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11.23.08

Christ the King Sunday

THE GIVING OF THANKS

EZEKIEL 34:11-16, 20-24; MATTHEW 25:31-46

• A Happy Thanksgiving?
• The Myth of Thanksgiving
• Thanksgiving is the one holiday we celebrate each year that hasn’t been swallowed up in materialism
• It remains the only day reserved for quiet family gatherings
• It’s a day when even those who are not very religious stop to pray and give thanks for the wonderful blessings we have to enjoy—blessings of family and friends, of good health and the strength to work, of freedom and a life well lived
• Of the Big Four holidays we celebrate each year—New Year’s, Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas—Thanksgiving is, by far, the most reserved
• New Year’s is celebrated by wild partying and revelry
• Easter and Christmas have become so commercialized with all the decorations, presents, fancy clothes, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus
• Thanksgiving remains a day of relative peace, relaxation, and reflection
• Thanksgiving “Traditions”
• Having said all that, we must also say that Thanksgiving is not a holiday that’s completely free from all the trappings of our consumer society
• Although it hasn’t become commercialized in the same way as the other three of the Big Four holidays, Thanksgiving has become a celebration of our consumerism
• Just take a look at many of our Thanksgiving traditions
• We gather together with family and friends to indulge ourselves in an enormous meal where we often eat more in one sitting than we do on any other day of the year
• There is turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, a varied selection of vegetables and salads, and bread
• After all of that, (and we usually fill our plates more than once) many consider the meal incomplete until we have consumed at least two desserts
• After we have stuffed ourselves to the max, our next stop is the living room
• Lounging in front of the television, we try to consume more football in one day than is reasonably possible, and we label it “quality family time”
• All of the commercials during all those football games remind us that Thanksgiving Day is the “kickoff” of the Christmas shopping season
• The day after Thanksgiving, many of us will be off to the malls to max out our credit cards as we seek to outdo ourselves with the quantity and dollar value of the gifts we purchased for Christmas last year
• It is a fact that people who aren’t particularly religious, who don’t make a regular habit of saying prayers, at mealtime or any time, and who do not regularly attend worship do pause (albeit ever so briefly) to pray before they begin their indulgence
• But I wonder what those prayers sound like
• Are they truly prayers of thanksgiving for the blessings they have received from God, or do they sound more like the prayer of the Pharisee Jesus spoke about
• That Pharisee, praying in the temple, said with all sincerity, “God, I thank you that I am not like everyone else.”
• Then he went on to praise himself for all of his accomplishments in life
• More Meaningful Traditions
• That’s not to say that there are not good things that are part of our Thanksgiving traditions
• There are many people who do many things to try to express their gratitude to God and to extend God’s blessings to others
• Our family has long had the tradition of gathering around the table and sharing together those things for which we are truly thankful, and we offer them up to God as we seek God’s blessing on our Thanksgiving dinner
• On many occasions, we have included in our Thanksgiving celebration a member of our congregation who had no family of their own to celebrate with
• For one person in particular, when she was no longer able to come to our home for Thanksgiving because of her health, we took Thanksgiving dinner to her before we sat down at the table ourselves
• Other families have made it a tradition to spend Thanksgiving dinner at homeless shelters and rescue missions, serving dinner to those who are truly less fortunate
• The sad thing, however, is that that kind of care and compassion is often short-lived
• Once the holiday is over, how quickly we return our focus to ourselves
• There is a Thanksgiving tradition that comes from the hills of West Virginia
• It’s the tradition of the empty chair
• If you know much at all about the hills of West Virginia, you know that this is one of the most impoverished regions in our country
• Many of the people of Appalachia are poor farmers, barely able to eke out a subsistence living from their land
• Poverty is rampant, health care is in short supply—the basic necessities of life are sadly lacking
• It’s from these people that the tradition of the empty chair comes
• That empty chair stands ready to be filled or at least to be gazed at as a reminder that no matter how many are already gathered, there is always room for one more
• Even if there isn’t physically an “empty chair,” there is always an extra plate on the table and extra portions in case an unexpected visitor shows up
• Even though they often have very little, they are ready and willing to share what little they have with others
• The “Haves” and the “Have-not’s”
• Sadly, Thanksgiving has become a marker in our society between the “haves” and the “have-not’s”
• The “haves” celebrate in a grand and glorious style, overindulging in food, football and shopping
• For the “have-not’s,” Thanksgiving is the first big disappointment of the upcoming holiday season
• The lucky ones get a cafeteria-style meal served on paper plates at a church or mission
