FINDING OUR WAY INTO THANKSGIVING

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Norah Goodwin
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1 FINDING OUR WAY INTO THANKSGIVING SOUTH JACKSONVILLE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH - NOVEMBER 18, 2018 Rev. Louis R. Lothman, Th. D. Luke 18:9-14, I Thessalonians 5:11, If you haven t noticed, I have been floating around this congregation for more than 30 years. And like the Farmer s Insurance guy, I know a thing or two because I ve seen a thing or two. I have observed times around here of great hope, promise and excitement; conflictual times, chugging right along times, fearful and anxious times, and heartbreaking times. Three years ago there was hope and excitement building with the calling of a new pastor and now that person is suddenly gone and times here are uncertain and changing. And we live in uncertain and changing times of great division in our country and culture, with rapid oscillations of hope and excitement counterpointing with high anxiety, distress and despair depending on the latest news cycle of reporting about election results in close races or which direction the volatile stock market is swinging today. So as I come to join you on this Sunday before our national Thanksgiving Holiday, I am honored to be invited and thank you for the privilege of speaking with you. I am excited to come alongside you all and share some things I have been considering about gratitude and thanksgiving of late. Said in a few words, I would like to offer some reflections about the difference between giving thanks for things, and learning the secret of giving thanks in all things, which Paul says is the will of God for us in Christ Jesus our Lord. At first, I was going to preach on what I thought was a truth - that truth being that one cannot be giving thanks and be angry at the same time. Makes sense, right? When I feel angry, I don t usually feel very grateful. How about you? Until I remembered the story in Luke we read moments ago. Lo and behold there it was - someone quite realistically being described as giving thanks and being angry at the same time! And Jesus telling a parable to teach people he

2 noticed were full of arrogance and despising. And so we hear of the Pharisee. Who is depicted using words angrily to set himself as apart and better than others he so easily demeans and judges and with the same breath giving thanks to God. One picture of giving thanks. A picture of arrogance and self righteous judgement that frequently arises in my heart, I suspect your heart at least occasionally, and by all my best reckoning fairly universally in all the dealings of the 7 billion people currently inhabiting our planet. Clearly this picture is not the one that works for Jesus.! Nor does it lead anywhere good for any of us! And the other picture one of humility and surrender looking for a good beyond his own, and hoping desperately to encounter mercy. Paul, who wrote the words we read from Thessalonians, lived both pictures of ways to give thanks depicted in Jesus story of the Pharisee and the despised tax collector. As Saul, you remember, he gave thanks to God for his righteousness even as he participated in stoning people to death - convinced, absolutely sure in himself that the ungodly things he was participating in were God s will. Until one day, he was quite literally stopped in his tracks by the blinding light of God. He was awakened to his blindness and led into a transformative path of light and mercy. Over time he grew into the new man in Christ we know by the name Paul, who writes to his brothers and sisters in the church of Thessolanika about giving thanks in all things. And Paul wrote and spoke as one who lived just that - giving thanks in all things. I haven t time to remind you of all the trial and tribulations, joys, successes, failures, imprisonments beatings and the like Paul went through. But in Philippians you may recall he wrote - Not that I complain of want for I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things [including giving thanks in all circumstances] in him who strengthens (teaches, transforms) me! Paul was a person transformed from ignorance and arrogance to deep

