Astana,
Kazakhstan
The
watchword of the month of September: “Be
generous when you worship the Lord, and do not stint the first fruits
of your hands. With every gift show a cheerful face, and dedicate
your tithe with gladness.” (Sirach
35.10-11)
Dear Readers! Dear Sisters
and Brothers in Christ!
In
Old Testament times there was a special place in the Jewish calendar
for the holiday celebrating the first fruits. On this day every
family was to be happy for the new harvest and to sacrifice to God
the first sheaf of barley. But the temptation to minimize the first
fruits of their labors was a problem not only for the ancient Jews,
but remains so for contemporary farmers. And not only for them. It is
rare that you hear from someone in our villages that it was a good
harvest of potatoes or wheat. Even if it was an abundant harvest a
village dweller will search for a reason to be dissatisfied: “there's
a lot of potatoes, but they're little. They won't preserve well..”
“There's too much wheat. We don't have time to dry it all out. It's
burning up in the sun.” Those who have dachas do the same thing. It
is as if every person is literally scared to be happy for the
harvest. When the harvest is poor people complain about that. When it
is not, they also complain. There's a joke in Germany – “when a
peasant boy is born, they put a rock on his chest so that he learns
right away how to whine and complain.” The reading from Sirach is
relevant in our day for our church, too. Many pastors and ministers
in our church as well as regular congregational members are like
those complaining village dwellers. “There were more of us before.”
“Again two families left for Germany.” “Our congregation is
getting smaller.” They forget, though, that there was a family that
was baptized not long ago, or the grandmother and her two little
granddaughters who started coming to church regularly. But even if
our first fruits are few, we still have no right to minimize them.
When we do that we neither value our own labor nor that which the
Lord does. It is God who gives Christian faith through the preaching
of the Gospel in the sermon; it is God who unites us with the Kingdom
of God through Baptism; it is God who gives forgiveness of sins. God
does this all through our hands...or through out mouths when we speak
to people of His great love for them. Therefore I ask you, dear
brothers and sisters, to notice the wonderful things God is doing in
our congregations. Rejoice that our sisters and brothers are saved.
Rejoice for new people in the congregation. Rejoice at that which to
you seems to be insignificant, but which before God is a great
miracle – the forgiveness of sins which God gives to us here and
now. Rejoice for the sermon which you and the worship service in
which you take part. But, of course, most of all we should praise God
“with a cheerful face” for that which we can be thankful even if
we are in prison, seriously ill or facing death – that is Jesus
Christ who died for all and who rose to save all. Honestly speaking
there are a lot of reasons that can be found for rejoicing before the
Lord. Maybe they are the ones that I wrote about here...but maybe
instead it is the little things – a sunny day after a rainy week,
rain after a drought, clean air which you breath in deeply in the
early morning as you stand on the balcony, the smell of fresh ink in
a new textbook... we have that and much more in our lives. We all
have something to be thankful for.
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