On this Sunday before Thanksgiving, it seems good and right to think about and to thank God for the people and places and things for which we are grateful. If we were making a list, I know it would include family and friends. They give us life and help give our lives meaning. We have bonds and shared memories and experiences with family that link us together forever. Our birth families share our physical DNA and if we are especially blessed, they also share our emotional and spiritual DNA. We feel deeply for each other, we pray for each other daily, and we long to be known and loved by God. We form friendships, some casual, others so close that our best friends become family. As many of us gather around tables Thursday and in the days following, families of friendship will be formed and we will be grateful to God.

I believe we would put on the list of gratitude that we are grateful that we can worship as we choose. We are grateful for our nation. Surely we would put on that list the fact that we have a place to live, food to eat, and clothes to wear. I am not suggesting that we have all we want or even all that we need, or that our lives are perfect or problem free. I am suggesting that there is much for which we rightly give thanks and that at the top of our list is gratitude for all that God has given to us.

Both the lessons for today, the lesson from the Psalm and the letter to the Colossians remind us to live with thankful praise for all that God has allowed us to have.

Did you hear the invitation of our lessons to approach God who blesses us richly with thankful praise? I learned the other day that the word bless has changed in meaning over the years. Now we think of a blessing as a means of asking God’s favor. It is what we mean when we say, “bless your heart” or “God bless you”. It’s what Charlie meant when he sang, “Bless This House”.

But in its original meaning, to bless meant to “bend the knees” (notes on hymn #276, “We Gather Together” Chalice Hymnal. St. Louis. Christian Board of Publication, 1995). It meant to assume a posture of obedience and submission to God. To seek the blessing of God is to want to be known and heard and understood by God; it is to be a person at prayer. What fills you with thankful praise today? For what do you bend your knees?

Can you recall a time when you found strength you didn’t know you had? Has there been a time when you felt utterly exposed in your deepest emotions and spirit, but you found shelter and a place to rest? Maybe you are there now. I want you to know today that we can thank God who is our strength and our refuge. God is that power in our lives that builds up our falling and failing spirits. God is our shelter, our protection, our safe place.

Because God is here with us, we can begin to let go of that negative spirit that leads us to fear so much that our first response is, to say, “we can’t make it, we don’t have enough, I am inadequate, the situation is hopeless.” You may have heard that non-dictionary definition of fear that describes the emotion as False Expectation Appearing Real. It is a false expectation because it assumes that all we can expect are bad things. We anticipate negative things to happen. When we reach a difficult point in our lives, as we all will, it simply confirms that negative things are supposed to happen to us. And so our false expectation becomes real and a self-fulfilling prophesy, and every unpleasant incident feeds our fear.

With thankful praise to God we remember that the God who called the world into being with a word, who mourns at the brokenness and sin loose in the world and in ourselves, is the same God who rejoices at every act of reconciliation and every act of confession and repentance, is with us. It is the God of our ancestors and of me and of you who says to us, we need not be overwhelmed by fear.

Perhaps some fear is natural, these are after all anxious days. But it is not fear that God calls us to embrace. The one who in our times of trouble is our safe place, calls us instead to faithfulness. God calls us to believe that God is able to give us what we need to overcome every obstacle. God calls us to have courage – believe that we are stronger than we know; we are called to hope – believe that our God still has a good future for us, we are called to trust – reliance upon God absolutely that will get us through.

On this Thanksgiving Sunday, we hear the Psalmist promise that God will be like a life-giving river in the middle of a holy city. We understand that “Psalm 46 is not a song about an unconquerable city of God, where no harm will every come to its inhabitants. The Psalm is a song of praise God who will help the people God has chosen to live among and who for a time chose Jerusalem and its temple as the locale for the divine ‘dwelling place’. The song does not invite trust in a place, but in a Presence who wills to dwell with people. In the Old Testament, God’s dwelling in time and space was never fixed and final. The locale was a moveable tent, a shrine at Shiloh (Joshua 18), the temple in Jerusalem. In the New Testament, the dwelling of God with people took the form a person” (Interpretation series. Psalms. James L. Mays. Louisville: John Knox Press. 1994, p.185). For us, that person is Jesus himself. That promise was good news to the people of Jerusalem and it is good news to us in Columbus.

