Context is important. We all know that. A "thumbs up" gesture is positive in one part of the world and insulting in another. Clothing that is appropriate for the gym would hardly be right for a formal dinner. Context is important.
On the Sunday before our national holiday of Thanksgiving, I want to say something about its context. Not for the purpose of complaining about the excesses of food and football that will dominate this coming Thursday, but rather to see the spiritual significance of giving thanks, or gratitude.
Most American school children know that in the autumn of 1621 some fifty or sixty people who had come to these shores from England by way of Holland held a feast in celebration of the abundant harvest they gathered. The previous winter, their first in their new surroundings, had been harsh, causing the death of almost half their number. But the spring and summer that followed brought favorable conditions, sunshine and rain in helpful combination. There was enough food for the coming winter. They celebrated, and they gave thanks to God as was their custom. That's what people have been doing for a long time.
The verses read as our first lesson express in poetry the gratitude of a woman, Hannah, who has given birth to a son after praying for such a blessing over a long period of time. The son was named Samuel, and he became one of the great prophets of Israel. The poem attributed to Hannah was written centuries after the years of her life, which unfolded a millennium before the birth of Jesus. The Oxford study edition of the Bible calls the poem "a psalm of national thanksgiving" for Israel. I point this out to illustrate the practice of ancient people—Israelites, Greeks, and Romans as well as others—to express gratitude for what they considered the good things of life: a good harvest, the birth of children, victory in battle, recovery from sickness, and vindication in the face of critics, to name a few.
The Israelites saw such things as evidence of God's favor. They expressed their gratitude to God in poetry, in words like those of Psalm 100, a classic hymn of praise:
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
Serve the Lord with gladness.
Come into God's presence with gladness,
And enter God's courts with praise.
Give thanks to God, bless God's name.
For the Lord is good;
His steadfast love endures forever;
Her faithfulness to all generations.
Those words reflect the world view of people who lived with a vivid sense of a power greater than themselves. At first they believed they could influence or manipulate that power, which they saw as personal and called God, by offering sacrifices of birds or animals, or by observing certain rites or rituals. Some of the Hebrew Scriptures are best understood in the light of that world view, which is a specific context.
Our second lesson reflects a later context, but one still very different from our own. The Epistle to the Hebrews still envisions a higher power, a God, who requires sacrifice. But the need for sacrifice has been satisfied by the death of Jesus, seen and described as the perfect offering for the sins of the world. Instead of blood sacrifices to appease or satisfy God, the writer calls on Christians to offer sacrifices of praise in thanks to God and to live one's life in goodness and generosity as a sacrifice of praise. Care for neighbor becomes a response to God's care rather than an attempt to earn God's favor.
How do we translate that into the context of our lives here and now? The whole idea of a God who requires atonement for human sin is meaningless or off-putting to a growing number of people who take seriously the spiritual dimension of life. Many Christians, I among them, have moved away from the context of a sacrificial system in understanding Jesus' death and resurrection as the expression of divine love.
Last Sunday's discussion of the book A New and Right Spirit made clear the challenge of shaping an identity as Christians in 2006, connecting our stories as individuals and our story as a congregation with the story of God's self-disclosure in Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years ago. We will continue to work on that challenge in the coming weeks and months.
For now I want to say a couple of things about thanksgiving or gratitude as we practice it in 2006. I am sharing with you something of my own experience, strength, and hope, not something I have always done in sermons. But I am coming to understand that the objective nature of much Protestant preaching (read Presbyterian preaching) repels more people than it attracts.
For me, giving thanks is an acknowledgment that I am not the center of the universe. That certainly is true when I give thanks to God, but it is also true when I am genuinely grateful to another human being or to a group of human beings. To give thanks is to acknowledge that I have received something I value, and when I thank another person, I recognize that person as being significant. Therefore, I am not the self-sufficient, solitary center of the universe, a realization that seems to escape some people in our contemporary culture.
Saying "thank you" then becomes important. And there are different ways to say it. Two weeks ago in this sanctuary during the service celebrating the life of Nancy Williams, longtime soloist in the Rutgers Church Choir, Duncan Hartman, our bass baritone soloist, said "thank you" to Nancy in a way many of us will long remember. He told of coming to sing on a Sunday morning after learning that both the paychecks he expected, one from the church and another from other work, were a-typically late. He had to take a trip that afternoon and had almost no money in his pocket. Nancy noticed his distress, asked him what was wrong, heard his story, and rummaged in her pocketbook. She simply handed him some money, actually a lot of money, and said, "Will this help?"
Duncan's testimony of gratitude helped me know and appreciate Nancy Williams, whom I never met, and helped me see Duncan as someone very much worth getting to know. Saying thank you is important, and there are many ways of saying it.
Gratitude is powerful. It can be transformative. After my daughter died in 1999, some people in my life gave me the time and space I needed to do the work of grieving. And then, very gradually and very gently, they opened up to me the possibility of being grateful for the time I had with Jenny instead of continuing to lament what I lost when she died. They encouraged me to make a gratitude list, writing down all the good things that became part of my life because Jenny had been my daughter. Focusing on gratitude transformed my life. It didn't take away the piece of sadness I will always have in my heart, but it opened me up to the possibility that life could be good again. And it has become good again, very good, in fact.
A woman named Melody Beattie, whose writing on recovery has helped thousands of people, and who has had her own share of pain and loss, says this in her book The Language of Letting Go:
Say thank you, until you mean it.
Thank God, life, and the universe for everyone and everything sent your way.
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Say thank you, until you mean it. If you say it long enough, you will believe it.
I encourage each of you to take the time to make a gratitude list, writing down the people, the things, the events, and the circumstances for which you are grateful. And on Thursday, or some other day this week, share the list with someone you trust. That is what our second lesson calls mutual encouragement. I guarantee it will make a difference. It will move you closer to the wholeness God intends for us all.
Thanks be to God.