The Eliot Church of Newton

Texts: II Corinthians 9:6-15; Luke 17:11-19

When I told my son Zach earlier this week
            that I was working on my Thanksgiving sermon,
                        he said “Thanksgiving sermon? This year? Good luck with that!”
And we both knew what he meant. 
The American economy is shakier than it’s been in 80 years,
            the stock market is on a downward-spiraling roller coaster,
            our largest national industry, the automobile empire, claims to be on the verge of bankruptcy,
            the housing market has tanked, unemployment figures are soaring,
                        and there seems to be no end in sight.

Thanksgiving? Good luck with that! 

And yet, and yet, and yet…
And yet, I remembered that we are still among the most fortunate people
            in the wealthiest nation on the planet.
In a world where millions have never known
                        even a day of freedom from hunger, or from violence,
            in a nation where tens of thousands of children go undernourished every day,
                        and tens of thousands of adults have never learned to read,
            and hundreds and hundreds of families lack the resources
                        to even rent one room against the cold and snow and rain,
            even the poorest of us who are gathered here this morning
                        have indeed been blessed with great good fortune. 

Yes, today for some among us, a bit of our prosperity and fortune seem to be in jeopardy.  
We may feel tentative in this Thanksgiving season, and everyone is talking about cutting back. 
And obviously, wise and prudent financial decisions need to be made,
            whether about our church budget or our home budgets, or our Christmas spending.

But then I also remember the words we just heard
            from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth:
“The one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly,
            and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 
And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance,
            so that by always having enough of everything,
                        you may share abundantly in every good work. 
As it is written,
            “He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.”
… The One who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food
                        will supply and multiply your seed for sowing
                                    and increase the harvest of your righteousness.”

And I remember too, the situation of the Pilgrims who gathered
            for those first thanksgiving feasts at Plymouth Plantation in the 1620’s.
Legend and maybe history has it that the Pilgrims actually came to Plymouth by accident,
            because their ship was blown so far off course from their intended landing in Virginia. 
And even after their safe arrival, the Pilgrims faced the winter wholly unprepared and under-stocked. 
By spring, over half of the community had perished of disease and starvation.
During January and February of 1621 it was not unusual
            to have two or three deaths a day among their small company.
It is said that during the worst of it,
            each person had but five kernels of corn to eat each day.

In the spring, the native Wampanoags who befriended the pilgrims
            taught them how to plant and grow corn,
                        and they could also harvest the abundant wild game in the lush forests that surrounded them.

And that autumn, they held a feast of thanksgiving.
Mind you, this was just eight months after a winter in which they buried half their loved ones. 
They had suffered tremendous losses, and the thought of another winter
            close upon them must have struck some fear in their hearts. 
Their survival was still a question mark. 
Yet they held a feast in gratitude to God for the harvest and for their good fortune.

And then I remembered the relationship between one’s gratitude
            and one’s sense of peace, and happiness, and abundance.
Dennis Prager wrote a book called, “Happiness Is a Serious Problem” 
In it, he writes, “There is a secret to happiness, and it is gratitude.
             All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy.
            We tend to think that it is being unhappy that leads people to complain,
                        but it is truer to say that it is complaining that leads to people becoming unhappy. 
            Become grateful and you will become a much happier person.”

A few years ago, in a Boston Globe article, Jeff Jacoby quoted Prager.
I don’t often agree with Jeff Jacoby, but in this article he went on to add:
            “If you never give a moment’s thought to the fact that your health is good,
            that your children are well-fed, that your home is comfortable,
            if you assume that the good things in your life are normal and to be expected,
                        you diminish the happiness they can bring you. 
            By contrast, if you train yourself to reflect on how much worse off you could be,
            if you develop the custom of counting your blessings and being grateful for them,
                        you will fill your life with cheer.
            It can be hard to do. Like most useful skills, it takes years of practice
            before it becomes second nature. 

This is one reason, Prager writes, that religion, sincerely practiced,
            leads to happiness – it ingrains the habits of thankfulness.
            People who thank God before each meal, for example, inculcate gratitude in themselves.
            In so doing, they open the door to gladness.”

I mentioned earlier the lore that in that winter 1620,
            the pilgrims had only five kernels of corn per person per day. 
Are you familiar with the “Five kernels of corn” tradition? 
Some families start their Thanksgiving meal with only five kernels of corn
            on each plate, to remember the simplicity, the suffering,
                        and the spirit of thanksgiving of our pilgrim ancestors. 
Then they take turns each picking up a kernel of corn
            and sharing one thing they are grateful for, till each member has shared five things.
You might try this as part of your family’s Thanksgiving tradition this Thursday. 
            (If you don’t have field corn at hand, popcorn works fine!)

I would like to close by sharing what my list of five will be this Thanksgiving:

First, I’m grateful for my health. 
Since my sudden health crisis last spring and my heart surgery,
            I no longer take a single day of waking or breathing or working or walking
                        for granted. I live in gratitude for my health.

Secondly, I’m grateful every day for my family. 
My wife Karen is my best friend and the joy of my life,
            and my two sons Nate and Zach have filled my years with love and laughter
                        and challenge and purpose for the past 21 years. 
God has truly blessed me in my family

Third, I’m grateful for my larger family, my parents and siblings and in-laws
            – and especially this year for my mother, who died last May,
                        and who was such a wonderful gift and blessing to us all. 
To grieve her is to honor her greatness
            and the tremendous loving presence she was in all our lives. 

Fourth, I am grateful for my Christian faith, and for the church in which that faith abides. 
I was born in the faith, and in a church, and both have nurtured me, and called me,
            and counseled me, and challenged and consoled me through all the decades of my life.
They have guided me in my journey with God, and in my service to Christ. 
And it is my great good fortune that it is now the Eliot Church of Newton
            and the United Church of Christ that nurture and call and counsel and challenge
                        and console me on that journey – and pays me a salary to boot! 
It doesn’t get any better than that!

And fifthly, I can’t remember a time when I have been more grateful or more proud
            to be a citizen of the United States than I am right now. 
If this sounds blatantly political, you’ll just have to indulge me,
            but the election this month of Barack Obama by a clear majority of the American people
                        has brought a hope and a joy to me as it has to so many millions of others: 
- hope of finally exposing the lie in the myth that race is a distinctive category of identity; 
- hope of shrinking the divide between ethnic communities;
- hope of restoring our nation’s respect for the other peoples and nations of the world,
            and restoring and re-earning respect for America from the nations of the world;
- hope that America might once again become a credible international voice
            for human rights and peacemaking.

We have elected person of mixed-race who was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia,
            a politician who started his career as a community organizer in the struggling streets of Chicago,
            a Christian whose father was an African Muslim and whose middle name is Hussein.
I am so proud and grateful to be an American citizen who has lived to see this day in our history.