Thanksgiving Eve sermon
FOR GOD HIMSELF
I Timothy 2:1-8
Thanksgiving Eve
November 25, 2009
The Gospel appointed to be read on Thanksgiving fairly drips with Law. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Law. But good Lutherans know that the Law can’t save us. And there’s something else that the Law can’t do: it can’t make us thankful.
To be sure, it reproves ingratitude. It points out to us how much we have to be thankful for. But while the Law can accuse us and make us feel guilty for not being thankful, gratitude is beyond its power to create.
But as I said last year- as I’ve said Thanksgiving after Thanksgiving for years- there is Gospel in today’s Gospel.. Only one leper returned to give thanks. The other nine- the ones who stand for you and me, who fail so miserably to be grateful to God for clothing, shoes, meat drink, house, home, wife, children, and all His other blessings- went their merry way just as we do, with nary a thought to return and say thanks.
But nine lepers were healed- and nine lepers stayed healed! Grateful or not, there’s not a word in our Gospel lesson that suggests that their leprosy returned because they weren’t grateful. And the same is true of us: despite our massive failure to give God the gratitude He’s due for all His blessings, He continues to bless us.
And that, is where I’d like to pick the thought up this year, moving from the Gospel to the Epistle
I had a talk with Mark before church a view weeks ago about the bizarre doctrine of God the Eastern Orthodox church has. I won’t go into detail, beyond saying that they deny that God has attributes. They refuse to say, as we in the West do, that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, or any of those other “omni’s” we learned back in confirmation class. He isn’t even merciful, or just, or good. He’s merely God. He is what He is. Heaven, in the Eastern view, is how those of a certain condition of soul experience His eternal presence. Hell is how others experience it. But to the Eastern church, heaven and hell are the same place. And God’s judgment, they believe, is nothing more or less than how, subjectively, each soul encounters the One Who once told Moses, “I AM THAT I AM.”
There’s a great many problems with this view from a Scriptural point of view. But there is one aspect of Eastern thought on this subject that is undeniably true, and absolutely valid. God, they point out, loves the damned as much as the saved. God, as the Apostle says in our text, is not willing that any should perish. He makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust alike.
As you’ve undoubtedly gathered by now, I’m very impressed with Dr. Steven Hein’s observation to our Christian Doctrine class at River Forest that what Christ will say to those on His Left on the day when, contrary to what our Eastern brothers and sisters teach, He comes precisely to judge the living and the dead can be paraphrased by the words of the hamburger commercial: “Have it your way.” Nobody will go to hell because God wants him there. People go to hell because they refuse to allow God to be merciful to them. God is a lover, not a rapist. Eastern theology aside, he will not force any unwilling soul to spend eternity with Him.
We may recognize ourselves in the person of the Nine. After all, we are no more adequately grateful for God’s blessings than they were. But do we recognize ourselves in Richard Dawkins, the obnoxious and snarky atheist, or in Osama bin Laden, or his Islamofascist cohorts? Do we see ourselves in those who not only don’t return to give thanks, but who refuse to be healed?
But God loves them as much as He loves us. He yearns for the salvation of those who refuse to be healed with a yearning that human words cannot express, and human minds cannot conceive.
I’d like to suggest tonight that we take a page from our Eastern brothers and sisters and meditate, not on the blessings which God showers upon us every day (and for which we are so ungrateful), nor even on the fact that He doesn’t take His blessings back in retaliation. I’d like to suggest that instead we contemplate, not God’s blessings, but God Himself. Yes, God judges. Yes, God condemns. But these, are, as Luther called them, His alien work. It’s foreign to Him. It’s not Who He is.
And who is God? The Eastern Christians are right in saying that human words and human thoughts cannot define Him. So how do we understand what Luther called His proper nature- God as He is in His heart?
Only in one way: by recognizing Him in the bloody mess of a man hanging on a Roman cross and literally experiencing the pangs of hell not only for ungrateful people like you and me, but even for those who refuse to allow His suffering and His death to matter.
God is beyond good. God is beyond gracious. We have more to be grateful for than merely God’s blessings or even His mercy.