We hear confirmation of who Jesus is in the lesson from Colossians. First Paul offers words of benediction to the church. He has already assured them of his prayers for them. Then he tells them words we overhear and receive as words for us.

With thanksgiving and praise to God in Jesus Christ, Paul desires that they and we continue to grow strong, not in our own human power, but in the power of God at work in us through Jesus Christ. It is not that we are powerless. We are not. But our power is limited, it is finite, it can only take us so far before we fall down disgusted, demoralized, dejected, so tired we want to just stay where we are, but then we hear this word of good news: we can rely on God’s power. As we do, we gain the strength we need to do the work before us. As we grow stronger, we find our endurance, as we hang on, we gain patience, and as we grow in patience, we learn to wait on God.

While we wait, we remember. What is it we remember? We remember that when we are separated from God, isolated from the source of our faith and hope, we are as lonely as we can be. In that moment we can look up. As we lift our eyes and our voices, and our hands, and all that we have to God, we are rescued, we are redeemed, forgiven, and embraced tightly in the arms of our Christ.

We remember in fact who Jesus is and that our greatest highest, halleluiah praise belongs to Jesus Christ. Verses 15-20 in Colossians are the words to a hymn Paul quotes to tell us who Jesus is. Listen to the rhythm of his words as he talks about Christ and creation.

“He is the firstborn, he is the agent of creation; he is the origin and goal of creation. Christ is the head of the church and the first born from the dead. It is through Christ that God reconciles ‘to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross’” (Texts for Preaching – Year C. Louisville. Westminster/John Knox Press. 1994, p. 606).

That was one of Paul’s songs of praise. What is your song of grateful praise? What do you sing as you think about the one for whom our greatest, highest, halleluiah praise is offered? When you were little, just learning about who Jesus is, maybe the song was, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong, they are weak, but he is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me”.

As you grew in faith, the songs changed, our praise songs became, “Lord I Lift Your Name on High”, and “Give Me Jesus”. As we reflect on the sacrifice Jesus made for the sake of the world, and how he prepares us for life faithful lives here so that we have life in eternity, the song becomes, “Beneath the Cross of Jesus”, “What Wondrous Love Is This”, and “Fix Me Jesus”

We do not live and worship for ourselves, but to give glory and honor to God and to find hope and strength to serve the world. We sing of being united in Spirit and walking and working with each other, so “They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love’. The voice of “Jesus Calls Us, each of us, all of us to be about his work. So there are songs we sing just for ourselves, and there are songs we sing together.

Whatever your song, whatever our song, let’s sing with grateful praise to Jesus who calls us to be his disciples, who saves us by his death and resurrection, and who by his ministry among God’s people, showed us how to live lives committed to faith in God. Because he was faithful to God, because he embodied all God intended for the world, we follow and imitate him.

What would the church look like, feel like, sound like if we were to show compassion to one another, welcome one another like Christ welcomed us (Romans 15.7), share each other’s joys and sorrows, and do all that we can to build up this great church so that it becomes the seat of our mission and ministry.

Next year, this congregation will be 135 years old. We have proclaimed the good news of Jesus through the tumult of several wars, the Great Depression, the turbulent 60’s, the advent of television, computers, space travel, and the booms and busts of the 80’s and 90’s, the great mainline Protestant peaks and the great mainline decline.

We have been here and God willing, we will be here. The brief values survey that you took this morning will tell us what we value most, that will be the framework around which we will pray and plan for growth and financial stability.

With thankful, joyful praise we will in the next months read and study together. There will be book groups and Bible reflection groups as we seek God’s blessing for a time of renewal and growth here. With joyful, thankful praise, we will look to, rely on, and follow Jesus the living Christ. With thankful praise, we live in hope.

For what do you give thankful praise this day? As you count your blessings, as you remember family and friends, country and comforts of life, give thanks to God made known to us in Jesus Christ.

He is indeed the one through whom we see God. It is Jesus who is the true head of the church, the first of those whom God raised from death to eternal life, the one in whom and by whom we are reconciled, brought together in our love for him and him for us. He is the source of our spirit’s hope, and we are indeed grateful. Thanks be to God. Amen.