Thanksgiving for the Future

On my flight to Israel a couple weeks ago, I thought of the many "must see" places I would be visiting in the Holy Land -- Bethlehem, where Jesus was born; the Western Wall, a place steeped in prayer; Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed before his arrest. But a surprising thing happened as I toured the holy sites of Israel and the West Bank: I felt moved the most by "lesser" places that I visited without much anticipation. One of them was the Church of the Multiplication in Tabgha.

The Church of the Multiplication was built in 1982, which isn't noteworthy in a land where you can gaze upon the excavation of a 10,000 year-old section of Jericho's city wall. What is noteworthy, though, is the location where the Church of the Multiplication is built. The Church sits over a place near the Sea of Galilee where Jesus is said to have performed the miracle of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. In the Church's austere sanctuary, beneath the altar, a rock protrudes through the mosaic floor, marked only by the flame of a single, small candle. There, Jesus, faced with a hungry crowd of more than 5,000 people, took five loaves of bread and two fish, gave thanks to God for them, broke the bread, and had his disciples distribute the food to the people -- who miraculously ate their fill, with twelve baskets full of bread and fish left over. You can read Mark's account of this miracle here.

Altar of the Church of the Multiplication 

As I stood before the altar and looked at that stone, I experienced what I can only describe as an overwhelming sense of God's provision. I've long acknowledged that God has greatly blessed me and my family, but in that moment, I was swept up by a wave of awe and gratitude that carried me far beyond my narrow, self-focused interests. In the spot were Jesus fed a hungry multitude, I felt acutely aware that it's God's very nature and deep desire to provide for all of God's beloved children. And it's not enough for God that we don't starve. God prepares a lavish meal of loving kindness for us all that more than satisfies; God serves a meal so big that baskets full of leftovers remain. That's God's nature. That's how much God loves and cares for us. In Tabgha, I experienced a moment of clarity about who God is that I hope to never forget.

When I returned home from Israel, I flipped through the dozen or so sermons that my father preached around the holiday of Thanksgiving, and I found one he wrote in 1967 about the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Setting the scene for the miracle, Dad wrote, "The situation seems hopeless. A crowd of 5,000 people. What will they eat, miles away from the nearest market? 'What can we do?' the disciples ask Jesus. The conversation that follows between Jesus and his disciples underlines the helplessness of the disciples. But at the same time one gets the feeling of serenity, for through it all Jesus never panics; he has complete control and mastery over the situation. How desperately we want someone like that in the midst of our panic today -- someone to insure the future for us, someone who is in control."

Look at what Jesus did! "Five loaves and two fish -- just five loaves of bread and two fish. With the smallest of resources he provided a veritable banquet for more than 5,000 people. Folks who know much more about the scriptures than either you or I point out the very great significance of this banquet. Both the Old and New Testaments are full of references to a great banquet, a great heavenly banquet which all will enjoy when the end of the age comes and the Messiah is exalted to his position as Lord of all creation. ... Over and over again, the symbol of a meal or banquet is used to show that in the end it is God who triumphs. God is victorious, and the time will inevitably come when God will be able to celebrate God's victory at a joyous table of fellowship with God's faithful children.

And that too is the meaning of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. With this miraculous banquet, Jesus is giving a preview or a prophecy, if you like, of that great final banquet that is to come. The meaning here is that no matter how hopeless and dim the present situation (5 loaves and 2 fish), there is still reason to give thanks. For God can take the most hopeless set of circumstances, a famine, and turn it into a veritable feast. And this banquet for a mere 5,000 is nothing compared to the great truth to which it points -- namely, that God is in charge of the course of history. Although disaster and hardship may threaten, in the end God will triumph, and God's kingdom will come as we have so often prayed for it: 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.' That is, the time will come, figuratively speaking, when we all will come from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and sit at the table with the Lord in the kingdom of God.

You see, this is the meaning of Christian thanksgiving. ... We not only look backwards and praise God for all of God's kindness in the past. We also dare to turn around and face the future and thank God for that too. In a time when many may despair about the future and others may clamor feverishly for plans and human solutions to our many problems, the Christian hope comes like a refreshing breeze. Of course, things may get worse. But the Christian can meet those prospects serene and unshaken, knowing that the Risen Christ already has overcome the powers of sin and death and in the end will reign. When? How? We do not know the answers to such questions. But if God be God, then God's kingdom will come. Of that we may be sure."

