11/20/60

Scripture: I Timothy 4: 1-10

Text: I Timothy 4: 4,5; “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for then it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.”

The Pilgrim Fathers in our nation set aside their season for feasting and thanksgiving nearly a year after they had landed on New England shores. The first season had been exceedingly difficult, yet rewarding to those who survived. Nearly half of the company had perished in the deprivation and severity of the first winter. But the survivors had planted crops and improved their shelters. Not all of the seeds had grown well, but some had. And the native corn had brought a good yield, thanks to the advice of friendly Indians.

And so the Pilgrims set aside a time of thanksgiving for their first year’s harvest. For it is done in Britain and it had been done for centuries by the Israelites. But it was new to these shores of the New World. And it has been continued, in some form, ever since. Of course it did not become an official national holiday until proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln, two centuries later. But, for far longer than its history as a legal holiday, Thanksgiving has been a custom of people in this country at the conclusion of the harvest.

Practically speaking, the day proclaimed by the President is a national holiday. In much of our country it is a harvest festival. And the pattern is one of feasting. The high point is the family-centered meal in which over-stuffing is as much in vogue as it was on the first occasion. Yet it is doubtful that it is the same for many of us. There was a spiritual consciousness at those Pilgrim tables that stemmed from the suffering they had known. There is a tradition (I do not know whether or not it is actual history) that those original celebrators had just a few kernels of corn on each plate, as a reminder that they had known the time when each one had only that amount of food per meal. How great should be their thanks, and was, for the abundance of the harvest!

Certainly the way to appreciate daily bread, or anything else, is to know what it is like to do without it. Someone has suggested that we would all be more keenly alive to our abundant blessings if each of us were to abstain from eating food in a 48-hour fast. It would make vivid to us, not only the blessing of our plenty, but also the plight of those millions who never know what is really enough food.

But we have not, most of us, had to tighten our belts in recent times. Actually, ours is an opposite problem. One of our major concerns in this country is cutting down calories. And our agricultural midwest is plagued with the problem of overproduction. In our over-fed nation, Thanksgiving Day is the time when we overstuff ourselves more than usual. Do we know how to be thankful for the abundance?

Another difficulty, if we may call it such, is the fact that Thanksgiving, in its original spirit, has been a rural festival. Large sections of our nation are still rural. But we have become increasingly an industrial society. Yet the abundance of the fall harvest is at the heart of our celebration. And as a harvest festival, thanksgiving is more nearly universal than specifically American.

Well, should we not raise objection to all of this emphasis on harvest and daily bread? Is not that too mundane? After all, man does not live by bread alone! Should we not raise our sights above the physical necessities of living, and be more spiritually minded, taking special care to thank God for the blessings He has given to our souls?

It appears obvious that we ought to be grateful for all blessings of every sort, and certainly for the blessings of the spirit. But, from a Christian point of view, that does not exclude, nor belittle, the emphasis on gratitude for the fruits of the earth. This too is in the realm of creation, and nature is God’s mediator to us. God has ordained our daily bread to us. He created us with a need for it. And gratitude for its provision should be a stimulus to Thanksgiving for all of us who partake of daily bread.

Thanksgiving is one of the pure and noble activities of mankind. It is a recognition of the Creator, a confession of faith in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. As we approach our national day of Thanksgiving this year, with a purpose to thank God for the blessings of ordinary living, let us examine God’s plan for His creation here.

William Hulme has pointed out that God has made the blessings of life both desirable and sacramental.

