people. Now I'm more likely to send a text or email. I think I'm probably more likely to be thankful in the moment than in looking back to write a list. And maybe that's better anyway.
This is a sermon that was preached on Sunday, November 5, 2017 at United Presbyterian Church, Sterling Ks. Listen to the audio here. Read Joshua 3-4 here.
---
“Today
is the first day of
the rest of your life.”
~
Attributed to Charles E. “Chuck” Dederich, Sr., (1913–1997) ~[2]
Say this with me: Today is the first day of the rest of your
life.
. . .Unless you live
on the other side of the international
date line, in which case yesterday was the first day of the
rest of your life.[3]
No, just kidding.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life. You really can’t argue with that.
You might prefer the Bible version of this – Psalm 118:
“This
is the day that the Lord has made
We
will rejoice and be glad in it.”
~ Psalm
118:24, The Holy Bible ~
Very similar. Both
true. But let’s go back to the other one:
“Today
is the first day
of the rest of your life.”
…because
today we’re talking about Joshua and the major transition happening for the
people of Israel in our scripture readings, and this statement is so fitting for their situation. God had sent Moses to rescue them from
slavery in Egypt. They spent 40 years in
the desert headed for the land that God had promised to their ancestors, and
now all that separates them from that land is the Jordan River. As they cross the Jordan, they are leaving
wilderness wandering behind, and they are beginning a new season in their
lives, a new chapter in their history, with a new leader, Joshua, the man that
Moses anointed for leadership before he died.
There is so
much going on here – so many parallels to other parts of the Bible* and so much
symbolism that has become so engrained in our culture that we may hardly even
notice it. But God wanted to make sure
they always remember what’s happening here, so he gives Joshua some very
specific instructions, and that’s what we’re going to focus on this morning.
First he
tells them to prepare themselves. He
says:
“Sanctify yourselves; for
tomorrow the Lord will
do wonders among you.” --Joshua 3:5
Joshua was
reminding them that this is not just a sight-seeing excursion. They are following God. They need to be prepared to experience what
God is going to do.
The Holy
Spirit is at work in us, preparing us, and we tap into that preparation, we
participate with prayer, praise, confession.
We demonstrate that together in worship:
By asking God to prepare our hearts
as we come to church and into the sanctuary
We begin with praise to renew our
focus and get our hearts and minds turned toward God
We confess our sins, getting rid of
the things that would get in the way of hearing and seeing God.
We come expecting to see and hear God,
as Joshua has told Israel to be – expectant that God will do wonders among us.
The
Israelites had been camped there by the Jordan for weeks. Now they were finally moving forward and they
needed to be ready.
Today, on
this first day of the rest of your life, what
will you do to prepare? How will you
make sure you are ready to see and hear God at work in your life and in the
lives of those around you?
2. Then
Joshua tells them how to know that God
is there. Joshua says…
“By this you shall know that among you is the living God . .
. the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth
is going to pass before you into the Jordan. . .When
the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters
of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan flowing from above shall be cut off;
they shall stand in a single heap.” –Joshua 3:10-13
The Ark of
the Covenant was the sacred box that was the sign of God’s presence with
them. When they were camped, it was kept
in the tabernacle behind a special curtain.
When they were travelling, only certain priests were allowed to carry
it, and they never touched it. They
carried it on long poles.
When the
toes of those priests carrying the ark got to the edge of the river, the water
stopped flowing, so that Israel could cross the river on dry land. This might sound familiar. This is just like what happened back at the
beginning of their journey, when they first left Egypt and were standing on the
edge of the Red Sea. Then Moses raised his staff and God made a
strong wind blow the waters back so they could cross.
It happens a
little differently here – the Ark instead of the staff – but still the waters
part and make it clear that God is there
working, just as he was at the beginning.
3. And then
Joshua tells them to mark this for the
future.
A common way
in the Bible to mark when God does something is with stones. Joshua
tells the people to choose a man from each tribe – 12 men to each pick up a
stone from the riverbed. These weren’t
small stones – they had to carry them on their shoulders. They carried them to their new camp and used
them to build a monument, so they
would always remember what had happened that day and how God had worked a
miracle in bringing them into their new home, in bringing them across the river
on dry land, in giving them a new start.