• The food is nourishing, the spirit is welcoming, but it’s not the Thanksgiving of anyone’s dreams
• The “haves” have plenty of leftovers in which to indulge, but for the “have not’s” there are no leftovers—no leftover goodies to nibble on, no leftover family to spend the long weekend with, no leftover feelings of security
• Our nation has the largest income gap of the world’s top 17 industrial nations, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
• 10% of Americans own more assets than the other 90%
• 500,000 families (that’s ½ of 1%) of U. S. families own 40% of the nation’s wealth
• Can we not find room for an empty chair?
• The Depravity of Abundance
• God’s Condemnation of the Shepherds
• In our text from Ezekiel, God speaks words of comfort to the oppressed and harsh words to those who are partners with oppression
• God speaks of the reversal of human standards
• The rich will no longer get richer while the poor get poorer
• Those who have been cast off by a culture that doesn’t care will be gathered in
• They will graze in rich pastures and all their needs will be satisfied
• Truly, this is good news for all of the poor and oppressed in our world
• But God has very harsh words to speak to those who plunder the poor, who take advantage of the disadvantaged, and who turn a deaf ear to the cries of the needy
• In the Old Testament, the shepherd is the image of those who lead
• God’s word here is a condemnation of those who are in positions of power
• A shepherd is one who protects his sheep, who provides safe passage for them from one grazing field to another
• A shepherd is one who tends to the needs of his flock, providing them with food, shelter, and protection
• God speaks these words to Israel because they had failed to live up to their responsibilities as God’s people in the world
• They were selfish and self-righteous, seeking to gain as much as they could for themselves and ignoring the needs of those who have less
• They effectively cut off any and all who were different—the lame, the poor, the sick, the marginalized
• Not only did they cut them off from the rest of society, they took advantage of them, robbing them of what little they had, bullying them into submission
• The sad fact is that little has changed from the days of Ezekiel until now
• Our current economic crisis indicates how little everything has changed
• The middle-class is disappearing from our culture
• The rich continue to get richer, and they do so on the backs of employee benefits packages and retirement accounts
• The poor continue to get poorer as good paying jobs disappear and those jobs that remain pay so little that it’s impossible to survive
• Countless thousands of families have been driven out of their home because of shady lending practices and exorbitant interest rates
• The demand on food pantries this year is so enormous that many of them have empty shelves, left without resources to help those who need it most
• Are we “Sheep” or “Goats?”
• Whether we like to admit it or not, we are at greater risk of being identified with the “goats” in Jesus’ parable than we are to be included among the “sheep”
• The ideal for us as Christians is that, through our faith and our devotion to following Jesus Christ, we would become so selfless and so self-giving that our ministry to the needs of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the prisoner would be automatic
• In the face of each of them we would see the face of Jesus Christ, and we would give freely because of our love for Jesus
• But the reality is that we’re not there yet; we still have a very long way to go
• Instead of being selfless we are selfish, thinking of our personal comfort ahead of the needs of others
• Instead of being self-giving, we are self-taking, grasping what we have earned, what we think we deserve, with clenched fists rather than open hands
• And instead of seeing the face of Christ in the faces of the poor and needy, we see the dirty face of those who have not bathed, we see the face of one who is lazy because she/he cannot find gainful employment, and we see the face of one who is getting that he/she deserves
• Around our table there is no empty chair, within our family there are no open arms, and in our communities, those who are different are problems to be solved, not people to be loved
• When a national day of thanksgiving was established on the fourth Thursday of November, it was not because the fourth Thursday of November was a particularly thankful day
• It was intentionally chosen because of its arbitrariness to remind us to be thankful on a daily basis for the bounties God has heaped upon us
• As Christians, every Sunday is a Thanksgiving feast day—every Sunday at worship we give thanks for the greatest event of human history—the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead
• Every time we gather at table, we gather in thanksgiving because every moment of every day and every morsel of bread is the gift of God’s grace to us
• We best express our thanks to God through our willingness to share the bounty of God’s blessings with others
• Nothing we have is ours to keep—what we are given has been given to us to use and to share
• The true measure of our faith is what we do with what we have
• Genuine thankfulness is expressed through our willingness to give—to respond to the needs of others, not thinking about what we can gain or what we stand to lose—but giving because we see the face of Jesus in the faces of the poor and oppressed around us
• Can we make room for an empty chair at our tables, on Thanksgiving Day and every day, so that others might come and experience the blessings of  God’s abundant grace?