To Whom I Give Thanks<title> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../../sermon.css"> <style fprolloverstyle>A:hover {color: #FF0000} </style> <style type="text/css"> p { font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify; } cite { font-variant: small-caps; font-size: smaller; } </style> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../2002/sermon.css"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" vlink="#0000FF"> <table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4 > <tr VALIGN=BASELINE BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td COLSPAN="2" BGCOLOR="#000080"> <b> <font color="#FFFFFF"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">  To Whom I Give Thanks </span> </font> </b> <font color="#FFFFFF"><br>A Sermon based on </font> <a target="_blank" href="http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&version=NIV&passage=Romans+16:1-16,21-27"><font color="#FFFFFF"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Romans 16:1-16,21-27</span></font></a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN="2" width="640">  <p>When Nancy and I moved into our house in Rockwall in 1997, we inherited a security system but chose not to maintain the service. Though we didn't have the service, we still had all the hardware which was still connected to the electricity. On occasion, a power surge would set off the alarm system. Somehow, over time, we learned which buttons to push to shut the alarm off when it was inadvertently turned on. But one time the siren that was hidden somewhere in the wall went off and would not stop. It was the middle of the night. It was a horrific noise. We knew if we couldn't find a way of turning it off, we would literally have to leave the house. It was just unbearable.</p> <p>We finally traced the source of the noise to a horn that was hidden inside a grate in the wall by the fireplace. With the siren still blaring, I removed the grate, literally almost ripping it from the wall. With a pair of wire cutters I clipped the two wires that connected it to the electricity. I had one of those moments you see in the movies, when I didn't know if I clipped this wire instead of that one, something would blow up. But, I was so desperate for something to happen, I clipped them, and there was blessed silence. We never had trouble with the system again because we had disconnected the siren from the source of electricity.</p> <p>Over time, I've discovered that we can do the same thing with our consciences. We do something wrong; we can't stand the noise of the siren of our conscience. So we either listen to our conscience and correct our behavior or we cut the wires that connect our behavior to our conscience. It doesn't change the way we live; it just makes it possible to live the way we do without listening to the howling dogs of our conscience in the basement of our souls.</p> <p>How is it that we do that? We can consciously choose to cut the wires of our conscience by just developing very rational ways of justifying our behavior so that we can justify even the most abhorrent behaviors to ourselves and others. More subtly, I think what happens is that we cut the wires that connect our souls to our conscience by failing to do something else.</p> <p>The text we've read this morning is from the apostle Paul's letter to the Roman church. They are from the very last chapter of that letter. Now, listen to some words from the very first chapter of that same epistle. "Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So men are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened" <cite>(Romans 1:20-21)</cite>.</p> <p>At the root of all immorality, on some level, is the failure to acknowledge God as God, specifically by failing to give thanks. Conversely, at the root of all true spirituality is the willingness to constantly, daily, moment by moment, acknowledge God as God, specifically by thanking God. If we choose not to thank God, we disconnect our conscience from our souls. We become self-centered in our thinking in that we come to believe that we are capable, independent of God. It is in thanking God that we stay connected to God as our source of hope and guidance.</p> <p>That's true on a human level, isn't it? Think of the closest relationships you have in your life right now. Is it not true that in those close relationships, the four or five closest relationships in your life, is it not true that one of the hallmarks of those relationships is your constant willingness to express your gratitude to each other for your presence in each other's lives, one way or another?</p> <p>When Nancy and I were married, we were given one piece of premarital advice. George Mason, the pastor of Wilshire and our pastor at the time, said to us, "I only have one word of advice for you. Every morning when you wake up, before you get out of bed, look at the person lying next to you and take just a moment to thank God they are in your life." Not bad advice. How much marital conflict could be resolved with a simple "thank you" now and then?</p> <p>We have come today to give thanks in this worship service. Specifically, we have come to give thanks by giving an offering of our financial resources, not to the church as much as to God through his church. To acknowledge God as God by giving thanks to God with our financial resources.</p> <p>From the text we've just read in Paul's epistle in the 16th chapter, there's one thing that is also evident. It is impossible to give thanks to God without thanking the people through whom God has made himself known to us. This may have seemed a rather bizarre passage of scripture to read for a sermon this morning, with all these names that are virtually impossible to pronounce correctly. Thanks for your indulgence a few moments ago as I attempted to do so.