Giving Thanks and Giving Back
Rev. Paul Sprecher
Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org
November 20, 2011
Readings Psalm 133 -Translated by Stephen Mitchell
How wonderful it is to live
in harmony with all people:
like stepping out of the bath,
your whole body fresh and vibrant;
like the morning dew, glistening on the tiniest blade of grass.
It is God's infinite blessing, a taste of eternal life.
“To Savor the World or Save It,” Richard Gilbert
(quoting E. B. White)
"It's hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its challenge. If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
I rise in the morning torn between the desire
To save the world or to savor it—to serve life or to enjoy it;
To savor the sweet taste of
my own joy
Or to share the bitter cup of my neighbor;
To celebrate life with exuberant step
Or to struggle for the life
of the heavy-laden.
What am I to do when the guilt at my bounty
Clouds the sky of my vision;
When the glow which lights
my every day
Illumines the hurting world around me?
To savor the world or save it?
God of justice, if such there be,
Take from me the burden of
my question.
Let me praise my plenitude without limit;
Let me cast from my eyes all troubled folk!
No, you will not let me be.
You will not stop my ears
To the cries of the hurt and the hungry;
You will not close my eyes to the sight of the afflicted.
What is that you say?
To save, one must serve?
To savor, one must save?
The one will not stand
without the other?
Forgive me—in my preoccupation with myself,
In my concern for my own life
I had forgotten.
Forgive me, God of justice,
Forgive me, and make me whole.
Sermon “Giving Thanks and Giving Back” -Rev. Paul Sprecher
Jesus was teaching one day when
[NRS Luke 12:13] Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." 14 But [Jesus] said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" 15 And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." 16 Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' 18 Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' 20 But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God." 22
The rich man’s first thought on reaping a bumper crop was not gratitude for the abundance of the harvest, recognizing that he himself had not brought this abundance to fruition all by his own effort. He didn’t acknowledge that the sun and rain had been favorable, that the fields were fertile because he had received them in good condtion from generations who had worked the land before him, or that there were workers available when the harvest was ready. He probably said to himself, “Look how smart I am, and how self-disciplined, and how hard I work. I deserve this bonus for the hard work I put into my crops, and I am entitled to every drachma of it.” His only thought was how to store all this bounty, and he undoubtedly resented any taxes that might be levied on his crop because, after all, the crop was all his, he had earned it all by himself, fair and square. I suppose his modern equivalent would have torn down his house and built a much larger one, just as the rich man tore down his barns to make more room for all that he had. Or maybe a yacht. Even better, a private jet.
No one gets what he or she has all by themselves. No one is self-made – all of us prosper in part because of what we have received – nurture and discipline and love from our family; a society around us that provides many people to help us in so many ways; and finally this good earth from which comes our food, the air we take in with each breath, and indeed our very lives. As Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, “We live in a network of mutuality.”[i]
The poet says that the first prayer we need to offer and the only one we truly need is “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Or, as e.e. cummings says in our centering thought today, “I thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is yes.”
And so we come with thanksgiving today, remembering that we are not alone, that we have not survived and prospered because we did it all by ourselves, and that we live in a web of all existence upon which we depend and of which we are only a small part. In that spirit of gratitude, we give back by helping to provide the basic necessities of living through our Interfaith Food Pantry, helping by means of our offering today and by using our hands to prepare this bounty for those who are in need of its sustenance. We are reminded as we do so that we too are subject to fortune for good or ill, and that we too might someday need or perhaps once have needed the generosity represented by these fruits of the earth that we are privileged to share. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Jesus was teaching to the poor and outcast of his time, to the 99% rather than to the 1%. Marcus Borg describes the nature of the preindustrial agrarian society that was the context in which Jesus lived and taught this way:
The division between city and country corresponded with a class division of power and wealth between urban elites and rural peasants. The urban elites consisted of two groups. First there were the elites proper, typically 1 to 2 percent of the total population: the ruler, aristocrats, high government and religious officials, and their extended families. Second, attached to the elites was a service class known as retainers, typically 5 to 8 percent of the population: lower-ranking government officials, soldiers, priests, scribes, urban merchants, and so forth.
The economic gulf between urban elites and rural peasants was enormous. Elites and their retainers (together, less than to percent of the population) acquired about two-thirds of the society's annual production of wealth, with about half of the total going to the top r to 2 percent. Rural peasants (90 percent of the population) made do with the remaining one-third.[ii]
The sociologist Robert Bellah, who studies religious and moral issues and their connection to society, suggests that
… there are two major strands in the American cultural tradition. One strand emphasizes the importance of community, based on biblical and classical ideas of covenant and civic virtue. The other strand emphasizes the individual. Both strands are important and can be combined, as they sometimes have been in American history and as they are in the biblical tradition.
But according to Bellah and his colleagues, the individualistic strand has become dominant in our recent history, so that the core value or ethos of contemporary American society is individualism. Our quest—in our work, relationships, families, ambitions, organizations, often our religious practices—is the personal fulfillment of the individual, however we define that fulfillment.[iii]
Marcus Borg – professor of religion and culture at the University of Oregon – asks the students to write a list of the central messages that we acquire simply from growing up in our culture; here’s a representative sample:
Be all that you can be.
Just do it.
Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
You only go around once.
Go for the gusto.
Look out for number one.
Work hard and you'll succeed….
Life is about having and consuming.
Government is bad.
Be slender (fit, strong, sensitive).
Enjoy yourself.
Nice guys finish last.[iv]
Here’s another, a jingle that sometimes rattles around in my head unsummoned: “You deserve a break today.” None of these bits of conventional wisdom represent communal values; occasionally a student will mention the golden rule, but these proverbs of American common sense are overwhelmingly tilted toward the consideration of what is good for me and those who are dearest to me and not toward gratitude or obligations outside of my own needs and interests.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
There are those who argue that any sort of payment or assistance to elders or those who are in need – things like social security, health care, food support and the like – should be given voluntarily rather than supported by tax dollars, as we do here today with our voluntary support of the Food Pantry. Many of those who have been blessed with wealth are in fact very generous with their means. We remember the great fortunes of Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford, whose foundations represent a generous spirit of philanthropy; and we are grateful for contemporary benefactors like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and others who have signed their Giving Pledge for carrying this tradition forward into our own time. Ironically, though, charitable giving is actually inversely proportional to wealth – that is, on average those who are poorest give the largest share of what they have to others, while those who are wealthiest give the smallest share. In an earlier, idealized age, communities were cohesive enough to be able to take care of one another as the need arose, and this was the model to which the society of ancient Israel was committed by the teachings of the Torah. Today, though, families and communities have been fractured by the demands of mobility to find work and opportunity and by the self-segregation of those who prosper from those who don’t. As a result, few communities have maintained the solidarity necessary to sustain one another in need.
The prophets of the Jewish Bible responded to growing inequality within their own societies with words like these from Amos:
Woe to those who lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the midst of the stall; who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp…. Who drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of [the poor of their peasant society].
Amos's indictment continued: You trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way. . . .
You oppress the poor and crush the needy. . . .
You trample on the poor and take from them taxes of grain. . . .
You trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land.
You buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.[v]
We are asked to be generous with the bounty we have received, and to give thanks for the blessings we cherish. As a society, we will be judged according to how we provide for those who are the least among us. Jesus taught, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required.” [Luke 12:48]
“Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.” “I thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is yes.” May we be grateful and generous and blessed as we gather this Thanksgiving to truly give thanks.
May it be so, and Amen. www.secondparish.org