1 Generosity and Thanksgiving Colossians 2:1-7, November 1, 2015 O Lord, that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness. William Shakespeare President Theodore Roosevelt was a charismatic figure who made quite an impression on people. One journalist, William Allen White, wrote of his first meeting with Roosevelt in 1897: "He sounded in my heart the first trumpet call of the new time that was to be... I had never known such a man as he, and never shall again. He overcame me. And in the hour or two we spent that day at lunch, he poured into my heart such vision, such ideals, such hopes, such a new attitude toward life and patriotism and the meaning of things, as I had never dreamed men had... After that, I was his man." If a mere man can have such an impact on a person, how much more our Lord Jesus Christ? Spend time with him and let him pour into your heart a new vision, a new hope, and a new attitude towards life. Then afterwards, you will say with thankfulness, "I am his!" "Every breath you breathe will be filled with thankfulness when you realize Jesus Christ is your Blesser, Giver and Healer." What do you think of Christ? I like the old hymn I stand amazed. Because I stand amazed whenever I turn to consider the person of Jesus and what he has done for me. Don t you find it strange that Jesus Christ never makes the top ten lists of the world s most influential people? For in the person of Christ we surely have the most intelligent, the most engaging, the most insightful, the most interesting and the most giving person who has ever lived. And to think we are invited into the company of this great and wonderful man and to be his apprentices! How often does that happen? When my Dad, brother and I were driving home from Georgia after seeing Adam s graduation exercises for combat officer training at Fort Benning, we stopped at New Orleans for several days. On a fine Sunday morning we went to church and then took a conducted walking tour of a residential neighborhood in the Garden District. The guide was going on at length about all the famous
2 people who lived there. At one point I dropped back from the group to snap a picture of two little cute miniature dachshunds standing in a doorway apparently looking for someone. Then I saw their owner as she was stooping to pick up her newspaper on the other side of a magnolia tree. As she straightened up I realized this person was the actress Sandra Bulloch. I was tempted to gush, Ohh, I really liked you in Gravity. But instead I said, What a fine Sunday morning and what cute little doxies you have. She smiled and said in that gorgeous voice of hers, Why thank you sir. And I wish you a very fine morning as well. Moments later I caught up to the guide and when I told her who I had just met, she exclaimed excitedly, Did you get her picture? I replied, Thankfully, no. I daydreamed all the rest of the day on how nice it would be to spend a day with Sandra Bulloch. Mind you, this was long before I met Michelle. But I really don t think any rich or famous person would want to spend a day with me. Bill Gates doesn t need my financial advice. I doubt President Obama would value my insights into military strategy in the Middle East. And I can t imagine Donald Trump would need any suggestions from me on how to be clown. But the most important person in the world, Jesus, actually does invite me into his presence. He wants to get to know me, and you for that matter, as if you and I were the only important people in the world. He invites us to be a part of his Kingdom and to walk with him on the narrow road which leads to life. Hard to believe? Well, pretend you never heard of Jesus invitation to come to him. It is an astounding invitation. But how can we be sure it is true? Jesus proved his love for you and me by dying in our place, paying the penalty for our sins, which by their very nature cuts us off from the only true source of life, God the Creator and Sustainer. He assures us: Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command (John 15:13). Of course when we consider ourselves in relation to everyone else in the world people with far greater needs than ours, people with far greater gifts and talents than ours, people who are far more capable and are in far better positions to get things done; we might think why would we be the center of Christ s
