Today we celebrate Thanksgiving Sunday and it is a day to give God thanks and these lessons that tell the story of Hannah giving birth to Samuel. You remember Hannah. She was the number two wife of Elkinah, a good and decent man. She was teased and mocked by the Elkinah’s number one wife, Peninnah because Hannah did not have any children, in an era when a person’s worth was measured by the number of children they could produce.

One day Hannah is in the temple praying, Eli the priest accuses her of drunkenness, and Hannah has to explain to him the difference between drunken babble and deep prayer. Eli come to understand and he blesses Hannah’s prayers and the vow she has made. If God will give her a son, she will dedicate him back to God.

Hannah prays fervently, and she prays expectantly. You know that prayer. It is the prayer that waits day after day for the promise that you know is out there, but is not yet fulfilled. It is that prayer that gets you through grief, through family struggles, you have prayed for the church. Hannah prays believing that God will hear her. And when God does hear her, she stays true to her promise and gives her son to the service of God as a nazairte, he will be among those servants of God who will, as he serves the temple, abstain from drinking alcohol, and from cutting his hair. Hannah names her son Samuel, which means, "he who is from God".

Hannah’s prayer is one of lament that turns to praise and thanksgiving. She reminds us of the need to be patient and persistent in prayer, and then when we are, our pleas for help, for a change in circumstance, for God to help us see our way more clearly, even to reach a difficult decision become occasions for us to offer God our thanks and praise.

As she prays, Hannah reminds us of the "importance of expressing our needs before God. Sometimes we become more intent on presenting a portrait of strength of our faith than in confessing our struggles, our anxieties, and our pains. In our religious life, we admire positive thinking, goal setting, problem solving, and program planning. We often seem to believe that the right spiritual discipline, the proper church-growth program, or the most thoroughgoing strategic plan will meet our needs, and that’s OK. But, Hannah simply and expressed her need to God. In doing so, she recognized that wholeness in her life lay beyond those things she could control and rested in God as the larger reality of her life. Sometimes facing our needs as persons and as churches can open new possibilities, not of our making but of God’s."

Hannah also teaches us that "that the proper response to the gift of God’s grace is to give some of the grace and goodness back to God. Samuel was a gift of grace from God to Hannah, and when he was old enough, she lent him back to God through his service in the temple with the priest, Eli. (New Interpreter’s Bible, volume II, Nashville. Abingdon Press, 1998, p. 977-978).

We celebrate thanksgiving as we express gratitude to God. The letters to the church we know as I Peter and II Peter were written to a church displaced and scattered, in exile, sometimes under persecution, not yet part of the culture in which people lived their lives. But as we read the letter, we hear an invitation to thank God and to know that even when we are not where we yet want to be, we can be grateful that God is nevertheless with us.

And so we can offer our thanks and praise to God for all God has given to us. Remember the first etiquette lesson you learned? It was probably when you were taught to say thank you. Thank you, a simple two word expression of appreciation and gratitude. For Peter, our first thanks belong to God. For a few minutes, let’s be among those faithful believers to whom Peter wrote. Let’s be among those who thank God just for being God and for sharing with us the grace and mercy only God can give. Let’s be grateful for the community of people gathered, and made new in Jesus Christ.

We thank God that we have an inheritance waiting for us. It is alright, just where it is. It is in a place safer than anything we can thing of; it is so well protected that our inheritance will not die, it will not be ruined, it will not fade. It is eternal, pure, always fresh and available to us. God who created it, holds it in trust for us, Jesus who gave us his life has redeemed it, the Holy Spirit who sanctified us keeps it in sacred trust for us. We thank God for a living hope.

"For the earliest generations of Christians, it was clear that Christian life was ‘new birth.’ One was not born into the faithful community, but chose it, often leaving behind the security or the good reputation of the old life for the insecurity and blessing of the new. 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, 1988, p.250).

And out of the life we have, we not only to ask what would Jesus do, but then to do what Jesus did. We are called to love, to care, to see his face in the faces of the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, naked, and imprisoned. We are called to speak truth to power, honor and respect all people, and love God with our whole being.

Rejoice and be glad, scripture says, because we can thank and praise God even in times of trial, because difficult days are temporary, they won’t last always. At a luncheon I was at last week, Rich Nathan, pastor of the Vineyard Church here in Columbus told a story about Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town in South Africa, and the power of rejoicing in God. It seems that during a service in the cathedral that police, armed and dressed in full riot gear stormed into the church and stood in the aisles. Their presence stopped the service and terrified the worshipers. At first Bishop Tutu angered by the intrusion into holy space, quoted Galatians 6.7 "Do not be deceived. God will not be mocked". But then he smiled and said to the police officers, "Why don’t you put down your arms and join us. After all you have already lost this battle. We will win, we have won." When he finished talking, the people in the pews were no longer afraid; reminded of the power and presence of God, they began to praise God with clapping, dancing, and singing.

I do not know what they sang. Maybe it was "O Jesus I have promised to serve then to the end; be thou forever near me, my master and my friend. I shall not fear the battle, if thou are by my side, nor wander from the pathway, if thou will be my guide" ("O Jesus I Have Promised", Chalice Worship, #612).

Maybe they were singing, "Siyahamba" as they marched and sang, and danced, and prayed in the light of God. Maybe they sang a song that declared that despite the pain and ignorance caused by apartheid, they were grateful for the God in whose image they knew themselves to be created:

"For every mountain, you brought me over. For every trial, you’ve seen me through. For every blessing, halleluiah, for this I give you praise" (Kurt Carr, "For Every Mountain").

Whatever it was they sang, they were able to drive out the very symbols of their oppression, not by throwing Bibles and hymnals at them, not by becoming violent, but by calling on the name of God who they knew to be with them in the journey from oppression to freedom in a way that caused the police to lower their weapons and their heads and move out of the church. It was indeed a day of thanksgiving.

This Thursday, when we celebrate Thanksgiving, we will be doing a lot of things. We will no doubt think about the version of the story many of learned in elementary school, the one with the Pilgrims celebrating their survival through the harsh winter of 1620-1621 at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. We will remember that Chief Massasoit led his Wampanoag tribe in helping the settlers survive. We may recall that in 1863 Abraham Lincoln designated the last Thursday in November as a day of thanks for the United States; and that Franklin Roosevelt designated the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day, Congress approved the bill and it was signed on November 26, 1941.

Did you notice that the journey to thanksgiving as we know it was celebrated just after the crisis of near starvation; in the middle of the worst part of the civil war, and in the days just before the United States entered World War II? Maybe that is why we hold Thanksgiving day as a day for family, friends, fellowship, and food; time for travel, being company and having company. It is a time to remember those who might be alone and lonely and needing the warmth and closeness of care. It is a time to be grateful.

We know it to be a time, even for those of us who have lived all of our lives in cities to thank God for the harvest of food that sustains us. This Sunday before thanksgiving is good, it is right that we sing the hymns of harvest home and thanksgiving. But it is mainly a time for us to remember and thank God that we have been included in the family of God, sons and daughters of God with a world full of sisters and brothers who have made the choice to be followers of Jesus Christ.

For all that we give thanks for, for the witness of those whose gratitude to God inspired us, because we are grateful people of faith we receive a dividend, our salvation, our promise of life with God. And for that may our thanksgiving be faithful, joyful, beyond description, and simply glorious. For this we give God praise. Thanks be to God. Amen.