We have God Himself. Despite the tragedies which afflict us in this life, and the sufferings and the sorrows, we have as a God One who deserves our love, as St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out, not for what He does, but rather for what He is.
He is love, and blessing, and goodness Himself.
What, Dr. Luther rhetorically asked, does it mean to have a god? A god, he wrote, is whatever we fear, love or trust the most. And it was basic to Luther's understanding of the Ten Commandments- the Law in its most familiar form- that God begins not by threatening the Israelites, but by identifying Himself precisel as "the Lord your God, Who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. What follows is a description of what it is like to be a person whom He has so delivered- of how it is fitting that such a person behave.
What does it mean, Luther continues, if the Lord is your God? It means that your enemies can no more stand against you than Pharoah and his hosts could stand against those who had the Lord as their God. It means that Satan and the world, sin and poverty, sickness and suffering, and all the things we so fear in this life are but empty forms whose threats against us are finally futile, because the Lord is our God- and if the Lord is our God, there is nothing we need to fear. If God is for us, who can be against us?
Guilt at our ingratitude does us little good. No, let Thanksgiving rather be a time to meditate, not on the things God does for us, but rather on the wonder of God Himself. It is that for which we have, after all, the most reason to be grateful: that our Creator, our Judge, and our Protector is the One Who was willing not only to put up with our ingratitude, but to suffer the torments of the damned not merely for us, whom His sacrifice saves, but even to lavish His love upon the ones who refuse to be loved.
There are those who do not have the Lord as their God. But Jesus was willing to suffer the pangs of hell even for those who, in the end, will insist on suffering them themselves. God loves them, too- loves them, and gave Himself for them. He makes the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, and is not willing that any should perish. And even knowing that they would not let Him save them, He emptied Himself, and did all that needed to be done for the salvation even of the lost- those who finally will not let themselves be saved.
But the Lord is our God. We need look for no further reason to be thankful than that alone, because those words embrace all the other blessings of body and soul which He showers upon even ungrateful folk like us.
The Lord is our God- and for Jesus' sake, we, who so little deserve it, are His people despite our ingratitude and our sin. That is quite enough to be grateful for. In fact, in the face of love like that, what can we be but grateful?
I Timothy 2:1-8
Thanksgiving Eve
November 25, 2009
The Gospel appointed to be read on Thanksgiving fairly drips with Law. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Law. But good Lutherans know that the Law can’t save us. And there’s something else that the Law can’t do: it can’t make us thankful.
To be sure, it reproves ingratitude. It points out to us how much we have to be thankful for. But while the Law can accuse us and make us feel guilty for not being thankful, gratitude is beyond its power to create.
But as I said last year- as I’ve said Thanksgiving after Thanksgiving for years- there is Gospel in today’s Gospel.. Only one leper returned to give thanks. The other nine- the ones who stand for you and me, who fail so miserably to be grateful to God for clothing, shoes, meat drink, house, home, wife, children, and all His other blessings- went their merry way just as we do, with nary a thought to return and say thanks.
But nine lepers were healed- and nine lepers stayed healed! Grateful or not, there’s not a word in our Gospel lesson that suggests that their leprosy returned because they weren’t grateful. And the same is true of us: despite our massive failure to give God the gratitude He’s due for all His blessings, He continues to bless us.
And that, is where I’d like to pick the thought up this year, moving from the Gospel to the Epistle
I had a talk with Mark before church a view weeks ago about the bizarre doctrine of God the Eastern Orthodox church has. I won’t go into detail, beyond saying that they deny that God has attributes. They refuse to say, as we in the West do, that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, or any of those other “omni’s” we learned back in confirmation class. He isn’t even merciful, or just, or good. He’s merely God. He is what He is. Heaven, in the Eastern view, is how those of a certain condition of soul experience His eternal presence. Hell is how others experience it. But to the Eastern church, heaven and hell are the same place. And God’s judgment, they believe, is nothing more or less than how, subjectively, each soul encounters the One Who once told Moses, “I AM THAT I AM.”
There’s a great many problems with this view from a Scriptural point of view. But there is one aspect of Eastern thought on this subject that is undeniably true, and absolutely valid. God, they point out, loves the damned as much as the saved. God, as the Apostle says in our text, is not willing that any should perish. He makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust alike.
