October 9, 2011 – Exodus 32:1-14; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14
Exodus 32:1-14; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14
A God who Cares – Thanksgiving Sunday
17th Sunday after Pentecost [Lectionary 28] – October 9, 2011
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6, NRSV)
Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
Summing it all up, friends, I’d say that you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious – the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. (Philippians 4:6-8, The Message)
With thanksgiving, Paul says.
Don’t worry about anything. Pray with thanksgiving. Always.
He’s writing this from prison, right?
So when he says, “in all things give thanks,” he’s not just whistling Dixie.
He means it. He’s living it. He’s discovered, somehow, in prison, that God is with him.
That God in Christ in the power of the Spirit has come to be with him. And care for him.
And so he prays for the church in Philippi, a congregation he loves:
he prays for them with thanksgiving.
He prays with thanksgiving because he’s discovered in Jesus a God who cares.
Who cares about him. Who cares about that little congregation in Philippi.
Who cares about the ill, the disadvantaged, the misfits, the poor, the rejected.
Who cares about the apathetic, and the rich, and the middle class.
A God who cares even about his enemies, one of whom was Paul.
And so he prays with thanksgiving. Because God cares, and that makes all the difference.
It’s costly to care, and Paul has discovered this too.
Who has ever cared and not discovered that it’s costly?
Anyone who has ever cared for anyone knows it’s costly.
Paul was a well-educated Pharisee and he knew the Exodus story backwards and forwards.
He was intimately familiar with the story of the golden calf.
He knew how much it hurt God to be rejected by the people,
after he had cared for them so deeply and so generously.
God has freed the people from Egypt, given them food, led them to water,
given them the great gift of the commandments:
indeed, he keeps the very first commandment himself: I am the LORD your God.
And yet, the people turn so quickly away.
It’s astonishing how God reacts here, kinda takes you aback: vigourously and almost petulantly.
God briefly considers destroying everyone again as in the days of Noah and starting over with
Moses and his offspring.
God is deeply hurt because God deeply cares about his relationship with the people.
The only reason God is so deeply hurt is because God so deeply cares.
But God cares even more than to be simply hurt: God cares enough to hear Moses’s prayer.
God cares enough to reconsider his actions.
God cares enough to admit he is wrong. And God cares enough to change his mind.
On Thanksgiving Sunday we gather to give thanks to a God who cares.
Now the Gospel lesson is difficult. So difficult Martin Luther hated preaching on this parable.
It filled him with dread. Where is the Gospel – the good news – in this story?
Sometimes you have to wring the Gospel with both hands, he said, to produce a drop of grace.
The story starts out well enough: a king’s wedding invitation is rejected by the intended guests,
so the king invites everyone – the good as well as the bad – to the feast!
All are welcome to God’s feast! Our presence at this table doesn’t depend on
what we have done or what we haven’t done: it is dependent on the graciousness of God.
This God’s welcome is huge: all are invited! This is grace!
Luke’s version of the story stops there! Hurrah, we shout! Great! Reason for thanksgiving!
But Matthew’s story doesn’t stop there. It goes on.
Some guy wasn’t wearing a wedding garment and got tossed out into the alley where
there is weeping and wailing and much gnashing of teeth with his hands tied behind
his back so that he can’t even fight back when he gets kicked and smashed.
When we come to this feast, we are invited to put on the loveliest garment of all,
a garment that is pure gift: the love, the light, the very clothing of Christ.
We are invited to wear that garment always, that the grace we have been given might
be made known to all in deeds of lovingkindness and mercy and compassion,
both here and when we leave this place.
Now, it matters to God whether or not we wear that garment. It matters to God how we live.
God cares about what we do.
This is a parable of judgment, and there are plenty of them in Matthew.
They’re very hard to hear as good news, but ultimately it is good news that God cares enough to
expel evil from our universe, that God will expel apathy, and self-centredness.
It’s good news that God will get rid of illness and grief and violence and death.
It’s good news that God cares. It’s good news that God is not neutral.
It’s good news that what we do matters to God. Because what we do can make a difference.
God cares about whether or not we come to this banquet on Sunday morning.
It matters to God that we get up to get together to pray for our sick, for the world’s vulnerable,
for the hurting earth, and for political leaders and governments to govern wisely with
justice and peace as their mandate.
It matters to God that we come together on Sundays to try to figure out together
how we’re going to use the gifts we’ve been given to engage in God’s mission to
love, bless and heal this world and every person in it.
It matters to God that we treat one another hospitably when we gather and that
we serve one another bread and wine and juice and coffee.
It matters to God that we collect food for the food bank and that we
give generously of our finances to this mission and that
we do everything we can to make sure Kids Klub happens again next summer.
These things matter to God. God cares about what we do with our bodies and our gifts.
Yes, as the Catholic priest and writer Henri Nouwen observes, yes:
God is all about unconditional acceptance. That is most certainly true.
But God is not about unconditional approval. That is also most certainly true.
And that is good news.
It’s a matter for thanksgiving that God cares so deeply about this world and every person in it.
Jesus is continuing to address the religious leaders in this section of Matthew.
He’s using every means at his disposal to get them to understand that what they do matters,
including using some very extreme and colourful language about the outer darkness.
It’s not enough for them to just show up at the banquet.
They have forgotten that God feeds them for a purpose:
so they can be strong in order to care for the weak.
So they can be a manna society in which the common good
takes precedence over individual good.
So they can be the people God freed them to be in the Exodus so long ago.
They have forgotten that these things matter to God, and that that is good news.
And that it is reason for thanksgiving, even in the midst of their imprisonment by the Romans.
Thanksgiving opens our eyes to all the wondrous ways in which God is at work among us,
every moment of every day.
A couple of weeks ago I noted that it was easy for the Israelites and it’s easy for us to see
the bad things in our lives as evidence of God’s absence.
But what about all the good and wondrous things that are constant evidence of God’s presence,
that are constant evidence that God truly always keeps the first commandment:
I am the Lord your God and I’m not going anywhere.
The beauty – the almost unimaginable perfection – of this fall weather.
The child that falls asleep on your shoulder. The miracle of food.
The grace of a pet. The abidingness of friends. Health. Music. Musicians. Teachers.
Knowledge. Libraries. A selfless act done for you. The ability to vote this past week.
I was knocking on doors on election day this week encouraging people to vote.
I came to a house where an elderly black woman opened the door.
She looked at me suspiciously at first, but when I told her I was there to encourage her to vote,
a big smile erupted across her face.
“Oh,” she said, “we’re going to vote alright. By the grace of God we’ll be there to vote.”
And I thought: right: it is by the grace of God that we participate in a representative government.
It matters to God that that is the case. It is a great grace.
A great grace that the Arab Spring has opened our eyes to this year.
It is a great grace and it matters to God and with thanksgiving we need to pray for our
newly elected leaders and our government, that they might govern with a concern for
the welfare of all people and for the common good. That matters to God.
You matter to God. And what you do matters to God. And that is good news. That is great news.
On the cross Jesus will be the one without a robe. Because that is how much God cares.
God cares enough to enter into our robelessness. Into our nakedness and our vulnerability.
But also into our sinfulness, our apathy, our rejection of all that God desires for us.
It matters so much that God raises Jesus from the dead with a new robe: a robe of light and
love and forgiveness, a robe that is given to you to wear in baptism as a free, lovely gift.
So wear it. Wear it with fortitude. Wear it with hope. Wear it with confidence.
Wear it with thanksgiving. And Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
Summing it all up, friends, I’d say that you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious – the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Fill your minds with thanksgiving.
Beloved: God cares. So with thanksgiving, let us say together, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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