Nov. 23, 2003 (Jimmie Johnson)

Joel 2:21-27

Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the LORD has done great things! Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield. O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God; for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame.

Matthew 6:25-33

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kindom of God and his righeousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

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Have you ever lived through the year of the locusts? We call them grasshoppers here in Central Texas. Most of us have a hard time with the image of the locusts because we are not farmers. However, the Prophet Joel’s words about hope for the renewal of the earth, the animals, and the people of faith are set against the background of the year of the locusts.

The year of the locusts is the year in our lives when everything is cut, chewed and devoured to barrenness, the year in our lives when every plan we had was destroyed, the year in our lives when they devoured our field of dreams, the year that our whole lives became barren and desolate, the year in our lives when we don’t have anything left. Nothing is left. Everything is devoured by the events of the year. Inwardly and outwardly, we were left with nothing.

So, let me ask you again. Have you ever lived through the year of the locusts?

Sure you have if you have lived even a few years. Little children know about the year of the locusts when their family was broken, when togetherness and calmness and the feelings of happiness were all eaten by the crushing sadness of a death. Teenagers know about the cutting and eating of the locusts. It is a year in which it seemed Mom and Dad would never stop yelling and fighting each other. Hurtful words were so accusing and devouring of love that fear dominated the house. It seemed as if all joy and love and security had been eaten away by animosity. The parents wonder now what’s caused the children to be so hyper or so quiet and passive. It is the year of the locusts. You don’t have to be old to know about the year of the locusts when everything that was green and growing and full of potential goodness is simply devoured and your horizon is filled with barrenness and your heart with pain.

Soren Kierkegaard is one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Denmark has not produced another like him. Known still as the Great Dane, he also happened to be a Christian who sought to believe in his thinking and think in his believing. Not all do, you know, particularly in magical thinking, Bible-belt religion. Kierekegaard wrote these words, which I find on this Thanksgiving Sunday to be a powerful aid to faith: “How very joyous it is to give thanks
when into our lives You, O God, have poured from above every good and perfect gift. But there comes a deeper joy and peace when a person can give thanks in the midst of misfortune, abandonment and hopelessness—when it seems his own thoughts have betrayed him, when all reason has left him, when there is only discouragement and disillusionment. Ah, to give thanks then!...When the odds are all against us, when there are those who would seek to convince us that we are without hope and without God in our world, then in such times we need more than ever to hold on to Him who holds fast to us.”

Do you realize this dynamic of faith to give thanks in the midst of the year of the locust is the very origin of our national day of Thanksgiving? When the sun rose that first Thanksgiving morning, those pilgrims had been through a terrible devouring. The majority of them had died. The survivors had lost everything. They were barely alive. But they decided as a people to give thanks for what they had going for them rather than be done in by what had gone against them.
What they had going for them was a faith that they all shared together: a belief, a trust in Benevolent Providence! These pilgrims, these men, women and children, looked at their common horizon, and all they could see was destruction, desolation. So, what they did through the faith dynamic of thanksgiving was to grow larger horizons.

Do you remember how this Benevolent Providence expressed itself in the lives of the pilgrims? Oh, I know there has been a lot of romanticizing of our history into a national myth that is expressive of our chauvinistic national pride. But, even a critical reading of our history will reveal that our nation began with a helping hand. The majority who were at that time Native Americans, people of color, reached out to the minority, European colonists, those pink skinned and by that time sallow, gray-skinned surviving pilgrims. And the pilgrim immigrants offered thanks. That’s the origin of the holiday we call Thanksgiving, the dynamic where in the face of the horizon being filled with desolation, you grow a larger horizon with God’s help mediated to you through other human beings.

My favorite line in literature is the ending of Hemmingway’s Farewell to Arms: “Life breaks everyone. Some grow strong at the broken places. If I could give you each a gift, it would be the gift to find your way to the wisdom that knows how to be one of those persons who grow strong at the broken places. It is how you survive the year of the locust when everything promising was destroyed. It’s how you grow larger horizons.

God doesn’t zap thanksgiving into us as if it is some kind of joy juice injected directly from God. No, it comes to us through our own asking for help and through the grace that is mediated through the touch, voices and love of others that God uses to help us grow larger horizons. But it is never easy. We know the answer is not the imbecilic idea so superficially poked in our faces by the words said with a silly grin: “Just turn your life over to Jesus, and everything will be ok.” Look, an expression of turning your life over to Jesus is letting others know what the locusts have done to your heart so that Jesus can come to you through the love of others who hear what all you have lost and who will help you find your way to be thankful again for what you have going for you. This love from others will keep you from remaining heart broken by what has gone against you.

Baby Mary Lacy is being baptized into the Body of Christ. This means we take care of her and one another. When the locusts come, she will have us. Through the sacraments, scripture, sermons, and theology of the church and its personal fellowship, she will find Jesus being real to her, and then she will find the wisdom to take those dead locusts, those devourers, and use them as fertilizer for next year’s field and crop of dreams.

When Jesus talks about his eyes being on the sparrow, that’s very comforting. But the sparrow still falls to the ground. The faith of Jesus is one that offers us minimum protection but maximum support. Thanksgiving is centered in the appreciation of the support.

 

 

 


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