We are also
in transition and making a new start, and today we will also mark the day with
stones. We are:
ofinishing
a series on growing in gratitude
ogetting
used to a new pastor
opreparing
for the coming year by getting ready to make our pledges next week
ojust
getting started on the new work God for us as a church
No matter
what is going on in our lives, every day is an opportunity to start fresh with
God.
Today is the
first day of the rest of our lives.
We too need
to prepare for the transition, recognize God’s presence in the midst
of it, and mark the transition to
remember what God is doing among us.
Our series
on growing in gratitude has been an important part of our preparation. As we practice gratitude, we are also
practicing seeing what God is doing,
and hearing what God is teaching
us. By practicing gratitude daily, we
are preparing ourselves each day to see and hear and follow God.
Together, let’s
decide today to make this a forever practice, something we will commit to doing
daily from now on.
I’ll be
honest, there are days when I am annoyed with myself for having committed to
practicing thankfulness, because I really don’t want to. I want to stay in my grumpiness a bit, but
it’s a commitment God calls us all to make, and so I do it anyway. (Remember
our theme verse: 1 Thess 5:18 and
today’s Psalm 107)
The Bible
tells us to be thankful, so I do it, and so many days this is a game changer
for me. I sometimes don’t even notice
until the end of the day that although I started out grumpy, I did my thankfulness practice, and ended up
having a better day.
We are
always in transition in some way, and our thankfulness needs to include what
Moses and Joshua demonstrate in leading Israel through their transition:
Thanks to God for what’s happened in
the past – thanks for bringing us to
this moment.
Thanks to God for right now – thanks for God’s presence
Thanks to God for the future – thanks for whatever God has in
store for us
We need to
remember to be thankful in all our transitions for whatever God is doing.
Alex
Haley, the author of "Roots," had an unusual picture hanging on his
office wall. It was a picture of a turtle
on top of a fence post. When asked, "Why is that there?" Alex
Haley answered, "Every time I write something significant, every time I
read my words & think that they are wonderful, & begin to feel proud of
myself, I look at the turtle on top of the fence post & remember that he
didn’t get there on his own. He had help." That is the basis of thankfulness - to remember
that we got here with the help of God, & that He is the provider of every
blessing we have.[4]
Today is the
first day of the rest of your life. We’re
marking this day with stones as well.
Israel used the stones to remember and to teach their children about
what God had done. They gave thanks for
the past and prepared for the future.
Throughout
the Bible, people use stones to mark for themselves that God has done something
significant. The most significant is
Jesus’ death and resurrection, and we refer to him as the rock on which we
stand. Jesus is our rock, and because
through our faith in Jesus he lives in us, we too become rocks, living stones.
The Bible says in 1 Peter that we are “like living stones, … being built
into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
–1 Peter 2:4-5
We are
living stones. And here’s something
really cool. Did you know there are
stones that grow? There’s a plant that
looks just like a rock
. . .until it
blooms and a flower grows up out of the middle of it
We are just like those plants – living rocks. Sometimes we might just look like plain old
stones, but by the power of the Holy Spirit working in us, God is making us
grow and we too bloom – maybe in unexpected ways and at unexpected times and
places.
In just a
few minutes, we’re going to celebrate communion, one of the ways we mark and remember
what God has done for us through Jesus Christ, and as you come up for communion
we’ve got something special for you - a rock to take home with you. Written on each rock is the word Eucharisteo, the Greek word that means “he
gave thanks.” Jesus, on the night he was betrayed and arrested, gave
thanks.5 Eucharisteo to help us remember to be practicing thankfulness. This week as you are considering your pledge
commitments that we will bring back next week, use this rock as a way to
prepare –
To remember and give thanks for all
the ways that God has brought us to this day, including thanks for all the
people who have been a part of making the church worldwide and this church here
in Sterling what it is today, and thanks to God for providing all that we have
needed so far.
