Over the next few weeks, in the lead up to harvest, we are are going to be celebrating different aspects of God’s creation, and exploring what our responses to God’s gift in creation could be.
This morning I am going to be talking about God’s generosity and abundance, and about how God provides for what we need. Now, you may have come along this morning and be really struggling with money, with housing, with where you’re going to get food for meals this week. Some of what I’m going to say might feel like it’s completely disconnected from the reality of your life. If that’s you this morning, then feel free to zone out from what I’m saying, and bring your needs to God in prayer. One of the things I’m going to be talking about is how those of us who have experienced God’s material blessings can respond in gratitude by sharing what we have. So, if you need something, then please don’t be embarrassed. Come and talk to me afterwards, or drop me a message in the week, and we’ll see what we can do as a church family to support you, and become part of you experiencing God’s abundant provision.
Let’s take a look at our Deuteronomy reading. To give us a bit of background, we’re going to look back at the first verses of Deuteronomy.
“These are the words Moses spoke to all Israel in the wilderness east of the Jordan …. in the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh moth, Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all that the Lord had commanded him concerning them.”
So, we know that the speaker is Moses, the one that God had sent to lead the people of God out of slavery in Egypt, but what does it mean by the “fortieth year”? Why is that significant? Well, when the people had escaped from Egypt, they’d headed across the desert to Canaan, the land promised to Abraham, their ancestor. However, when they’d arrived and scouted out the land, they had become afraid, hadn’t trusted God, and had decided not to go in to the promised land. So, God had said that they would need to spend forty years, travelling around the wilderness, before they went in. Here we are, forty years later, on the east bank of the Jordan, with the people ready to receive the promise of God, but before they do, Moses is going to remind them of their history, and of the commandments of God. You see, he’s not going with them. He is coming to the end of his life, and this is his farewell teaching and prophecy. It’s poignant and powerful stuff.
We see many of the threads that run through the whole of Deuteronomy in what we read this morning. There is encouragement in the focus on the blessings of God. There are reminders of what they’ve been taught in the law, of their history, and of the ways in which God has provided in the past. There are warnings of what happens if they are unfaithful to God.
He starts with the blessings. This really does sound like a lovely place to live, doesn’t it. It is a good land. There is fresh and abundant water. The fields are fertile and there is a range of crops that will grow well there. Plants flourish, and there is no need for anybody to be in want or hungry, it is a place of abundance. The rocks of the hills are ore bearing, and can be mined for iron and copper to make tools and implements. This is a really good place to live. God’s provision is wide ranging, generous, and abundant.
The main purpose of this teaching is to inspire thankfulness. As it says in verse 10:
“”When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.”
Or, as the hymn has it, “all good gifts around us are sent from heaven above, then thank the Lord, o thank the Lord, for all his love.”
Now, this isn’t to say that it all drops on our plates. The fact that in verse 9 the land is described as a place where “bread will not be scarce” implies that there is work to be done by the people – farming, milling, baking. The reference to ore suggests that mining, smelting, and forging will be taking place. All require work, and all are part of God’s good plan for provision for human flourishing from creation.
The trouble is, when we have contributed work to something, we have a tendency to forget that our part is only a contribution. Which is why Moses warns the people against pride in verse 17,
“You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’”
It is true that we may have worked hard to have what we have, but what Moses reminds us is that the ability, circumstances, health, strength, to work are all gift. What ever we have, it is founded on God’s gracious gifts to us. The only appropriate response is one of thankfulness, of gratitude.
Moses warns specifically about pride, but there can be another temptation that comes when we forget that it is all gift, and that is envy. When we see others who have more than we do – a nicer car, a bigger house, more money, longer holidays, then we can start envying them. We lose sight of the good things we have been given, because we resent others having more. We lose that sense of gratitude and thankfulness to God.
One unhealthy human tendency is to look down on those with less than us and believe that they are lazy, and to look down on those who have more than us and believe that they are lucky.
Pride and envy are both attitudes of heart that we need to guard against, and repent of, when we catch ourselves in them. And one of the most effective attitudes that guards against both pride and envy is thankfulness. Of remembering that it is all gift, and choosing to praise and thank the Great Giver.
Another guard against pride and envy is trust, trust in God. Trust that in the end we will have what we need. This is what Jesus is going on about in our reading from Matthew’s eyewitness account of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus is encouraging his friends and followers not to be afraid, but to trust. When life is hard, and we’re not sure that we are going to have what we need, this can be difficult to believe, but it is what Jesus calls us to.
As we embrace thankfulness and reject anxiety, so we are freed to celebrate and share what we have with justice, exercising the stewardship of the earth that has been entrusted by God to humanity.
We celebrate God’s goodness and generosity to us by looking after the land entrusted to us, and by sharing the goodness we have been given. Let’s think for a moment about some of the areas of creation that we have been thinking about in Deuteronomy – farming and mining. We may not have direct involvement in these, but we have choices to make about what we buy, what we invest in. These choices can make a difference in encouraging fair trade, sustainable agriculture practices, ethical mining, just employment practices in the farming and mining industries. Now, we may not think that our buying decisions make much difference, but I believe that markets can be, and have been, shaped by consumers. That is why, as a church, we use fairtrade coffee, tea, and sugar in our refreshments. It’s why we bear these things in mind in our other buying decisions. There is still work to be done, but we don’t let what we can’t do stop us doing what we can do.
We celebrate God’s goodness and generosity to us by sharing what we have been blessed with in our giving. Whether that is to charitable causes that are close to our heart, donating to foodbanks, giving our time in voluntary work, or giving financially to the work of the church, it all flows from a response of gratitude that recognises God’s generosity to us. I love the many different expressions of this that I see around All Saints, it is part of the culture here to want to share, and I want to celebrate that and encourage even more of it.
We’re coming up to the time when we set our budget for the new year as a church. We will need to make decisions about what we pay our staff. I hope that we can continue to pay them the national living wage, at least, but this will mean that our giving will have to go up by the same percentage as the living wage goes up. So, please do review your giving, and if you have joined the church, but are not yet part of the planned giving scheme, then please talk to me, or Liz Lawson, our Treasurer so that we can give you the paperwork.
We have a God who is generous, giving out with a measure pressed down and running over. God has created this beautiful and abundant earth, with more than enough for everyone. God has given us responsibility to steward it well, and to ensure that its abundance is shared. Let us not be ruled by anxiety, but let us celebrate the blessing we have received with thankfulness and praise, and by living up to our call to care for creation and for each other.
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