On the Third Sunday of Lent I want us to consider: What if Thanksgiving wasn't just a holiday meal featuring turkey and stuffing? What if Thanksgiving was a spiritual discipline -- a conscious, consistent act of carefully discerning the blessings of God and offering a word of gratitude? What would happen if we took an entire week, right in the middle of this Season of Lent to be thankful?
Because I'm willing to bet that if we did that, then something amazing would happen to us.
I'm willing to bet that if we started looking out for the things we can be thankful for, that we'd find them at every bend.
I'm willing to bet that suddenly, we'd have this amazing list of blessings to share...not because God is rewarding us with favors because of our thankfulness, but because our thankfulness opens our eyes to the blessings that have been there all along.
It is easy to get sucked into the vortex of dissatisfaction. To focus all of our energy on what we want, on what is wrong, on what hurts and what isolates us. We see that in this Sunday's scripture passage from Exodus 3:11-17, what I like to call "An Official Meeting of the Back to Egypt Committee." The Israelite people "thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’" It is easy to be unsatisfied.
It is so much more life-giving, though, to focus on thankfulness -- on what is blessing us, on what we have to give, on the generous spirit that fills us and lifts us and sets us free. We see that in our other sermon scripture for this Sunday, Psalm 95: "Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God!"
This Sunday we'll look to take a break from "The Official Meetings of the Back to Egypt Committee" and instead focus our energies and our spiritual disciplines on the way of Thanksgiving.
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From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.
The people quarreled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’
Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’
But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’
So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.’
The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’
Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’
Psalm 95 A Call to Worship and Obedience
O come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and the dry land, which his hands have formed.
O come, let us worship and bow down,
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
O that today you would listen to his voice!
Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your ancestors tested me,
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they do not regard my ways.’
Therefore in my anger I swore,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’
Psalm 95 A Call to Worship and Obedience
O come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and the dry land, which his hands have formed.
O come, let us worship and bow down,
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
O that today you would listen to his voice!
Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your ancestors tested me,
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they do not regard my ways.’
Therefore in my anger I swore,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’
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