To acknowledge and give thanks to God
for his presence with us right now and for all the ways God is working among us
today, helping us grow as the living stones that make up his church.
To give thanks to God for all the ways he is
leading us into the future, to be living stones who bloom and grow in ways we
have yet to discover.
Today is the
first day of the rest of our lives.
How will
this be a new start for us all?
Let us be
prepared to follow Jesus wherever he leads us on this great adventure!
. . .
Our playlist for the day this was preached:
[1] By Rev. Melissa Krabbe,
preached on Sunday, November 5, 2017 at United Presbyterian Church, Sterling,
KS.
This is a sermon that was preached on Sunday, October 29, 2017 at United Presbyterian Church in Sterling, KS. Listen to the audio here. Read Deuteronomy 34 here.
--
A
little girl named Jamie was trying out for a part in the school play. Her mother knew that she'd set her heart on
being in it, but was afraid she would not be chosen.
On
the day the parts were awarded, her mom went to pick her up after school. Jamie
rushed up to her, eyes shining with pride and excitement, “Guess what, Mom,” she shouted, “I've been chosen to clap and cheer!”[1]
Jamie
got a part in the play alright….she’s officially part of the audience. But instead of being disappointed, she’s
excited, and she’s thankful.
We
can also count on disappointment.
Dealing with disappointment is part of life, and also part of growing in
our faith, and growing in gratitude.
It’s easier to have faith when things are going well, and easier to be
grateful, but when we manage to be thankful even when things aren’t going the
way we wanted or expected, we grow.
Disappointment is the gap between what
we expect from life or from our faith and what we experience.[2]
Disappointment can be in people, situations, things or God. We could all tell about our
disappointments. I’m looking forward to
our discussion time this afternoon when we will have the opportunity to
encourage one another as we share how we have dealt with our disappointments.
In
our reading for today, Moses was surely disappointed. He had spent 40 years leading Israel out of slavery
in Egypt, through the desert, and to the Promised Land. The books of Exodus and
Numbers are all about that journey and all the disappointments they faced along
the way. Now, in Deuteronomy, here they
sit on the bank of the Jordan River, finally ready after all these years
to cross over into the land they’ve been dreaming of and promised for
generations . . . but Moses, their faithful leader, won’t be going with them.
Why
not? We find the answer in Numbers 20. This is one of the times in the wilderness
journey when there was no water. The
people complained, Moses went to God, and God told Moses to speak to the rock
and water would come out. Moses gathered
the people in front of the rock, and then, instead of speaking to the rock,
Moses spoke to the people and chastised them for their faithlessness. Then, out of anger, Moses struck
the rock with his staff. Water did come out, enough for all the
people and all the animals, but because Moses let his pride get in the way of
his leadership, God told him:
“Because
you did not trust me enough to demonstrate my holiness to the people of Israel,
you will not lead them into the land I am giving them!” (Numbers 20:12)
Because
Moses didn’t quite follow directions, and didn’t give God any of the credit for
providing water, Moses would not enter the Promised Land. But God did let Moses see it from up on top
of Mount Pisgah. The first two verses of
Deuteronomy 34 remind me a bit of the scene in the movie TheLion King (1994)
when the father lion Mufasa takes his son
Simba up on top of pride rock to show Simba what will one day be his kingdom
when Mufasa dies, and Mufasa says, “Everything
the light touches is our kingdom.” God
is saying to Moses, “Everything you can see is the land I promised to your
ancestors.”
In
Deuteronomy 34, we are reading the last chapter of Moses’ life – his death –
and it ends with a wonderful statement to sum up his life:
Since then there has not arisen in Israel a prophet
like Moses, whom the Lord knew face
to face, 11 in
all the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, before Pharaoh,
before all his servants, and in all his land, 12 and by all that mighty power and all the great
terror which Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.
This
is the end of the journey, the end of the book, the end of the Torah, and the
end of Moses. Deuteronomy is the book of
Moses’ last words. Its Hebrew name, debarim,
means “these are the words.” Deuteronomy
is mainly composed of three speeches
Moses gives to the people of Israel as they are camped beside the Jordan,
getting ready to enter the Promised Land, preparing them to go on without him.
