Sermon Text: 2 Corinthians 9:10-15
Date: October 12, 2025
Event: Proper 23, Year C
2 Corinthians 9:10-15
And he who provides seed to the sower and bread for food will provide and multiply your seed for sowing, and will increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11You will be made rich in every way so that you may be generous in every way, which produces thanksgiving to God through us.
12To be sure, the administration of this service is not only making up for what is lacking among the saints, but it is also overflowing in many prayers of thanksgiving to God. 13By proving yourselves in this service, many people are glorifying God, as they see the obedience shown in your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity shown in your sharing with them and all people. 14At the same time as they pray for you, they also express their longing for you, because of the extraordinary measure of God’s grace given to you. 15Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
Gratitude Is Powerful
Happy Thanksgiving! That might be rushing it just a little bit (unless you’re in Canada, in which case the holiday is actually tomorrow!), but this morning, as you’ve noticed in our readings and hymns, we’ve been focused on gratitude and giving thanks. So while it might be early for our designated holiday at the end of November, it is a good reminder that we’re not really supposed to relegate gratitude to one day per year, but it should be a continual way of life.
And this is not just a God-directed contentment; even the secular world recognizes the power and benefits of being actively thankful. Perhaps you’ve seen the concept of a “gratitude journal,” where you write down things you are grateful for. It can be a potent defense against depression and other mental health struggles. I, for instance, tend to “catastrophize” things, that is, to get fixated on the worst possible outcome of a given set of circumstances. It’s not a great path to go down (and in many ways ignores the promises that God has made to us), but finding even small things to be thankful for—warm sunlight on a crisp, cool morning; a cute dog on a walk or a cat in a window; the warmth of a nice cup of coffee—can help stem the tide of negativity. It doesn’t mean the struggles are no longer present or not real, but intentionally focusing our thoughts on gratitude for things that aren’t bad can help keep those more negative thoughts at bay.
Likewise, focusing on thanksgiving can help foster a sense of contentment. If I recognize that my life is a balance of good things and difficult things and can see the good alongside the bad, it becomes easier (if not actually easy) to not live in a constant sense of need, want, or even greed. Paired with God’s promises of daily bread—everything we need for our body and life—I know that I will, in fact, be taken care of in the way that I need and can find some peace even in the places I feel things are lacking.
Our focus this morning is on the power of gratitude and giving thanks, but not in the low-level ways we’ve just mentioned. Gratitude isn’t just powerful because it allows us to stave off some bad things or help us find peace in difficult situations. Gratitude is powerful because of our focus on God’s blessings—especially his eternal blessings—and because it can aid in sharing those eternal blessings with others.
If we’re going to give thanks, we need to know what for. After all, you probably wouldn’t write a thank you note for a gift you never received. How would you know what to write? How would you know what to thank the person for? How would you know they gave you the gift in the first place? Likewise, it’s a whole lot easier to thank someone for what they’ve done for you if you see the need they helped you to meet. If someone helps you load the moving truck, you know they helped you do far more than you could do on your own. If someone “helps” you by painting your kitchen neon green while you’re at work—something you neither asked for nor even wanted—well, thanking them might see just a bit off.
It never feels good to focus on places where we have failed, but in this situation it’s absolutely vital. In our Sunday morning Bible Class, we recently covered how we can divide God’s Word into two primary messages: law and gospel. The law is a pretty uncomfortable message. Anytime God’s Word points out our failures to live up to God’s standards of perfection, we are dealing with the law. The message of the law shows us our sin and our state of absolute spiritual helplessness as a result.
That’s… not a pleasant message. We don’t want to hear about what is lacking, let alone something that is lacking that we cannot solve. And so here, more than anywhere else, God met our needs. While he certainly provides for us physically here, he has perfectly met our eternal needs in Jesus. Jesus was our substitute, taking the punishment our sins deserved on himself. His perfect life and his innocent death mean that the debt of our sin is wiped out, and our account is fully funded with the perfection God demands. We are the people God expects us to be because, in his sacrifice, Jesus made us those people. Hell no longer stands as our eternal destiny; instead, we look forward to eternal life with God.
So it’s not just that we’ve been healed from leprosy, a painful skin disease that could cut us off from our families; it’s that we’ve been healed from sin, the worst disease that would have cut us off from God with painful suffering for eternity. It’s not just that we’ve been given our daily bread, enough to sustain our bodies and lives here; it’s that we will be given access to the heavenly banquet where we will eat and drink with our Savior in perfection forever.
When we truly understand and appreciate our need and what it cost Jesus to meet that need, we cannot help but be eternally grateful. In the light of the gospel, God’s law takes on a different purpose. No longer do God’s commands simply show where we have failed; now, God’s law is a roadmap for thanksgiving. Do you want to thank God? Do this good thing; avoid this sin.
And, astonishingly, God allows us to express our thanksgiving to him most often in how we treat one another. Consider Paul’s guidance to the Corinthians in our Second Reading. What would be the results of God’s goodness and blessings—especially the eternal blessings—in the lives of the Corinthians? He who provides seed to the sower and bread for food will provide and multiply your seed for sowing, and will increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you may be generous in every way, which produces thanksgiving to God through us. To be sure, the administration of this service is not only making up for what is lacking among the saints, but it is also overflowing in many prayers of thanksgiving to God.
Generosity to others is the primary way we show thanks to God. Treating others as God has treated us is a way to show that we understand and appreciate all God has done for us. We spent some time over the last couple of weeks focusing on forgiveness for other people, and that certainly looms large here in our life of thanksgiving to our forgiving God. But it goes even farther than that. Does your brother or sister in faith need a helping hand with a project, some assistance to overcome a financial burden, or some of your time to share what is on their heart? Give generously! Is there a neighbor who comes to you in need of a second set of hands or something more substantial to meet a need they have? Give generously! Is there a charity or other organization doing work that you cannot do, sharing the gospel or bringing physical aid to people in places or on a scale that you cannot? Give generously! Do you meet someone who claims a great need, but you know nothing about them because they are a stranger to you? You don’t have to be a detective to see if their need is legitimate or meets your standards—give generously!
Paul points us to what the effect of all this thankful generosity, this powerful gratitude, just might be: [This service] is also overflowing in many prayers of thanksgiving to God. By proving yourselves in this service, many people are glorifying God, as they see the obedience shown in your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity shown in your sharing with them and all people. Your generosity is a powerful confession of faith. Your willingness to give to others from what God has given you reflects God’s rich, eternal generosity toward you and all people in Jesus.
And so what does that mean? Gratitude is not just powerful because it shows appreciation or stems the tide of selfishness. No, gratitude that results in generosity is powerful because it might be the beginning of the opportunity to share the forgiveness of sins and eternal life with those who do not yet know it or have long-since rejected it. Imagine that—by giving from your finite resources, you might directly or indirectly share what is infinite, eternal life with our Savior from heaven!
So, my dear brothers and sisters, be thankful and let your life be filled with gratitude. Our lives will never be perfect on this side of eternity, but we all have blessings from God that we can be thankful for. And even if there is literally nothing here and now for which you can give thanks, the eternal love of your Savior remains a constant. You will be in eternal life because he loves you, and your gratitude for that just might enable you to share that same blessing he’s given to others—to all.
Let your thankfulness to God rule your heart and mind, knowing you are the forgiven child. As we will say at the end of our communion liturgy, may this verse from the psalms be the theme of all our days: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His mercy endures forever (Psalm 136:1). Amen!
