(Thanksgiving Sunday
texts)
[NOTE: This is the entire manuscript of the sermon
which was edited during its preaching
due to time restraints in the worship service.]
God is enough. That’s
the message of these Bible passages today, isn’t it? God is enough.
The prophet Joel in the
Old Testament celebrates the promise of an abundant harvest following a
period of drought. He tells the soil, the animals, and the children not
to fear—God is enough.
Paul writes to Timothy
in this New Testament letter to assure him there is one God and one who
makes everything right between God and humanity—Jesus Christ--God is
enough.
Jesus in Matthew’s New
Testament Gospel tells his followers, “Don’t worry—God provides for even
the most insignificant of creation, so how much more will God provide for
you.” Jesus says seek for God first—God is enough.
Juliana of Norwich, a
15th century English woman of faith, says it well to God in her
prayer which we offered as our Opening Prayer this morning:
God, of your goodness give me yourself; for you are
sufficient for me.
United Methodist Hymnal, “The Sufficiency of God,” 495
Do you believe that today? As you sit here this morning and hear this
Word of God from the Scripture and offer this prayer, do you believe that
God is enough?
What do these texts say
about those who really believe that God is enough? The prophet says they
don’t fear—they know without a doubt that God is among them and they will
never be put to shame. What does Jesus say about them? Jesus says they
don’t worry—they don’t worry about what to eat, drink, or wear. Jesus
says because they seek God first they know all these other things will
come. What about you? Are you afraid? Is there fear in your life?
Would you describe your life as quiet and peaceable? Do you worry? Do
you really believe that God is enough?
Now don’t misunderstand
the Scripture this morning. There is a good and healthy place for fear in
your life. There is a good and healthy place in your life for the desire
for food, drink, and clothing. The impulse of fear, hunger, thirst, is
basic to all living creatures. This impulse is a good gift of God which
is essential to survival. So fear in itself is not bad; the impulse of
hunger and thirst in itself is not bad. The problem is we are so
impulsive. The impulse itself is fine—it’s how you control the impulse
that is the issue. Do you control your fear or does your fear control
you? Do you control your hunger and thirst or do they control you?
Recent studies of the
human brain have revealed the part of the brain that is the source of this
impulse. This is the more primitive part of the brain we share with
almost all animal life. This is the part of the brain that signals
immediately when something is wrong—at the point of danger or alarm it
takes over for the thinking, logical, reasoning part of the brain and
causes you to take immediate action. It is responsible for your
split-second reaction to danger. It takes over when there is no time to
weigh decisions or consider options; in moments like that it takes
control. This is the most primitive and most basic part of the brain.
That fear is healthy fear and a good gift of God. The impulse in response
to this reaction is vital to life itself. Fear is not the issue. It is
how you respond to fear.
The issue is not the
impulse. The issue is impulse control. Imagine you are 4 years old and
someone makes the following proposal:
If you’ll wait until after I run an errand, you can have 2
marshmallows for a treat. If you can’t wait until then, you can
only
have this one—but you can have it right now.
It is a challenge sure to try the soul of any 4
year old, a measure of how adept the child is at controlling impulse. I
don’t know how I would have done! Controlling impulse is at the root of
all emotional self-control. Scientists say if you can control impulse
then you are well on the way to getting a handle on this thing called
life. Dr. Walter Mischel of Stanford University conducted this test with
many 4 year olds in the 1960’s and then followed them throughout their
lives. In his study he noticed a big difference between “the
grab-marshmallow now” preschoolers and those who delayed gratification and
ate 2 marshmallows later.
Some four year olds were able to wait what must surely have
seemed an
endless fifteen to twenty minutes for the experimenter to
return. To
sustain themselves in their struggle they covered their eyes so
they
wouldn’t have to stare at temptation, or rested their heads in
their arms,
talked to themselves, sang, played games with their hands and
feet, even
tried to go to sleep. These plucky preschoolers got the two-
marshmallow reward. But others, more impulsive, grabbed the one
marshmallow, almost always within seconds of the experimenter’s
leaving the room on his ‘errand.’
Dr. Mischel followed up on these same preschoolers when they were
adolescents 12 to 14 years later.
