Think—Thank—Do
Sermon for the Harvest Thanksgiving, year C
Bible reading: Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Here we are plum in the middle of a city—so why have Harvest Thanksgiving?
In the old days, when the Lutheran church was very much a rural church, harvest festival (as it was then called) was one of the really important Sundays on the church calendar. I have seen old photos where you can hardly see the altar, so bedecked it was with all kind of fruits and vegetables, sheaves of wheat, and so forth. In some places it was also the day when church members made a large monetary offering—often out of the annual wheat or wool cheque they had recently received.
Even if some of us have rural roots, we no longer live on the farm; none of us. And because of water restrictions, and also because some of us are not as young and strong as we used to be, we don’t have the big fruit and veggie gardens like we had years ago. Yet I hope you are as glad as I am that we still have harvest thanksgiving. It is good that we place here before our eyes some of the fruits of the earth, water, bread, groceries, arts and crafts, and other symbols of God’s goodness and bounty and blessing. Having these things beautifully presented before our eye helps us to visualise God’s goodness, and encourages us to lift our voices in praise and thanksgiving.
The Psalm today is spot on:
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with thanksgiving … for the Lord is good [and] his steadfast love endures forever.
Yes, thank God!
If you want to thank, you first have to think. The two words are of course related: think—thank; same in German: denken—danken.
Some years ago there was a movie which explored the think/thank relationship. It was called ‘O God!’ and starred George Burns (well into his 80s) as God. God appears to a schoolgirl as an old codger (George Burns in check shirt and golf cap). He tells her that lots of things are going terribly wrong in the world because people are ignoring God—living their lives as if God didn’t exist. So God gives the girl an assignment: she has to think of a little slogan that can be put up on billboards and everywhere; a slogan that will get people tuned into God again.
After some fruitless days the girl came up with a slogan of just two words: ‘THINK GOD!’
How clever! People go around saying (in many cases rather thoughtlessly): Thank God. Change the first word slightly, and you might start a revolution: ‘THINK GOD!’
And how well that fits for us today. If you want to thank God, you first of all have to think God.
And that is precisely what we find in the Old Testament reading for today from Deuteronomy 26. Here we have instructions to the Israelites while they were still in the wilderness about what they should do when they are living in the promised land and they have brought in the harvest.
In ancient Israel harvest thanksgiving was held seven weeks after the beginning of the grain harvest. Because of that time span it was called the Feast of Weeks, but in Greek it was called Pentecost, because that means 50. And then there was another harvest festival called ‘booths’ for the late harvest in Autumn.
What were pious Israelites to do on these harvest festival days? Well, as we heard in the reading, they were to fill a basket with fruits of the earth; they were to go to the sanctuary where God was worshipped; they were to stand before the altar and give the basket to the priest; who was to take it from their hands and set it down before the altar.
And while the priest was doing this, they were to think about all the great things God had done, and recite them in a set way that we would call a creed. So here they have come to make and thank-offering, but the most important think is not the thank-offering itself, but the thoughts about God that go with it.
And what was this ‘think God’ that went along with the ‘thank God’? Well, it was a sort of brief retelling of the story of their salvation.
So the pious Israelite stands there before the altar, and after the priest takes the basket of first-fruits from his hand, he tells the wonderful story of Israel’s salvation, not in ‘they’ language, but in ‘we’ language:
- A wandering Aramean was my ancestor (that’s the Patriarchs of Israel: Abraham, Jacob and his children who went down to Egypt)
- Down to Egypt we went where we were aliens, yet blessed by God and therefore strong and populous
- There the Egyptians oppressed us with hard labour and bondage
- So we cried to God and God heard us
- God delivered us with signs and wonders
- God brought us to this goodly promised land, flowing with milk and honey
- And that’s why I bring these firstfruits of the earth to you, O Lord, because you have given them to me.
Dear friends, there is wonderful encouragement in this story for us to do what Israel before us has done: and that is to think, to thank, and to do our thanks.
Let’s start with the thinking. In the promised land it was actually hard for Israel to remember the God who saved them from slavery in Egypt and gave them the good land to live in. The big temptation was to forget the God of their ancestors and to go for the local gods, the Baals. They were thought to be vigorous bull gods, with power to bestow fertility upon land, people, and animals.
