This year, my friend Catherine and I added three goats to the family of livestock living at the farm. These are yearlings, two wethers (castrated males) and a female, and their names are Newsy, Bolero, and S’more. These goats live in an attitude of scarcity, even when they were just fed five minutes ago. Bolero in particular cries out petulantly: “Mmmgehhh!” sometimes so loudly that the neighbors take note. We got a text one time: “Everything okay over there? Some animal sounds like it’s in distress.” We feed these three goats blackberry leaves, apples, hay, all of which they are happy to get. But five minutes later: “Mmmgehhh!”
It’s easy these days to see how much is broken: climate change, lack of affordable housing, lack of living wages, lack of affordable healthcare, and on and on. Lack, lack, lack. Broken, broken, broken. As we age, maybe our own bodies feel more and more broken: aches and pains crop up and become the new normal.
Can you feel the stress of dwelling on all that’s broken?
This is why we’re doing this sermon series on thankfulness. It flips the script and invites us to look at what is going right, what is not broken, what feeds our souls. We’ve looked at thankfulness for immigrants, thankfulness for God’s law, thankfulness for those we love. And today, we look at giving thanks to God.
Examples of giving thanks to God:
Communion: Jesus takes, blesses, breaks, gives bread and wine. He gives thanks—right before being arrested and tried and crucified. He gives thanks for all of it.
Israelites wandering in the desert—not so much. There is much singing and dancing and celebration when the waters part and they cross over to freedom, and Pharaoh’s army gets drowned in pursuit of them. But as their new reality sinks in, they turn—reasonably—to Moses and say, “So, what’s for dinner tonight? And tomorrow night, and the night after that? What’s the plan?” And Moses has to say, “Uh, let me get back to you” and go scurrying off to consult with God. The Israelites are portrayed as being chronic complainers, kind of like those goats, but they’re coming out of 400 years of slavery, of being taught not to be self-starters or to think for themselves. They’re in an entirely new environment and don’t know how to navigate or how to provide for themselves. No wonder they’re a little panicked and homesick and living out of a mindset of scarcity. Giving thanks is something they have to learn. As do we, often.
Psalms: start off bemoaning struggles, pivot to thanks for God’s saving hand. “You have brought me out of the pit.”
Corrie ten Boom and her sister were devout Christians in their 50s in Haarlem, Holland in World War II. With their father, they ran a clock shop. As they saw Jews being rounded up, they created a hiding place in their home to protect at least a half dozen Jews. Eventually someone ratted them out, and the sisters were put in a concentration camp. The conditions are terrible. Not enough food, not enough toilet paper, fleas, illness—and of course death all around them. But at one point they notice that the fleas keep the guards from getting too much in their business. So they give thanks for fleas, even in a concentration camp.
Perhaps you have a practice of saying grace at meals. My mother’s family used to say this:
From thy hand cometh every good
We thank thee for our daily food
O with it, Lord, thy blessing give
And to thy glory may we live. Amen.
Now, if you recite the same grace every night and you’re hungry for the food that you can smell right there on the table, the words can become rote. “Fromthyhandcometheverygoodwethanktheeforourdailyfood….amen, let’s eat, please pass the potatoes.” Saying grace loses all meaning.
But grace is an opportunity to give thanks to God: for the food itself, those who planted it, pollinated it, weeded around it, harvested it, packaged and shipped it to market, sold it to us, prepared it, washed the dishes after we ate it…. For the sun, rain, nutrients, soil that helped it to grow. And when we take that practice seriously, we are reminded that it’s all a gift, it’s all a blessing, and that our food connects us to everything and everyone, human and more-than-human, on the entire planet. Our cup of coffee depends on the health of coffee plants in other countries, birds and bees able to pollinate the blossoms on those plants, workers able to make a living growing that crop, climate stable enough to support those plants, governments stable enough to allow trade of those crops. Thank you, God, for all of those elements being in place so that we could have our cup of coffee.
Like saying grace, we may take our national anthem as a rote exercise we have to participate in from time to time at public events. And we may take issue with Francis Scott Key’s politics or the extraordinary vocal range that the tune requires. We may disagree with a lot of the political divisiveness that is present today. But we listen or sing along, and after we hear “o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave,” the next words in our minds are … “Play ball!” Like grace: okay, we got that out of the way; let’s get to what we’re really here for, which is a ball game. But once in a while maybe we stop to think about what it means to live in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” And we thank God that we live in this place, for all its foibles. May we be free—may everyone be free—and may we be brave enough to meet the justice issues of the hour.
One of the aspects of ministry that I thought I could never do is to accompany people as they die. But what I have discovered is that the time after the stroke or the end of treatments, the time when hospice has been called in—that is the holiest time. And as I sit and talk with people who are facing the end of their days in that body, what I often hear is how thankful they are for their lives. What a gift. All of it—even the hard stuff. What a gift. Thank you, God.
I invite you to take a moment right now and think about what you give thanks for to God. [Pause.]
Now I invite you to turn to someone you did not come to church with and share one thing for which you are thankful. [Pause.]
Write down what you’re thankful for, and email it to me by midday Tuesday. Next week is our Thanksgiving service, which culminates this sermon series on thankfulness. We will share some of what we’re thankful for in a prayer.
Let us close with prayer now:
God, as Isaiah says, you are our strength and our might, and you have become our salvation. With joy we draw water from the wells of salvation.
We give thanks to you and call on your Holy Name;
we make known your deeds among the nations;
we sing praises to you, for you have done gloriously;
let this be known in all the earth.
We shout aloud and sing for joy,
for great in our midst is the Holy One. Amen.