Be Thankful
“Be Thankful”
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B August 19, 2018
1 Kings 2;1-12; 3:3-14 Ephesians 5:15-20
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly
The last two Sundays I was on vacation and I want to thank the congregation for supporting me and my family by providing this important time away from the functions of the office of teaching elder, or pastor. I had the time to focus on other things, such as a mini-bicycle tour to Priest Lake and back, camping along the way. Also, we began a very much anticipated project at our house as we are in the process of installing a back door. Our house doesn’t have a back door, so it will be nice to have more direct access to that part of the yard.
Part of our yard is fenced to keep the deer out of our garden, and one of our bumper crops this summer is garlic. We have lots of garlic! Harvesting garlic is kind of a process, but pretty easy. I had a failure, however. In my kitchen, once I cut off the roots and cleaned up the heads of garlic, I put them in a pot to store them because I couldn’t clean them all in one attempt, there were so many. Every day or two, I’d clean more and add them to the pot. But once we started working on the door project, it was a few days until I finally took the lid off the pot to add a couple more cleaned heads of garlic. But, the pot had tremendous condensation inside and the cleaned up garlic was beginning to get a little fuzzy and smelled a bit off as mold started forming. All that garlic!
I ran the pot outside and spread the heads in the sunshine to dry them out and kill the mold. What had happened was the internal moisture of the garlic itself collected in the pot on those warm days and the papery dry skin on the cloves became damp. They are now not fit to eat, in my opinion, but they will make great seeds for next year’s crop. I’ve brought them to church today and you can take some home for your garden. Just separate the cloves and plant them this fall. Next spring you’ll have an amazing crop as well.
Another failure involves my honey bees. After a swarm from my American Langstroth hive boxes took away the queen bee and half the workers, the remaining bees had no queen, no eggs, no larvae. Inspecting the hive I did find a couple queen cells that they were forming to replace the old queen, but later on in another inspection that cell was empty and there still were no eggs in the comb. I ordered a new queen, drove to Spokane and picked her up, brought her home and opened up the hive to put the queen cage inside so the bees could get used to this new queen. But in talking with the people at Tate’s Honey Farm in Spokane, they reminded me that it can take up to 17 days for a new queen to emerge, go on mating flights, and begin to lay eggs. They told me to make sure the hive was queen-less, otherwise they would simply kill this new, purchased queen. I gave the colony a thorough look through, and sure enough I found a beautiful, brand new queen. Still no eggs, but she was definitely looking good, strong and healthy.
So in my ignorance, I now had to figure out what to do with an extra queen. Since my Slovenian A-Z hive has been so healthy and strong this year, I decided to do a split, so I used some materials laying around the barn to adapt my empty hive box so it would only fit six frames, a small nucleus colony. I took some bees and brood frames from the first A-Z hive and moved them into their new home and began the process of introducing a new queen. I just looked last week and she is now laying eggs, fully accepted into this new colony.
Both of these failures were unintentional, based on my own ignorance or lack of experience. I made a some mistakes which had unintended consequences. Yet rather than beat myself up or judge things good or bad, in these failures I, instead, looked for some other outcome that would help redeem the situation. Sometimes, redemptive outcomes bring about something that wouldn’t have taken place without the failure. Certainly, in the process there is learning as wisdom is gained; wisdom involving not only knowledge, but linked with hands-on experience.
In discovering wisdom, and maintaining humility, something else is possible, something that also contributes to participation in our benevolent universe. Rather than get caught in self-perpetuating cycles of judgement, condemnation, guilt, scarcity, and fear, this something else helps us stay centered on the abundance of grace, the living Reality of Christ in all things, and a non-dual perspective that sees unity through perceptions of the heart. That something else is Thankfulness. Be thankful. This is a key aspect of living the contemplative journey as we draw nourishment from that which is deeper than circumstance or short-sighted, lesser things.
This morning’s story of Solomon has similar dynamics as we hear about this vision shared in the night as Solomon converses with God. Thankfulness over the ways God helped King David is expressed, and Solomon also admits, in a humble way, that he doesn’t know how to lead such a great people as God has created. He asks God for an understanding mind. In response, God not only grants Solomon an understanding mind, but goes even further, with a “wise and discerning mind.” Granting knowledge of right and wrong is one thing, but giving wisdom is even more.
The Apostle Paul also shares in Ephesians how it’s important to live with wisdom, focused on what’s deeply fulfilling, rather than fleeting or simply filling voids. This is another example of wisdom and humility leading to thankfulness as he calls the people to “sing palms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
What an amazing gift to live in non-dual ways, not constantly splitting the field, judging things as good or bad, wrestling with our own mind at every moment. Simply belonging, held in God’s Presence, redeemed in Christ; coming alongside Solomon in all his glory as God grants us wisdom, grants us courage, for the living of our own days. Like verse three of God of Grace and God of Glory, hymn 420 in our hymnbook, we pray for God to “Cure Thy children’s warring madness, Bend our pride to Thy control; Shame our wanton, selfish gladness, Rich in things and poor in soul. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal, Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal.” (The Presbyterian Hymnal, 1990 Westminster/John Knox Press, #420, God of Grace and God of Glory, John Hughes, 1907, Harry Emerson Fosdick, 1930; alt., text used by permission of Elinor Fosdick Downs).
God’s kingdom, the Reign of Christ, the movement of the Holy Spirit over all things, seen and unseen, has love as the goal. Love which unifies, includes, sustains. As we read about Solomon and hear those words shared with the early church in Ephesus, what comes to mind is a more recent teaching by James Finley from the Center for Action and Contemplation. In a webcast about John of the Cross and the Dark Night of the Soul, Finley talks about the love and Presence of God, which “protects us from nothing but sustains us in all things.” (https://cac.org/events/webcasts/past-webcasts/). “Protects us from nothing, but sustains us in all things.”
Paul says, “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” He’s saying the same thing as James Finley, or many of the Christian mystics throughout history. No one is exempt from the difficulties of life. Everyone is given 24 hours in any particular day (on the planet Earth). How we choose to live involves not only superficial or limited things, such as choices or attitudes, but on deeper, foundational aspects that set certain trajectories or orientations. We need, for example, to use our minds, to be discerning, but from a heart standpoint, a heart centered in the love of God. We need to decide on how we behave, but this works best if we first belong and realize we’re included in love’s bond that rejects nothing and has nothing to defend because there is no fear, no scarcity in love. One way of saying all this is that our false, egocentric self has to die so our True Self may emerge. God’s light shines into our shadows as our goodness wells up like springs from our Christ-centered hearts.
God’s love protects us from nothing, but sustains us in all things, like trees planted by that living water. Wisdom, often gained through experiencing failures, cradled in humble hearts, leads us to thankfulness. As someone said in our Tuesday Centering Prayer group, “It’s hard to be angry when you foster a spirit of generosity and appreciation and gift.”
As the Wisdom of Solomon, given as gift in a vision, and the melody of the heart shared by Paul the mystic guide us in the days ahead, we’re reminded that we’re participants in life’s grand arch of God’s creative purposes. We can Be Thankful for God’s sustaining power and Presence, who in Christ redeems all things. And as we live and move and have our being, with thankful hearts, may God be glorified, now, even as forever, Amen.