Call to Worship:
Voice 1: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble.
Voice 2: Be still and know that I am God.
Voice 1: Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea.
Voice 2: Be still and know that I am God.
Voice 1: The nations are in an uproar, empires totter.
Voice 2: Be still and know that I am God.
Voice 1: God is in the midst of the city. God is among us. God will help when the morning dawns.
Voice 2: Be still and know that I am God.
Let us be silent…
Hymn Medley: “We Praise You, O God” (vs. 1 and 2) #420
“Come, O Thankful People Come” (verse 1 and 3) #422
Invocation: This is a prayer in the Native American tradition, from the Lakota people:
O God, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me! I am small and weak and I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears be sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people. Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every rock. I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother or sister, but to fight wrong whether outside me or within. Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes. So when life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame. Amen.
…
Meditation: “This Time of the Year”
For those who take note of such things, this is the last Sunday of the year in the liturgical calendar. Next Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent, for Christians is the beginning of the story and thus the beginning of the church year. We anticipate and then celebrate the birth of Christ, follow him through his earthly ministry, observe the week of his passion, death, and resurrection; reflect on his continuing presence to his disciples, the gift of the holy spirit, inspiring those disciples to go out into the world, and then spend half the year in what is called ordinary time, where among other things we reflect on what it may mean for us to be disciples in the ordinary times of our lives. And that season of the church year ends with the last Sunday before Advent, which is today. Next week the cycle will start all over again.
But today is…well, it is Thanksgiving Sunday, the Sunday that is part of Thanksgiving weekend. Some years this would be the first Sunday in Advent already, but this year we can celebrate Thanksgiving on the weekend of the Thanksgiving holiday. Of course that is part of our Congregational heritage in the United Church of Christ, since our Congregational ancestors were the people we call Pilgrims. Sojourners is in that tradition. Around Chicago the German part of our heritage, the Evangelical and Reformed Churches, many of them celebrated this Sunday as what they called “totenfest”, which means a remembering of the dead, especially those of the community who had died during the previous year. For still others, this is a day that is referred to as the Reign of Christ Sunday, and for some that may mean Christ’s return to earth at the end of time, while for others it may be more associated with the reign of God coming to earth, which again is to occur in the last days of life on earth. All these meanings that are sometimes attached to this day, or most of them anyway, it seems to me have to do, in one way or another, with “endings”. Advent is a forward-looking time, a time when we are encouraged to be hopeful, to strain toward some promised future, or at least to reflect on those dimensions of our lives. We are by and large a forward-looking people, focusing on what is undone, what remains to be done, where we should put our energies, and so forth. We are by and large a forward-looking culture, not much valuing history, believing in progress and improving ourselves, not letting ourselves get bogged down in the past, always ready to turn over a new leaf, and so on. But a day like today, suggestive of endings, offers an opportunity to pay some attention to other parts of ourselves. And so I thought we might pause today and think about endings, and the graces that may be involved in them. Let’s pause right now and listen to some words from scripture
1Thessalonians 5:13-18
Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Habakkuk 3:17-18
Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is one the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield not food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.
Often when we are encouraged, or even admonished, to be thankful, what is suggested to us is that we “count our blessings”, meaning, I think, that we are supposed to take an inventory of everything that goes to make up our lives, recognize that there are many good things there, and give thanks for them—rather than complaining about all the things that are not so good. If there are hardships, struggles, conflicts, misfortunes, pain, worry, regret, we are supposed to put those things aside, at least for a few moments, bracket them, press that little minus sign in the corner of the computer to make them instantly shrink into a little box until we are ready to deal with them again. At the same time we are supposed to be paying attention to all those positive, upbeat, rewarding, happy things in our lives, and giving thanks for them. This way we can work on developing a positive attitude, and avoid the tendency to let our problems occupy too large a space in our spirits. And since we do tend to do that, at least I do, there is a certain common sense rightness to this approach, which I don’t want to deny. But I do think the scriptures point us in a different direction.
When Paul urges us to give thanks in all circumstances, when Habakkuk says that “though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord”, they are not telling us to count our blessings, however good it may be for us to do that. They are suggesting the possibility, not the moral obligation so much, but I would suggest the healing power of being able to give thanks and to rejoice in the Lord in a way that in no way depends on whether things are going well, or how resourceful we are in finding things to be thankful for.
There is a process here. The first step in that process is to allow ourselves to do what our culture sometimes tells us and what we may sometimes tell ourselves is not a good thing to do: to dwell on the past. We’re not supposed to do that, are we? We know how unhelpful and even destructive it can be to dwell on, or in, the past. Guilt or regret are helpful only if it means we have learned something and are ready to make a change. Replaying something that has happened in the past will not make it come out any different, no matter how many times we do it. Tormenting ourselves with thoughts of “If only I had done this or that” in the end accomplish nothing. Anne Lamott in her book called Traveling Mercies offered her definition of forgiveness: “giving up all hope of a better past.”
But the problem with all our destructive ways of dwelling on the past is not that we are spending too much time thinking about it. It’s the ways we think about it. It’s the fact that we are not respecting the past, but trying to change it. We approach the past very often in the same way we approach the future. We try to manipulate it. We do try to make it better. We try to improve it.
But what about just simply remembering the past. Just remembering. Not remembering selectively either, but inclusively, as inclusively as we are able to do, whatever that may mean for us, the happy and hopeful and hurtful, a kind of emotional and spiritual harvest, a gathering in of what my life has consisted of. And then…well, for the moment, and then…nothing. Just a holding of what has been—not a twisting, or a clenching, or a shoving, or a hiding—but just a holding of what and where and who we have been. There is a peacefulness, perhaps that we are looking for here, not the willingness to do battle with the past, but a spirit…of gentleness. A spirit of gentleness that we need to be open to in ourselves and in God. Let’s pause and sing:
Hymn: Spirit of Gentleness
Psalm 63
O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you;
My flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips with praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call upon your name.
My soul is satisfied, as with a rich feast,
And my mouth praises you with joyful lips when I think of you on my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.
My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.
And then…thanksgiving. Having gathered the pieces of our past together, and held them until we can be at peace, no longer struggling with them, we lift them up …and give thanks. Not just thanks that comes in spite of, or in the midst of it all, the good, bad, and indifferent, but thanks even for it all, the good, the bad, the indifferent in which the hand of God has somehow been present, not present in a way that we can necessarily describe with any precision at all, but present nonetheless.
Thanksgiving—not only in every circumstance but even more than that. Not certainly that we give thanks for everything as though we are commanded to view everything that happens as a gift directly from the hand of God and therefore as something we ought to view as good, even though our hearts tell us otherwise. But thanks for the hand of God that is in everything. “My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips as I think of you on my bed in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.”
And so in a way we do give thanks…for everything, because it is a rich feast and because it contains the hand of God, and because there is a holiness about what has been, and what is—not a goodness, but a holiness.
And then…a letting go. Maybe possible only after we have found it possible to give thanks, to let go of someone, or something. God knows there is much to be let go of, sometimes for the sake of another, sometimes for the sake of ourselves. But we all know that there are many things that, were we to let go of them, it would be a beautiful gift that would be healing and freeing.
And we all know that it is not that easy. To say that there is this process of gathering in and holding the past, of lifting it up and giving thanks, and then of letting go is to describe not so much a reality as a hope, a prayer. For the truth is that sometimes it requires a miracle for any one of those things to happen, much less all three. And so in a few moments we will pray together, pray as we always do, but pray especially today in the spirit of helping one another to know the graces contained in our remembering, in our giving thanks, and in our letting go. Amen.
Jim Bundy
November 26,2000