</p> <p>In those 23 verses of scripture, the Apostle Paul names 35 individual people to whom he gives thanks and, through them, the uncountable scores of other people and churches. People we've never known or seen, many with names that are all but impossible to pronounce, but who were sojourners with the Apostle down the road of faith. Some who had offered material support of comfort and encouragement, others who had prayed, and others, he goes further to say, did more than that. "Greet Prisca and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus, and who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles."</p> <p>Now, we don't know for sure how it was that these two people had risked their necks for Paul's life. Paul did. He had not forgotten it, of course, and he was saying that, without all of these people through whom God had made himself known to them, there would be no Paul. "To whom I give thanks," Paul said, and then named 35 people specifically.</p> <p>As we came to Thank Offering Sunday, I was praying and thinking about how to approach this message. What should I say today? Since the 1930s, this church has been celebrating Thank Offering. Has anything not been said about thanks-giving that I could add to it? Well, probably not, in terms of biblical exegesis. But, if I take the scripture we have read this morning and apply it to my own life, then maybe there is something I can offer that's just a little bit new.</p> <p>Let me say quickly that some today would have encouraged me to scold those of you who do not give. If you don't give, you have your own reasons. I would say that I fear for your conscience, quite honestly. Just a question. If you never connect giving thanks with supporting the Kingdom of God with your financial resources, will there come a day in your life when you completely fail to give thanks to God altogether? If so, what might that mean for you?</p> <p>More than that, though, I have decided that scolding people who have found a rational way of not giving to their church from whom they expect so much is absolutely worthless. The scripture we have read this morning in Romans says that all of nature bears witness to God's faithfulness. That must be a part of what Thomas Chisholm was thinking when he wrote these words: "Morning by morning, new mercies I see. All I have needed Thy hand hath provided. Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me. Summer and winter and springtime and harvest; sun, moon and stars in their courses above, join with all nature in manifold witness to Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love" <cite>(Thomas O. Chisholm, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, 1923)</cite>.</p> <p>If the faithfulness of God to you does not motivate you to give thanks with your financial resources through this local community of faith, I am certain there is nothing I can say that will change that. Besides, and I speak only for myself, I don't want to receive a scold offering this morning. I want to receive a thank offering. Don't you? So, if it were yours to give thanks this morning, not to scold, but to give thanks by thanking the specific people through whom God had made himself known to you, who would you thank? Can you name them?</p> <p>Last week, I was at my alma mater, Hardin Simmons University. I had been asked to preach at the worship service that concluded the homecoming weekend at which we celebrated my 30-year class reunion. The person who recruited me to preach asked me specifically to celebrate what Hardin Simmons had meant to all of us. "Celebrate," she said. I didn't know any other way to celebrate what that institution had meant to me without thanking the people who had touched my life through that institution and through whom God had made himself known to me. That's what I'd like to do now. I have no more interest in scolding. I just want to spend my time thanking.</p> <p>I thank God for my parents, both of whom now rest in the arms of Jesus. I introduced myself this past week to a man who is being transferred to Midland. I don't know what he did to make his boss mad, but he's being transferred to Midland. It turns out, he's in the oil industry, and it caused me to tell him about my father, that my father was a petroleum engineer in Midland. As I listened to myself talking to this total stranger about my dad, I realized that, even though he is now with Jesus, I still like to brag on my daddy. I thank God for my father. It was my father who taught me that faith involves clear thinking, as well as passionate feeling, followed by specific action. My father taught me that. Where would I be without my dad? I thank God for my dad.</p> <p>I thank God for my mother, who taught me to love nature, specifically God's little creatures. Specifically, dogs. My dog Beau is the daily recipient of my mother's love for animals through me.</p> <p>I thank God for countless Sunday school teachers who gave of their time to teach me the Bible.</p> <p>I thank God this morning for a deacon who took me aside after one of my very first sermons in which, at the beginning of the sermon, I had apologized for not being that good before I even tried. This deacon took me aside and graciously scolded me afterwards and said, "When you stand to preach the word of God, don't you ever again apologize to anyone." I've never forgotten that.</p> <p>I thank God for one of my fathers in the faith, Glen Edwards, who walked with me through some very challenging times in my life. One time, I was so proud of a sermon I had written that I sent it to him, hoping that he would brag on it and make me feel good. You know how you always want people that you respect to brag on you? He sent it back with a word of encouragement. "File this sermon away so that someday you can look back on it and see how much you have grown."