Deuteronomy 26:1-11
1st Sunday of Lent
17 February 2013
Elizabeth M. Deibert
I have not had the flu this
year– stomach or respiratory – but what I remember about being sick with the
flu is how thankful you feel when your fever and aches are gone and you feel
like a human being again. When you’ve
been nauseated, and finally you feel like eating again, there is this rush of
gratitude. “Thank you God that I feel
good again!"
We had new neighbors move
in this summer from Wisconsin. They
have four girls and they were constantly in the pool. The parents were always reveling in the wonderful weather. But now that they’ve been here a
while, they are just like the rest of us – rolling from one beautiful day to
the next without giving thanks. We
take it for granted. Sometimes we need
some northern relative or friend to come visit to remind us what a blessing it
is to live with such beautiful sunshine year-round.
Deuteronomy is like your
northern relative or friend. This book
is all about remembering how cold and grey life was before God rescued
you. The passage we are reading today is
set in the time before the Israelites entered the Promised Land, but it was
probably written many hundreds of years later, when they could look back and
rehearse the stories of how good life was in the Promised Land, before they
forgot how good they had it, before they were taken away in Exile.
This passage is a challenge
to remember your blessings and to be thankful, by giving back to God and by giving
generously to our neighbor as well.
That’s what our opening hymn, quoting Hebrews 13:15 means by our sacrifice
of praise. The sacrifices we make to
thank God for the blessings we have been given.
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, 2 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. 3 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." 4 When the
priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the
LORD your God, 5 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. 6 When
the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on
us, 7 we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard
our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8 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; 9
and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk
and honey. 10 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. 11 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. (NRSV)
The writer of Deuteronomy makes it very clear
that giving of our first fruits is the best way to say thanks to God. The first fruit is the like the first thing
you buy, the first check you write after payday. The first fruit is not the leftovers. The first is the best. But it is not just giving, but rehearsing
the story of God’s deliverance.
Have you ever considered that how you
rehearse your life’s story says a lot about your relationship with God? There are many ways to recount history,
your personal history, but how you choose to remember it, will shape your
future attitudes. You can tell your
story from the perspective of a victim – all the bad stuff people have done to
you, all the unfortunate things in your life, all the pain you’ve had to endure,
all the things you cannot afford to buy.
Or you can tell your story as a self-made
person, remembering how you accomplished this or that, and how all your
children are good-looking and above average in every way. Or you can tell your story with more
humility and gratitude to God, by pointing out how God has redeemed your
mistakes, forgiven your sins, lavished you with gifts beyond your deserving, and
blessed you with the gift of friends and family, with comforts like home,
health, food and shelter, rather than taking those for granted.
At Peace we’ve been in a season of gratitude
because we are anticipating the gift of a new home – our Promised Land. Just a short time ago, we had no idea how
we would move confidently into the future.
Our lease here was ending sooner than we wanted, we could not find
another acceptable place to rent, nor could we afford to build on the five
acres our presbytery purchased for us.
We were in a tight place. But
with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great mercy and compassion,
tenderness and love, God came to our aid.
God rescued us from our distress.
God has blessed us with a land
and a building.
Even people beyond Peace can see that. Peggy Donaldson told me yesterday that she
had a friend at First Presbyterian who was praying for us when we were on the
verge of homelessness as a church, and when she heard the good news of our
contract and building purchase campaign, she exclaimed, “That’s God.” I think we all can see the hand of God in the
way this plan came together.
So let’s recap what we are learning from
Deuteronomy. First, we learn that it is
right to give thanks to God for our blessings.
Second, we learn to rehearse the story of God’s great work in our lives. Third, we learn that giving thanks involves giving
generously to God, not what’s leftover, but your first fruits, out of
gratitude. When you give your first
fruits, whether it is a weekly pledge off the top or a gift from investments,
you have to trust that God will help you make it on what’s left. Stewardship, the act of managing your
resources faithfully, requires two things – a heart of gratitude and a willful
act of trust – a leap of faith.
But there’s another key point in our lesson
from Deuteronomy: Notice the last verse
of the text. 11 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. So after you set aside your thank offering to God, you invite the
strangers, the weak, the alien, the strangers around you and you share with
them the bounty that God has given. So
the bountiful blessing is not just for us.
We are blessed to be a blessing to others.
Several examples: God has blessed
some of you with resources to be very helpful in this purchase of land. You could have claimed those blessings as
yours to spend as you please, but instead, you realized that God gave you extra
so that you might be a blessing to others through this church. Others of you are stretching to give a little
more each week or month, even though worried about how you will pay your
bills. Thank you for making your
sacrifice of praise.
Another example: This country of
ours – the great USA – has welcomed aliens from day one. We have been the land of opportunity, and we
understood that we had been blessed so that others might also be blessed. Many strangers have come to these states
looking for a chance to earn a decent living, to rise above the poverty, danger,
or religious restrictions of their former homeland. Many of us are descendants of such aliens,
so my hope is that we can find a way to continue to share the blessing of
living in a land of opportunity.
Another example is this land Peace is purchasing. We will soon have the privilege of space
that belongs to us, that we can decide how it gets used. I pray we will be generous with the bounty
God has given. I pray that we will
always be looking beyond ourselves to the persons who might need peace – peace
of mind, peace in Christ, peace and security, any kind of peace. Compassionate Outreach has always been one
of our goals. We have aimed to care
for the needs of others by serving the poor, the homeless, the hungry, and
those without faith or without a loving church community. I hope we will continue to look beyond
ourselves and people like us to explore how God might want us to be a safe
refuge, a sanctuary of welcome for all people – especially those who are
rejected or misunderstood or forgotten or marginalized in any way.
Not many of us know the pain of being an alien, the fear of hiding who you
really are, so that people will not reject you – because you are without legal
documents or because you are gay or because of whatever it is you hide about
you – your past, your present. Jesus
challenged the attitudes of the religious authorities by spending time with the
people they rejected, the people they considered unclean, unfit. He scandalized the powerful and the super
religious by showing them the boundless nature of God’s love.
To really understand God’s grace, we have to first understand that not one
of us deserves it. It is by the mercy
of God that we wake up every morning.
What? Did you think it was a given
that you should be alive today? Did you
deserve more time on earth than the dead children of Sandy Hook, or the dead villagers
in Pakistan, struck by a bomb yesterday?
No. While we cannot rationalize
those tragedies, we know it is only by the grace of God that we are alive and
that we live in comfort, and are surrounded by such beauty and bountiful
resources. Why do we take it for
granted, as if we earned what we have, as if it were not a gift to be born into
a reasonably safe country, to have clean water, a good education, freedom of
religion and freedom of speech, excellent medical care, wonderful opportunities?
You see, when we stop rehearsing the truth that it is God who blesses us,
then we become ungrateful, self-serving, spoiled brats. So don’t forget every day to give thanks to
God for all the gifts of your life and every week or month giving back your
first fruits. Especially in the season
of Lent, give thanks for the life that Christ gives you by his sacrifice on the
cross, and let that thanksgiving overflow into spiritual disciplines of
sacrificial love toward others. The
Mission Team is offering you multiple ways to show sacrificial love during
Lent. Please choose at least one and
make a commitment to it today.
God has richly blessed us beyond our deserving. People who are grateful for God’s bountiful
blessings cannot help but share generously with others, the first fruits, not
the last, our sacrifice of praise.
