Sermon for Thanksgiving Eve Year C 2015 Thanksgiving Requires Humility and Memory Martin Rinkart was called to be the pastor of the Lutheran church in his hometown of Eilenberg, Germany. He arrived there just as the terrible bloodshed of the Thirty Years War was beginning. The city of Eilenberg was a walled city and it became the refuge for political and military fugitives. This, however, caused serious overcrowding, and deadly pestilence and famine swept through the city. Armies overran it three times, leaving death and destruction in their wake. The population of Germany went from 16 million to 6 million during this time. The Rinkart home was a refuge for the victims, even though he was often hard-pressed to provide for his own family. In the year 1637 the plague was particularly severe. At its peak, Rinkart was the only pastor remaining in Eilenberg, conducting as many as 50 funerals in a day. He performed more than 4000 funerals in that year alone, including that of his beloved wife. Tradition has it that one evening after yet another day of burying scores of people, he came home feeling deeply discouraged. And his response to his own discouragement was to write the following poem: Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices, Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices; Who from our mothers arms has blessed us on our way With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today. Oh, may this bounteous God through all our life be near us, With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us; And keep us still in grace, and guide us when perplexed; And guard us through all ills in this world, till the next! Laura Ingalls Wilder (yes! that little girl you inspired the TV series Little House on the Prarie) in her book, On the Banks of Plum Creek, describes a phenomenon I had only read about before in scripture, a phenomenon that I have never seen and never hope to see: 1
a description of a plague of locusts. Laura tells how the locusts flew into the area one day in clouds so huge that they covered the sun and made it deep twilight. Then they settled onto the prairie and began to march. As far as the eye could see, the prairie was a seething mass of moving brown as the locusts marched, eating everything in their path. Laura and her sisters could not go outside because they had no shoes and there was no place to step that was not covered with locusts. This continued for days as millions upon millions of locusts marched, voraciously eating. When they had passed, there was nothing left: the trees were stripped, the garden was empty, the wheat and rye and grass were gone. She told of how her family held onto hope by remembering the ancient words from Jeremiah when God promises, "I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten..." Why is it that when some people go through hell they come out and teach us about heaven? Perhaps we might think that compared with the Ingalls family and the times of Pastor Rinkhart, we live in relatively predictable times. We are not as far removed as we would like to think from uncertainty and hoping for survival and the need for the gracious help of neighbors and even strangers as those who first gathered together a thanksgiving feast several hundreds of years ago. Even if we came through the super storm in relative safety and comfort which one of us which of us has not experienced sudden ill-health ourselves...or on the part of a family member? Which of us has never suffered from an accident or had a family member or close friend suffer from an accident? Which of us has not ourselves lost or known a neighbor to have lost a house to fire? a spouse or child or sibling or friend to death? a job to downsizing? a marriage to divorce? I would like to invite you to consider that we have all had "years that were eaten by the locusts." You may be living in one now. 2
Yet, in the passage from Joel, the prophet tells us more than once, "Do not fear..." In the passage from the gospel, Jesus tells the people (and us) three times, "Do not worry..." Joel speaks the prophetic word of hope, Jesus speaks the gentle word of comfort, not because there is nothing to fear but because there is. We are gathered here tonight to worship together in thanksgiving. We are gathered to give thanks not because nothing bad has happened or is happening, but in spite of the bad. We gather in the face of the locusts in the face of all that threatens to undo us and divide us from the love of God. We gather tonight not in our worldly wealth, but in our spiritual need. We gather to learn from one another how to give thanks "everywhere and always." We gather because most of us are still amateurs at naming the blessings and gifts that surround us not only in days of plenty, but in days of barrenness and sorrow and pain. We gather to remind one another of God's continual outpouring on our behalf and to hold each other accountable to give thanks to the God who over and over has fulfilled God's promise to pour abundance into our lives. The Pilgrims gave thanks as the cold of their second winter set in. Almost half of them had died the first winter; there were no guarantees that any of them would survive the months of cold and disease that faced them, but they stopped and rejoiced not only for having lived through the first year, but in preparation for what was yet before them. And, I would hope that among the blessings those desperate pilgrims named before God were the people of the Wampanoag tribe the tribe who aided those starving pilgrims when they landed on the shores of the country we know call America. 3
