Oh, The Things We Worry About!
Sermon
Sermons on the Gospel Readings
Series III, Cycle B
Object:
I extend to you and your families a joyous and blessed Thanksgiving. Some of you will gather at tables later today, and most everyone you love will be there. Bless you! Others will gather at tables, and there will be an empty chair where a loved one should be ... but is not. Bless you! Still others will not gather at a table at all. Your life may be filled with heartache or loneliness or hardship, and you may be in no mood to be thankful. May God especially bless you ... and somehow fill you with hope and praise. That is my Thanksgiving prayer for us this day; that God will fill our hearts with thanks and praise. "God of grace, on this day of Thanksgiving, we come before you with prayers of gratitude, and prayers of need. We look to you, Lord Jesus, to give us what is necessary, confessing that we long for more. But mostly, we thank you for your promise of love and life eternal. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen."
Now having said all of that, I predict that there will be a lot of worrying today. Children will worry that their favorite pie will be in short supply and they will have to eat Grandpa's mincemeat! Football fans will worry (unnecessarily, I might add) that the Vikings will lose and the Packers might win! But I fear that the bulk of the worrying will be done by those who prepare the Thanksgiving meals. They will worry that the turkey will not be moist, or that the potatoes will be lumpy, or the piecrust will be flat, or the table decorations will be shabby. Because they take their hostess responsibilities very seriously, they want the day to be perfect. So they worry.
Now, each of us can recall at least one Thanksgiving dinner disaster. I remember hearing about the woman who made pumpkin pie and then set it on a shelf in the garage to cool. When she went to serve it, she noticed that the cat had swiped its paw across the top of the pie for a taste, but because it was the only pumpkin pie she had, she smoothed the surface and she served it anyway.
Late that evening, when all the guests had gone home, she went out to the garage and found the family cat lying dead on the garage floor. Assuming the worst -- that the cat had somehow been poisoned by the pie -- she called each of her guests and they each went to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped. She was humiliated by having to confess to them that she served a pie that the cat had pawed. The next morning, there was a knock at the door, and there stood her neighbor. "Say, I didn't want to disturb you last evening when you had dinner guests, but your cat was hit by a car, so I just laid him on the garage floor for you. Have you found him yet?" Like I said, we each have our Thanksgiving disasters.
It occurs to me that we have come a long way since that first Thanksgiving Day. You probably remember the story on Thanksgiving's origin. In 1620, a boatload of 110 people left Holland for the New World and freedom. Forty-four of them were religious, so they were referred to as "the saints." The other 66 were not at all religious, so they were called "the strangers." But together, these saints and strangers made the difficult 65-day voyage across the Atlantic, and only one of them died en route.
Once they arrived in the New World, however, living proved to be much more difficult than the trip over. That first winter was hard, the snow was heavy, and by the time spring arrived, more than sixty of their number had died. Over the next few months, and through their own perseverance, along with friendship from the Native Americans, their crops flourished, and they were able to store enough food for the coming winter. In mid-October of 1621, Governor William Bradford called for a day of thanksgiving to be shared with the Native Americans. For three days they sang and celebrated and thanked God for his blessings. That's one of the misconceptions of Thanksgiving ... that the Pilgrims thanked the Native Americans. In truth, the Pilgrims gathered to thank God.
Now imagine that! After a rugged, two-month trip, and a brutal winter that killed half their group, they celebrated and thanked God for his blessings! And the next year, when the harvest wasn't nearly so plentiful, and they had to share their short supply of food with newly arriving Pilgrims, they thanked God again. And the third year, when sun and drought scorched their crops, they gathered the community on November 29, 1623, for another day of thanksgiving and praise.
Thanksgiving has never been about wealth or health or comfort or prosperity. It has always been about thanking God for being there ... in times of plenty and in times of want ... in times of joy and in times of sorrow. Though the Pilgrims had difficult lives, they never lost sight of the God who loved them and traveled with them to a new land.