As
part of their preparation, Moses reminds them how they got here. Almost all of them were born after they left
Egypt, so they may not know all that happened on their journey, and all the
ways that God took care of them. Moses
also reminds them why he will not be going in with them. In Duet. 1:37 he says, “Because of
you the Lord became
angry with me also and said, ‘You shall not enter it.’”
This isn’t quite accurate. Moses
is in trouble for his own behavior, not the behavior of the people, but it’s likely
that Moses’ frustrations with the people contributed to his behavior and so he
blames them.
Moses tried again to talk God into letting him
lead the people into the Promised Land, and God again said no and don’t
bring it up again (Dt 3:26).
Instead, God told him to work on preparing the people and encouraging
Joshua, their new leader, who would take them across.
So Moses offers them encouragement. He says in Deuteronomy 31:6 the words we
heard the choir sing today: "Be strong and courageous, do not be
afraid or tremble at them, for the LORD your God is the one who goes with you.
He will not fail you or forsake you."
Moses, the greatest prophet, the one who spoke
with God face-to-face, was not immune to disappointment, and experienced it in
the same ways we do.
Disappointment
in ourselves.
When Moses finds God at the burning bush, he
responds by listing all the ways he’s not good enough to go lead Israel out of
Egypt. Despite that, Moses does go and
the people do indeed get freed from their slavery to Pharaoh.
Disappointment
in people.
Moses was frequently disappointed with the
people of Israel. Early in their journey
across the wilderness, Moses went up on Mount Sinai to meet with God for 40 days,
and when he came back, the people whom God had just rescued from Egypt had
already made new gods for themselves.
Moses was so upset that he smashed the stone tablets on which were
written the Ten Commandments.
Later,
when they first got across the desert to the edge of the Promised Land, Moses
sent a team of men to check it out and report back. Of those ten, all of them
reported scary stories except Caleb and Joshua.
The people heard the scary stories and refused to go in, so God gave
them their wish and they wandered for 40 years.
The Bible is full of stories of
disappointment
·King
David wanted to build a temple to honor God but God said no.
·Paul
asked God to remove a thorn that had bothered him all his life, but God said
no.
·Judas
wanted Jesus to rise up and rescue the people from their Roman oppressors, but
that wasn’t God’s plan.
Why,
if God is faithful, do we have disappointments?
Disappointment happens when our expectations aren’t met. The problem is that our expectations aren’t always so good.
Sometimes
we have wrong expectations because our
expectations are based on what we’ve heard, not what we actually
read in the Bible. Or maybe we
read it a long time ago and we’re mis-remembering. Reading the Bible we may see how God works
differently than we’d expected. Having Bibles of our own to read is one of the
major outcomes of the Reformation!
We get the expectation from our
culture that if we do the right things and work hard enough, that life will go
well for us, and then when it doesn’t we are disappointed.
I
am so thankful that in my young adulthood when I was frustrated with the way
life was going that our pastor at that time didn’t say, “You just
need to have more faith.” My faith was
young, for sure, but the bigger issue was my faulty expectations. Instead that pastor said, “God didn’t promise it would be easy.” He’s right, and that’s why I frequently go
back to Jesus words to the disciples in his final speeches to them. He said, “In
this world you will have trouble, but take heart for I have overcome the
world.” (John 16:33)
God
doesn’t promise us that everything will work out the way we want it to, but God
does promise that we won’t have to face any of it alone. “I
will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
I
will never fail you. Knowing that God is
with us doesn’t make us immune to disappointment, but it is how God helps us
through it.
Disappointment
can get in the way of gratitude. I’ve
said almost every week since we started this series that gratitude can
sometimes be really hard. Can we be
thankful even in the midst of disappointment?
Yes. Maybe not right away, but we can get there.
