Thank You!

(This is an abridged version of the sermon preached at Epworth Chapel, Baltimore on 11/20/11)

"Praise the Lord! O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good, for God’s steadfast love endures forever. Who can utter the mighty doings of the Lord, or declare all God’s praise?" (Psalm 106:1-2)


It has been suggested that there is an infectious disease that is permeating our land. It is the disease of ingratitude. We live in an age where many people have forgotten how to say “thank you.” Ingratitude has overtaken us.

If you know like I know, there is a certain irony that can be found here, in that we are more blessed than we have ever been in the history of civilization. We are blessed with technological advances, and material things that our foreparents could have only dreamt about.

Many of us are blessed to have finer homes, and larger cars, and more expensive clothing than ever thought we should or could possess. Many of us are blessed to be more educated and to have better jobs, and some of us even have a few more dollars in the bank. We’re blessed.

But still many people today are infected with this disease of ingratitude. For some reason many people are ungrateful, and seem not to know how to say “thank you.”

I remember growing up, and being taught as one of the first lessons of life how to say “please” and “thank you.” It was engrained into our very being as young people that if you wanted somebody to do something for you… you’d first say “please.” And once somebody was kind enough to do something for you, however small or large it was, the appropriate response was to say “thank you.”

Now it seems that many people think that it is their right that somebody would do something for them. They have the audacity – the nerve – the unmitigated gall – to ask without saying “please,” and to receive without saying “thank you.” Ingratitude is in our midst.

In Psalm 106, we find the psalmist reminding those who would hear with these words, “O give thanks to the Lord for God is good; God’s steadfast love endures forever.

This is a word of reminder to the faithful. In order that their faith might be well-founded and properly grounded, in order that their hope and perspective might be sustained, the psalmist sent them a lesson in thanksgiving. In order to improve their aptitude for praise, and enhance their attitude of gratitude, the psalmist here offers words of instruction as to the conditions in which the believers of this day were to render their appreciation, and say “thank you” to the Lord.

In similar words of encouragement, the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica and said, “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you.” (1 Thess. 5:18)

What Paul was saying to the congregation is that the zenith of Christian conduct is to be able to say “thank you.” In everything give thanks, Paul says.

Here, in Thessalonians we find that the apostle Paul was en-route to Rome with a layover in Corinth when he wrote his first letter to the young church at Thessalonica. Paul was aware that the church there would have its ups and downs, its risings and fallings. It is apparent above all else, that the people in the midst of whatever they were going through, had forgotten how to say “Thank You” to the Lord.

And so Paul says that we are to give thanks in all things. Herein lays the real challenge of faith and life. If we are to follow Paul’s instruction, we will develop the capacity to give thanks for the good and the bad of life. We will be able to give thanks in ups as well as in downs, in the sunshine and the rain, in life and in death, in triumph and in trial.

The psalmist encourages us to give thanks - in other words, to say "Thank You!" If we affirm what the psalmist wrote, we can affirm that God is good. This speaks to the very nature of who God is. The Lord is good. This is the acknowledgement of the omni-benevolence of that Lord, that the Lord is God in all God’s ways.
• From the rising of the sun, to the going down of the same, God is good.
• In ups and downs, God is good.
• In joy and even in sadness, the Lord is good.
• In times of prosperity and even in times of need, the Lord is good.

O, give thanks to the Lord, for God is good. God’s steadfast love endures forever. Oh that people of faith will find a reason to be grateful in the days that are before us.

When I think of the goodness of Jesus
And all that he’s done for me
My soul cries out, Hallelujah,
I thank God for blessing me!

Teaching our Children

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." (Frederick Douglass) Let us coninue to pray and advocate for the proper education of our children.

The Continuing Need for Societal Change

"White America is seeking to keep the walls of segregation substantially intact while the evolution of society and the Negro's desperation is causing them to crumble. The white majority, unprepared and unwilling to accept radical structural change, is resisting and producing chaos while complaining that if there were no chaos orderly change would come."

(Dr. Martin Luuher King, Jr. in a September 1967 speech to the American Psychological Association, entitled "A Challenge to Social Scientists")

LESSONS IN A LAD'S LUNCH

(This is an abridged version of the sermon preached at Epworth Chapel, Baltimore on 11/6/11)

John 6:1-13

Over the ages, a large part of the human predicament has seemed to relate to economy, and whether we as humans have all that we need to survive. The perennial concern here is really whether or not God will provide for our needs. Note here, that this matter of economy relates not simply to the things that we want, but the things that we need.

