Next Thursday, we will gather with our families and loved ones for that great American family gathering, Thanksgiving. As we gather, we will meet and hug and tell stories and eat. Unfortunately, we don't always get to do that with all of our church family because many of us need to be with our natural families. I hope our worship today will help us to fill that void as we gather around the Lord's table to celebrate what Christians call the Eucharist -- which literally means, Thanksgiving.

Yesterday, I preached at the local synagogue -- Congregation Rodfei Zedek. They wanted me to talk about Jewish Christian relations. It was a lot of fun. Brenda went with me for moral support. The service started at 9 a.m. and went till 12:20 p.m. -- and this was their regular service. Most of the service was reading of scripture and prayers -- in Hebrew, of course. One of the more interesting events was when the rabbi called Brenda and me out and took us to the Children's worship. The children were actually leading worship. They are much more liturgical and prayer book oriented than we are, so it was easier for them to do that. In his brief remarks to the children, the rabbi said, we say all these prayers and read all this scripture for one thing: and that is to lead us to be able to say the Shema with all our heart and with all our commitment. The Shema, is the call to Israel that begins with the words, "Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and all your strength." When Jewish people hear this, their deepest passions are evoked, their hairs stand on end because this is the call that holds together their story of liberation from Egypt from the place of slavery. They would feel it as if they are physically there listening to Moses preach these words.

You remember the story, don't you? About how God called out a group of slaves from slavery in Egypt and made a covenant with them in the desert -- that day, God promised them a land flowing with milk and honey. There is a fundamental premise in that covenant, which was spelled out more fully by Moses in a sermon which we now call Deuteronomy and later reiterated by Joshua, that the land was God's gift. Not that they deserved it, not that they earned it, not that they conquered it; but this rag-tag band of runaway slaves saw the tremendous miracles that God performed all along the way. It was obvious to them that the land was given, freely and extravagantly. Along with that acknowledgement came the notion that nothing was theirs to own, in fact, everything was to be used with great care because it was God's.

So in Deuteronomy 26, there is a ritual for offering first fruits to God. Now, first fruits are actually tokens. They indicate the acknowledgement that the entire crop is God's. But since all of it cannot be carted into the temple, they were simply asked to bring the first-fruits. Here's the instruction. "When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and settle in it, you shall take some the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.' When the priest takes the basket form your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response before the Lord your God." What follows next, often referred to as the most ancient credo of the Isrealites is in fact a recalling of the story of God's graciousness. "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he 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. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord have given me." It was very important to narrate the story over and over again, in fact to ritualize it so that the people will never forget it.

For us, Thanksgiving is the best opportunity to ritualize this truth, that all that we are and have is what God has given us. This may seem like a small thing, and we may very devotedly say the words. But I know, that living that truth is very hard for us. That is so, because the stories we receive from our culture go completely contrary to this biblical assertion. I have said this before, but it bears repeating over and over again. When we and our children come to hear the stories of God's faithfulness, we don't come story-less. Rather, our imagination is already saturated with other stories, which we have learned to trust. We get these from the values of our market-driven culture and are constantly hammered into our brains, particularly through TV commercials. I don't have to tell you, you know these stories. Money is the key to happiness, says one story. And most of us, if not all of us buy this story, very easily. Is it not true that we aspire to having more money that we are willing to work interminably long hours at the expense of ourselves and our families? And then there are lots of others who go crazy over lotteries and casinos and TV shows like "Who wants to be Millionaire?" Just do it, says another. Do what, you ask? Anything you want. Everybody is doing it, if it is drugs or alcohol, if it is sex before marriage or outside marriage, its OK. That's the cool way to live, says this story. "Coke is it" says the punch line of yet another story. Is what, you ask? The answer to all life's problems, of course. Perhaps the most disastrous story that we buy from our culture is that we own what we have, it is what we've earned and it is ours. When we come to listen to God’s story we come with our heads filled with stories from our material culture.

Let’s understand that these stories are at best inadequate. At worst, they are outright lies. They are inadequate because they lack the life-giving power that comes from beyond ourselves. So, when we come to hear and receive the stories of God, we cannot but notice the shallowness of those stories. Discipleship is about discerning being faithful to God's story rather than the stories with which our culture bombards us.

One of the real keys to being faithful to God's story, is developing a spirituality of thankfulness. Someone said, gratitude begets justice. This is because such a spirituality says that what we have is not ours, or what we ourselves generated, but it is given to us, extravagantly and abundantly -- not to be used irresponsibly or as we want to, but as good stewards of God's manifold grace. A spirituality of thankfulness is one where we are we will give thanks to God not only for the big and important things in life, but also for the mundane and ordinary, the day-to-day things of life. It is a spirituality in which even in the most difficult of circumstances, we will be able to see the wonder of God's grace and be thankful. This is more than grace before meals which for some of us has become a perfunctory ritual. But grace before meals does not have to be perfunctory. It can be a daily, tangible expression of our being thankful at all times.