Not
too long ago I was dealing with some disappointment and anger at God for not
healing my stepmom Lydia’s cancer. I had
a friend who started chemo for cancer on the very same day as Lydia. I prayed diligently for both of them. My friend continues to struggle with her
cancer. I think she even just started a new treatment. But Lydia died . . .
almost a year ago. For awhile I was even
resentful of my friend for surviving when Lydia didn’t. Really, though, I was mad at God for not
doing what I wanted him to do.
It’s
important that we acknowledge our
disappointments. Otherwise they
fester and make us bitter. Acknowledge that doubt and anger are normal outcomes of disappointment. Moses of all people had a close relationship
with God, meeting with God face-to-face – the best of anyone except Jesus! –
but still Moses had disappointment, and we see at several points in Moses’
journey with the people through the wilderness that his disappointment led to
anger.
We
need to acknowledge our disappointments, and we need to talk to God about our
disappointment, and keep working on gratitude.
The Psalms are a great example of this.
They express deep feelings of discouragement and frustration, but often
in the same Psalm, gratitude to God. The
gratitude we find the most often is for God’s faithfulness.
Give thanks
to the Lord, for he is good. His
faithful love endures forever. (Psalm 106:1, et al)
God
is faithful, and his promises never fail.
Disappointment
with God may be the hardest kind of disappointment.
A
young woman woke up one morning feeling desperate – desperate to find God, to
know God’s love, to feel God’s presence.
She wasn’t a churchgoer, but she dragged herself out of bed, put on
nicer-than-usual clothes, and with fear and hope found a seat in a pew in a
church. She was nervous, but her
desperation also made her brave. So she
sat and waited and listened….and was let down.
The preacher’s sermon was lifeless.
The people were standoffish. She stumbled back out onto the street
feeling worse than she had when she’d started….but getting used to the
disappointment.[3]
First,
let me say that I pray that we will not be that church. What that woman learned was that in seeking
God she had put too much trust in the institution,
too much trust in the people. Thankfully she learned to find God on her own through the Bible
and other books, online discussions, private prayer time, volunteering…all of
which are good and important parts of building our lives with God.
People will fail us. Institutions
will fail us. Situations will fail us, and our own thoughts and emotions and
expectations will fail us, but God will never fail us.
The
church can be a great place to find God, and worship and grow and encourage one
another, but we will all at times be disappointed with our church because the
church is made up of people, and we aren’t perfect people.[4]
Today
we commemorate the Protestant Reformation and the lessons we learned from
Martin Luther and so many others that our faith is not in church or in its
people or even it its work, but in the one who created us, our faithful God who
sent his son to die for us.
By grace we have been
saved through faith, and this is not our own doing;
it is the gift of God.
(Eph. 2:8).
We will struggle with disappointment at times, but God is
right here with us in the midst of it.
For some of us, turning to God in the midst of our disappointments is
easy. For others, it’s really hard. Let’s encourage one another, and maybe most
importantly, keep on praying for one another, and for all those who don’t yet
know God’s love and grace.
This is a sermon that was preached on Sunday, October 22, 2017 at United Presbyterian Church in Sterling, KS. Listen to the audio here. Read Matt 22:15-22, Eccl 1:1-11 here.
---
You can learn a lot about kids from their prayers. At our house, we took turns saying grace at the dinner table. Sometimes our kids would say the funniest things. One time, when our son Tristan was about five, he prayed, “Thank you, God, for killing the dinosaurs before making people.”
No matter what else we prayed for, we always made sure we thanked God for the food. Often we’d also say thanks for the people who prepared it, and, all too often, the people who delivered it. In the cartoon series The Simpsons they also have the kids take turns saying grace for meals. Asked to say the dinner prayer one night, Bart says, “We paid for all this ourselves, God, so thanks for nothing.”
As we’re going about our lives, working hard to earn money, saving up to buy the things we need and want, we can easily forget that all this is a blessing from God, and maybe even wonder, “If all this is God’s, why do I have to pay for it?”