If you are looking for another remarkable example, at about the same time in history, then consider a Lutheran pastor by the name of Martin Rinkart. As the only pastor in Eilenburg, Germany, during famine, pestilence, and the Thirty Years War, Rinkart conducted 4,500 funerals in one year -- 1637 -- sometimes burying as many as fifty people in a single day. One of the people he buried was his own wife. So, in light of all this hardship, what was the only hymn that Pastor Martin Rinkart ever had published? This is the first stanza:
Now thank we all our God,
with heart and hands and voices.
Who wondrous things has done,
in whom this world rejoices;
who from our mothers' arms
has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love,
and still is ours today.1
They were not "fair weather followers," these seventeenth-century people. They were faithful people who endured great difficulty, and they were grateful to a God who promised to meet them in whatever circumstances their lives encountered. They were concerned for their health and life and survival. They grieved the loss of loved ones. They worked hard at doing everything humanly possible to meet their survival needs. But they also trusted God ... and they thanked God ... as they met the uncertain future with confidence.
In the gospel today, Jesus offers us a simple invitation: Don't worry. "Do not worry what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, or with what you shall clothe yourselves, for your Father in heaven knows that you have need of all these things." It is not pie-in-the-sky theology that exhorts us to run naively into the future. It does not suggest that our lives will be free from burden and filled with prosperity. It is, rather, this: that whatever bounty or blessing your table holds -- or doesn't hold -- the God of grace is already there.
To be thankful this time of year may have nothing to do with financial blessings whatsoever. We live in the richest nation in the world, and still people worry! We worry about getting or keeping our jobs. We worry about whether the income we have now will be sufficient. We worry about whether retirement funds will be there when it's time for us to retire. While the rest of the world wonders if their currency will hold any value next week, we are caught up in worrying about T-bills and mutual funds. Financial security is not a bad thing ... it's just that it's ... not secure! In the end, the only truly secure thing in this life is Jesus Christ. Everything else -- everything else -- is up for grabs.
One of the great promises in all of scripture is couched in our gospel lesson today. For right after Jesus tells us not to worry, he tells us why we don't have to. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all the other stuff will be taken care of." That is, I think, what the Pilgrims did. It is what Martin Rinkart did. It is also what we have been invited to do: to seek first the kingdom of God, and not worry about anything else in this life.
Today when you sit at the table, or tonight when your heads hit the pillow, I hope you will remember this: Don't worry. Don't worry! The God of creation will never leave you. And that's a promise. Thanks be to God. Amen.
____________
1. "Now Thank We All Our God," words by Martin Rinkart, 1636, translated by Catherine Winkworth, 1858, in the public domain.
Now having said all of that, I predict that there will be a lot of worrying today. Children will worry that their favorite pie will be in short supply and they will have to eat Grandpa's mincemeat! Football fans will worry (unnecessarily, I might add) that the Vikings will lose and the Packers might win! But I fear that the bulk of the worrying will be done by those who prepare the Thanksgiving meals. They will worry that the turkey will not be moist, or that the potatoes will be lumpy, or the piecrust will be flat, or the table decorations will be shabby. Because they take their hostess responsibilities very seriously, they want the day to be perfect. So they worry.
Now, each of us can recall at least one Thanksgiving dinner disaster. I remember hearing about the woman who made pumpkin pie and then set it on a shelf in the garage to cool. When she went to serve it, she noticed that the cat had swiped its paw across the top of the pie for a taste, but because it was the only pumpkin pie she had, she smoothed the surface and she served it anyway.
Late that evening, when all the guests had gone home, she went out to the garage and found the family cat lying dead on the garage floor. Assuming the worst -- that the cat had somehow been poisoned by the pie -- she called each of her guests and they each went to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped. She was humiliated by having to confess to them that she served a pie that the cat had pawed. The next morning, there was a knock at the door, and there stood her neighbor. "Say, I didn't want to disturb you last evening when you had dinner guests, but your cat was hit by a car, so I just laid him on the garage floor for you. Have you found him yet?" Like I said, we each have our Thanksgiving disasters.