History shows that God is a God of provision. God is in the business of providing for our needs. Some have declared that God is an on-time God. Others have framed it with words of affirmation that God will make ways out of no way. Others have declared time and again that God is good all the time. And still others have spoken of the great faithfulness of the Lord – the song-writer declared, “All I have needed, thy hand has provided.” Indeed God specializes in providing for our needs.

The challenge comes in the fact that many people are apt to forget about all the ways that God provides. Many fail to acknowledge that God is actually in the business of providing for all our needs – whether spiritual, physical or social. This forgetfulness – this form of spiritual amnesia - is often couched in doubt about the presence and power of God, or in complaining about the things that we don’t have, the ways that have not yet been made for us, and the things that we have not yet achieved.

Instead of looking with eyes of faith, trust and appreciation at the many blessings that are already present in our lives, many are like the Israelites who despite how God blesses, will complain and fuss – even about the things that God has blessed us with.

And we should be concerned not only with our own provision, but with the needs of our sisters and brothers. In Africa today, famine and malnutrition threaten the lives of over 11 million people from Kenya to Somalia. Many people in cities like Baltimore and Washington, DC – mostly women and children – will go to bed tonight without adequate nutrition, housing and healthcare. In the “Occupy” movement that has spread from Wall Street to cities across our nation, our awareness has been raised to the fact that 1% of our nation’s population holds about 50% of the nation’s accumulated wealth. That leaves 99% of us to make due on the other 50% of our collective resources. Indeed, the rich seem to be getting richer among us.

And in the event that we need more evidence of how God blesses us, and what we can learn within the context of our blessing, we can turn again to Scripture. In the Gospel of John, we find lessons for how to recognize and appreciate our blessings. Here, we find Jesus trying to get some rest having been busy ministering to the masses. But everywhere Jesus went, large crowds of people followed him. And so, Jesus and his disciples decided to get in a boat to get away from the crowds, but when the boat docked, Jesus found that people had rushed to the other side of the river and were waiting there for him.

The Lord knew that the people who had followed him had needs and wanted to be blessed. He knew that they were in need of physical and spiritual healing, in need of being taught about the ways of God, and also in need of physical nourishment (they were hungry). And so Jesus decided not only to heal and teach the people, but he knew that needed to feed those who had come, as well.

In this story of the feeding of 5000, Jesus took the lunch of a boy in the crowd - 5 loaves and 2 fish - and lifted them up toward heaven and asked God to bless the lad’s lunch. The Lord then began breaking the fish and bread into pieces and the disciples passed it out to all the people who had gathered.

The word says that everyone had all they wanted to eat, and everybody was satisfied. When they had finished eating the disciples picked up the leftover food. They collected 12 baskets of leftovers.

There are several lessons that we can glean from this story.

First, we have evidence again that God will provide for all of our needs. Even when things look the most dire and desperate– even when it seems that we are in the most need, even when our money resources seem the scarcest - God is about the business of working on behalf of God’s people, and providing for our needs. The word says that all of the people were satisfied after having eaten the meal provided for them.

Second, we find that our blessings will often come to us in unexpected ways, through unexpected people. Of all the people in the crowd (5000 men, plus women and children), it was a lad who had the blessing in his hands. So often we look for our blessings in what seem to be the obvious places, among the people who we think are most able and likely to be a blessing to us. But God used a lad and his lunch to bless the people. Maybe God is trying to tell us to look around us and see God’s blessings in all the people around us.

Third, we learn that God will not only provide what we need, but God is in the business of providing more than enough. The word says that Jesus took the lad’s two fish and five loaves of bread and he fed all of the people there. But it’s good that the story doesn’t stop there. It says that there was more than enough - there were leftovers. God not only provides for our needs, but God offers us blessings in abundance.

The good news is that God provides for all of our needs, and God provides more than enough!

Great is thy faithfulness,
Lord God our father…
Great is thy faithfulness
Great is thy faithfulness,
Morning by morning
New mercies I see.
All I have needed
Thy hand has provided
Great I they faithfulness
Lord unto me.