3 wisdom and peace. A path of spiritual growth and maturity we could all bear to be on, at least from my perspective, as I look at life around me. Now let s highlight an important distinction here. I have been talking about giving thanks in all things. But that is different from giving thanks for good happenings. Now that is not, in itself, bad! Being grateful for things or circumstances. But we better be careful with that. It seems to me the man in the parable was grateful to God for the circumstances of his life, and he was way off base! And there is another thing to realize about being grateful for things, things that happen, or propitious circumstances when they occur - Have you noticed what happens when good circumstances become less so? It seems that giving thanks for good fortune has a short shelf life and can turn on a dime when life turns away from what we want or would like it to be or think it should be. Just ask any victim of loss, or catastrophic fires or floods. When thanksgiving for good things evaporates in your life and mine, a profound opportunity opens up to us to learn about giving thanks not for things, but rather giving thanks in all things, the path of wisdom, and as we shall examine in greater detail later, deepening love. Opportunity like now, in this church. And opportunity perhaps not pressing in upon you currently if life is good just now, but which could occur if life shifts in a harder direction as it unfortunately does, as we all know The key is availing ourselves of the opportunity to grow whenever possible! And that means turning into the wind, and towards what is difficult and painful whenever we encounter life s hardships and disappointments. In her book, Tears to Triumph. Marianne Williamson writes The wisest question when we are deeply sad [or angry or in pain, I would add], is not How can I end or numb this pain immediately? The wisest question is What is the meaning of this pain? or, What does it reveal to me? What is it calling me to understand? Or, in a word, what can I learn?

4 [Wisdom says, she writes, I know this is a terrible time. But it is not without meaning and I am committed to find out what that meaning is. I am committed to opening myself to the lessons to be learned here And the lesson is always, in some way, the expansion of our capacity to love. Some of you know I follow Richard Rohr, a noted Franciscan priest, who s out a daily devotional. This fall, in his devotionals on the topic of suffering, he introduced me to Etty Hillesum, a young woman who died eventually at Auschwitz in 1943 and who left behind her diaries written while she was a in Westerbork, a Nazi concentration camp in the Netherlands. In her last weeks supporting and encouraging others also facing deportation to Auschwitz she wrote.. I am not afraid to look suffering straight in the eyes. At the end of the day there was always the feeling: I love people so much. Never any bitterness about what was done to them, but always love for those who knew how to bear so much although nothing had prepared them for such burdens All we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of you, God, in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well. Alas, there doesn t seem to be much You, Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. You cannot help us, but we must help you and defend your dwelling place inside us to the last. Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace and reflect it to others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world. Rohr offers these powerful, lovely words of comment about Etty s words and what they illustrate about her The flow of grace is an increasing ability to forgive reality for being what it is - instead of what we want it to be. He concludes with more words from Etty s diary. This is something people refuse to admit to themselves: at a given point you can no longer do, but can only be and accept. There is no causal

5 connection between people s behavior and the love you feel for them even when they don t give you much occasion to love them. Love is like an elemental glow that sustains you. Her last words, on a card she threw from the train on her way to Auscwitz were these: In the end the departure came without warning. On special orders from the Hague. We left the camp singing, Father and Mother firmly and calmly, Mischa, too. We shall be traveling for three days. Thank you for all your kindness and care. That is what giving thanks in all things looks like in utterly unmistakable, and transformative form! But it doesn t have to be known only to people in such horrific circumstances as Etty s. And the atrocities of WWII. Take a woman I know whose father, whom she deeply loved and admired, died. After a time, it became clear that her aging and widowed mother needed to transition to other living arrangements and preparations were made for the old family homestead to be cleaned out and sold. The pain for my friend was intense and what life was serving up, even if quite to be expected, was still bitter and difficult. A childhood friend of hers from a different city caught wind of what was happening, called her and said. I am coming to help. We will have a sleep over at the house, watch scary movies, and eat Cocoa Puffs just like when we were kids. So she came and indeed they spent the night in the old home. But instead of the scary movies, they talked and wept and laughed and ultimately found themselves giving thanks even in what was so difficult and so unwanted. They created the lovely banner that night you see pictured in the bulletin that hangs in South Roanoke United Methodist Church. They were learning to give thanks in all things and being transformed in the process. Again, that is what giving thanks in all things looks like closer to home.