I used to have a wonderful neighbor named Hester, who lived well into her 90's. Dorry and I were young parents when we lived next door to Hester, and she loved visiting with our kids. Whenever we spoke with Hester about our hopes and fears for our children, she always had the same comforting response. She would say, "There's no need to worry about what the future holds when you know who holds the future." As I sit down with family for our Thanksgiving dinner, I will be thanking God not only for God's past provision, but also for the future -- for I know who holds it for us all.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

From: "A Christian Thanksgiving"
Scripture: Mark 6:31-44
Preached Nov. 19, 1967
Adams Shore Community Church, Quincy, Mass. 

A Thanksgiving Fix For A Divided Nation

The pollsters at Gallup released survey results yesterday showing that a record-high 77% of Americans view this nation as divided. More than a third of Americans are dreading Thanksgiving dinner this year because of inevitable conversations, and confrontations, about the recent presidential election. News outlets are reporting that tensions are running so high that folks are uninviting friends and family members to Thanksgiving dinner because of their differing political views. We've never seen anything quite like this before. Or have we? When I dug into Bill's Barrel to read some Thanksgiving sermons, I quickly found one discussing how polarized American society was in 1977. Here's what my father had to say that year on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday: 

"Our community, and all communities, stand in a desperately divided condition today. We hear so much about polarization in our nation, and most of us who have our eyes and ears open know that it is not just an empty phrase or a gimmick cooked up by the press. It is real. If you circulate at all and talk to people in your community, and if you examine yourself, you cannot help but be terrified at the chasms individuals and groups are dredging out between each other. 

It has really come to the point where we must ask if true community does in fact exist any more. Or are we rather just an aggregate of unrelated people who share nothing with each other and just happen to live in the same geographical area? The barriers between us range from indifference, to quiet prejudice, to outright enmity. People live across the street or across the hall and don't even know each other's names. Symbols, like long or short hair, black or white skin, or different accents become walls that keep us from learning to know, appreciate and help each other. 

But this is not a new problem even if it takes on greater proportions today. If you read the gospels, you get a glimpse of the great distance between peoples in the day and place where Jesus lived. Talk about a polarized community -- that was it! Gentiles versus Jews; Pharisees versus Sadducees; Jews loyal to Rome versus rebellious Jewish zealots; Jews versus Samaritans; clean versus unclean. It's hard to imagine such a small country with so many sub-groups trying desperately to avoid each other and clashing when they couldn't. Sometimes, this was carried to ridiculous extremes. 

Samaria stood in the middle between the Jewish province of Galilee to the North and the Jewish province of Judea to the South. In Jesus's day, any good Jew traveling from Galilee to Judea or from Judea to Galilee would not take the shortest and most sensible route through Samaria, but in order to avoid the Samaritans (who were considered heretics and mixed breeds) would travel clear around Samaria, losing much time and energy. Or take another example: Learned rabbis decreed that when the wind was blowing from behind a leper toward a healthy person, the leper had to stand at least 50 yards away.

These examples sound ridiculous to us because they come from an ancient time. But if we could somehow get outside of our skins and watch some of the things we do, I'm sure our polarizing ways would seem equally ridiculous. A white family goes to the expense and trouble of uprooting themselves and moving if a black family moves in nearby. Property-owning taxpayers vote to keep out apartments, assuming that renters will bring an undesirable element. Students throw rocks and mock the police unmindful of how the very law they flout guarantees their freedom. Middle-class neighbors, comfortable and without much to do on a Saturday afternoon, sit on the patio knocking "lazy" welfare recipients. We have not come much further in building real community than had the many factions in Jesus's day."

So what is the solution for such a Balkanized state of affairs? My dad sought the answer in Thanksgiving: 

"A true community is born when we can say thanks to God. What a unifying revelation it could be if all of us could really apprehend the fact that same God who makes it rain in my suburban middle-class township also makes it rain on the inner city, on the rural farming community and on the affluent neighborhood, on the hard-scrabbled borough and on the quaint college town. Now that sounds simple, I know, but I think there's a point. If all of us, despite our differences, could see by faith that our life comes from a common source in God, if we all could suddenly grasp that our common needs are all served by the same Lord, that our thanksgivings rise to the same Father, then most assuredly, the gaps between us would quickly close.

