Faith and Gratitude

The Reverend J. Howard Cepelak

Trinity Church

Waltham, Massachusetts

Pentecost XXV – 18 November 2012

Joel 2:21-27, Psalm 126, I Timothy 2:1-7, Matthew 6:25-33

From the Book of Joel:
Fear not….You shall know that I, the Lord, am your God and there is none else…

From St. Paul’s 1st Letter to Timothy:
For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all….

From the Gospel According to St. Matthew:
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ said, Do not be anxious about your life…O men of little faith, do not be anxious….

Let us pray.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer, our Strength and our Salvation,
Amen.

As has been the case for the past several years, we at Trinity Church combine Stewardship Sunday with Thanksgiving Sunday. The relationship between faithful stewardship and gratitude to God for His countless blessings is obvious. He has given us literally everything that we have as well as all that we are – the very fact that we live bears witness to His grace, His mercy and His love to say nothing of His creative power. Thus, we give to God because we’re thankful for all that He has given to us – including the gift of life itself.

Last Sunday the Gospel lesson was the account usually referred to as The Widow’s Mite – one of the best illustrations of faithful stewardship. The widow put into the Temple treasury literally all that she had – everything – her entire retirement account so to speak – out of her devotion to God. As faithful Jewish women of her time, she probably knew of the requirement of the tithe – the 10% of everything that one has – given annually to the Temple. We can assume that she knew of God’s promise, that if the people will faithfully tithe, He will open the windows of heaven and pour down an overflowing blessing.

She went so far beyond the tithe – she gave everything. And yet some in human history gave even more.

Let’s shift gears for a moment.

As last Sunday was Veteran’s Day Sunday, there has been a lot on the Internet regarding soldiers, sailors and airmen – their various experiences in our various wars and conflicts. Reading these accounts, one comes across some deeply moving stories of service and of sacrifice; especially of the ultimate sacrifice made when courageous warriors laid down their lives in defense of their families, friends, and countrymen in the divinely ordained cause of freedom.

On the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C. these words are inscribed – Freedom is not free…. How profoundly true. Freedom is most certainly not free. Your freedom – my freedom and everyone who enjoys freedom in this country does so because someone else has suffered and died to insure our liberty. We’re free because hundreds of thousands of defenders, over the years, gave their lives.

One man, an army veteran and now an ordained minister, wrote about his first visit to Omaha Beach in Normandy, France where on June 6th, 1944, thousands of our brightest and our best stormed that beach – and lost their lives in the effort to defeat the Nazi totalitarian, socialist threat to western civilization. Freedom eventually won. You and I share that legacy – and inheritance to which we are heirs and for which they died. Freedom won, given to us free of charge because so many others paid the price.

His visit to Omaha Beach happened in 1977 while he was stationed in Germany as a helicopter pilot. He, his wife and two friends traveled to Normandy. They were deeply moved by what they saw. He said that they had to wear shoes while walking along the beach – fragments of shells, casings, rusted parts of tin, C -ration cans, bits and pieces of rusted metal from exploded landing craft as well as so much other debris of that brutal and bloody battle literally littered that beach in those days.

But what really got to him was not the beach itself, but the scene at the top of the steep hill. There, in sharp contrast to the beach, was a garden like plain of manicured grass punctuated by 9,000 crosses – crosses making the graves of the courageous, self-sacrificing men who lost their lives in that place at that time. He could not speak being so overcome with emotion, sadness and the impact of what had happened there – and that he lived in freedom because these men died for freedom.

30 year later, he returned. But he returned a different man. He had become a Christian and saw the scene through Christian eyes. Jesus’ words, Greater love hath no man than this – that a man lay down his life for his friends – instantly came to mind as he contemplated the sacrifice.
The image of God in which these dead soldiers had been created somehow came through in their self-sacrifice for the sake of a profound and somehow holy love. Looking at the scene from the perspective of faith, he was grateful. Faith and gratitude.

Keep this in mind as we talk about the Pilgrim founders of this nation. 324 years prior to the Normandy invasion, a very different sort of landing happened just a few mile down the road in Plymouth – the landing of the Mayflower with 103 refugees from the religious war going on in England in those days. These brave men and women sailed across the Atlantic in a tiny ship – about 100’ long – to attain freedom – freedom from government control of their Christian faith and religion and freedom to worship and live as they believed God intended for them to worship and to live.

I will not once again rehearse their story so very familiar to us, other than to say that their faith brought them to these shores and in faith they gave thanks to God for their new life in a new world – a new world of freedom. Faith and gratitude characterized their journey, arrival and settlement in the years that followed. But it’s so important to remember that the first thing that they did was to kneel in prayer to thank God.

We also know that while still on board the Mayflower, they wrote and signed a governmental document called the Mayflower Compact. This document became the foundation for the greatest governmental document ever written in all of human history – the United States Constitution. Both recognize the ultimate authority of God.