This week is the 4th week of our series called “Growing in Gratitude.” How many of you have already figured out that this is the stealth stewardship series? Really, though, every Sunday is about stewardship, because stewardship is about how we live the lives God has given us. Everything we have and everything we are is a gift from God to be used in his service and to his glory. The love we have, the very core of our lives, comes from God. This, however, may be the first week in this series that sounds like what we traditionally expect from a “stewardship” sermon because this week we specifically talk about money.
In our reading from Matthew for today, we find that Jesus is still dealing with challenges and questions from the chief priests and elders. They come when he’s teaching in the temple and want to know where he gets his authority to teach. Jesus has in several ways already answered their question, but they keep throwing challenges at him, trying to get Jesus to say something for which they can arrest him. This time, they’ve brought some people from King Herod’s court along. Normally the priests and elders wouldn’t be hanging out with Herodians, but depending on how Jesus answers, the Herodians might also want to arrest him, so they’re working together, and they ask…
“Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” (22:17)
Their question seems to us in modern times like a no brainer. Of course you pay taxes. Why wouldn’t you pay taxes? But it’s a trick question.1
If Jesus says, “Yes, pay taxes,” then he will anger all the people who are struggling to pay the 50% tax the Romans have been demanding, and Jesus will lose his popularity with the crowds that have been following him, and so then the elders can arrest him.
If Jesus says, “No, don’t pay taxes,” then he’s going against the government and they can arrest him.
It’s so much more than just a simple question, as questions about money so often are. For one thing, it reveals the motivation of the chief priests and elders. They’re not asking to learn more about Jesus or to learn more about what he’s teaching. They aren’t there for a friendly discussion. Verse 18 tells us they had evil intent. Jesus calls them hypocrites. They’ve just lied to him, saying flattering things about his integrity and godliness. They don’t mean any of it. They just want to catch Jesus off guard. Their motivation for asking is the problem. What’s their motivation? Basically greed. These guys have money and the power. They don’t want to lose that. Jesus is a threat to their position, so he must go.
Obviously greed is bad. It’s one of the seven deadly sins. It’s the tenth commandment – thou shalt not covet (Ex. 20:17). What’s the problem with greed? We could argue that greed is the underlying sin that prompts all the rest of the sins. In Buddhist teaching, they say that greed or desire is the root of all suffering.2
Greed is the excessive desire for more than we need, not for the greater good but for one’s own selfish interest, and often at the expense of our relationships with other people. Greed can be for anything, but is most commonly for food, money, possessions, power, fame, status, attention, admiration, [or] sex.3
It’s what makes Eve take a bite of the apple. She wants what God has. Greed gets us thinking about what we don’t have instead of what we do have.
Greed tells us we don’t have enough.
Two friends met in the street. One looked sad and almost on the verge of tears. The other man said, "Hey my friend, how come you look like the whole world has caved in?"
The sad fellow said, "Let me tell you. Three weeks ago, an uncle died and left me 50-thousand dollars."
"That's not bad at all...!"
"Hold on, I'm just getting started. Two weeks ago, a cousin I never knew kicked-the-bucket and left me 95-thousand, tax-free to boot."
"Well, that's great! I'd like that."
"Last week, my grandfather passed away. I inherited almost a million."
"So why are so glum?"
"This week - nothing!"4
Why was he sad? Not because his family members had died, but because this week nobody had given him a huge sum of money. He was so focused on what he didn’t have, he wasn’t able to see the blessings he did have.
Greed was motivating the elders to set a trap for Jesus, and greed can also be a trap for us. We may not even realize sometimes that greed is at work in us. We know it’s wrong, so we may not think we need to worry about it. The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians warns us about that. He says
“ If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall.” (1 Cor 10:12)
We are more vulnerable if we think we aren’t vulnerable. Greed is not always obvious. But it’s such a common and pervasive problem, that it’s the basis of the plots for scores of books, movies, TV shows and plays. If we didn’t need to worry about it, Jesus wouldn’t have talked about it so much.5
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy…but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven... For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt 6:19-21)
You cannot serve God and wealth (Matt 6:24)
We need to keep on examining our motivations, and asking for God’s help and forgiveness.