It is said of animals who are natural enemies that during times of flood they can be found sitting side by side quite peaceably on some high piece of ground. Why? Simply because they have been forced to recognize that this small piece of dry ground is their one and only salvation. How parabolic that is for us! Here we are bickering and feuding, expending valuable energy, sometimes even spilling blood to maintain the differences between us, and so few of us ever stop and look up to get the big picture. So few of us manage to apprehend by faith that when each individual breaths out thanksgiving for life, it all rises to the same God.

A true community also is born when we say thanks to each other. In Jesus's day no two people stood further apart, both figuratively and literally, than a healthy Jew and a leper. When Jesus heals a group of ten lepers, they go on their way, but one suddenly turns and breaks ranks with the rest, runs back and falls at Jesus's feet, giving him thanks. This man, who is not only a leper but a Samaritan, returns to thank a Jew! This is a real breakthrough. The Gospel draws people together into Christian community. 

Christ lends a wholeness to life, not only to individual life but also to shared life between people. Christ brings us together into a relationship of mutual gratitude and appreciation. Somehow Christ gives us the ability to see differences in other people not as barriers, not as something to fear, but rather as blessings. What the other fellow has that I don't have is something he can offer to me for my enrichment, and something for which I should thank him. God very often chooses to bestow his blessings on us through others. This is how God works. How stunted and narrow our lives become when, because of our differences, we cut ourselves off from the good gifts God would give us through others.

This Thanksgiving, it is really up to us to choose what we would make of this event. It could be merely a time to turn inward and thank God for our private prosperity, but I urge you to go beyond that. Our community is as polarized and fragmented as any American community today. It is our job as the Body of Christ in this time and this place to be the reconciling agents in our community. The way to begin this leavening work is to remember that all people, despite their differences, owe thanks to the same God and, because of their differences, owe thanks to each other." 

From: "A Community Gives Thanks"

Preached at: Community Thanksgiving Eve Service,

Easton, Pennsylvania (1977)

Scripture: Luke 17:11-19; John 4:1-14

A Reason to Give Thanks

As I prepared to teach a Sunday school lesson on the topic of giving thanks, I came across a fact from American history that I had not known. While we credit the Pilgrims and their Native American counterparts for the first Thanksgiving feast, and although George Washington declared America's first national day of thanksgiving and prayer, Thanksgiving Day was not established as a national holiday until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation "invit[ing] my fellow citizens in every part of the United States ... to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens[.]"

If I had to guess the year in which Thanksgiving became an annual holiday in the United States, I wouldn't have guessed 1863 -- the height of the Civil War. It was a time when our nation's grief and pain may have been at their worst.  With brother fighting brother, the war left an estimated 620,000 men dead -- roughly two percent of the nation's entire population. What could have caused Lincoln to ask the entire nation to pause for a day of thinks and praise in the midst of such devastating loss?

In a Thanksgiving Eve sermon entitled "A Reason to Give Thanks," my father wrote that "people who know their Lord know how to thank him in plenty and in want." Dad observed that the Apostle Paul called upon Christians to "give thanks in all circumstances." 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NIV). "Note that he does not say, 'Give thanks for all circumstances,' but 'give thanks in all circumstances.' Everything that happens to us is not a part of some obscure [but] good plan of God. [It's not all] from God. Until the Kingdom of God fully comes, the forces of evil will continue to rage against us. Terrorists commit unspeakable carnage. Volcanoes spew steaming mud over whole towns of people. Hundreds of thousands perish by drought. Cancer strikes. Marriages fail. Drugs destroy. ... These are not the works of God, and it is a weak defense of God's goodness to say that they sometimes result in good spin-offs  For example, God doesn't cause a baby's death to convert a wayward father. 

We live in a world pocked with evil because God allows freedom to us and to his natural creation. The only unconditional blessing God promises to us is himself, his own presence, in both times of trial and in times of rejoicing. The ultimate reason for giving thanks is that God is God, and he is with us.