We live in this land of promise, and how we are tempted to turn away from the Lord our God and run after other gods. We have the money god Mammon, we have a god called The Good Life, another called Do-Your-Own-Thing, another called I–Did-It-My-Way, another called Me-My-And-Myself, another called Fame, another called Beauty, another called Power, another called Sport, and so on.
Luther said: That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is truly your god.
So where does that leave all of us? We are tempted to chase after these false gods. And we can fall into the other temptation: just gradually and quietly to ignore God, to shut him out of our lives, until there comes a time when we feel that we don’t really need God at all in our lives.
So, how do we stop from lapsing into the numbing kind of forgetfulness that gives us amnesia about God? As we enjoy the good life this land has to offer, as we hold our basket of abundance, we are to think, to recall, to remember. Remember the mighty acts God has done and still does for us. Remember the story. Remember all the things God did for Israel, as we heard them in this reading. But that is only the beginning of the story. For us there is a greater Exodus, a greater deliverance, a greater salvation, a greater promised land.
Think of all that God has done for us in giving us his dear Son. Here we are between Christmas and Lent—time to think about what it means that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.
Here we see before us on and around the altar all the wonderful blessings and gifts God has given us in realm of nature, but central among them on the altar there is the crucifix—God’s gift to us, God’s Son bleeding and dying for our redemption.
God is not remote and comfortably removed from the pain of the world. God was with Israel as they struggled on their journey to the promised land. God is with us on our journey. God is with you in your pain and struggle. In Jesus, God has borne the pain of the world. Jesus suffered for the sins of the world, for yours and for mine. And more: he broke through the impenetrable wall that would stop us all dead in our tracks: death.
The resurrection means there is hope of really good life in this world, because we die daily to sin and share in the resurrection life of Christ. Every day is not just a new day, but a day which we can live as a new person. And beyond this life there is a greater promised land. The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, a paradise of unimaginable beauty where there is neither scorching heat nor icy blizzard, no Black Saturdays, no tsunamis, earthquakes, fires, floods, no sickness, pain, crying, dying, but only life and love and peace and joy overflowing.
And why is God doing this? Because God is good. God—good; the two words are related, of course. God is the good Creator, Maker of heaven and earth. God is the gracious Father who loves us and cares for us and provides for us abundantly, as we see before us today. God is our Maker and Redeemer. God saw our lostness and our need. So God sent his Son into the world: born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell; the third day her rose again from the dead …
Echoing the creed, of course. And that is the very point. The pious Israelites, handing over their basket of thanksgiving, did their thinking by focussing on the words of a little summary of God’s wonderful deeds. We have the same opportunity. If you want to know what God has done for you, think of the creed. The creed helps us to think of the deeds of God for our salvation, so that we can truly thank the Lord our God.
Think … thank … do. In the liturgy of Holy Communion we hear: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God, and then we say: It is right to give him thanks and praise. But in the Latin it actually says: Let us DO thanks to the Lord our God (gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro).
What can we do? What can we offer God? All that we are, all that we have, is a gift from God. And more: We were lost, and now are found—what a gift! We were dead, but now are alive—what a gift! God has given us everything. We owe him our lives so we can give him our hearts, our selves.
And as a sign of that we can give of ourselves to others. Be a generous person, for Christ’s sake. Be kind. Be helpful. Be unselfish. Come gladly and put something on or at this altar. The truly thankful person does not give God their leftovers, but their firstfruits. Today we celebrate God’s goodness with these tokens and symbols. Sunday by Sunday we have opportunity to return to the Lord the firstfruits of his bounty toward us.
The word of God today encourage us to give thanks. And so does the holy sacrament. It is sometimes called the Eucharist—the giving of thanks. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. Let us give thanks to God for his priceless gift!
says St Paul in 2 Corinthians 9.
The priceless gift is of course God’s own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the true food, the Bread of God that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, as we heard in the Gospel reading. Today we receive him in Word, in Bread and Wine. O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.
Today is a happy day: a good day to think God, to thank God, and to do our thanks.