It has struck me and I wonder if it strikes you as well that there is a disconnect between the boldness and courage of the Wampanoag people and those who vow to turn away all Syrian refugees who seek passage to the US today. Like Syrian refugees today, many of the pilgrims left everything behind to escape religious and political persecution. I can imagine the Wampanoag debating their response to the starving pilgrim refugees whether to aid, resist or even fight them. After all, the pilgrims posed a potential threat to the Wampanoag if allowed to establish themselves here. We know in hindsight that whatever safety concerns the indigenous people may have harbored were... well-founded. So were the Wampanoag naïve? Were they so moved by the pilgrims heart-wrenching need that they did not adequately consider the possible drawbacks to their generosity? When the Wampanoag considered the many possible threats posed by the pilgrims, my guess is that they weren t being naïve, but they chose to accept physical threats over spiritual ones. They chose to protect the life of the soul over the life of the body. While the relationship between Native Americans and Europeans would become increasingly complicated and tragic over time, the Wampanoag chose empathy over indifference, compassion over cruelty, and generosity over hard-heartedness. They overcame evil with good, darkness with light. To be a person of faith means giving thanks not only when things are going well but as an act of faith when we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. (Just stop and think about words we hear every week at the time of our great thanksgiving On the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took bread and gave thanks... ) To be a person of faith means being called to the great delight and the foolish enterprise of hearing the words of the prophets, facing straight into the locusts, and giving thanks! Wars and pestilence, holocausts and earthquakes, inhumanity to one another, famine, floods and hurricanes, drought, and violence, all have swept through our communities over the entire span of our existence as human creatures of this earth. And we are still here. 4
I am not suggesting that it is easy to give thanks "always and everywhere;" that is why we come together to do it. Together we have strength and confidence and hope and support that we do not have in our isolated rooms. We do it in community because sometimes giving thanks is too hard for us to do alone, and we need to lean on one another for emotional and spiritual strength as the locusts march through our broken world. True Christian thankfulness is not the same as having a positive outlook or looking on the bright side of things. Rather, Christian thankfulness draws us closer in intimacy with the God who cares about every human need and closer to Jesus who wept over the needs of the people of Jerusalem. Prayers of gratitude are expressed side by side with prayers of deep intercession for the needs of the world. God calls us to be thankful in all things, not for all things. Above all, the act of thanksgiving requires both memory and humility. Both are reflections on the causes and sources of gratitude The recognition of the blessing as a grace, rather than an entitlement. A spirit of thanksgiving is incompatible with pride and distracted self-absorption which are two great threats to our life of faith. It is virtually impossible to be thankful when one is distracted or indignant. Thankfulness requires a laying aside of slights and irritations; thankfulness requires recognition of our unearned blessings and their source. Over and over, I have been blessed to learn what people like Pastor Rinkhart, Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people have learned: that fear and worry are no way to live an abundant life and that the time to give thanks is now this is the time and place for thanksgiving for all God s promises and all that God has given to all of us and all that God will pour out upon us. Whatever locusts are swarming in our lives, we give thanks because God has promised us again and again that the locusts are not the last word. And again and again, that promise has been fulfilled. Giving thanks is engaging in the risky business of affirming life when everything else around us seems to be affirming death. Giving thanks is saying that the latest terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut and Mali, devastation to our communities by storms or even the random violence in our inner cities these things are not the last word. 5
Giving thanks is saying that our pain, our grief, our hunger, our fear, are not what define us however powerful and seemingly all-consuming they may be at this moment. Giving thanks is committing to living this moment, this now, fully. Every day (every day) is a day of Thanksgiving when we listen to the words of comfort and confidence God speaks to us and to all people across the ages... in years of plenty and in years that "the swarming locust has eaten." Every day (every one) is a day of Thanksgiving when we hear God's promise of abundance in the face of danger, pain, sorrow, violence, war and pestilence. Every day, every single now, is a day of Thanksgiving when we respond to God s invitation to lift up our hearts in humble remembrance for every blessing that has ever been and in faithful hope and anticipation of the blessings yet to be with the coming of God's kingdom of justice and peace. Every day is a day of Thanksgiving. It is so. May it be so. Amen. 6