6 So, how do you get there? What is the way to San Jose? And the way into Thanksgiving? Through love. Thomas Merton, Trappist monk and writer, wrote a powerful, short piece I happened upon while on vacation. Here are a few salient words from that piece called The Ways of Love. See if you can t see what he is talking about in the two stories I just shared. The freedom that is in our nature is our ability to love something someone besides ourselves and for the sake, not of ourselves, but of the one we love. Thee is in the human will an innate tendency, an inborn capacity for disinterested love. This power to love another for their own sake is one of the things that makes us like God, because this power is the one thing in us that is free from all determination. It is a power which transcends and escapes the inevitability of self-love..[thus we can be truly] happy in this world only in so far as we are free to rejoice in the good of another or others: specifically in so far as we are free to rejoice in the Good which is God s. Merton sees deep spiritual growth is ordered to one thing above all: the perfecting of this disinterested love and the liberation of our wills from the bondage of self-love. Merton highlights for us what we see in Etty Hillesum, and what Paul knew - that our deepest desire, our greatest freedom, our most innate and pressing need and the spark of God in us waiting to catch fire is - transcending our self limiting interest and being drawn into loving God and others. Learning to give thanks in all things, which is the will of God for us in Christ Jesus our Lord. God created us to move beyond ourselves and transcend ourselves in order to be most profoundly and joyfully alive. Like Etty Hillesum. Or Paul. Or my friend. Or anyone who has begun to discover the secret of giving thanks in all things through love of God and neighbor. Judy and I join others at San Jose Catholic Church for a Christian Meditation group on Sunday evenings. Last Sunday in the opening tape recorded teaching, the words of the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, were played,

7 teaching people to quiet the mind and lift up your heart in love to God, seeking only to love God for who God is and not for what he can do for you, or solely for what God does for you. This is the way to grow into giving thanks in all things. This is the way to learn to forgive reality as it is like Etty did and learn to love the beauty of God and others with self disinterest. This is the way to learn with Paul how to be content no matter what may be going on and to give thanks in all things which Paul writes is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus our Lord. This pathway of mercy and love means we are called to move towards suffering around us, not away from it out of fear. Rohr says rightly I believe, that shared suffering engenders more compassion than shared joy. Let me illustrate. I went to the worship service at the Jewish Temple the other night that was held to express solidarity with the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh where the horrible slaughter of innocent people by a gunman occurred not long ago. At one point near the end of the service, the Rabbi asked us to reach out to someone around us we did not know as an enactment of respect and love across lines of diversity and beyond our own personal comfort zones. I think it was a masterful way for all those assembled to concretely practice love of others as a countermeasure to hate and fear of others. As I looked into the eyes of two women both weeping about the senseless slaughter in Pittsburgh and looking at me, I, too wept, and we exchanged names. I know I will remember Vicki and Dana and the experience with them far longer and more deeply than any stranger I have met at a happy wedding event. Shared suffering forges bonds. Etty learned that as she courageously went towards the suffering around her. The women s friend went towards her suffering. That is what creates empathy in us, not running away in fear or anger or judgement. But rather seeking mercy and being merciful and acting mercifully. That is when we are most free, and closest to God s eternal heart!

8 There is opportunity aplenty for growth in love in our world if you haven t noticed. And opportunity aplenty in this hard time at SJPC. Opportunity for learning better how to love one another and ignite the love of God within. Opportunity aplenty for learning how to give thanks in all things a little bit more. I hope you will find your way into thanksgiving not only on Thursday, but in every day you live, discovering that living in love, moving in mercy towards the suffering around you and learning to give thanks in all things is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus our Lord. Comfort one another with these words and live their truth and mercy. God is eager beyond belief that you and I will do so and find our way more deeply into Thanksgiving. Amen

Well Done. Good and Faithful Servant Sunday, November 16, 2014

Well Done. Good and Faithful Servant Sunday, November 16, 2014 Etty Hillesum was a young, talented, Dutch-Jewish woman who became a prisoner in a Nazi transit camp where she worked very hard to comfort