Giving Thanks When The Going Is Tough

(Scripture text: Philippians 4:1-13)
“Giving Thanks When The Going Is Tough”

Today our nation will be celebrating Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays, commemorating the Pilgrim’s celebration in 1621 at Plymouth Plantation for having survived the brutal winter. We’re told that the feast lasted three days, and provided food for 53 pilgrims and 90 Native Americans.

Today, of course, we’ll be celebrating in circumstances that are of course very different from those encountered by the Pilgrims. For most of us, our mental image of Thanksgiving probably owes more to Saturday Evening Post illustrator Norman Rockwell than to Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford or Miles Standish or Squanto or the other names we may dimly remember from long-ago school lessons about the Pilgrims. You probably have seen the Norman Rockwell illustration – a large family seated around a kitchen table covered with a white tablecloth and laden with goodies. The children, grinning broadly, look out toward the viewer. Grandma is about to set a huge roasted turkey on the table, as grandpa stands behind her, beaming. And perhaps our mental image has been updated a bit to include an after-dinner football game and a nap on the couch.

As it happens, the Norman Rockwell painting I described was created to depict “Freedom from Want,” one of the “four freedoms” enunciated by then-president Franklin Roosevelt in a famous 1941 speech. (For those who are counting, the other three were freedom of speech, freedom to worship, and freedom from fear.)

We are celebrating Thanksgiving during a time when “Freedom from Want” is very much an open question. The rate of unemployment is the highest it’s been in recent memory, maybe the highest since the depression of the 1930’s. Our own neighborhood of Bridesburg has been hit hard by the economy. While our situation is hardly as dire as that of the Pilgrims who celebrated that first Thanksgiving, for some in our community – maybe for some of us here - it’s plenty dire enough. And with unemployment comes the despair that drives a host of related social ills: crime, alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence directed against spouse and children. Against this backdrop, the smiling faces around Norman Rockwell’s thanksgiving table seem almost to be mocking us – hey, we have our Thanksgiving dinner. How about you?

Paul’s letter to the Philippians was written at a time when Paul wasn’t necessarily sure how many “next meals” he had, and in which, on an external level, he had very little freedom at all. He was a prisoner awaiting trial and sentence and possible execution. Under the circumstances, there are many things he could have written. Were I in those circumstances, I think the first thing I’d have written is “get me out of here!” But Paul wrote “Rejoice! Rejoice in the Lord! Don’t worry about anything! Take your requests in prayer to God! Be thankful! And one more time, in case you weren’t listening the first time - Rejoice!”

How could Paul rejoice? How could Paul give thanks? And how do you get your mind around Paul saying “Don’t worry” when he knew perfectly well that his own execution was a possibility. He lets us in on a secret: “I have learned to be content with whatever I have. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” I don’t believe Paul was indulging in escapist fantasy, or, as in the Monty Python comedy from some years back, singing “always look on the bright side of life” while hanging from a cross. Rather, Paul’s many trials had brought him to a place where he was so focused on serving Christ that he was not concerned with his own comfort. Paul wasn’t ignoring or escaping the realities of his imprisonment, but he was focusing on the greater realities of the Kingdom of God. While he was under arrest and was restricted in what he could do and where he could go, his spirit had boundless freedom. His spiritual well-being didn’t vary with changing personal circumstances, because his spiritual well-being didn’t depend on circumstances. Instead, despite his own increasingly dire circumstances, the welfare of the churches, not his own welfare, was at the top of his mind. He had confidence that if he kept faith with the Lord, the Lord would supply his needs. He lived by the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, to seek first the Kingdom of God, and everything else would be added to him.

This is an area in which our Christian faith is deeply counter-cultural. The world’s message is one of scarcity – there never has been enough; there isn’t enough now, and there never will be enough, so you’d better grab what you can while you can because if you don’t, the next guy will. The world worships at the altar of what Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann calls the unholy trinity of autonomy, anxiety, and greed. The world tells us that there will never be enough – never enough food, never enough clothing, never enough money, never enough time, never enough love….never enough – and that’s as true for an investment broker insisting that he needs a three million dollar bonus and can’t possibly scrape by on two million, as it is for those seeking assistance from our food cupboard.

Our faith, by contrast, provides a message of the abundant love of a gracious God. We see this in the familiar story of the feeding of the four thousand. Faced with a hungry crowd after a long day of teaching, Jesus asked the disciples to feed them. Their response comes out of the world’s message of scarcity – we only have a handful of loaves and a couple fish, and look at all these people. We’re told that Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, and gave it to the disciples to distribute – and in Jesus’ hands “not nearly enough” became “more than enough - enough and to spare.”

I think I caught a glimpse of what this might look like recently. As members of Emanuel Church know, during the first week of November I was part of a delegation sent by the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference of the United Church of Christ to visit churches in Cuba. Our conference has been exploring a partnership with a group called the Fraternity of Baptists in Cuba. Contrary to popular belief, rumors of the demise of the church in Cuba are greatly exaggerated – in Cuba, the church is very much alive. We visited over a half dozen churches in Havana and other communities on the west end of the island – urban churches, rural churches, house churches. In our travels, I was repeatedly struck by three observations: the poverty our Cuban brothers and sisters endure, their “can-do” attitude toward ministry, and the gracious and generous hospitality they offered us. Their poverty isn’t a subtle thing – it’s right in your face, as the Cuban housing stock and infrastructure in many places is crumbling, falling apart right in front of you. But despite that, we were welcomed as if we were long-lost family members. As little as they may have had, we were always offered a cup of expresso or guava juice or papaya juice or such. And as small as some of these congregations were – and while there are some large congregations in Cuba, some of the churches we saw had congregations of a dozen or two dozen or maybe as many as three dozen - many of them were planting gardens or raising rabbits and pigs to feed their members and their neighbors. Externally they have limited freedom – while they have some freedom of worship, other freedoms such as freedom of speech, freedom from want, and freedom from fear are pretty much out the window. And yet I believe these brothers and sisters had discovered the truth of Jesus’ words that if the Son will make you free, you are free indeed – despite external circumstances.

I’m not advocating that our churches plant gardens or purchase feed troughs. But I think our congregations – especially in a neighborhood like Bridesburg that abounds with small-membership churches – sometimes buy into the culture’s message of scarcity – “there are so few of us - we’re so small – we’re so weak – we can’t do anything – our best years are behind us - we have nothing to offer – what we do offer, nobody wants.”

In response to this message of scarcity and defeat, Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord! Don’t worry! Instead, take your requests to God! Give thanks! Learn the secret of having plenty and of being in need. Be content and give thanks for what we have! We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us! When we offer what we have and what we are to Christ, Christ will multiply our loaves and fishes to physically and spiritually feed multitudes! Just as we have been doing with the food cupboard with its recently-expanded distribution program. This program is many things – among them it is a lifeline for our needy neighbors – but the cupboard is also a way in which we can return thanks for the blessings God has bestowed on us.

From Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” Despite our circumstances, as Christians we have a great deal for which to be thankful. Whether we will be celebrating Thanksgiving with our families or alone, we can give thanks for being members of the family of faith – we have each other. We can give thanks for God’s presence in our daily lives, for he has promised that he will never leave us nor forsake us. Most of all we can give thanks that Jesus Christ lived and died and rose again so that we may be reconciled with God, and may have assurance that when plenty and hunger and food and clothing and our time on earth have passed, we may be welcomed into those heavenly mansions prepared for God’s faithful, where we will rejoice and give thanks in God’s presence forevermore. Amen.