Do you remember being ill as a child and your mother or your father just sitting there with you, holding you through the long night? There was precious little they did or could do to relieve the distress of your illness, but somehow their just being there was enough. It is so with God, who is like a father and a mother to us, and even more besides.

My friends, thank God tonight and tomorrow and into all eternity that he is Sovereign Love, that when times are bad and can't get any worse, his presence is our promise of ultimate hope and justice. Yes, we have many reasons to be thankful, but none outshines God himself. Thank him; praise him; love him for himself alone. He is our reason to give thanks!" 

Dad's sermon brought to my mind the last words of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. On his deathbed, Wesley is reported to have said, "The best of all is, God is with us!" God is with us indeed. Happy Thanksgiving, my friends!

"A Reason to Give Thanks"

Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-28

Thank You and You're Welcome

Over the last three years, I've gone from being the youngest lawyer in my office to being nearly the oldest. Working now with a younger crowd has made me realize that folks don’t say “thank you” as often as they used to. And when I thank co-workers for their help or for a job well done, it’s rare to hear “you’re welcome.” The common response I get is “no problem.” No problem? At the risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon, I don’t like “no problem.” It belittles my thanks. I’m thanking you because it was a problem … or could have been one without your help. Why even say “thanks” for something that’s “no problem” at all?

I had to laugh earlier this week when I read a sermon in which my dad complained about someone’s reaction to him saying “thank you.” I guess it’s true what they say: The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Here’s what my father wrote on saying “thank you”:

“The service had come to an end, and I went to the back of the sanctuary to greet the worshipers as they filed out. Near the end of the line came the soloist of the morning, who had done quite a nice job that day. I told her so and thanked her warmly. As I spoke a look of horror came across her face, and she said, ‘Oh no, pastor! Don’t thank me. Give all the praise to God. It’s not me; He does it all!’”

“That’s not the first time I had received such a reaction when I thanked another Christian for doing something, nor would it be the last. It is common in some Christian circles to refuse to accept personal thanks. I've thought a lot about that reaction from the soloist and others, and while I understand the point they are making, it seems to me to grow out of a narrow and rigid way of thinking about our relationship with God – and an inadequate understanding of our personal and social needs as human beings.”

“It must be conceded that in … Paul’s letter to the Philippian Church, he couches his thanks to the Christians there as an act of thanks to God: ‘I thank my God,’ he writes, ‘ every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now[.]’ (Phil. 1:3-5 NIV) And yet, if Paul only wanted to thank God, why would he put it in this letter so that the Philippians would overhear him? I believe Paul understood the necessity of thanking others for their efforts and accomplishments.”

“Saying ‘thank you’ is a very important Christian grace for at least three reasons:

•  First, it satisfies the need that every person has to receive feedback concerning his efforts. There is nothing more draining than to work hard and faithfully day after day and seldom or never hear a word of appreciation. … Someone is bound to say, ‘As Christians we don’t serve in order to be praised by men, but just to please God.’ That is very true. But how does God express his pleasure to us? Doesn't God often choose to communicate through our brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ? It is good theology to assert that a genuine word of appreciation from a fellow Christian is also an expression of pleasure from God. We all need to hear the words, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ (Matt. 25:21)

•  Second, saying ‘thank you’ is a healthy expression of our inter-dependence with other people. … Our natural sinful tendency is to see ourselves in disproportion as the center of our own little universe, everything revolving around us. A heartfelt ‘thank you’ can readjust that whole skewed, self-centered way of looking at things, as we realize that we cannot take anyone for granted. Each person in our life is essential to us.

• Third – and most important – saying ‘thank you’ is an expression of our dependence upon God. (I believe this is what the soloist was trying to tell me that Sunday after the service, although I don’t like how she rules out our thanking one another.) The fact is that any good you and I do is the result of God’s direct or indirect action in us. And so, when I thank you for something, I am reminding both you and myself that it is in God that ‘we live and move and have our being.’ (Acts 17:28)"

So, as my dad put it, “thank-yous are in order often and all around.” I'll start by thanking you for your interest in this blog. Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

From: "On Saying 'Thank You'"
Scripture: Philippians 1:3-11