November 19, 2000
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Thanks This is Thanksgiving Sunday. It begins a time when we focus on thanking God for the harvest of the land and for family and friends, shelter and clothes, meaningful work, meaningful retirement, support in down times, and the love of God in all times. It is one of my favorite times of the year, there is a chill in the air, the senses are heightened as we hear special music, eat special food, and feel our lighten. There is even an attempt by many to embody a season of goodwill in the midst of some uncertainty and anxiety. I know that this is also a season of depression for some. Those whose grief is still raw are forced to face the holidays after the loss of a loved one, knowing that things will not ever be the same again. For the men and women who are alone now, when all they long for is companionship; things are too much the same. For them, the words of good cheer, best wishes and blessings are more annoying than comforting. What can the church offer? We can bear witness to the good news that there is a sliver of hope to hold on to, there is a morsel of trust to sustain us. For us it is the presence of Jesus Christ that assures us that we are not alone. God in Jesus Christ is with us. That presence will not bring physical, live company, it will not restore our loved ones to us, but perhaps it will help us not get too mired in depression, it helps us to feel cared for and then to care for ourselves. It helps us to know that we are a redeemed people, and for that we can give thanks. The lessons today teach us to give thanks. Daniel is taught to give thanks for his protector. The Hebrew Christians are invited to give thanks for the love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It was the custom for the temple High priests, at the appointed time to offer their prayers and sacrifices behind a curtain in the Holy of Holies, the inner most part of the temple. Only priests were allowed there, and they could only go when it was their turn to offer sacrifices on behalf of the people. The problem was that the people did not always act as if the sacrifices made for them made any difference at all. It seemed as if the priests were doing the same activity with the same frustrating result. It was almost as if their work was to no avail, because the people did not feel forgiven, they did feel guilt and shame. We are like the priests sometimes, offering our rituals in worship, but feeling little if anything. It may seem that we are going through the motions and emerging from our time of worship feeling worse than when we first got here. But there is another way. In comparison to the priests who do their work behind a curtain, the writer says, look to Jesus. Here is God's highest priest who offered one sacrifice on the cross for us for all time. In giving up his life for us, in being raised from that death, Jesus has torn open the curtain that once symbolized our separation. Now that the curtain is opened, he sits in a place of authority. Because Jesus Christ is the Son of God, High Priest, savior of the world, author and finisher of our faith, God has given to him a place of respect and responsibility while Jesus waits till the day when evil is overcome and the adversaries of Christ and the church are nothing more than an ottoman beneath his feet. When that day comes, the powers of oppression and destruction will give way to liberation and life. For that we give thanks. We are invited into relationship with him when we follow his word, love people more than things, include people rather than exclude them, when we are faithful to God in word and deed rather than being blasphemous and acting as if the love of God is not in us. Our connection is one of being perfected, of being made holy, of being carried along in a process by the love of God who will not let us go. I am thankful. We learned in the first reading, that Daniel had the archangel Michael, a fierce warrior, the protector of Israel, and that is good. Today I give thanks that we have Jesus. I want us to give thanks that by the Spirit of God we can know love and redemption through Jesus Christ. We know it deeply when we refuse to accept that we are anything less than God's own daughters and sons, made worthy by his grace to come to him and to each other as forgiven sinners. We can give thanks that when God forgives us, the debt owed to God for our lack of faithfulness and our willful disobedience, and breaking of trust is paid. No penance is required by God other than that of a renewed heart and a refusal to go back to the way we were before forgiveness. We may need to make things right with the people we have harmed, but once we are sincerely repentant, and fully forgiven by God our debt to God is paid. Give thanks. We can give thanks because verse 19 begins with the word therefore. That lets us know that all the above is true, and that it will effect what follows it. Because it is all true, we can respond to God with some thankful activity. First, we can approach the altar of God. Remember the curtain has been torn, the barriers are down, we can go toward the holy places of God not in fear and doubt, but in the confidence of our faith which tells us that our ultimate trust in God will lead us far beyond where we are in this moment. Because we can come to God by ourselves, we can bring to God every joy and care and every hope and doubt and we can believe that our present and future are safely in God's hands. That confidence is seen in the people who day by day live their lives and work to make tomorrow better. They beat the odds that declare them doomed to failure, they hear that their dreams are impossible, their goals are unreachable, but they do not stop dreaming, and they do not stop reaching. Somehow they have felt the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, that "no one can make you feel inferior without your permission", and they have refused to give that permission. That is my story, that is the story of many of us. Yet here we are, because somebody helped us to find the confidence to approach God and to find there a strong belief in the love of God, and the hope that is ours through our baptism, and our ability and willingness to lead a new life. Second, once we approach the throne of God, we are invited to cling to our confession of hope. We tend to think of confession as an admission of wrong doing, which it is sometimes, and sometimes we need to confess our offenses to those we have harmed. But in Hebrews the term confession refers to a statement of belief such as we find in the Nicene Creed, one of my favorite statements of faith. "We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made of one being with the Father." But we are a non-creedal church, we do not recite or require either corporate statements of belief, not corporate confessions of sin. For the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), there is this common confession, "we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God." That is the statement of belief from which all that we do in the church follows. Our giving, our nurture, our outreach, our worship, our teaching and learning, it all comes from that confession. It is ours so let's not just hold it, let's hold on to it for dear life, without letting go, knowing that the one who promises us eternal life, the joy that overcomes our pain, the ability to just hang in there when we want to let go will do what was promised. Thomas Long has written that "God has promised that a day is coming when war will be ended, when justice will flow down like a waterfall, and when death and pain will be no more. God has promised that a time is coming when no [parent] will weep again for lost children, when all will have a place to live and food to eat, when many will come from east and west, north and south for a great homecoming with God. God give us patience to wait and while we wait, to act in confidence that the day of fulfillment will come." God is able, Jesus is faithful, and the Holy Spirit will help us to hold on. Third, God has given us what we need, minds to think, hearts to feel, senses to enjoy while we experience all of life. We do not hold these for ourselves but rather use them to affect others, to provoke them in fact. Notice we are not called to provoke to anger, or to spew out hastily, nastily spoken words, we have all heard enough of that in recent weeks. Rather we are invited to provoke each other to good deeds. That is what happens when people see us spending our days at Trinity House, or filling the outreach box, and tutoring students, and doing all that we can to offer a hand in welcome, care, eye contact and a smile. Fourth, because we want to share our ministries, we gather in this place. Now all of us know people who have chosen not only to absent themselves from this congregation, but who are not worshiping anywhere. We may even know and sympathize with their reasons. For the sad fact is that church can be boring and meaningless and it can leave us feeling tired and with a sense that nothing is going to happen in church anyway. Hear Thomas Long again: "the local video store has better drama; television has more interesting stories; the pool club has friendlier people; the park has a nicer view; the Sunday paper has more intrigue, and sleeping in provides a more profound Sabbath rest. What is more, nobody at the beach or the backyard barbecue is going to hand us a pledge card, call us to pray for people in a country whose names we cannot pronounce, or ask us to teach the junior high youth." That may all be true. But Thomas Long goes on to say what we who are here know well. There is a sense of joy which rises up in us when we are together. I miss you when I am not here on Sundays. It is just not fun when we are apart. When we are here, we can encourage each other, say well done, keep at it, thank you for all that you do, for all the ways you help me to worship, for all that you do to make us strong, because we are so much weaker when we are apart. Today we can praise God that our confidence invites, our confession convinces, our provocation to good works inspires, and our worshiping God together encourages us to say to ourselves and to each other: "Give
thanks with a grateful heart, To God be the glory, forever and ever. Amen. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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