1) God has made our common, ordinary living desirable. He is the wise Creator who works at both ends of the creative process. He creates what is needed and the desire for it. As human beings, we are placed in the midst of His creation. Our bodies, for example, need food to function. God created the food; in addition He created the appetite for food within the body so that these two things would come together. He created us as part of a human race that needs to perpetuate itself. So he has made people as men and women. Within each is a form of attraction for the other so that, among people. we have marriage and the family. God Himself is needed for our human living. So, by His Holy Spirit, he had placed within us a hunger and thirst for Him. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.” [Psalm 42: 1]

All of this makes wholesome living a part of His natural creation. But there comes sin into this picture to spoil it all. Instead of use, we have abuse. Instead of worshipping the Creator, we worship that which is created. Sin is foreign to God’s purpose. It is a perversion of what is basically good. It makes people capable of abusing -- misusing -- what is basically good -- willfully; even habitually.

Out of this mis-use there develops a religious perversion, so that creation itself becomes an object of mistrust. And we may get the idea that it is wrong to use and enjoy what some people abuse. This is an erroneous reaction to sin. It is like the swing of a pendulum, going far to one side. When it swings back from (in this case, the error) it goes far past center to the other side (another error). And so, in reaction to periods when some people enjoy God’s creation to an abuse, we find some religious folk becoming ascetic to it and thinking that enjoyment itself is wrong.

The stern English Puritan father of Sir Walter Scott illustrates this in a little family incident. The Scott family was at table and had been served some soup. The young boy, Walter, was enjoying his soup with obvious relish, smacking his lips with enthusiasm. His father’s face became more and more stern until, reaching over he picked up the boy’s bowl and dashed the soup in his face. “Food,” said the stern father, “is meant to eat, not to enjoy!” Does not this attitude deny the whole doctrine of a good creation? It contradicts a first article of faith, that God himself is the maker of heaven and earth and wants us properly to enjoy His gifts.

When Paul was writing to Timothy, he said: “Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for then it is consecrated by the word of God in prayer.” [I Timothy 4: 4, 5]. When we receive with thanksgiving, do we not consecrate that which we receive by the Word of God and by prayer?

By God’s Word, his redemption, He brings us into fellowship with Him. By our prayer, we exercise this fellowship in our expression of thanks.

Paul lived at a time when there was great controversy over whether or not one might eat food (meat) that had been offered before idols. Some of the Christians in that early church said that Christians could buy meat that had been offered before idols and eat it without any adverse scruples of conscience. Others said, No, it was a grievous wrong to do so. Said Paul, “If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks?”

God desires our ordinary life to be enjoyable. The writer of Ecclesiastes had said: “Every man to whom God has given to accept his lot and find enjoyment in his toil .... this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.” [Ecclesiastes 5: 19, 20]. From the need for food and family has come the family meal, where we eat together as a sign of our fellowship.

Our Thanksgiving celebration is, in a sense, a love feast, with as much emphasis on the family ties about the table as upon the food on the table. The early church had what its members called a “love feast.” At least one branch of the church (Moravian) still perpetuates the custom of the “love feast.” To the need for food and family is added recognition of the need for God.

The celebration of eating together as the family of God is climaxed in the celebration of the Lord’s supper. Jesus used food at table, in terms of the bread and the wine, as a means of joining each to the other and each to God. These reminders of his complete giving of self became the church’s thanksgiving meal. Indeed, Thanksgiving is one of the basic meanings of the Lord’s supper.

God has made common ordinary things of life desirable, to be used rightly and gratefully.

2) And God has made this common ordinary living sacramental. One idea of the word “sacrament” is that earthly things become sacred when they serve to communicate heavenly gifts. We accept the definition of a sacrament as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” The outward sign may be something that can be seen, touched, measured. But its significance is the inward, immeasurable spiritual truth which it represents.

When we think of the sacraments of the church, we think of baptism and the Lord’s supper. Here, Christ has chosen elements of God’s natural creation -- water in baptism, and bread and wine in the Lord’s supper -- to bring us to heavenly elements -- forgiveness and salvation.

From the basic idea of the sacraments in baptism and the Lord’s supper, the Christian looks out to the creation as a whole. In a sense, he sees through the earthly to the heavenly in all of life. In material things he receives the spiritual. The sunlight of a beautiful day brings him the light of God’s presence. Food is an evidence of God’s providing for all of life.

