WHERE ARE YOU LOOKING FOR THANKSGIVING ?
Deuteronomy 8:1-10, Philippians 4:4-9
About 20 years ago, I read a story in one of our Presbyterian publications about a women going through a crisis of faith. Her story begins one Sunday at the early worship service in her church. Like most Sundays, she attends worship, listens to the sermon and for communion proceeds to the front of the church to receive the bread and cup by intinction--meaning you pull off a piece of bread from a common loaf and dip the piece into a common cup.
In this church in the early worship service, the congregation stands in a circle around the communion table to receive communion. As she is waiting for communion, the woman notices that she is standing next to an unfamiliar person. The stranger is a woman who is dirty and disheveled. She is wearing an oversized, dirty and worn-out winter coat. Her winter boots are too big and muddy. Her face is dirty and her hair is messy. When the loaf of bread is passed to this stranger, she rips off a piece with her dirty hands and passes it to the women recounting this story. Her crisis of faith starts when she tears off her piece of communion bread and instead of eating it she slips the bread into the pocket of her jacket. She cannot bear to eat the bread after the dirty hands of the woman standing next to her has handled it. She is fearful of getting sick and fearful of this strange woman.
She spends the rest of the service and most of that Sunday thinking about the woman--who is she, where does she live, is she homeless, what is her story? She spends a considerable amount of time contemplating her decision not to eat the communion bread. She ends up feeling guilty about her decision and wondering if anyone noticed what she had done? She hopes that the woman did not notice that she slipped the communion bread into her pocket. Her crisis of faith deepens when she realizes she is afraid she has not lived up to her expectations of how a Christian should respond with compassion to those who are obviously in need. And that fear begins to consume her.
Most of us have experienced fearful times in our lives. We know that fear eats away at our self-confidence, our confidence in everything and everyone. I wonder how fearful are those Israelites that we have just read about in chapter 8 of Deuteronomy. Moses is trying to prepare the Israelites for life in Canaan, which has been their long sought-after destination for the past forty years. Moses explains that part of God's purposes in having the people travel through the wilderness was "to humble you and to test you."
Now that could really make us fearful--thinking that God is testing us. So does God test us? I think we have to be careful when we ask that question and how we understand that question. In this passage in Deuteronomy and elsewhere the authors of the Bible use the language of testing to describe one way we relate to God. What does it mean when people say that God is testing them? Was God testing the women I just spoke about? I know people who assume that everything that happens to them is a test from God. Any illness, any difficulty, "God must be testing me." We should be careful with this talk of God testing us. I don’t believe that every event in our lives is a pop quiz sent directly from God. In my belief system, I cannot comprehend that the death of a family member or friend from a tragic accident or debilitating disease is a test from God. I don’t know if any of us can explain why certain things happen. We have difficulty answering the why question, but surely these things do not happen just simply so God can test us.
When people see life as a test from God are they saying that God so ordered the universe that all events are predetermined? Or does the biblical language of God testing us a way of saying that things are not set up in advance? I think the biblical language of testing leads us to believe that God has not already filled in all the answers. We have choices to make; we can change things.
In the passage from Deuteronomy, the Israelites have just spent forty years in the wilderness. What this experience tested was the ability of the people to handle adversity. What would this time of deprivation do to the Israelites? Could they keep their faith in the desert? Would this wilderness experience keep them from living within the promises of God? Listen again to these words spoken by Moses, “For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing….”
Moses is speaking to people who are about to have their dreams come true. The time of deprivation is behind them. They will soon enter the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, their destination for all of these years. Here they will find life-giving water, beauty, and prosperity. In the wilderness, they were constantly on the move; here they can put down roots.
Entering into a land where you will lack nothing sounds like a test that anyone could pass. However, having the material things we want does not guarantee that our faith will prosper. We can be tempted even, or maybe especially, when everything is going our way. The Israelites had lived with 40 years of adversity while wandering in the wilderness and had known generations of adversity while slaves in Egypt. And now prosperity is at hand.
But we all know that life is never as simple as adversity and prosperity. Even in our darkest times, we have blessings. Even when we have enough material things, life can drop trouble in our laps. Even the richest and most powerful people can feel heartache. The real test is to look for God's hand in our lives whatever our circumstances. I will paraphrase John Calvin at this point; he talked about looking for the fingerprints of God in the history of the world and in our lives. Whether life is going our way, or whether we are stumbling around in some wilderness, we can open ourselves in gratitude to God.
We can choose not to look for God, but if we choose to look for God's hand in our lives our adversities, our fears, anxieties will not crush us.And that is what Moses is doing. He is encouraging the people to remember what God has done for them. He is encouraging the Israelites to invite God into their midst, the same God who brought them this far and will be with them from now on. Moses is asking the people to allow the same God who offered them help to provide them now with hope.
"Remember the Lord your God," says Moses. Remember to call upon the same God who released you from slavery in Egypt and guided you into the Promised Land. But it is more than just remembering and recalling the acts of God. The Israelites are being asked to bring into the present the blessings of their past! Remember that you were tested in wilderness. You were hungry but God fed you with manna. Even though you were in the wilderness for 40 years, your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell. In those times of distress, you did find comfort in what God provided. So now it is both fitting and right to give God thanks and praise.
And it is fitting and right to give thanks and praise to God when we have received comfort and hope in times of distress and not to forget God’s presence in our lives when we have been uncomfortable with life’s situations.
There is a world of difference between being comforted and being comfortable, a difference as stark as the difference between wandering for 40 years in the wilderness and entering a land where you will lack nothing. Being comfortable implies, at least in our culture, an absence of disturbing, distressing features in one’s life. We use words such as content, untroubled, carefree and secure to talk about a comfortable life style. Some us of with comfortable lifestyles try to keep them that way by choosing to avoid the disturbing, distressing and painful things that are part of our world. But to really avoid the ugliness of the world we would have to become very familiar with words like, apathetic, dispassionate, detached and aloof and we would have to be very good at denial. I think it is impossible to be truly comfortable as we live in this world.
But the good news is that God does comfort us--to comfort means to soothe in distress or sorrow, to ease misery or grief; to bring consolation or hope. And that is what God does for us.
Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God," Moses tells the Israelites, "for it is God who has brought you to this place." And it is the same for us; it is God who has brought us to this place, this day.Now back to my story about the woman who is going through a crisis of faith. Remember, she could not bring herself to eat the communion bread after it had handled by the woman standing next to her. Later that week, she sees this dirty and disheveled woman sitting alone in a downtown coffee shop. So she gathers up all her courage, swallows her fear and goes into the coffee shop to find out about this person who was standing next to her this past Sunday in church. The two women spend several hours talking to one another, sharing their stories and eating a meal together.
The woman recounting this story never fully resolved her crisis of faith. She never felt comfortable about how she reacted to the women during communion but did find some comfort when she spent time getting to know the women.
So what of us this Sunday before Thanksgiving. Are we prepared to immerse ourselves in this journey on which God has called us. Prepared or not, it is time to continue on with the journey. There are people here who need our concern and compassion. There is a community out there, which needs to be nourished by the good news of God’s love. There's a world in need of our prayers and the promise of our Savior Jesus. For the same One, who has led us this far, leads us still. Above all, remember that and give thanks. Amen.
November 11 , 2007
The Reverend Mary Alice Lyman
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