Those who had resisted temptation at
four were, as teenagers, more
socially competent: personally effective, self-assertive, and
better able to
cope with the frustrations of life. They were less likely to go
to pieces,
freeze, or regress under stress, or become rattled and
disorganized when
pressured; they embraced challenges and pursued them instead of
giving
up even in the face of difficulties; they were self-reliant and
confident,
trustworthy and dependable; and they took initiative and plunged
into
projects. And, more than a decade later, they were still able
to delay
gratification in pursuit of their goals.
The third of so who
grabbed for the marshmallow, however, tended to
have fewer of these qualities, and shared instead a relatively
more
troubled psychological portrait. (As teenagers) they were more
likely to
be seen as upset by frustrations; to think of themselves as
“bad” or
unworthy; to regress or become immobilized by stress; to be
mistrustful
and resentful about not “getting enough;” to be prone to
jealousy and
envy; to overreact to irritations with a sharp temper, so
provoking
arguments and fights. And, after all those years, they still
were unable to
put off gratification.
Daniel Goleman, Emotional
Intelligence, Bantam Books, 1995, pp. 81-82
God is enough. Adam and Eve were
told, “from this tree you cannot eat;” but they ate anyway. They could
just not control the impulse. God went looking for them, “Where are
you?” And when God found them, what did they say, “We heard the sound of
you in the garden and we were afraid.” The Scripture says that those who
really believe God is enough do not fear, live quiet and peaceable lives,
and do not worry. What the scientific community is just now recognizing
as a matter of emotional intelligence, emotional growth, the church has
know for a long time to be a matter of spiritual intelligence, spiritual
growth. The church didn’t really need this scientific evidence to verify
this truth of faith but nevertheless the results of these studies should
be no surprise to people of God.
Evelyn Underhill in her
book The Spiritual Life says
We mostly spend (our) lives conjugating three verbs: to
want, to have,
and to do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material,
political,
social, emotional, intellectual—even on the religious—plane, we
are
kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs
have any
ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by
and
include in, the fundamental verb, to be: and that being, not
wanting,
having, or doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.
Evelyn Underhill, The
Spiritual Life, quoted in A Guide to Prayer for
Ministers’ and Other
Servants, Rueben P. Job and Norman Shawchuck,
eds., The Upper Room, Nashville,
Tn., 1983
We are sometimes so afraid, we too
often worry so much that we give way to the impulse to want and to have
and to do while all along we just need to be—to be who we are, to be where
God has made us, to be the children of God, to be the one who knows that
God is all I need. The church teaches you, doesn’t it, to do whatever it
takes—cover your eyes, sing, play games, quote scripture, go to Sunday
School, get into a small group—do whatever it takes to control that
impulse until your soul settles in on the truth.
You know what the basis
of the spiritual life is. It is living each day knowing you are
constantly held in God’s eternal arms. We spend so much time hoping and
praying that God might be with us that we miss entirely that God was
already here and is here right now. As Christians we must learn to resist
the impulse to want and to have and to do, resist the impulse to crave,
clutch, and fuss after so many things in life. God is enough.
Brothers and sisters in
Christ, let the church help you with this this Thanksgiving. Let God into
your heart that you may grow more trusting of God’s care in your life.
Give your children and your grandchildren that gift of love which will
foster in them a life of confidence and trust.
Before us this morning
is a wonderful sign and symbol of the sufficiency of God—a sign that South
Roanoke Church believes that God is enough. There is good news here.
Scientists who study emotional intelligence have found that if you take a
very impulsive child and put him in the proper environment with the right
community where appropriate impulse control is encouraged and reinforced
the chances are that that child will develop a mature sense of balance in
impulse control and ultimately make peace with life. Scientists have
shown that in such an environment actual chemical changes take place in
the brain, the signals are actually re-routed through the more mature and
less primitive parts of the brain and reactions to impulse become more
manageable and more appropriate. Now its nice to have a bit of scientific
confirmation but we Christians have known for a long time what God can do
in a heart once it is surrendered to God. Christian conversion and
nurture is a gift of God which brings healing and wholeness to life. The
Church shares that life. It is the life Christ came to restore.
In this coming blessed
season of the year, let the church help you, your children, and your
grandchildren. Believe it and teach it—God is enough! Do not fear, live
a quiet, peaceable life, do not worry. God is enough! Thanks be to God.
