One of my favorite singers is Darius Rucker, lead singer for a group called “Hootie and the Blowfish”. On his solo CD, he sings a song that speaks of hope. He declares that he is still standing/still here, still growing and going, walking and talking, crying and smiling. I am still searching and finding, breathing and living, receiving and giving, hoping and trusting, caring and loving.

We have been talking in this month about hope, that sense of assurance and confidence that God loves us, is with us, and will be with us. Hope is a reason for us to be grateful on this Sunday before Thanksgiving. It was after all hope and gratitude that led people in this nation and elsewhere to pause for a day to celebrate a successful and life-sustaining harvest, for the gathering of family and friends, for all of the blessings they have received from God.

There are historical and emotional reasons for giving thanks in these days. Thanksgiving has been a time of healing and celebration in difficult times. It was so at that famous celebration of thanks observed by the Pilgrims and native peoples in Massachusetts in 1621. It was so at the height of the Civil War in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln decreed that the last Thursday in November would be a day when the nation stopped to give thanks to God. In his statement about Thanksgiving, Lincoln said some things that are yet true for us. He declared, “The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God... No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”

You may know that it was in 1939, at another hard time in our history, during the great depression while Europe was already engaged in what would become World War II, that Franklin Roosevelt designated the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving day. He made his declaration when the Christmas season really did begin after Thanksgiving. In fact, it was considered a bit unseemly to do any Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving. It is not like it is now when the holiday season starts in October. His purpose was to help merchants sell more of their goods before Christmas. Some states celebrated the holiday the next to last Thursday, and others in the last week, some celebrated two holidays. Finally in 1941, Congress decreed that Thanksgiving would be the fourth Thursday in November. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving, p.2-4).

I share that background with you to say that Thanksgiving has been a meaningful observance in our this country, and an occasion for enjoying good food in good company, but that is not our only reason to give thanks to God. There are spiritual reasons for Thanksgiving too. We are surely thankful to God for all that God has given to us. I trust we are thankful that we have a sense of assurance and gratitude in sometimes uneasy times. I pray it is so because in all times, we are people of hope who believe that we are loved and kept by our God. And for that we give God thanks and praise.

There is much for us to be grateful today. We are thankful for the food we eat, grateful for the roofs over our heads, and the clothes on our backs. We thank God for family and friends and this house of faith. We give thanks today to God for work and retirement, for school and for every source of education. We give thanks to God for our very lives this day and every day. God has been faithful to us and in hope-filled confidence we give thanks and faithfulness to God.

We are grateful to God for all that we have and, especially we in the church are grateful for the harvest salvation we have in Jesus Christ. We are grateful to God for the source of our hope. It is God who has given us Jesus Christ, and it is Jesus who blesses us, gives us holy favor, makes our lives beloved of God and loveable to ourselves and each other. Thanks be to God for the hope we have in Jesus Christ.

Do you know what it is to be filled with hope and gratitude? Have you ever started a new job, a new relationship, moved to a new place, rekindled an old friendship, heard good news from a doctor, burned a mortgage, or signed for a new one? If you could answer yes to these questions, and dozens more just like it, you know hope. You know that feeling that it’s going to be alright, you’ve got this, God is blessing you, and you want to bless others in God’s name.

One of the reasons I love this passage from I Peter is because it is so excited about the good news of Jesus Christ and for the church’s ability, then and now to share in it, that its words leap off the page with thanks and praise. We can get just as excited as Peter is about our hope. Because as wonderful as our hope in this world is, the hope we have in Jesus Christ is greater, and it is a living hope. This hope helps us find renewal in our lives, it gives us life, even beyond this life. “Hope lives because it is based in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, his triumph over death. Hope lives because death cannot overcome it. Hope lives because even in the face of tribulation it does not back down or grow faint. Living hope is hope that gives life” (New Interpreter’s Bible, volume XII. Nashville: Abingdon Press. 1998, p. 250).

