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November 24,
2011, Thanksgiving,
All Souls
Episcopal Church
Thanksgiving
As we know, the
Cheery and often deeply profound little comic strip
entitled, Peanuts, is still with us after many years
even after the cartoonist Charles Schultz died. I’ve used
his thoughts many times in the past. One of the earliest
episodes fits well into our Thanksgiving theme today. In
this particular scene, Charlie Brown and little Linus are
leaning on a wall as they think and talk. Charlie brown
asks: “Do you ever think much of the future, Linus?”
And Linus
answers, “Oh Yes, all the time.”
Whereupon, Charlie Brown advances the thought and says,
“What do you think you would like to be when you grow up?”
And Linus immediately responds,
“Outrageously happy!”
It was
the philosopher, Blaise Pascal, who said that
“all men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever
different means they employ, they all tend to this end.”
Happiness and thanksgiving walk hand in hand…so I wish to
tie them together for us today.
Now….one more thought
Do you
remember James Therber’s famous quote:
“Look not to the past with regret, look not to the future
with fear, but look to the present with awareness of
what is around you.”
Awareness on
Thanksgiving Day…..how we must experience it!!
So
tying Thanksgiving awareness and happiness together, we find
all our actions can blend toward that direction.
And God is in full agreement with
that aim. We are happy now because God Wills it!
He too wants us to have lives full that are worthwhile, and
complete and happy. He sent His Son to us who said, “I am
come that they might have life, and that they might have it
abundantly.”
But God
in Christ also came
to tell us that we of times seek our happiness in the wrong
way and in the wrong places! He came to tell us where
happiness is truly to be found. And He came to tell us, in
so many words, that we can never be happy simply by buying a
new Apple product, or increasing our net-worth in this
volatile market, or by moving into the corner office next to
the CEO. God made us. He knows what makes us tick. He
knows that only spiritual
goals, spiritual
victories, and gaining the wisdom which sees the
spiritual essence behind all
things, are the realities which
alone can make us,
in the long run, effectively and lastingly happy and where
“Thankfulness” will naturally evolve!!
Only the
Holy Spirit can work
that work of gratitude in us. As you know some of the
happiest families this Thanksgiving Day are those who have
little in the way of “things” and have little set aside for
a “rainy day.” They, obviously, don’t wish to be this way,
but they are truly happy with an awareness of God’s abundant
Grace in Christ. They have learned to give thanks in
everything! Sort of like our Pilgrim fathers:
A time
for Thanksgiving? Of the 18 wives on the Mayflower, only 5
remained alive for the first Thanksgiving Day. The children
fared a little better, but only because, in many cases,
their mothers made the supreme sacrifice. It was a severe
winter in 1620 and 1621; it took a terrible toll of life.
The graves were not even marked, lest the Indians discovered
how deplete were the ranks of the colonists. Actually, only
half of the ships original roster survived to eat that first
thanks giving meal.
So,
although we may picture a well fed people, surrounding a
festive, food-laden Thanksgiving table, it is only the
better part of honesty for us to recall or be made
aware…that the first Thanksgiving Day was really an act of
praise and gratitude to God….
·
For a little
bread instead of none
·
For a slim hope
on life in place of death
·
For a glimmer of
hope in an otherwise uncertain future
It
was in those circumstances that the pilgrims gathered in an
act and discipline of the will to give thanks to God, the
Father for everything.
As we
said, it is the Holy Spirit which must be allowed into every
fiber of our being for us to experience the love and mercy
and forgiveness of Christ feeding and supplying our inner
natures with the riches of God’s Grace.
A
seventeenth-century German pastor named Martin Rinkhart is
said to have buried 5,000 of his parishioners in one year
due to disease, war and an invader’s oppression. By all
rights, an unrelieved pall of gloom should have enveloped
the life and household of Pastor Rinkhart in l630 during the
Thirty Years’ War. But instead, out of a heart “trained in
thanksgiving for God’s goodness and love, he penned this
simple grace for his children:
“Now
thank we all our God
With heart and hands and voices;
Who wondrous things hath done
In whom his world rejoices
Who, from our mother’s arms,
Hath blest us on our wa
With countless gifts of love,
And still is our today!”
This
prayer, of course, has become one of the most loved hymns of
the Christian church and certainly why we will sing it this
morning as our departing processional hymn
Some
final thoughts:: C. S. Lewis, in his now famous and classic
book, “Mere Christianity”, put the finger on some facts.
He wrote:
“God
designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is
the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our
spirits were designed to feed on. There isn’t any other.”
End of quote
So,,,,how
do we do that? How do we let our “human machines” run on
God? We do this through
thankfulness! For when we immerse our lives in a
spirit and attitude of thanksgiving for all of our many
wonderful gifts, both great and small, that very outlook on
life mysteriously multiples our
quality of life!
Thankfulness also reaches out and transforms so many other
lives for the better. A thankful person is a happy person
and is one who radiates and is infectious with this
happiness and in so doing can, in his little niche of the
world, transform society itself.
So no
matter how this year was or next year will be, whether our
bread supply increases or not, we give thanks to God. We
give thanks to God for God and His Son, Jesus Christ. Once
we are able to give thanks for Him, then gratitude for all
other things seem to come naturally. Please remember
this! The real test of a person’s character is
always seen in the
power of gratitude and
thanks giving that person lives
in his life!
When we
live
the right sort of religion and
enough of it and our lives are immersed in thanksgiving, our
lives ( to quote the poet) “will become lyric and epic. We
shall burst into songs which even the angels will stop to
hear”
So may
you all today and in all of your tomorrows be filled with
thankfulness……and may you also be outrageously happy!
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost
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