It occurs to me that we have come a long way since that first Thanksgiving Day. You probably remember the story on Thanksgiving's origin. In 1620, a boatload of 110 people left Holland for the New World and freedom. Forty-four of them were religious, so they were referred to as "the saints." The other 66 were not at all religious, so they were called "the strangers." But together, these saints and strangers made the difficult 65-day voyage across the Atlantic, and only one of them died en route.
Once they arrived in the New World, however, living proved to be much more difficult than the trip over. That first winter was hard, the snow was heavy, and by the time spring arrived, more than sixty of their number had died. Over the next few months, and through their own perseverance, along with friendship from the Native Americans, their crops flourished, and they were able to store enough food for the coming winter. In mid-October of 1621, Governor William Bradford called for a day of thanksgiving to be shared with the Native Americans. For three days they sang and celebrated and thanked God for his blessings. That's one of the misconceptions of Thanksgiving ... that the Pilgrims thanked the Native Americans. In truth, the Pilgrims gathered to thank God.
Now imagine that! After a rugged, two-month trip, and a brutal winter that killed half their group, they celebrated and thanked God for his blessings! And the next year, when the harvest wasn't nearly so plentiful, and they had to share their short supply of food with newly arriving Pilgrims, they thanked God again. And the third year, when sun and drought scorched their crops, they gathered the community on November 29, 1623, for another day of thanksgiving and praise.
Thanksgiving has never been about wealth or health or comfort or prosperity. It has always been about thanking God for being there ... in times of plenty and in times of want ... in times of joy and in times of sorrow. Though the Pilgrims had difficult lives, they never lost sight of the God who loved them and traveled with them to a new land.
If you are looking for another remarkable example, at about the same time in history, then consider a Lutheran pastor by the name of Martin Rinkart. As the only pastor in Eilenburg, Germany, during famine, pestilence, and the Thirty Years War, Rinkart conducted 4,500 funerals in one year -- 1637 -- sometimes burying as many as fifty people in a single day. One of the people he buried was his own wife. So, in light of all this hardship, what was the only hymn that Pastor Martin Rinkart ever had published? This is the first stanza:
Now thank we all our God,
with heart and hands and voices.
Who wondrous things has done,
in whom this world rejoices;
who from our mothers' arms
has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love,
and still is ours today.1
They were not "fair weather followers," these seventeenth-century people. They were faithful people who endured great difficulty, and they were grateful to a God who promised to meet them in whatever circumstances their lives encountered. They were concerned for their health and life and survival. They grieved the loss of loved ones. They worked hard at doing everything humanly possible to meet their survival needs. But they also trusted God ... and they thanked God ... as they met the uncertain future with confidence.
In the gospel today, Jesus offers us a simple invitation: Don't worry. "Do not worry what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, or with what you shall clothe yourselves, for your Father in heaven knows that you have need of all these things." It is not pie-in-the-sky theology that exhorts us to run naively into the future. It does not suggest that our lives will be free from burden and filled with prosperity. It is, rather, this: that whatever bounty or blessing your table holds -- or doesn't hold -- the God of grace is already there.
To be thankful this time of year may have nothing to do with financial blessings whatsoever. We live in the richest nation in the world, and still people worry! We worry about getting or keeping our jobs. We worry about whether the income we have now will be sufficient. We worry about whether retirement funds will be there when it's time for us to retire. While the rest of the world wonders if their currency will hold any value next week, we are caught up in worrying about T-bills and mutual funds. Financial security is not a bad thing ... it's just that it's ... not secure! In the end, the only truly secure thing in this life is Jesus Christ. Everything else -- everything else -- is up for grabs.
One of the great promises in all of scripture is couched in our gospel lesson today. For right after Jesus tells us not to worry, he tells us why we don't have to. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all the other stuff will be taken care of." That is, I think, what the Pilgrims did. It is what Martin Rinkart did. It is also what we have been invited to do: to seek first the kingdom of God, and not worry about anything else in this life.
Today when you sit at the table, or tonight when your heads hit the pillow, I hope you will remember this: Don't worry. Don't worry! The God of creation will never leave you. And that's a promise. Thanks be to God. Amen.
____________
1. "Now Thank We All Our God," words by Martin Rinkart, 1636, translated by Catherine Winkworth, 1858, in the public domain.