As you’ve undoubtedly gathered by now, I’m very impressed with Dr. Steven Hein’s observation to our Christian Doctrine class at River Forest that what Christ will say to those on His Left on the day when, contrary to what our Eastern brothers and sisters teach, He comes precisely to judge the living and the dead can be paraphrased by the words of the hamburger commercial: “Have it your way.” Nobody will go to hell because God wants him there. People go to hell because they refuse to allow God to be merciful to them. God is a lover, not a rapist. Eastern theology aside, he will not force any unwilling soul to spend eternity with Him.
We may recognize ourselves in the person of the Nine. After all, we are no more adequately grateful for God’s blessings than they were. But do we recognize ourselves in Richard Dawkins, the obnoxious and snarky atheist, or in Osama bin Laden, or his Islamofascist cohorts? Do we see ourselves in those who not only don’t return to give thanks, but who refuse to be healed?
But God loves them as much as He loves us. He yearns for the salvation of those who refuse to be healed with a yearning that human words cannot express, and human minds cannot conceive.
I’d like to suggest tonight that we take a page from our Eastern brothers and sisters and meditate, not on the blessings which God showers upon us every day (and for which we are so ungrateful), nor even on the fact that He doesn’t take His blessings back in retaliation. I’d like to suggest that instead we contemplate, not God’s blessings, but God Himself. Yes, God judges. Yes, God condemns. But these, are, as Luther called them, His alien work. It’s foreign to Him. It’s not Who He is.
And who is God? The Eastern Christians are right in saying that human words and human thoughts cannot define Him. So how do we understand what Luther called His proper nature- God as He is in His heart?
Only in one way: by recognizing Him in the bloody mess of a man hanging on a Roman cross and literally experiencing the pangs of hell not only for ungrateful people like you and me, but even for those who refuse to allow His suffering and His death to matter.
God is beyond good. God is beyond gracious. We have more to be grateful for than merely God’s blessings or even His mercy.
We have God Himself. Despite the tragedies which afflict us in this life, and the sufferings and the sorrows, we have as a God One who deserves our love, as St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out, not for what He does, but rather for what He is.
He is love, and blessing, and goodness Himself.
What, Dr. Luther rhetorically asked, does it mean to have a god? A god, he wrote, is whatever we fear, love or trust the most. And it was basic to Luther's understanding of the Ten Commandments- the Law in its most familiar form- that God begins not by threatening the Israelites, but by identifying Himself precisel as "the Lord your God, Who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. What follows is a description of what it is like to be a person whom He has so delivered- of how it is fitting that such a person behave.
What does it mean, Luther continues, if the Lord is your God? It means that your enemies can no more stand against you than Pharoah and his hosts could stand against those who had the Lord as their God. It means that Satan and the world, sin and poverty, sickness and suffering, and all the things we so fear in this life are but empty forms whose threats against us are finally futile, because the Lord is our God- and if the Lord is our God, there is nothing we need to fear. If God is for us, who can be against us?
Guilt at our ingratitude does us little good. No, let Thanksgiving rather be a time to meditate, not on the things God does for us, but rather on the wonder of God Himself. It is that for which we have, after all, the most reason to be grateful: that our Creator, our Judge, and our Protector is the One Who was willing not only to put up with our ingratitude, but to suffer the torments of the damned not merely for us, whom His sacrifice saves, but even to lavish His love upon the ones who refuse to be loved.
There are those who do not have the Lord as their God. But Jesus was willing to suffer the pangs of hell even for those who, in the end, will insist on suffering them themselves. God loves them, too- loves them, and gave Himself for them. He makes the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, and is not willing that any should perish. And even knowing that they would not let Him save them, He emptied Himself, and did all that needed to be done for the salvation even of the lost- those who finally will not let themselves be saved.
But the Lord is our God. We need look for no further reason to be thankful than that alone, because those words embrace all the other blessings of body and soul which He showers upon even ungrateful folk like us.
The Lord is our God- and for Jesus' sake, we, who so little deserve it, are His people despite our ingratitude and our sin. That is quite enough to be grateful for. In fact, in the face of love like that, what can we be but grateful?
Comments