Thanksgiving Sunday - Living Grateful Lives

St. Andrew's Church

9 October, 2005

I was not long into my ministry when I noticed a common phenomenon when I went out parish visiting. It happened more when I visited someone in middle age or older. The conversation would start out like any of a hundred thousand conversations which people have day to day. The pleasantries of "how are you doing?", "funny weather we're having!" etc. etc would be dispensed with. A cup of tea would be produced and we would move into the sort of conversation which really begins to share more of oneself.

Perhaps it would start out with sharing something of the family members - where they are, how they're doing. Current news of them would be replaced by stories of earlier days. We would travel backwards in time and it was around this point that the phenomenon would show itself.

When the stories get back to the time of the Depression - the dirty 30s - I would often hear sentences like, "We really didn't have much, but we were really happy. We enjoyed life more back then. We made our own fun. We shared what we had and everyone was cared for."

I doubt I'm the only one who has noticed this phenomenon. Perhaps you have heard it too, or perhaps you have actually experienced it. Somehow it seems that there is a tendency for people to enjoy life more when they have less ‘stuff.'

This checks out with my experience in the third world as well. Some of the happiest, most well adjusted people I have met have also been people who have had very little ‘stuff.' I remember what it was like in the village of Gutalid on the southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines. I visited it in early December in 1993. It was hours by pony up in the mountains to their village. They had no electricity, no water in their homes and no t.v. They did have a small river which ran swiftly by, and they had the fruits and vegetables which thy planted ,and the chickens which they raised, and bamboo huts which they lived in. And they had very little else. I was up there with their bishop to bless the Church which they had made. It was the only Church I had been to which had a mud floor.

There was something about the idea of blessing that Church which reminded me of Moses standing before the burning bush and being told by God to take off his shoes because he was standing on Holy Ground. Here we were, blessing a Church where the floor really was the ground. That ground continued out of the Church and was the same ground which comprised the whole village and which nourished them and was the ground which led into their own homes.

Without planning it, on the spur of the moment when I got up to preach at that service, I stood in the centre at the front and silently removed my shoes and socks. I was so impressed because my interpreter, Peter, without missing a beat, did exactly the same thing, and I spoke about blessing and about holy ground and Peter interpreted.

After the service we had a feast. We were each served our rice dish in a folded up banana leaf, and we ate without utensils. The meal, the day, the whole village was a perfect example of simplicity. And the people had such joy in them. At the end of the day, some of the youth came around and sang Christmas carols until it was time for bed.

I realized that the Bishop didn't really bless that Church and that congregation, but, rather, declared them to be blessed. The ground in that Church was holy before we got there, of course. And the people I had met were truly blessed in so many ways. Not the least in their lack of worries and anxieties which seems to be the norm in what some mistakenly think of as a more ‘civilized' society.

I listen to CBC radio when I'm in the car and, because of the lockout, I have heard quite a few radio re-runs. I heard Jane Farrel on workology. I can't remember who she was interviewing but they spoke about the joy-to-stuff ratio.

I looked it up on the internet and the basic definition there is:

joy-to-stuff ratio (joy-too-STUF ray.shee.oh) n. The time a person has to enjoy life versus the time a person spends accumulating material goods.

Ellen Frankenburg of the Cincinnati Business Courier writes a little about it which might help us understand it a little more:

Worse than that, though, I think that people with full blown affluenza are not only lacking in time to enjoy their stuff, I think that they have lost the ability to appreciate their stuff. Even if they had all the time in the world, they would be bored with their stuff.

Affluenza can make people devalue more than just their stuff as well. They can devalue experiences and even people. People with affluenza often forget how to be grateful.

In the Book of Deuteronomy Moses warns about a lack of gratitude. Just beyond today's reading, where Moses tells of the good land into which the Lord is leading them, he writes,

I think Moses was speaking to us! Just like the other nine lepers who are so busy getting back to business, we can too often forget that it is God who provides all that we have. Indeed, and especially, our own well-being.

The preceding verses from Deuteronomy which we did read in today's lesson was meant for the Israelites of about 620 B.C., but the land it describes, that God is promising to his people is much like the one in which we live. If we take out the bit about the fig trees, pomegranates and olive trees, the lesson talks of:

This is as good a description of Canada as any we could find: the wheat of the West, the abundant supplies of water, where we can eat without scarcity - it even describes the rich minerals that we posses in this land, including the copper that we can dig out of the hills.

The conclusion to the lesson tells us how to live grateful lives. It says that we live grateful lives by keeping God's commandments, and living in his way.

And Jesus himself summarizes God commandments by saying to

Today is Thanksgiving Sunday. Let us remember to thank God for all that we have. If you have trouble feeling grateful, perhaps it is time too look at your joy-to-stuff ratio. Perhaps it is time to simplify your life.

Certainly no matter who you are, it is always time to live grateful lives, because thanksgiving is not a day, but an attitude. And it is God's commandment to us. Amen.