This homily was preached on Sunday, November 24th, 2019 at a community Thanksgiving service held at First Baptist Church in Bryson City, NC, based on Psalm 107:8-9 and 33-37 and Philippians 4:8.
Would you pray with me?
God who gives us all things, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. Be with us here today. And may the words of my mouth and the mediations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
We live in a world that makes gratitude difficult, don’t we?
I don’t know if y’all have experienced this, but I certainly have. I am constantly bombarded by new things to be worried about, new disasters about to occur, new scandals to concern myself with, new ways that I can be wrong as I try to move through this world. It is so easy to be worn down by this world, worn down by the messages that tell us that we are not good enough, that we will never be good enough. And that weight, that worry, traps any hope for gratitude inside us. It stops us from reaching out in joy to those who could use a little bit of it. If we’re not careful, it’ll take all the delight out of the soups and desserts that await us after this service.
And yet, those who study gratitude tell us that gratitude is the key to joy. Giving thanks for all that we have, whatever it may be, is the way that we connect to one another and to the One who gave us each other. Gratitude is one of those pesky gifts, given by God, that can make us whole.
So I guess it’s worth a try.
What does gratitude look like for us today?
Well, God in God’s wisdom made us all different and so I assume that gratitude might look different for each of us. After all, not everyone excels at saying one thing they’re thankful for when there’s a perfectly prepared turkey sitting right in front of them.
But I do think that for some, it looks like saying grace before every meal. It’s a simple acknowledgement that all things come from God and all things are going back to God and the plants and vegetables and labor that have gone into making this meal are all gifts from above. For those who’ve experienced food insecurity, who’ve had trouble putting meals on the table, saying a blessing before each meal contains real thankfulness, real gratitude. For others of us, saying grace before each meal is the most basic of ways of acknowledging that God has redeemed our bodies and blesses us with the delights of pumpkin pie and fried okra.
For some, it’s noticing the beauty in creation all around us. Breathing in the clean mountain air, seeing the last of these beautiful leaves, taking in rocks and rivers and the songs of a thousand birds brings joy to our hearts and honest gratitude to our lips. I’ve heard from many of you that mornings and sunsets bring up something in you that would find its voice in gratitude. The beauty of our mountains is a gift indeed.
And for others, that gratitude comes out through prayer. We offer thanks for the people in our lives who have carried us through difficult times and those who have brought out the joy and peace within us in good times. There’s a beautiful song from the musical In the Heights, about the abuela of the neighborhood, the lady who didn’t have children of her own but how adopted the whole neighborhood, and the song is called Alabanza, which in Spanish means to raise this thing to God’s face, to say praise to this. Abuela would sing “the praises of the things we ignore,” the song says, “glass coke bottles and bread crumbs and a sky full of stars.” It is not just that she recognized the beauty all around her, but that she raised those beautiful things back up to God.
If I’m going to practice gratitude, I think I want to practice it like that, not just during Thanksgiving but throughout the year. See, Thanksgiving is our time for that kind of “streams in the desert” kind of thanks, spending concentrated time thanking God for those powerful moments of support that God sometimes gives, the miracles when all hope is lost, the encouragement to grow when all within us felt barren. Thanksgiving is our time to raise up the God who feeds the hungry and gives water to the thirsty, the God who put heaven aside for a time and came to earth so that we could know heaven. It’s fitting that Thanksgiving comes right before advent, before the start of a new church year, before we celebrate the baby in the manger who gives us the greatest gift of all. We’ve already prepared our hearts for thanks.
But our Philippians passage today doesn’t seem to suggest that we should only raise up to God the big and powerful works God has done. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Alabanza. Raise these things up to God.
A surprise phone call from an old friend. Alabanza.
A good book. Albanza.
The chance to learn something new. Alabanza.
A good sitting chair. Alabanza.
A calm, quiet morning. Alabanza.
A raucous family gathering. Alabanza.
Seeing the sun rise for another day. Alabanza.
There are so many small delights in this world to raise up to God. And we don’t have to wait until the end of November to do it.
Today, we give thanks, and rightly so. We give thanks for good harvests and good family and good friends. But let’s carry that thanks with us for the rest of the year. Let’s take it with us as a light into this world that could sometimes use a little more light. Let’s raise up to God all the excellent and worthy things that we see in this life, and let’s promise ourselves to look for as many of them as we can. Amen.
All text and pictures (unless otherwise attributed) © Jo Schonewolf, 2019. You can view a full archive of our sermons by clicking here