Deuteronomy 26:1-11

“When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, ‘Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.’

When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response before the Lord your God: ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’

You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.

Sermon Text

 “God is great, God is good, and we thank him for our food. By his hands we are fed, let us thank him for our bread.” This is one variant of a very common “grace,” prayer, offered before a meal. This is the standard way to pray over food in many cultures – before the meal we offer a short doxology praising God for the provision of the food, and asking God to bless our eating of it, and closing of course with a simple thanks. The offered praise, the gift of thanks given to the God who so rightly deserves it – the practice of prayer over a meal is something that is genuinely, simply, good for the soul.

The act of thanksgiving is not reserved for prayer, however, nor is the prayer only meant to be for the present goodness before us. When we gather together as the Church, like we did last week, and participate in the “Great Thanksgiving,” that is the Eucharist, we are not just thanking God for God’s present presence among us, but for all the good that God has done. Through birth, through life, through death, and in resurrection we proclaim a gospel that follows us from glory into glory and that testifies to the work that God has done, is doing, and will do in the future. Thanksgiving is not just a reaction to the present circumstances we find ourselves in, but a recollection of what God has done for us up to this point.

The re-hearsal of God’s goodness make us more aware of God’s current work around us. If we look to the patterns of scripture and of our own life, then we are able to see where God might be working now. The idea that, “God works in mysterious ways,” is often used to give words to the inexplicable aspects of God’s work in our lives, but I think we default to it too often. If we learn more, if we begin to acknowledge patterns of God’s work in the world and in our life, to become familiar with that divine rhythm, then we lose the security that not knowing can give us. If we are ignorant, perhaps we can be excused for missing out on God’s work – if we know better… Then we are much more responsible for our own actions.

Our scripture today captures a ritual in the life of the people of God. A commandment was given that, when they had made it through the wilderness, once Egypt was behind them they were to give thanks every harvest in a particular way. The first fruits of the harvest were to be given to the priests, and the person who gave them was asked to proclaim the faith they held in a very specific way. They were asked to recall the salvation history of God’s people, from Abraham to their present day, they were meant to tell a story as they gave thanks through the gift of their first fruits.

“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor,” is a reference to every generation of the patriarchs. While Abraham in his flight from Chaldea represented the first migration of the people who would become the Israelites, it was not the last. Abraham fled to Egypt, and then returned to Canaan. Isaac fled Canaan into Ammon, and then returned. Jospeh was taken into Egypt by force, and then his family followed by choice. The people of God were migratory, but more than that they were “migrants,” moving from one nation to another to escape plague, or violence, or danger. A reality reflected in the life of Christ when his family fled Herod by escaping into Egypt. The history of God’s people, was the history of vulnerable, transitory people.

In Egypt God’s people grew, and through the fear and bigotry of Egypt they were put to hard labor and culled through infanticide. Following years of abuse, God freed them and led them through the wilderness. When they arrived in their new home, the home of their ancestors Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, they were finally given peace. In that peace, for generations to come, they were asked to offer the first fruits, to share them and to celebrate, and to tell once again the story of their salvation.

For ourselves, many of us do not have the exact story of descent or family legacy to bring us to our present place. However, we have a spiritual story to tell. When we come together, when we offer up our time or our money or our resources to God, we ought to tie it to the story of how we got to be here. When I lead worship, I separate out the prayer of thanksgiving from the offering – because I find it vulgar to only thank God in the context of having money in a plate. We offer the gifts we give, because we have a story to tell, and the story we have to tell we tell in thanksgiving. We take time every Sunday to offer our joys, and then to praise God for them, because that is the essence of thanksgiving, not the material gift itself – though it is important and though it does follow.

If I were to adapt the creed our scripture gives us today, my own salvation history would go like this: “I was born into a family without faith, a wanderer in the world. Through accidents of life, and through marriage of my father, I found my way to the people called Methodists. From the mouth of a minister, who would later be found wanting, God’s word broke through and brought life to my barren world. Through a thousand more chance meetings, with righteous and unrighteous, with the holy and the vulgar, God called me to take up the yoke of ordination and serve God’s people with word and table. So now I offer myself to you, Father Almighty, and give you thanks and praise.”

We all have a story to tell, a testimony to give. For all of us, for too long we have let our beliefs be only centered on whether we hold something to be true or not. We are not invested in the story that God has told for us, and with us. The creed of God’s people is not meant to be a list of ideas, but a story we tell proudly. Tell you story, give praise to God, and let thanksgiving rule your heart and mind. – Amen.