And so we have this astounding combination – indeed, convergence of forces – faith in the One True God, an opportunity for a new life of freedom, the acknowledgment of God as the ultimate authority and power in and of life and the establishment of a governmental covenant to establish a way to live an orderly life.

Our Pilgrim Fathers knew their Bibles. They used the Geneva Bible. The King James Bible was too closely associated with the state religion of England to which they were opposed. They knew what Joel, as well as so many others, had proclaimed; that the faithful should not be afraid. God said, Fear not…. You shall know that I, the Lord, am your God and there is none else. Well, we know that perfect love casteth out fear.. But we can also say that perfect faith does so as well. So long as we know that the One True God is The One True God, then we need not be afraid. But if we depart from that faith, we will fall into degradation and we will feed on fear rather than be fed by faith.

What an act of courage for our Pilgrim founders to leave behind them everything that they had including family and friends and set out to establish their new life in the new world. They knew that it would be tough. During that first winter, over half of their number died. But nonetheless they came together in the following autumn to thank God for His providential care, for the blessings that they had received and for their new life of freedom. Joined by ninety native Indians, the three day celebration honored and glorified God.
Heirs to their legacy of faith and of the love of freedom, we celebrate Thanksgiving.

Back to Omaha Beach.

We don’t know the hearts and minds of all those brave souls who hit the beach in Normandy in 1944. But we know that most of them were Christians of one sort or another and that their faith played a significant part in their lives. I am certain that in the heat of battle, even the most casual of believers turned to God.

Most of us cannot imagine what happened that day. The minute those soldiers hit that beach they knew that most of them would die. Wave after wave of young men did just that. Were they afraid? Of course. Courage is not the absence of fear – it’s the force that overcomes fear. And authentic courage always comes as a gift from God – even when a non-believer courageously does the right thing in the face of fear and makes a sacrifice – even and especially, the ultimate sacrifice.

And yet, in that generation, we know that most people participated in their faith – much more so that we do today.
And one must ask, are we losing the legacy? Have we been faithful to their memory and their sacrifice? Have we so far departed from our Pilgrim Founders love for and obedience to God that we will willingly surrender our liberty to false promises of a humanitarian utopian world – a world without faith in God but rather faith in a faulty, eternally corrupt and forever greedy government?

I recall the woman who spoke to us at the Divinity School at Cambridge University when I returned there in 2000 on sabbatical. She and her husband served on the Ethics Committee advising the developing European Union. Her comments were striking. She said that

The European nations as well as England, Ireland and Scotland were implicating every aspect of the Nazi agenda that the previous generation had fought and died to defeat. Yet bit-by-bit and piece-by-piece, Hitler’s agenda was being implemented with the loss of freedom to the people. And she said it was primarily because most Europeans and had departed from The One True God. She was – and is – right. Depart from God and you’re lost. Humanitarianism always fails. Faith in God empowers all that’s good and right and true to prevail.

Well those 9,000 crosses in that beautiful cemetery at Normandy bear witness to those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Freedom is not free. They paid the price.

But those crosses bear witness to the One Cross on which the Prince of Peace, the King of glory, the incarnate Son of God – and the only Lord and Savior of all mankind – made His ultimate sacrifice so that we could live – forever – free from the powers of sin and death.

Jesus said, and I summarize and paraphrase – Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will wear or about anything else for that matter – but live by faith and God will provide. He will provide in the here and now. He will provide in eternity as well. But you must believe. And if you love me you will keep my commandments. Do so and live – forever.

You see it all fits together – freedom, faith, gratitude to God and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ who was – and is – and will be forever the ransom price paid for every freedom.

The church of Jesus Christ is the only institution in the world that has as its primary purpose to proclaim Christ crucified and risen – to proclaim the Good News of the Salvation of all mankind and to call those who do not believe into the ultimate and exclusive Truth of this faith and religion.

At the present moment, we have a free church – free from governmental control – although that is currently threatened for the first time in our history. Your faith – and my faith in Christ and our commitment to Him will be tested.

Hence, God’s call to faithful stewardship of all that we have, or all that we do – and of all that we are – to bear witness to Him and to His only Son – the only Lord and Savior of all mankind – and to do so powerfully remembering the legacy of His cross and those who died for the legacy of salvation. It all fits together. And we fit into it as well.

Faithful self-sacrificing stewardship out of deep gratitude for our salvation accomplished on the cross of Christ our Savior. Our Stewardship letter will be going out right after Thanksgiving. Pray about your gift. Study the scriptures and make your pledge. Support the cause of Christ.

Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, let your Holy Spirit move powerfully in this nation that we may return to you. Deliver us from believing in the prevailing deceptions. Bless us with a full appreciation of our Pilgrim Founders, their faith, their gratitude and their legacy. Grant that we will remember the sacrifices made on the battlefields of freedom. And most of all, keep us faithful to and thankful for the cross of our salvation given in and through the sacrifice of your Son, our only Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord,
Amen.

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