3 love and care? We are nothing special; flawed at best, a strange mixture of the tacky and the sublime. But never-the-less, in spite of and because of all this we are creatures upon whom the eyes of the Creator alight and take great delight. In God s eyes we count for much. C.S. Lewis famous quote from Weight of Glory captures it wonderfully: It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. So how are we to respond to the love of God poured out to us through Christ Jesus? As the psalmist suggests, I will lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. (Psalm 116:13). In our Scripture lesson today Paul is warning his friends in the Colossian church to avoid the deception of those who wanted to add to the gospel truth that certain secret knowledge will gain them full salvation. This is always the siren call of the cults and distinguishes a true church from a false church. A false church will always say Christ plus. Christ plus the Book of Mormon, Christ plus witnessing for Jehovah, Christ plus the teaching of this spiritual master or that prosperity preacher. But Paul says that in Christ we have the full mystery of God in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (2:3). Then Paul urges us to go continue to live in Christ. This is what intentional spiritual formation is all about. We are called to be in a constant learning cycle adding day by day our knowledge of Christ and our experience of Christ which strengthens our faith and the end result, the indelible proof that all of this is happening is a constant growing sense of thankfulness (2:7). The venerable Canadian preacher Harry Ironside put it like this: We would worry and complain less if we
4 praised more. Thanksgiving is the enemy of discontent and dissatisfaction. And how does a heart of thanksgiving express itself? It is through generosity of spirit and action. Abraham Lincoln said, I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. Thankful people are generous people. They know that all of life is a gift and are grateful for daily blessings others merely take for granted. One of my favorite table graces goes: The Lord s been good to me, and so I thank the Lord for giving me the things I need, the sun the rain and the appleseed. Oh the Lord has been good to me. Amen. And so it almost goes without saying that what we give of our tithes and offerings to the Lord s work is in direct relationship to how thankful we are for the way the Lord has been good to us. My maternal grandfather was given by his parents the middle name of Happy. All of his life he endeavored to live up to that name despite all that he had gone through. As a boy of eighteen he was shipped off to France to become a soldier of the Great War and had personally killed men in the vicious trench warfare of that time. While most of his buddies squandered their pay on French women and French wine, he saved every penny and when he got home he bought a convertible car and started a church band. They went all over Central Illinois singing gospel songs at church services and revivals. He married, as he claimed, his most attractive groupie and she became my grandmother. By the time I knew him he was the founder of the Peoria Southside Rescue Mission, president of the local Gideon society and a 20% tither to his church. I have never met a more generous man and when asked why he was the way he was he simply replied, Christ within me. One of his life quotes was from Simone de Beauvoir: What I consider true generosity is when you give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing. So the question to you today is: How thankful are you? The benchmark to measure Christian giving has always been the tithe which is 10% of our income. But we must couple this with the equally important motive and attitude toward our giving. In Luke 21 Jesus watched the rich giving large donations to the Temple in Jerusalem. But his eyes sparkled as he saw something that truly impressed him, a poor widow putting
5 in a tiny offering, just two small copper coins. This invoked Jesus admiration because as he notes: This is all that she had to live on. My grandfather s dictum for a prudent, care-free attitude toward personal finances was simply: Give a tenth, save a tenth and spend the rest with joy and thanksgiving. So again, in the eyes of God, your willingness to give and your amount of your giving really has little to do with the state of your finances, concerns over the economy or worry over bills. It has more to do with your Christian maturity. The real question is how much do you love the one who loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2). sacraments remind us that he gave us 100%, his entire life. How much do you want to give in return? A man had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. He could receive little company and was not to be excited. While in the hospital a rich uncle died and left him a million dollars. His family wondered how to break the news to him with the least amount of excitement. It was decided to ask the man s minister if he would go and break the news quietly to the man. The minister went, and gradually led up to the question. He asked the patient what he would do if he inherited a million dollars. The man said, "I think I would give half of it to the church." The minister dropped dead. In a few moments you will be invited to receive the Lord s Supper. If you are ready to declare your pledge for the ongoing work of this church in 2016 you are invited to bring your pledge card with you and put it in the basket. If you are not decided at this moment you may turn in your card by mail or dropping it at the church office or bringing it with you next week and placing it in the offering plat. By connecting communion with giving we are reminded that we give in direct proportion to what we feel we have been given by Christ. The