Now let's go to our beginning story. And that's the story of the early church. Sometime ago, I discovered the proliferation in the NT, of Greek words that have the root "char." Charis -- grace, or God's gift to us in spite of how undeserving we are; joy -- chara, rejoicing -- chairo, gift -- charismata and thanksgiving - eu-char-istia. Eucharist the Lord's supper, means thanksgiving. Remember now, the people of the early church experienced tremendous persecution. But despite that trusted God to care for them and that trust produced lives of joy and grace. They seem to have had great joy in the simple fact that they believed, not because of any goodness or merit on their part; after all, tax collectors, prostitutes and all kinds of sinners were allowed to discover and be a part of the Kingdom of God. Jesus once said that it was like the man who stumbled across a treasure in a field who "in his joy, goes and sells all that he has and buys the field" (Matt. 13:44), or like a woman who lost a coin, a shepherd who lost one sheep, a father who lost a son (Luke 15), all of whom found their lost treasures and had great rejoicing. Interestingly, the two emotions that are most frequently expressed in the NT are joy and thanksgiving.

The char words indicate an embarrassing richness; a great sense of abundance; they felt themselves to be extraordinarily gifted by God. And they expected that the abundance that they were enjoying would be multiplied beyond their most extravagant dreams when Jesus returned to rule over a transformed earth. The interesting thing is that when you have such faith in God's providence, you have little need to grasp and hold for yourself, or hoard. So they gave to others freely of what little they had. In Acts 2:44,45 and 4:32, we read that they shared everything, and there was no one with need in their community. And then later on when the church in Jerusalem had a famine and the believers were in severe need, Paul went around collecting money for the Jerusalem church. Writing to the Corinthian Christians about it in 2 Cor. 8 he commends the churches in Macedonia. "We want you to know, brothers and sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia, for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part." Their sense of enrichment was so overwhelming that they begged the apostles to take their offering to the saints in Jerusalem, and this despite their own poverty. Paul was so overwhelmed by this expression that he was sure that this was an illustration of what Jesus himself did in the incarnation. In 2 Cor. 8:9, he neatly captures this feeling of being enriched. He says, "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich." There is little reason to doubt that John who wrote the gospel perhaps 60 or more years into the life of the church, still may have felt that Jesus' promise "I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly" was being fulfilled in the church.

Paul's theology of thanksgiving is perhaps best in 2 Cor. 9:11ff., where Paul says that they, the giving church will accomplish even more with their contribution than financial relief. How? Because they will also produce thanksgiving to God. You see, the receivers will thank God for what they have received (vs.12). Interestingly, Paul does not say that they will thank the churches that gave -- but will thank God. Makes sense, because in actuality these things were not theirs to give in the first place, they were God's. And the Christians of the first century knew that well.

In our culture, is it not true that when we give, we expect to receive thanks for ourselves? And when we receive, we thank the giver hoping to reciprocate at least with a good feeling? All the thanksgiving Paul is talking about here is the overflowing in thanksgiving to God. The Greek the word charis, is used not only for grace, but also for gift. So, charis, was not always something nebulous, but often something very tangible, a gift, like money or food. And the thanksgiving that such a gift produces is eucharistia, same word that is used for the Lord's Supper, and so is expressed in tangible terms, bread and wine. Receiving charis produces eucharistia.

Thanksgiving, is really "returning thanks." In 2 Cor. 9: 12 the ministry of the church, which in this case was the collection for their impoverished sisters and brothers, was also a means of overflowing thanks to God. The picture is of thanksgiving as God's grace coming back to God all the richer in God's eyes for its having been received and put to use. The process is similar to the cycles of snow and rain. God's grace comes to humans who receive it and live lives of empowered, generous and gifted discipleship, and in so doing return thanks. So, returning thanks not just saying, "Thank you, Jesus" over and over again or praying it over and over, but it is also in doing something and giving something. Perhaps its in giving money in overflowing generosity in tithes and offerings to continue to the ministry of the church, or to specific missions that they might continue to do God's work. Perhaps it is giving our time and energy for tutoring at Strive. Perhaps it is to join with other faith communities to eliminate concentrated poverty from our city and to sharing the good news of Jesus with our neighbors. Returning thanks is certainly living our day-to-day lives as disciples.

Thanksgiving is returned to God when we live in constant awareness that all that we are and all that we have is because of God's gifts to us. And it will be expressed in ministries of giving, serving and living out our discipleship. When we gather with our families this Thursday, we would typically ask each other "What are you thankful for?" This time would you change that question around your thanksgiving table and ask each other, "How are we returning thanks?"