The Christian prays, quite simply as our Lord taught us to do, “Give us this day our daily bread.” [Matthew 6: 11]. But if he is alert to God’s goodness, he also has a desire that God’s gift of daily bread come to all mankind. And, indeed, it comes often even to the wicked, without our prayer. But are we not led, in this petition, to acknowledge our daily bread as His gift, and to receive it with thanksgiving?

In daily bread, indeed in all creation, we see God the Creator. The common created things of life bring about the experience of fellowship with God. That which brings about this fellowship with God through His created things, is thanksgiving. And so we see, at least part of the time, the place of ordinary things as a means for bringing about the expression of thanksgiving.

Growing in the Christian life means, partly, growing in the spontaneity with which we participate in all common activities with thanksgiving. So we acknowledge our Creator, we receive God in all our ways. Did not Jesus say, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things that you see?” [Luke 10: 23].

But our tragedy is that we do not always see them. We become short sighted and see only the things, but not God through the things. This is the curse of our secularized way of living --- thinking, and acting, and feeling as if there were no God. Meeting life with our own worry, instead of with God’s joy. We lose the marvel and wonder in life, perceiving so little in what we see, because we are looking for so little and missing so much. In this self-imposed limitation, we put in time to get the day over with; seek some little dash of entertainment to stall off boredom; forget to look for fresh adventure with God.

We people are living longer, on an average, today than people of earlier days. But we do not necessarily live fuller lives. What should it profit a man if he live ten more years, if he isn’t really living, anyway?

One of the most intensely useful lives I have ever known was crowded into a 40-year span, 28 years of which were borrowed out of the most precarious kind of delicate health --- and they were the most abundantly productive years! He lived more, and served better, than many a man who lives to be twice forty!

Instead of blindly losing the sacredness of the family meal, squandering it in pettiness and bickering and complaining, developing indigestion of the soul, let us leave room for the larger vision of what God may lead us to see and desire. Let it be a sacred enjoyment of each other and of Him!

We even let our worship life become affected with near-sightedness. So often we are too scattered to concentrate, too concerned with much to give ourselves over to enjoying the presence of God. We get cumbered with many things, like Martha, in the New Testament, whereas her sister, Mary, was a relaxed and eager hearer of what Jesus was saying to them. We get over-concerned with goals that are selling us short.

We may become so regretful over the past, and so anxious over the future, that we fail to really live in the present! We become blinded to the present opportunities for doing good! Why should we be guilt-ridden when God has promised forgiveness to the repentant? Why should we be tormented with anxiety when God gives the peace that passes all understanding to those who are even in the midst of great trial? Why should we fill up on envy and resentment, when, with trust in God, we can show instead, love and understanding to other people?

To what are we devoting this life that is so surely slipping by? How much good can we squeeze out of each passing moment, redeeming the evil days that surround us?

Thanks be to God, every present moment becomes a new opportunity! We do not have to stay the way we are. We can live not alone by things and bread, but by eternal things and the bread of life! “Behold, now is the accepted time.” [2 Corinthians 6: 2]. Now is the only time we really have!

For the Christian, let all of life be a sacrament of joyful living in what God says, and wants us to be. Let our thanking keep us in the light of His presence and His guiding. And let us see Him in the common things of living for which we give thanks. These are the words of a hymn:

This is my Father’s world,

and to my listening ears

All nature sings, and round me rings

the music of the spheres.

This is my Father’s world,

He shines in all that’s fair;

In the rustling grass I hear him pass,

He speaks to me everywhere.

He has spoken to me, and to you; in Jesus Christ; in his word, the Bible; at the table of communion; in daily bread.

O let us continually give thanks, for He is good.

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, November 20, 1960.

Imiola Church, November 16, 1969.

Waioli Hiuia Church, November 21, 1971.