An elderly man in Phoenix calls his son in New York. I hate to ruin your day, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing; 45 years of misery is enough.

Pop, what are you talking about? the son screams.

Oh, look, son, we can’t stand the sight of each other any longer, the old man says. We’re just sick of each other, and I’m sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Chicago and tell her. He hangs up.

Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. Like heck they’re getting divorced, she shouts. I’ll take care of this. She calls Phoenix immediately and screams at the old man, You are NOT getting divorced. Don’t do a single thing until I get there. I’m calling my brother back, and we’ll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don’t do a thing. DO YOU HEAR ME? She hangs up.

The old man puts down the phone, turns to his wife, and says. OK, they’re coming for Thanksgiving and paying their own airfares.

Of all weeks, my parents had to be here this week. Don’t get any big ideas, Mom and Dad! But look at the logic here. It hits our funny bone because there’s some truth to it. We think there’s not enough love, not enough attention, not enough money to go round. So we have to squeeze each other to get a little more of our share.

But this "not enough-ness" is counter to the attitude of Paul in our text. Listen to his litany of words from verses 5-15: bountiful, cheerful, blessing, abundance, enough of everything, abundantly, supplies, multiply, increase, enriched, great generosity, thanksgiving, overflows, sharing, surpassing grace, thanks be to God, and indescribable gift. It’s a cornucopia of thanks, a bountiful supply, a horn of plenty! He then contrasts these words with others that are too often ours: extortion, sparingly, reluctantly, under compulsion. Paul’s point is that we are all stewards of what God has given us; the question is whether we are generous or stingy stewards, faithful or unfaithful. The main issue is whether we trust the God who supplies all our needs.

There is an interesting word picture in verse 10. When Paul says that God supplies seed to the sower, he uses the word choregeo. It comes from a root that means dancing; we get our word choreography from it. Specifically, the image is of a dance manager who not only oversees the routines of the dancers on stage but also supplies their paychecks off stage. God, in other words, sees that we have the bounty we need so that we can concentrate on our job of giving.

When we worry about where the money is coming from and whether we will ever have enough for our needs, we never get to where we can concentrate on our job of giving. No matter how much money you have– whether you are wealthy or poor–if you remain focused only on the supply side, you will never get to distribution. Worry about whether there will be enough and there never will be. Trust God that there will be enough and there always will be. God supplies seed to the sower.

Now, the economy is perilous; we all know that. A return to sanity, really. Some of you, though, have lost jobs at the same time the rest of us have lost half of our retirement funds. We’ve had a shot of fear run through our national psyche since September 11. The question to Christians is: Do the circumstances of these times change our view of God’s faithfulness? Do we flip a switch in times like these and say, Well, Paul’s advice is good for the good times, but it’s not realistic in these times?

What we need is to take "a trip to bountiful" and renew our sense of being at home in God’s world. I made the mistake of titling this sermon before checking to see if I could review the movie by the same title. I had seen it in 1986 and figured it would be at Blockbuster. Wrong. Out of print. Nobody has it. If I get it wrong, I know you will correct me, but what I remember is that Geraldine Page played an old woman dealing with a terminal illness, who needed healing in her spirit as well as body. So she headed back to her ancestral home in a town called Bountiful. The journey healed her spirit and prepared her for what would come, because she got in touch with the bounty of her life rather than the scarcity of her health.

Here’s the point: bountiful living leads to bountiful giving, which produces bountiful thanksgiving. Thanksgiving rises up in three directions: in those who give, in those who receive, and in the God who starts it all off.

