November 19, 2000

Rev. Eugene Nelson, Jr.

The Community Church of Sebastopol

THANKSGIVING SUNDAY

Ephesians 5:15-20

             Two millennia ago, Rome subdued Israel in a terrible war.  The Roman legions dominated the land and destroyed its spirit…with a single exception.  A handful of Jewish resisters held on at Masada, a small flat top mountain, no more than twenty acres in all.  And they held on there, against the awesome power of Rome for five full years!  Each morning during those dreadful years, they would rise early, turn toward the east, greet the morning sun, and pray:  ‘Blessed are you, Great King of the Universe, who greets us in the rising sun.  We give you thanks for the dawning of the day.”  How is it they could be thankful under such circumstances, and for what, really?  They had to know their ultimate fate.  To answer that, reveals what kind of persons they were.

             A millennia and a half later, a small band of pilgrims weathered a terrible winter, laying half their number in a windswept graveyard.  But when, with the coming spring, the Mayflower set sail to return to England, not a single surviving settler chose to go home.  Because you see, they were home.  And when they brought forth their hard-won harvest, they set aside a day of Thanksgiving and they prayed, “Thanks be to you, O God.”  How is it they could be thankful under such circumstances and for what really?  Each of them had buried at least one loved one in the hard New England soil.  To answer that reveals the kinds of persons they were.

            Or consider the German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  A Lutheran pastor, he joined in a plot to kill Adolph Hitler.  He was arrested, and after months of languishing in a prison cell was executed, just days before the arrival of allied troops.  From jail, he wrote some of the most extraordinary words of the 20^th century, words such as these:  “I find, under whatever circumstances, there are useful employments for my energies.  In any place, it is possible to be thankful.”  How could he speak of thankfulness from the depths of a Nazi concentration camp.  It doesn’t make sense, but it does reveal the kind of person he was.

             And finally, the Apostle Paul.  Writing a letter from prison.  Tradition has it that he wrote it from jail in Rome, awaiting certain death.  Yet what does he say?  “Be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves…giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything.”  How could he be thankful?  Rome had him and this time was not going to let him go.  Yet still he speaks of being thankful, for everything.   How could he do that?  To answer that question reveals something of the person he was.

            And how about ourselves?  Do we find ourselves in any of these stories?  Quite honestly, about Wednesday, I wished I had picked another text from which to preach on this Thanksgiving Sunday.  This is a tough one.  “Give thanks at all times and for everything.”  How can we give thanks for everything?  I don’t think it’s possible…at least not for me.  In all honesty, I don’t want to give thanks for everything.  I have to agree with a colleague who writes, “There are many specific things in life for which we simply cannot give thanks - concrete events before which all the humanity within us recoils and for which we could never forgive ourselves if we did give thanks.”  I return home from a time away with our daughter in Colorado and what’s the first thing I hear?  A teenager, a local girl, has been killed in a car accident.  I say a prayer, but it is not a prayer of thanksgiving.  Again, what Paul is asking seems humanly impossible, at least for this all too human being.

             On the back page of our upcoming December newsletter, I mention Emily Webb, a character in Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town.  Do you recall the scene, right at the end of the play,  when she comes back from the dead to the town of her childhood - Grover’s Corners?   She finds her mother and father and all her long-dead acquaintances still “alive” and the town and its environs the same as when she was a child.  At first it is all wonderful, but before long she begs to go back to the grave.  The sheer beauty and wonder of it all - every sight and sound, every tender grace, every gesture of love and devotion - is overwhelming.  It is too much for her to bear.  She breaks down sobbing, saying to the Stage Manager, “I didn’t realize.  So all that was going on and we never noticed.  Take me back - up the hill - to my grave.  But first:  Wait!  One more look.  Good-bye.  Good-bye world.  Good-bye Grover’s  Corners, Mama and Papa.  Good-bye to clocks ticking…and Mama’s sunflowers.  And food and coffee.  And new-ironed dresses and hot baths…and sleeping and waking up.  Oh earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.”  Then she turns and asks the stage manager, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? - every, every minute?”  Do they?  Do we?

             John Claypool, an Episcopal priest, is a well-known preacher, speaker, workshop leader.  One of his favorite themes is that we should never take our birth for granted.  For birth - life itself - is a windfall.  What did we ever do to earn our way into life?  We have been called into something out of nothing, and didn’t even have to pass the written exam.  What a gift!  A free ticket to a miracle!  Don’t take your birth for granted.  How good of God to give me life.

             Now along the way I have known sadness and loss, disappointment and failure.  I’ve had problems, I have problems.  And often, in the midst of the struggle, the problems are all I see.  I go home at night, warm house, plenty of food, a wife who for unknown reasons still seems to care about me, and all I see are my problems.  Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen!

             And yet, when I am able to take a step back from the struggle and take a longer more expansive view of my life - sometimes in worship, in prayer, sometimes just a long walk by myself - when I can just step back, I see an uninterrupted river of mercy and love and care running through my life from the very beginning.  I have been the recipient of countless acts of love from others and from God.  Truly goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life.  What a wonder it is to be loved in spite of who you really are; what a wonder to be held in being by a supreme being who will never let you down.  Truly this river of love and grace runs through my life, runs through all of life.  And I am grateful.

             This is what I believe Paul was talking about.  This is what we see in the defenders of Masada, the Pilgrims, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the lives of so many others throughout the ages.  No, life wasn’t perfect, but it was still good.  They received each day just as it came to them, in its pain and beauty as a gift of God.  They accepted the gift and made everything they could of it.  They did not complain because water is wet or rocks are hard.  They took nothing for granted.  They did not ask, “Why don’t I ever get a break?” or “Why doesn’t the world treat me better?”  They did ask, “What can I give back to the world in gratitude for simply having been part of its wonder and mystery, for having been invited by God to share in the great banquet of life?”  And with this awareness, they gave thanks for everything.

             Lewis Smedes, professor and author, wonders if perhaps all of thanksgiving is not thanksgiving in spite of.   We give thanks in spite of the darkness and pain in our own lives, in spite of the darkness and pain in the world around us.  We give thanks in spite of the fact that life is not perfect.  All gratitude is really under a shadow.  When we do not see the shadow, gratitude can degenerate into complacency.  When we see only the shadow, gratitude degenerates into despair.

             And it gets harder to be grateful, to give thanks, when the shadows are in our own lives.  Almost every one of us who gathers around a Thanksgiving table on Thursday, will carry with us to that table,  the memory of so many losses…so much pain.  To be human is to hurt.

             Paul knew this - he experienced this . . . and still, he says, in all things give thanks.  Carlyle Marney, the great old southern preacher, used to like to say: “Roses grow out of horse manure.  And if we live in a world where roses grow out of horse manure, who are we to embrace despair?”  We know the manure.  To be human is to hurt.

             But, perhaps that is the price we must pay for all the joy and wonder and mystery of being a person in the world;  for knowing the warmth of a human touch - the comfort and joy of a long and tender human embrace.  And it is the spirit of gratitude which opens us to this joy and wonder and mystery.  It opens us to all of life’s beautiful roses.  Stop making demands for perfection, says Paul, and simply give thanks.

             This past month, we have been talking a lot about the need for us to be giving persons and certainly that’s true.  But today I think we can add to that the need for us to be thankful people because thankfulness opens us to so much - to so very much.

             The great Albert Schweitzer sounded much like the Apostle Paul when he wrote:  “The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything.  The one who has learned this knows what it means to live.  That person has penetrated the whole mystery of life: giving thanks for everything.”