For some reason it is tough to maintain a spirit of gratitude.We can pull it off at Thanksgiving (if the dinner is good and the year was semi-OK).We can pull off a spirit of thanksgiving when faced with our fortunate state: when a medical test returns negative; when we make it home safe from a stormy winter’s drive; when we hear of a neighbors misfortune; we make it through a stock-market correction without losing everything.But when the crisis is over— our gratitude fades.
I remember overhearing a conversation between my brother-in-law and my father one day, in which my brother-in-law related how, early one morning and not fully awake, he pulled up to an intersection in his car, stopped, and began to pull out onto the highway turning left.He apparently wasn’t paying full attention since he slipped into the left lane as he turned.A car was approaching quickly and he pulled his car back into his lane—narrowly avoiding a head-on collision!At this point in the conversation my brother-in-law said, “Boy, I was really thankful there for a while!”To this, my father replied, “But you got over it, right.”
My father said it as a joke and has a commentary on our ability as humans, (all of us, not just my brother-in-law) to “get over” our gratitude relatively quickly once the danger has passed and we return to life as normal.
Sadly, the thankfulness and resolutions we hold in our hearts and minds at times like that do fade.We “get over it”, unless… we consciously ritualize it and rehearse it somehow.This, I believe, is part of the wisdom and gift of liturgy and religion; the prayer of thanksgiving we offer at communion and other times rehearses not only reasons for our gratitude— but also reminds us of God’s grace and abundance, God’s love in Christ for the whole world, and puts us into a wonderful story with an identity and purpose.So we ritualize God’s story to remember and let it shape our souls.There is a deep spiritual wisdom to this; “when a people forget their past, they lose their present and their future.”[1]
Another way to get into this is to tell an old story about a farmer was paid a visit by one of his city relatives one day.Before dinner the farmer bowed his head and said a prayer of thanks.His “sophisticated” relative jeered:“This is old fashioned; nobody with an education prays at the table anymore.”
The farmer admitted that the practice was old and even allowed that there were some on his farm who did not pray before their meals.The city slicker felt justified and asked, “So enlightenment has reached the farm.Tell me, who are these wise ones who do not pray?”The farmer replied, “My pigs.”
We’ve lost touch with so much of the ground of our lives in terms of lasting values, practices that shape us (like Sabbath keeping), and identity as we have hitched our boat to the latest technology or fad.We ignore the wisdom of the past in favor of data, innovation, technology, trends and distraction.
On the National Public Radio’s program “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” they offered recently a fake news report that offers a true commentary on this trend of opting for the transient over the transcendent.The pseudo-report pertains to the discovery of a new mental disorder that afflicts those persons with smartphones— you’ve heard of the “apps” that they can download to their phones to help them with thousands of different tasks.“Apps” is techno-talk for “application” or program.The new disorder is called Appsberger’s Syndrome.The story ran like this:
“Sufferers of Appsberger’s are inclined to download and install compulsive amounts of applications and information to accomplish tasks they can already do themselves or live without entirely. ‘He uses his GPS to drive home to a house he’s lived in for 12 years. He’d rather read a movie review on Flixter than actually see the movie. His wife left him after not making direct eye contact with him for 14 months.’ The smarter his phone got, the worse his life became.
“The only way to treat Appsberger’s, according to Dr. Wolfman, is with learned behavior therapy.
“Fortunately, there’s an app for that.”
Our Hebrew ancestors understood this temptation for the latest and the need for the substantial, lasting, eternal values and so developed ritual reminders—prayers, recitations, psalms, offerings.Our First Lesson today is one of the most important in the entire Bible.
The situation was that after 39 years, eleven months and one week in the wilderness, the Israelites gathered at the eastern bluffs of the Jordan River Valley.After all those years of struggle and travel, they look across at the western blue hills and pastures of the Promised Land at last!Soon they will cross over and settle in the land.They must have been overwhelmed with gratitude for God’s deliverance, and so vowed to remember the gift of land and be thankful for it forever.
So they created a ritual, a liturgical app, if you will, for this remembrance— the first fruits offering. The first 10% of the barley crop in the late spring was offered in gratitude for the gift of land, the first of the fruits that ripened on the vine were brought with a ribbon on the branches.They rehearsed their history, harking back to Jacob, the “Wandering Aramean” (from northern Syria) who represents them.The story includes their finding refuge at first in Egypt and then their enslavement there.God’s deliverance from that oppression is included with allusions to a miraculous intervention at the Reed Sea.Finally, they felt God’s bringing them to, and gifting to them, this new land.
The offering each year was to keep them from “getting over it,” to maintain their gratitude, their history, their identity as God’s people.It shaped them and us in its retelling; it rooted them in memory, they were shaped by a journey, they were defined by joy and celebration—an embrace that extended to include other “wanderers”— aliens in their midst—who in fact probably included the Canaanites who lived there before them.
A ritual of remembrance and thanksgiving—a liturgical app— to maintain identity, gratitude, joy, and mission to outsiders…not bad.
Two apps…two applications for our use today:First of all, possession of the land was a prerequisite for the offering of first fruits—can’t have barley or fruit from cultivated trees if you are nomadic.In terms of your life, what is your “land”?How has God blessed you?Delivered you?Gifted you?What does your land-blessing look like, and what might your first fruit offering look like?
While I don’t own much land in the geographical sense, I am immensely rich, thankful and blessed with my home, and my wife Linda who loves me and helps me be myself, only better.I am blessed with three children who are wonders in their own right— thoughtful, caring, gifted, open.My “land” is the wonderful journey of my life, with valleys and mountains, filled with experiences and people that have brought such a richness and joy to me.And finding myself in this congregation with such caring, healthy, capable, and spirit-filled people like you—I am rich beyond my wildest expectations!That’s my “land.”From those gifts, Linda and I gladly give “first fruits.”
The other application of this involves us as a congregation.As our spiritual ancestors recited their story, we can too.It might go something like this:
“A wondering congregation was our story, we found ourselves in a changing neighborhood, no place to park our chariots, and a boiler & building that was getting old and troublesome.Yet God blessed us with new people and families, mighty and populous so that a room is not to be had on some nights, nor a parking space to be found.We cried to the Lord, with opened hearts in a spirit of discernment and found that God has delivered us to the bluff, where we can see our new land and imagine our new home and base of ministry to all people.So today we bring the first fruits—the first of the first fruits, and celebrate together with those who will join us in that new future.No longer aliens or outsiders…they will be our sisters and brothers!”
Sometimes our liturgical apps are found in hymns.I’d like to close with this one as it summarizes so well where we’ve been today.
1.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.
2.O may this bounteous God
through all our life be near us,
with ever joyful hearts
and blessed peace to cheer us;
and keep us still in grace,
and guide us when perplexed;
and free us from all ills,
in this world and the next.
3.All praise and thanks to God
the Father now be given;
the Son, and him who reigns
with them in highest heaven;
the one eternal God,
whom earth and heaven adore;
for thus it was, is now,
and shall be evermore.
So be it.Amen.
[1] Archie Smith Jr., Feasting On the Word, Year C, Volume 2, p. 26 & 28.
