It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:13-18)
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Holidays are all about traditions, and like most people, I have a few of my own. On Thanksgiving weekend – at least for the last few years – my thoughts are directed toward sump pumps! You might wonder what would cause me to think about sump pumps on Thanksgiving Sunday! But I do have my reasons. I think back to 8 years ago on Thanksgiving weekend. It was our first Thanksgiving weekend here in Port Colborne – and it was cold! Thanksgiving Day started out with a massive snowstorm – one that I might have expected if we had remained up north, but that I certainly wasn't expecting in Niagara. The snow fell, and it piled up pretty quickly. There wasn't much point in shoveling because as fast as I tried to shovel the snow would just pile up again. Then, as evening approached, the temperature suddenly started to rise. The heavy snowstorm turned into a torrential rainstorm. The snow began melting very quickly – much faster than it could drain away – and the rain kept coming down. Eventually we discovered that our sump pump simply hadn't been able to keep up with the storm. It overflowed. Our first Thanksgiving in Port Colborne was marked by cleaning out a flooded basement caused by a sump pump that overflowed. And it got me thinking as I contemplated Thanksgiving 2013. The Bible says that “thanksgiving [should] ... overflow to the glory of God.” I wonder what that means?
It's such a glorious image, isn't it. Thanksgiving that actually overflows! In a way it seems so far removed from our modern society, doesn't it. I find that we don't live in a very thankful society or a very thankful age. Some people call it the me-first society, or the entitlement generation. A culture that thinks they've “earned” things and really have no need to say “thank you” for them. A culture that's very obsessed with “rights” but often seems to forget that with “rights” come “responsibilities,” and that it's the willingness to accept the responsibilities that is at least one way of showing that we're thankful for the rights. And when you have an entire culture that often seems to be pushing the message that you “deserve” this and that you're “entitled” to that and that you have a “right” to something else, it's also easy to start to get the idea that there's nothing to really be thankful for. In a way it's unfortunate that we even need to have a special holiday called “Thanksgiving” because implicitly at least it seems to give the impression that this is our day to be thankful and the other 364 days of the year we don't have to worry about giving thanks! I would hope that for Christians at least, that's not good enough. Not at all! Our hope is that thanksgiving will “overflow to the glory of God.” And that word “overflow” strikes me as important. It's something that can't be stopped. By overflowing, it overwhelms. It's uncontrollable. It should be happening every day and every moment.
Now, I can't comment on how well we all remember to do it, but I suspect that most of us who are here today have more than enough reason to be thankful. I'm sure we all have problems and challenges and hurdles to overcome, but nevertheless God showers rich blessings upon each day of our lives. Think of the people you love and the people who love you. Think of God’s provision for our daily needs. Think of our families and friends. Think of our freedom. These are just a few of the treasures that immediately come to mind when we contemplate thanksgiving – and why we should offer it. But the greatest, most earth-shattering blessing we have received is God’s grace through Jesus Christ. As Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians, the grace that reaches more and more people should result in an overflow of thanksgiving to God’s glory!
Here's yet another reminder – as thankful as we are (or at least as thankful as we should be) even thanksgiving isn't about us; it's about others. It's about sharing the news of what God has done for us through Jesus with such passion and with such joy and with such passion and with such conviction, that this divine grace that has worked its way inside us and hopefully transformed our lives will do the same thing for others. And then they'll become thankful, and share the same news, and it will reach others – and so on, and so forth, and the message of God's grace will spread, and thus we have this explosion of thanksgiving, overflowing “to the glory of God.”
I look at the first couple of verses of the passage we read this morning: “It is written: 'I believed; therefore I have spoken.' Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself.” If we truly want to reflect on the fact that it's acknowledging the responsibilities that accompany our rights that reminds us to be truly thankful, then these words remind us of what our responsibilities as disciples of Jesus are. To understand the goodness of God, to reach out to the world around us with that goodness, and to share what we've been blessed with as a result of that goodness. Thanksgiving has a way of multiplying what we have. To be truly a people of thanksgiving means to discover that for all the things we may want, we already have far more than perhaps we realized. To be truly a people of thanksgiving means to discover that the people who are a part of our lives are more important than the things we possess in getting us through the hard times. To be truly a people of thanksgiving means to realize that all this comes from God. Thanksgiving begins to overflow simply when we take a step back and simply realize what we already have, The truth is that when you believe in God, thanksgiving and overflowing go together. With God things inevitably overflow: laughter overflows, joy overflows, love overflows, faith overflows. The “things” we have are nothing; but the God whose we are is everything.
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” And when we're finally able to see those “unseen” things – thanksgiving begins to overflow, and as we share, the overflowing can't be stopped.
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