Sermon Tone Analysis

Gospel Reading -37

:19-

Gospel Reading -37

#blessed

#blessed

-37

We’re getting ready for a time of year in which so much of our baggage becomes apparent to us and to the people around us.

It’s appropriate that we end our series on baggage right before Thanksgiving.

We start this stressful season talking about what we are grateful for, but so often we misplace our gratitude or we are expressing empty gratitude for the things we think we should be grateful for.

We often focus on the things we have or how far we’ve come - our own human accumulations and achievements.

Most social media platforms have a function called the “hashtag”.

You use a hashtag (known to those of us who lived in the time before cell phones as the “pound sign”) in front of a word or phrase to make the post more easily searchable by others.

One of the most popular ones, especially this time of year, is “#blessed”.

For giggles, I searched this hashtag on Twitter (a word-based social media platform) and Instagram (a photo-based social media platform) and found some really ridiculous stuff without even trying very hard.

By a band called “Busted” (which I’ve never heard of): “This album is 15 years old today, and we’re playing Wembley for the 15th time in March #blessed #loveourfans”

I think this is a sports-related one, but I really have no idea what the actual message is: “LETS GO FORK ‘EM BABYYYYY!!! GO DEVILS #blessed #fearthefork”

This is one of the silliest from a kitchen company in the UK: “#FreebieFridays are back and today, we're giving you the gift of stain free worktops (#blessed).

To #win this set of jazzy glass and copper coasters, tag someone who's left a positive mark on your life below and make sure you're following us!

#win #giveaway #prize” As if we’re not blessed if our countertops are stained.

People were #blessed when they signed on with college and pro sports teams, when their team won (there were alot of sports related ones), when they bought a new BMW, got an office with a view, when the server at the restaurant accidentally brought them two meals (lucky, sure - blessed, though?

Really?), one guy was #blessed because he brushed his teeth that morning (I don’t even know where he was going with this one).

A girl on Instagram was #blessed by new fake eyelashes.

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The running theme of the majority of these posts was that someone got something they wanted or something that elevated their status in some way.

#blessed has sort of become a way of saying, “I leveled up in the world’s game.”

In viewing our blessings in light of worldly status, however, we enter into a game we can never really win.

We get sucked into a pattern of “if I just had X, everything would be better.”

This is a dangerous cycle in which we find ourselves constantly worrying about achieving the next thing.

It’s ok to have goals, but when we start pinning our happiness or our definition of being blessed on these worldly acquisitions, we’re on a slippery slope.

We’re in trouble when we start using gratitude as a gimmick - something we do to look like a good person who has it all together.

Let go

Matthew warns us against this very thing.

When we start worrying about how #blessed we are, we miss the actual blessing - righteousness given to us in Jesus Christ.

The more we fall into the trap of worldly status and trying to store up for the future, the less we are able to see God’s Kingdom.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t prepare for the future or that we should be careless and say, “Well, God’s got it.”

But we have to remember that all things we do are to serve the Kingdom.

If it’s all about having the best eyelashes or the BMW or the office with a view, we’re missing the Kingdom.

What does the warning against “anxiety” actually mean?

Is it a warning against anxiousness, against an inner lack of freedom, against being a prisoner of worry?

Is it a warning against greed and covetousness?

Or is the issue not only an inner attitude but also a specific behavior, such as the challenge to renounce possessions or refusing to work?

The other main question is: Who are the persons addressed?

Are they the disciples who are to proclaim the kingdom of God?

Or do the wisdom elements show that the text addresses all pious people and not simply the apostles?26

Or is the text’s comfort offered only to the “poorest of the poor,” and is it an indirect expression of the material “anxieties of the ordinary people”?

Next week we celebrate Christ the King Sunday - the day we remember Jesus is ruler of all.

So this week, as we prepare for Thanksgiving, we set aside all the worldly things, all the mis-placed gratitude, that are getting in the way of allowing Christ to rule over our hearts.

No one can serve two masters.

We cannot live truly grateful lives in which we turn to God as our master if there are other things we are secretly hanging on to.

No one can serve two masters.

We cannot live truly grateful lives in which we turn to God as our master if there are other things we are secretly hanging on to as making life “good”.

the relation to possessions is not merely a question of one’s external behavior; it is also a matter of a fundamental attitude of the whole person.

Sometimes, we feel grateful for things that we are called to let go of.

God doesn’t give us good things in order to make us grateful.

Sometimes we have to let go of the “if I just had ____, I would be good.”

Grace in the Text

Grace in the Text

For people whose lives are overly planned and everywhere institutionally cared for it appears to open up the possibility of “carefree vitality” and “free spontaneity.”90

For the contemporary person who has grown tired of the constant Christian justification of possessions and who is suspicious about the emphasis on the supreme value of work, the text offers a glimpse of an alternative way of life.

It’s hard to find the balance here.

We

To some, this may feel like a scolding if you live a comfortable life.

And in another part of the gospels, Jesus does say that the more you have, the harder it is for you to see God’s Kingdom.

But this is less about what you have and more about what you want.

There isn’t anything wrong with having a warm house to live in or a running car or any of those things - as long as we remember that those aren’t what life is about and that if we don’t have those things or if they aren’t as nice as the house next door or the car our neighbor drives, we aren’t any less blessed.

We are free from having to be #blessed to be truly grateful in life.

Grace in the world

Matthew isn’t saying we are to be enslaved to a life of poverty or that we are all called to sell everything and become monks.

This is not a message of punishment or taking away - it’s a message of freedom.

We are free from materialistic anxiety when we serve God alone.

I found a beautiful story this week that illustrates this perfectly.

In A Second Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Rev. John R. Ramsey tells how in one church a certain person provided him with a rose boutonniere for the lapel of his suit every Sunday.

At first he really appreciated it, but then it sort of became routine.

Then one Sunday it became very special.

As he was leaving the Sunday service, a young boy walked up to him and said, "Sir, what are you going to do with your flower?"

At first the preacher didn't know what the boy was talking about.

When it sank in, he pointed to the rose on his lapel and asked the boy, "Do you mean this?"

The boy said, "Yes, sir.

If you're just going to throw it away, I would like it."

The preacher smiled and told him he could have the flower and then casually asked what he was going to do with it.

The boy, who was probably no more than 10 years old, looked up at the preacher and said, "Sir, I'm going to give it to my granny.

My mother and father divorced last year.

I was living with my mother, but she married again and wanted me to live with my father.

I lived with him for a while, but he said I couldn't stay; so he sent me to live with my grandmother.

She is so good to me.

She cooks for me and takes care of me.

She has been so good to me that I wanted to give her that pretty flower for loving me."

When the little boy finished, the preacher could hardly speak.

His eyes filled with tears and he knew he had been touched by God.

He reached up and unpinned the rose.

With the flower in his hand, he looked at the boy and said, "Son, that is the nicest thing that I've ever heard, but you can't have this flower because it's not enough.

If you'll look in front of the pulpit, you'll see a big bouquet of flowers.

Different families buy them for the church each week.

Please take those flowers to your granny because she deserves the very best."

Then the boy made one last statement, which Rev. Ramsey said he always will treasure.

The boy said, "What a wonderful day!

I asked for one flower but got a beautiful bouquet."

That's the thankful spirit.

That's the gratitude attitude.

It's that attitude that should guide our giving and our lives.

Like that boy's granny, God has blessed us so much.

God has been so good to us that giving shouldn't even be a question.