That new hope and renewed life was necessary for Peter’s audience. It is what helped his congregation of early church members claim their for hope and gratitude – they lived with a promise of an inheritance and they were thankful. We are invited by the spirit of the risen Christ alive in us to claim that same promise. The promise is that out of God’s great care and mercy for us, we are inheritors. God has in Jesus left us with a legacy of love that cannot be contested by any person or invalidated by any court.

The inheritance of love and hope and justice will not die, it cannot be spoiled, and it will not fade away. In fact, it will grow more valuable as we share our love and our community like we did with the friends who gathered here for the B-Street players cabaret last night. Be grateful today that we are protected by the power of God and that our faith results in our salvation – that in this life and in life eternal will be with God.

That is one reason we prayed today, “thy kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven.” We believe heaven is a place of unconditional love, unending peace, a wonderful practice of inclusion, and uncompromised faith. Surely we can practice here on earth for the life we have in heaven. We can live faithfully now, live hopefully now, live lovingly now.

We can open ourselves to the Spirit of God in us even as we endure what Peter calls various trials. For us, the trial we face may be people thinking all Christians think alike, or only care about money, or are more concerned about property than people. It may be the way we stand out from the rest of society. Our gratitude to God, our hope in Jesus Christ, our trust in the Holy Spirit can help us distinguish ourselves from the rest of society. Maybe the issue is not how we stand out, but rather how we reach out to those we want to attract to our church and to Jesus Christ.

In Peter’s day, “the issue was conversion of Greek and Roman Gentiles to Christianity, which at the time was a despised, foreign religion. Roman society was male dominated, and suspicious about foreign religious included the fear that conversions would reverse established up/down relationships and cause women to misbehave. That is, people believed they were created in the image of God. Romans expected foreign religious to cause immorality, insubordination within the household, and disloyalty against the state. They knew that once people believed they were loved by God, they would not be able to stand being second-class citizens of Rome or anywhere else. I Peter says it is not so with Christians. Those converted will imitate Christ, by among other things, doing good and not retaliating against those who would harm their community (notes in Ephesians. The Harper Collins Study Bible). Theirs would be a community of hope and thanksgiving.

We thank God for a joy filled spirit that keeps us serving others and that keeps us going. That is why the church sings songs of praise and thanks to God. When we have joy, we have a sense of peace, of well-being, of trust, we have a warm feeling that we are loved by the people closest to us and by God. We rejoice today that we are safe with God. I know the sad truth is that there are people who have been emotionally and spiritually abused by the church, and so they do not feel safe with any notion of God and they do not trust God’s people. Here is what we can do for them. We can show them by our love for them that the church at its best is a compassionate, nurturing, place. We can show them the real good news of God that can replace their bad news version. We can listen to and really hear their stories, we can lament and mourn with them, and we can tell them and show them the good news of our lives lived in the grace of Jesus. We can show them a grateful, hope-filled church and help them heal, now.

We can give thanks for the faith that feeds our spirits so that we are less concerned about what people says about us, and so much more concerned with how we witness to Jesus Christ, whom we know by faith. It is true that unlike the first disciples and apostles we have not seen Jesus face to face. But we have faith in him now. Hebrews reminds us that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11.1). We love Jesus without seeing him. We rejoice in his presence and love with seeing him. We believe in his goodness without seeing him. We have joy in him without seeing him because by faith we do see him and love him when we love and honor each other. Give thanks.

Because we have hope, we can gather and make what Psalm 100 calls a joyful noise. What does a joy-filled noise sound like? It is harmonious worship and singing that engages us heart, spirit, and in our intellects. It helps us thank and praise God that we know that we belong to God, and that hope is what we do when we gather here with thanksgiving.

God’s steadfast love endures forever, and because it does, we stand here now. We believe, achieve, walk and talk, see and reach, cry and smile, search and find, breathe and live, receive and give. Thank God for the hope we have in Jesus Christ. Praise God for this season of thanksgiving. May Jesus Christ be praised. Amen.

Dr. LaTaunya M. Bynum
Senior Pastor