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24_
The way to work on changing our thinking from being sad about what we don’t have or longing for more than we need is to be thankful for what we do have … to keep practicing thankfulness….which sounds way too simple, especially since that’s been the answer for everything we’ve talked about over the past several weeks, but thankfulness really is key. The apostle Paul talks about being thankful in almost all his letters in the Bible. So many of the psalms have something about being thankful. Studies show that the more we practice thankfulness, the more we have compassion for people, and the less we are focused on acquiring things.6
Our theme verse for this series is 1 Thessalonians 5:18 – Be thankful in all circumstances for this is God’s will for us who are in Jesus Christ.
Why? To begin with, it’s about obedience.
Obedience means we love and respect God enough to do what he tells us to do.
Jesus replied, "Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them." (John 14:23)
It may not always make sense to us to be thankful, it may often be really hard to do, but God knows that being thankful is going to help us, and so we need to work on it because God tells us to.
It’s also about perspective. Bart says, “We paid for all this ourselves, so thanks for nothing.” Jesus says, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Jesus points out that the money has the picture of the current emperor on it. The government created those coins, so they are the government’s coins. But consider this. In Genesis, it says that we are made in God’s image. We have the image of God stamped on us.
What is God’s?
One Sunday morning, a little boy named Timmy didn’t want to put his money in the offering plate, so his mother decided to use some hurried creative reasoning with him.
“You don’t want that money, honey,” she whispered in his ear. “Quick! Drop it in the plate. It’s tainted!”
Horrified, the little boy obeyed. After a few seconds he whispered, “But, mommy, why was the money tainted? Was it dirty?
“Oh, no dear,” she replied. “It’s not really dirty. It just ‘taint yours, and it ‘taint mine,” she replied. “It’s God’s.”7
Everything we have and everything we are comes from God. You may have heard me say that when we get ready to give our offerings each week. That’s the basic idea of stewardship. God our creator made us and all of creation. By God’s providence, we have life and love. When we give our offerings, we are giving back to God some of what God has given us.
What has God given us? It all depends on our perspective.
There was a little old lady who would come out every morning on the steps of her front porch, raise her arms to the sky and shout, "Praise the Lord!"
Well, one day an atheist moved into the house next door. Over time, he became irritated at the little old lady. So every morning he would step out onto his front porch and yell after her, "There is no God!"
Then one morning in the middle of winter, the little old lady stepped onto her front porch and shouted, "Praise the Lord! Lord, I have no food and I am hungry. Please provide for me, oh Lord!"
The next morning she stepped onto her porch and there were two huge bags of groceries sitting there. "Praise the Lord!" she cried out. "He has provided groceries for me!"
The atheist jumped out of the hedges and shouted, "There is no Lord. I bought those groceries!"
The little old lady threw her arms into the air and shouted, "Praise the Lord! He has provided me with groceries and He made the devil pay for them!"8
We’re fairly accustomed to thanking God for our food. We may not be so accustomed to thanking God for our circumstances, and when things aren’t going our way, we can easily lose our perspective and forget how much God loves us, and that everything is from God.
Years ago, legendary baseball player Lou Gehrig was being honored by Yankee fans on his last day of play. His career was shortened by ALS, which is now called Lou Gehrig’s disease, a debilitating muscle disease that eventually stops the heart. What would you have said in the face of this heartbreaking challenge? Amazingly, he begins: Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” How could he say that? Gratitude. Gratitude for all the gifts he had been given, for all the love he had been shown by fans, for all the opportunities he had. He focused on the joys not the losses. Lou Gehrig cultivated thankfulness!9
Jesus says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
We belong to God. The very breath in our lungs and the love in our hearts are gifts from God.
Ecclesiastes says everything is vanity. All the things we thought we needed to have will pass away, indeed we ourselves will pass away, but the love we have from God will live forever.
We know this love because of the greatest gift we’ve ever received, Jesus giving his life on the cross for us.
For this, and for all things, we give thanks to God.10
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[1] The
Pharisees know that either answer will jeopardize Jesus’ mission—exactly their
intent. (Wilkins, NIV Application
Commentary, Zondervan, pg 720-1)
