October 7, 2018 (Thanksgiving Sunday) -Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12
Thanksgiving for the State of the World
Lectionary 27B – October 7, 2018 [Thanksgiving Sunday]
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
It was July. It was beautiful. I was in Victoria with dear friends.
I had travelled across our beautiful country. I was on holidays.
The world seemed like a pretty good place.
I was drinking wine, I was eating delicious food. The company was perfect.
And then my friend Len, who was in worship a few weeks ago, said,
“There’s an interesting article in the New Yorker this week I think you’d like.
It’s about the whether the world is getting better or worse.”
Well, at the moment I couldn’t imagine the world being any better than it was.
And yet – I wondered for a second.
Maybe I was just fooling myself.
Maybe inside this beautiful place with beautiful people was just an illusion while,
as the headlines constantly remind us, the world seems to get worse and worse and worse.
I’m guessing many of you have felt the same way at one time or another.
Many people have expressed to me over the years that world is in fact getting worse
rather than better and that it is going to hell-in-a-handbasket.
So: I read the article.
It’s called “Are Things Getting Better or Worse?” by Joshua Rothman.
(https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/23/are-things-getting-better-or-worse?mbid=social_twitter)
It is largely based on a recent book by cognitive scientist Steven Pinker called
Enlightenment Now.
Pinker argues that by any objective measure, things in the world are better now than
they have ever been.
Life, it turns out, is pretty much better in every way.
An exhaustive survey of studies from around the world show that:
Infant and maternal mortality is down around the globe
Children are better fed, better educated, and less abused
Workers make more money, are injured less frequently, and retire earlier
Fewer people are poor and billions fewer live in extreme poverty
The world is growing less polluted and has more parks and protected wilderness
Globally there are fewer victims of murder, war, rape and genocide
Students report being less lonely and people in North America have more leisure time
than their parents did
The number of hate crimes has been falling for decades and analyses of internet searches
show that racist, sexist and homophobic attitudes are in retreat
So the question then, is: why do a majority of people, when polled, say that
the state of the world is worse than it was a generation or two ago?
I don’t know I have a complete answer to that question.
Pinker addresses it in his book, as have others.
The media often is often blamed, and perhaps it should shoulder some of the responsibility for
overreporting negative news items and underreporting all the long term progress
that has been made in the world.
For instance, Pinker notes that a truly even-handed newspaper could have run this headline
every single day for the last 25 years:
NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN EXTREME POVERTY FELL BY 137,000 SINCE YESTERDAY
The problem is: What the negative headlines bring with them is a sense of apathy.
The sense that things are so bad there is little we can do so we may as well not even try.
We can just look after the close little circle of people within our orbit and
bury our heads in the sand when it comes to the state of the world.
In a way, it’s a situation very similar to the one addressed by the writer of Hebrews this morning.
Here’s what was going on.
The people the writer addresses were once very excited by the things God did through Jesus.
They accepted the good news of God’s world transforming love enthusiastically.
They worked for and made sacrifices for God’s mission to love, bless, heal, feed and
set free this whole world and every person in it.
But at a certain point, things get to be too much for them.
They are persecuted for worshipping Jesus rather than Caesar.
And even when not persecuted, there are consequences for being Christian:
they are marginalized.
And let’s face it: Things do not change as quickly as they thought they might.
The promised day of God’s restoration seems long in coming.
Doubts start to set in, and it holds hands with apathy.
Soon people neglect coming to worship and caring for one another.
So: How does the writer address such a situation?
He takes the people back to where it all started:
to Jesus and the amazing promise of his life and ministry.
Jesus was the beginning of God’s work of restoring this world to its intended glory.
And Jesus seeks to continue this work through us, his brothers and sisters.
When the people look around at their community, they do not see themselves as
God sees them: they see dispirited people, they see decline, they see apathy.
And yet, the writer insists, that is not what they have been made for.
God sees them truly, fashioned to be glorious caretakers of this world and
agents in the mission to bring blessing to this world.
God has a future for them and for this whole world.
And at the end of the book, what is the writer’s prescription for the people?
Giving praise to God for what God has done in Jesus,
and for the things God has done for the community:
to give thanks and share what they have. (Hebrews 13:15)
The community had sensed at the beginning that God had done great things for them.
But other things happened to them that got in the way of acknowledging that.
And that let to apathy.
They forgot to keep their eyes open to all the things God continued to do.
They lost sight of all the gifts, all the good things, that sustained them in their difficulties.
Especially they forgot to give thanks for the great good gift of one another.
And so, at one point, the writer encourages them, “Do not neglect to meet together.”
One of the reasons, Pinker says, why we see the bad more easily than the all the good,
is because we are “guilty of the sin of ingratitude.”
“We like to complain, and we don’t know much about the heroic problem solvers of the past.”
I think ingratitude breeds apathy.
I think we need to give thanks because it is so encouraging.
It helps us see that God is still mightily at work, every day, and every moment of every day.
Thanksgiving is inspiring and it is the engine of action.
I do not believe for a minute that doom and gloom and negativity inspire people to
meaningful, long term action.
Maybe short term action, but not long term action.
I think, ultimately, negativity breeds cynicism and apathy and a conviction that
things will never really change.
I have said many times that if you have one spiritual practice it should simply be
giving thanks at the end of the day for the gifts you received, for the good things
that happened, for the good things you saw.
This will change you.
And it will motivate you to become part of the solution because it leads to the conviction
that God is working, and that Jesus is working –
and that God’s blessing can also come through you.
Yes: the world is improving. Yes: the world is a lot better than it was.
But that, too, should not lead us to apathy, to thinking all the problems have been solved.
Any clear eyed assessment would have to acknowledge that many problems remain.
Racism, sexism, and homophobia, though on the decline,
are still powerful and destructive forces.
Poverty still wreaks havoc on millions of lives globally and in this very neighbourhood.
Climate change and nuclear war are still very real threats.
And yet – progress has been made. Much progress has been made.
God has been at work through millions of people just like you,
both within and outside the church.
This should give us hope and inspire us to action, and give us confidence that
our loving actions are not in vain but that they actually can effect change.
So on this Thanksgiving Sunday, let us give thanks.
Because giving thanks is empowering and giving thanks is hopeful.
Giving thanks can open our eyes to a God who has worked powerfully in the past
and who continues to work in the present for a future in which all can flourish.
Let us give thanks for all the progress that has been made, for all the people whose
lives have been improved, and let us re-commit ourselves as followers of Christ
to that future in which all can flourish.
And together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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