On Thursday afternoon many of us will crowd our knees under tables and dig in. In most families there are traditional dishes that either make or break the whole affair. Maybe it’s the way the turkey is prepared, maybe it’s the creamed onions or the sweet potato casserole or bacon-laced green beans. Maybe it’s the Southern "dressing" or the Northern "stuffing," which turn out to be the same thing, don’t you know?!–a rose by any other name…. Or maybe it’s the pumpkin pie with whipped cream on top or pecan with Blue Bell Old- Fashioned Vanilla. Hungry? Now, if you went home and said, Listen, Mama, why don’t you just let us pick up dinner at Boston Market this year? We’ll eat it on paper plates in the TV room–no muss, no fuss–creamed spinach, macaroni and cheese, cinnamon apples, it’ll be easy. Well, you might as well stick a carving knife in her heart. Mama doesn’t want easy; she wants to give her best.

Bountiful giving leads to bountiful thanksgiving in those who give. Any time you give from the bounty God has given you, you receive a blessing in the doing of it. You will be enriched in every way, Paul says. The way God has devised the matter of stewardship, everyone–including the giver–is blessed. The most obvious, however, is the thanks that rise up from those who receive.

Mary Karr has written an autobiography called Cherry. When she was in the ninth grade, her mother was gone for two days on a drinking binge while her dad was away hunting. Mary and her young sister were left to fend for themselves. When her mother finally came home, she locked herself in the bathroom, threatening suicide. Mary decided she couldn’t take it anymore and swallowed too many aspirins, which only made her deathly ill. While she’s lying in bed recovering, her dad asks her if there’s anything she’d like, and she says a plum. Plums are out of season on the coast, so he drives all night to get her some, winding up at a roadside stand Ft. Smith, Arkansas. He brings her the plums the next morning. This is what she writes:

Through the window you see the Lawrences’ new rosebush, its base of burlap sticking out of the fresh red dirt. Its white buds are tight-clenched knots. But it’s when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise. The skin is still warm from riding in the sun in Daddy’s truck, and the nectar runs down your chin. And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody, anybody, who gives enough of a [care] to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That’s how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand. You don’t earn it. It’s given. [Viking Press, 2000, p. 117]

When we give, when we give out of love, when we give bountifully rather than stingily, it makes believers out of people. Believers in God, of course, but believers also that the world is

a place worth living in and that they are people worth living in it. Bountiful giving rises up to bountiful thanksgiving in those who receive.

But maybe most surprising of all is the thanksgiving that rises in the heart of God. Our church mate Allen Walworth wrote a wonderful Sunday school lesson on stewardship this year in which he told a story of medieval rabbis that’s worth retelling here.

A man had two sons whom he loved very much. When the man died, he defied the usual custom and divided his farm exactly down the middle between them, both because he loved both of his sons, and because he did not want either of them to feel mistreated.

One of the brothers was married, with twelve children. The other was single and had no children. Sometimes in the night, the brother with the house full of family would get up out of bed, look across the field at his brother’s house, and think to himself, Father was not fair dividing the land equally between us. Here I am with a wife and twelve children, and my poor brother has no one to share his life with. Father should have given him more of the land to compensate for his lack of all this human warmth and joy I have in my wife and kids. Sometimes he would feel this so strongly he would get up, take a wheelbarrow of grain from his barn, and roll it across the field to empty it into his brother’s barn. Only then could he go back to sleep.

But the other brother would also wake up in the night, look across the field at this brother’s house, and think of all those kids and a wife, and say to himself, Father was not fair dividing the land equally between us. Here I am alone, and my poor brother has all those mouths to feed. Father should have given him more of the land to compensate for the extra needs of his family. Sometimes he would feel this so strongly he would get up, take a wheelbarrow of grain from this barn, and roll it across the field to empty it into his brother’s barn. Only then could he go back to sleep.

One night the two brothers met in the field, rolling wheelbarrows of grain destined for each other’s barns. Instantly they knew what the other had been doing, and they fell into each other’s arms and wept for joy. According to the rabbis who told this story, a gentle rain began to fall on the brothers at that precise moment, as God began to weep for joy that someone had finally done with his bounty what God had always done with his.

The rabbis also said the brothers built a synagogue right there on the spot. I have an idea: why don’t we build a church … right here … on the spot of your generosity? Where you and I and God can rise up together in one great thanksgiving!