</p> <p>I thank God for the churches that gave me a chance when I knew less than I thought I did but when I could have never been convinced of that at the time.</p> <p>I thank God for friends. How do I name my friends, who still search me out, after all these years, just to see how I'm doing? I could name many. Jay and Laura, Dennis and Pam, Jud and Linda come to mind.</p> <p>I thank God for professors who took the faith my father gave me and stretched it to another level. Who reinforced what my father taught me, that faith and reason are not competing but complementary paths to the truth. So, I have discovered that I can believe God created the world and still believe that he used some form of evolution to get it done. Because to me, the most important thing is that God did it, not how he did it. Do you know how God did it? I don't know how God did it. Even the writers of scripture didn't know how. They just knew who and a little about why.</p> <p>I thank God for a history professor, Dr. Zane Mason, the best historian I ever knew. Occasionally in the student center at Hardin-Simmons, I would run into him, where he always had this strange habit of drinking a cup of hot water every morning. He always had room at the table for me. We would sit down and visit as I watched him drink that cup of tasteless hot water. At 18, 19 years of age, I had no idea why he'd drink hot water. At 52, I've come to appreciate and understand it a little bit more. Looking back, Dr. Mason was teaching me in the classroom that all of history is God's story. By taking time for me in the student center, he was teaching me that I was a part of God's story, too. That's good teaching.</p> <p>I thank God for Clint Dunagan, the first professor who helped me see scripture from the inside out. That you don't so much learn the story of scripture by dissembling it into its most microscopic parts, but by standing back and viewing the landscape of historic faith and getting the whole panorama. He taught me that the children of Israel were the first to model for us in their wilderness wanderings that faith means being on a journey to unpredictable places, that faith never gets into more trouble than we build permanent human temples meant to contain rather than worship God. Who took me aside in the student center one day, the day his wife left him, and told me, one of his students, how heartbroken he was. And by doing so, he taught me that faith is a never-ending journey to places we cannot imagine, but a journey on which we will never be abandoned by God, even when we have failed most miserably.</p> <p>I am not a fundamentalist because of what I learned from those kinds of people. I learned how to read scripture with an open and serious mind as well as a serious heart.</p> <p>I thank God for a BSU director who was the first to give me the opportunity through mission trips from Southern Indiana to the Rio Grande River, to experience first-hand the truth that the world was bigger than the "Leave It To Beaver" days of my West Texas upbringing.</p> <p>I thank God for my two boys, Griffin and Cameron, through whom God has shown me a love I've never known any other way. And I thank God especially for the two women, whom I've never known, who placed them both for adoption.</p> <p>I thank God for Nancy, who, for me, has always been the grace of God in the flesh.</p> <p>I thank God for Wilshire Baptist Church and for my friend George Mason. For that congregation that loved me through the darkest days of my life and brought Nancy into my life, and then, of all things, brought you, Cliff Temple, into my life.</p> <p>And last, but certainly not least, I thank God he has given me these eight years to be your pastor. You have done far more for me than I could ever do for you.</p> <p>One of my favorite stories, that you may have heard me tell, is about a little boy who got into a schoolyard fight in my first-grade year at Judice Elementary School in Lafayette, Louisiana. He was getting the stuffing beaten out of him. This was back in the days when little boys wore hats to school and somewhere in the fight his hat got knocked off of him. I didn't know the little boy but I felt sorry for him. After the fight was over and all the other students walked away, I walked over and picked up his hat and handed it back to him. Somehow over the years, the Lord has reminded me of that event and used it to teach me that's how you do ministry. If you really want to minister to people, just keep handing them their hat back to them after their dignity has been destroyed.</p> <p>Cliff Temple, you gave me my hat back! And, I could never say thank you enough. I thank you for being the kind of church that will allow me to say everything I've just said in this sermon and to continue exploring whatever faith means and wherever it may take us together.</p> <p>I am reminded this morning of a young mother who came once to present herself to a pastor of another church, to make her profession of faith. When he asked he why she had come, she said, "Last night, as I stood over the crib of my newborn baby, I realized for the first time in my life I had to have someone to thank."</p> <p>Can you imagine a life without someone to thank? To live is to give thanks. Living is thanks-giving. Thanks-giving is living. If there is another way, I simply don't know what it is. I just wanted to say thank you this morning, because I didn't know what else to say.</p> <p>Thank you! For everything. Thank you.</p> <hr width="100%" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Glen Schmucker, Pastor </td> <td> <div align=right>  November 5, 2006 </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN=2> Copyright © 2006, Glen Schmucker </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>