Matthew 6.25-33

Day of Thanksgiving (Revised Common Lectionary) | 11.25.21 | Matthew 6.25-33 | by Carl Voges |

Passage

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?  And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

And why are you anxious about clothing?  Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?  For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”         [English Standard Version]

“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who himself as a ransom for all…”                                              [1 Timothy 2.5-6a]

                                     In the Name of Christ + Jesus our Lord

It is always work for the Lord’s baptized people to step into a culture’s holiday such as Thanksgiving, trying to figure out the connections that may or may not exist with the Life given us by the Holy Trinity at Baptism.  It is work because of the significant differences between this culture’s life and the Life of the Holy Trinity.  These differences are seen in friends and family members clogging the interstate highways and airports for the holiday while others remain close to home – worshiping, cooking, social communicating, eating and later – shopping!).

Thanksgiving is a national holiday, one initiated by the early settlers in New England, one whose first proclamation was issued by George Washington, one whose proclamations strikingly resumed under Abraham Lincoln during the horrific conditions of the Civil War.

The differences between culture’s understanding of this day and the perspective of the Trinity’s Life persist in our attempts to surface the best of this country’s life while providing dinners for those who live on the culture’s margins.  Running underneath all these cultural and biblical understandings is a vague sense of the good material life available to many people in this country.

Such a sense may speak of the LORD God in a general way, but usually there are no specific mentions of the Father, Son or Holy Spirit (those speaking of thanksgiving in this culture may be inclined to get specific, but they know it is not allowed).  Given this reality, it would be easy for the churches in this culture, particularly those who sense they are to be faithful to the LORD God, to just walk away from culture’s holiday by not worshiping on the day itself or squeezing its emphasis into the previous Sunday or ignoring it completely.  But, at the same time, such churches would be missing a great opportunity to see the Life of the LORD God and his specific actions forming the real center of thanksgiving, regardless of what the culture thinks or understands or does.

Left to itself on this day and this weekend, the culture focuses only on the stuff of its life.

Gathering in the Eucharist on Thanksgiving Day, however, focuses on the real center of Thanksgiving – the rescuing, sustaining and creating actions of the LORD God – actions that mysteriously center this day, this weekend and the entire year.

That center is displayed, somewhat unexpectedly, in this passage from Jesus’ sermon

on a mountain.  Prior to this sermon, Jesus’ ministry has gotten underway in Galilee – teaching in the synagogues, preaching the Gospel of his Father’s kingdom, healing every disease and infirmity among the people.  At the conclusion of chapter four, Matthew lays down a three chapter summary of Jesus’ sermon on a mountain.  This is a vital section in Matthew’s Gospel where our Lord details his teaching (matched somewhat by Jesus’ Farewell Conversation in John).  Today’s Gospel is from the middle of that summary.

It is a highly familiar passage that revolves around what we eat, drink and clothe ourselves.  The passage opens with Jesus telling his followers to not be anxious about these three realities.  They become the center of our attention and, in so doing, generate a restlessness that consumes who we are and how we do.

What’s intriguing about our Lord attempting to lower our anxiety levels over these realities are the examples he cites from nature!  The examples are self-evident and true – birds are fed the food they need, anxiety cannot make person taller or extend his or her life, perishable vegetation like flowers has a stunning beauty already programmed into it!

Notice that the examples quietly shift the focus from ourselves to Jesus’ Father, the One who is the Creator and Maintainer of universe!  In that shift, notice that Jesus stings us with the phrase – O you of little faith!  He’s exposing the reality that, because of our births into this world, we have more faith in ourselves than in the LORD God!

Thankfully, our Baptisms have rescued us from that reality and the longer we live in those Baptisms the more we recognize that our faith is imbedded in the Lord who has rescued us from culture’s sin, culture’s Satan and culture’s death.

The examples, then, reveal a large gap as to what makes for Thanksgiving between the culture in which we live and the culture of the Church.  In the culture the focus is always on the self; in the Church the focus is always on the Father, the Son and the Spirit.  The culture’s way, however, is what stirs the anxiety in our lives.  The Church’s way, though, diminishes that anxiety because of its focus on the Holy Trinity’s activity for the people of this world.

That’s why, as the passage closes off, Jesus urges us to not increase our anxieties by worrying about our eating, drinking and clothing.  He reminds us that everyone in this culture is seeking these things and that his Father knows they are needed by all.  Jesus reminds his followers to concentrate on him, his Father and his Spirit.  They will then discover that the stuff they need for living will be provided.

The key, then, to catching the full impact of this reading is that we don’t make the stuff of our lives the center of our thinking and doing.  We give thanks not just because we have been graced with that stuff.  We give thanks because the Lord pushed into our lives with his own and holds us together in it.  It is the gift of the Lord’s Life that makes the giving of thanks real and true!

This becomes obvious when our lives are dominated more by suffering than blessing. Such lives can be desperate and bleak, but those realities cannot strip us of the Life which the Lord pours in on us from his Scriptures and Sacraments.  In our Life together with the LORD God, many of us have had to walk through such suffering numerous times.  These journeys are hard and difficult, but they reveal a Lord who does not pull his Life away from us.  Instead, he is relentlessly pushing his Life into our own.

For the person who is anxious and lost, it is a great power and comfort to hear the words of Baptism being sounded in ear and traced on our bodies – In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!  For the person who is dulled and numbed by television programming and social media, it is a great power and comfort to have the Scripture readings brighten and sharpen our vision!  For the person who is torn and tense in  relationships with others, it is a great power and comfort to have the words of the Lord’s Forgiveness renew and restore those relationships!  For the person who is trapped and alone, it is a great power and comfort to eat our Lord’s Body and drink his Blood in the presence of others!

Our Lord is determined to rescue us from the life generated by sin, Satan and death – a life, we should notice, that is temporary and disappears from sight.  Our Lord is determined to place us into his Life and its ways – the Life, we should notice, that is permanent and visible.

As we take part in this culture’s holiday today and this weekend, let us remember that it is the Lord’s gift of his Life which really drives our thanksgiving.  This is why we are worshiping today, witnessing to the real center of Thanksgiving – the rescuing, sustaining and creating activity of the LORD God!  We witness, then, to the people who have little or much of the stuff in the culture’s life.  Our culture bases all its thanksgivings on the apparent good of the stuff in its life, determining if there are sufficient accumulations to warrant such thanksgivings.  Baptized people base all their thanksgivings on the rescuing, sustaining and creating actions of the LORD God.

Thus, parish communities sensing that their ministry is to remain faithful to the LORD God do not walk away from the culture’s holidays.  Instead, they step into them with a fresh look at the Life into which they have been drawn by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  This is the Life that comes from eternity and runs them on into eternity!

        Now may the peace of God, which is beyond all understanding, keep our

                       hearts and minds through Christ + Jesus our Lord