Journey to Easter: Gratitude

 Deuterononmy 26:1-11

Lent has rolled around again, a season we most associate with the practice of giving up, fish on Fridays, a stronger resolution to avoid temptations, all somehow meant to prepare us for Easter.  But do these things work?  I read of a woman who gave up smoking with relish every Lent, only to get to Easter morning and joyfully light up and resume this unhealthy habit.  A few years ago I was invited join a clergy colleague and some others from her church to a most amazing all-you-can-eat chocolate buffet at a swanky hotel.  Chocolate covered fruit, chocolate sauce on pancakes and ice cream, hot chocolate to drink…. At the time it was only in operation during Lent. I guess the idea was that chocolate tastes that much sweeter when we think it’s a guilty pleasure.

In recent times some church folk have changed the emphasis on giving up some vice during Lent, to taking on a new virtuous habit, like more exercise, or volunteering.  There was hope that if we exchanged the negative feelings associated with trying to break a bad habit for the positive feelings of starting a new good habit we’d be better prepared for Easter joy.  Maybe.

Last year in worship we did some of both.  We gave up Alleluias, put them away in a box, and then took them out again for Easter.  And we worked on developing the habit of sharing what we have with the poor by giving out coin boxes for the Society of St. Andrew.

But this year the word of God found in Deuteronomy 26, other scriptures appointed for the weeks ahead and the creative vision of Sarah Chandler are pointing us to a different approach to Lent altogether.  The metaphor is a journey, and Easter is the destination.  When we set out to take a journey there is some giving up, because some things are too cumbersome to travel with.  And there may be something we start to do because it helps sustain us as we go, or God blesses us with it along the way.  But the experiences of the journey are far richer than giving up one random thing, or taking on something else.  On a Lenten journey everything is about moving toward Easter; but our focus is as much on the journey itself as on the destination. We have some expectations of what we will find at our destination, but the days of traveling themselves hold unimagined experiences, blessings from God that help to shape and change us.

The Lenten journey takes 40 days, a number chosen both because of Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness and because the Israelites spent 40 years to journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.  Spiritually the Promised Land and Easter are one and the same place. But when we count to 40 days we skip over the Sunday mornings as we count. This is because every Sunday is meant to be a day that Christians celebrate the resurrected Jesus and that leads us to the new life of salvation. The Promised Land of Easter is the kingdom of God, where the Lord is the ruler and all living creatures are experiencing shalom because they are living according to God’s design.  All along the journey God prepares his people for life in the Promised Land by giving us gifts.  That’s what this Lent is going to be about for us, focusing on some of the gifts God gives us to enable us to live in Easter when we get there.

            Every so often we come to a point in the journey of life when significant change is about to take place.  Graduations, getting married, becoming a parent, getting a new job, entering retirement.  This is what was going on when the Israelites were given the instructions we read today in Deuteronomy.  They had been traveling through the wilderness with Moses for nearly 40 years.  Now the land was in sight and the Israelites needed some instruction about what to do once they got there.  First settle in, then plant, and when the harvest comes take some of the first fruit of each crop, put it in a basket and bring it to worship and give thanks.

            In a typical thanksgiving service we offer prayers of thanks for the present blessings.  But in this ceremony the people are instructed to recite a creed, a kind of national history all the way back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…”  Abram and Saria had been living in the land of Aram when God called them to travel to the Promised Land, this very land they were now getting ready to enter with Moses.  Abraham’s family wandered around the Land for three generations   When Abraham’s grandson Jacob stole his brother Easu’s birthright and blessing and fled for his life he returned to Aram and lived with his uncle Laban for many years, acquiring two wives and 12 sons.  After Jacob returned to the Land with his much bigger family there was a famine in the Land and all of them had to relocate to Egypt. So the prayer continues, “My ancestor went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.  When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Everything points back to God’s hand working through all of the past to bring them to this point.  God called Abraham and made a covenant to bless him with many children so his descendants would become a great nation.  God watched over Jacob even when he was disobedient and even used the dysfunction in Jacob’s family to bring about the seeds of that great nation – 12 sons.  God led them to Egypt to save them from famine, and even as they were being oppressed, God used the time in Egypt to turn the family with 12 sons into a mighty and populous people.  Then the Lord was the one who led them out of Egypt with ha mighty hand, displaying power and signs and wonders.  And finally it was God who had led them through the wilderness to this good land flowing with milk and honey. By recognizing the hand of God moving through their entire past the Israelites were being given a gift – the gift of gratitude.  A gift that grows deeper and more powerful when it is tied to a long term, faithful relationship.

In our relationship with God, it is an important practice to reflect back over our lives and see how God has been faithfully with us through the entire journey of life.  Especially when we come to these points of transition where the path ahead is leading us into new terrain – of parenting, of a new job, of retirement, of life after a loved one has passed…The gratitude grows deeper and stronger the longer we look and the more we can see God’s hand at work in our past.  The gratitude comes from seeing clearly how God was sustaining us through the tough times, and how often God’s “no” or “not yet” really was for the best.

My grandmother had a love of learning and a desire to go to college, something still not common for young women in the 1930s.  As a little girl her rich uncle promised to help her go, but when she was old enough that promise seemed to have been forgotten.  So she made due with secretarial school.  But God heard her desire and guided her life to facilitate learning.  God gave grandma a scholarly pastor for a husband, introduced her to a wide range of friends and acquaintances who freely shared their knowledge and perspectives with her, and God fed Grandma’s hunger for knowledge with lots of books, lectures and classes. Finally in their retirement the Elder Hostel program was developed and grandma and grandpa went on at least one educational vacation every year for over a decade.  At the end of her life Grandma could look back with gratitude for all the ways God had fed her intellect even without a formal college education.

As I noted before, this practice of looking back to see God at work in our lives is something we should do every time we are about to make a major transition.  For when we see God at work in the past our hearts are filled with the gift of gratitude.  As a church we are about to make a transition.  Fred Kingsbury has been directing music at our church for over 25 years, starting when Vivian Winn moved back to Australia and taking just a few years break in the middle.   When we look back there is much to be thankful for.  God has given Fred some incredible musical talents that he has shared with us.  From leading the choir, to learning how to play the organ, to managing equipment, which allowed the choir to sing to tapes and cds, to jumping in and singing whatever part needed strengthening.  Fred has seen his gift of music as a gift and willingly took a lower than normal salary for the benefit of the church. Sunday after Sunday Fred has been here helping us to worship God. And even when he’s been away Fred has blessed us by introducing Bob O’Connel to us as a substitute.

Next Sunday we will be our Sunday of gratitude for Fred’s ministry here as organist and choir director.  We will thank him and pray for him in worship, and we will celebrate all that God has given us in Fred at coffee hour as well.  Please plan to linger and offer your gratitude.

The lesson at this stop on our Journey to Easter is this: Any time we start a new leg of our journey of life it’s good to pause and reflect back, looking for where God has been, and what God has done and be thankful and celebrate before we move on. Let us each do this individually this week, and collectively as a church so that we might truly see the hand of God guiding us, blessing us and giving us gifts all the way through life.