November 24, 2024: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.

This Sunday we enter into a week of thanksgiving to God for all of life. We gather with family and friends, and laugh, cry, cheer for our favorite teams, and argue over some thing or another.

Perhaps though, you are wondering, with all the news of the past few weeks, what is there to be thankful for? Maybe it was hard for you to sing that opening hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God.”

Perhaps though, the story of Martin Rinkart, will help.

“German pastor Martin Rinkart served in the walled town of Eilenberg during the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-1648. Eilenberg became an overcrowded refuge for the surrounding area. The fugitives suffered from epidemic and famine. At the beginning of 1637, the year of the Great Pestilence, there were four ministers in Eilenberg. One abandoned his post for healthier areas and could not be persuaded to return. Pastor Rinkart officiated at the funerals of the other two. As the only pastor left, he often conducted funeral services for as many as 40 to 50 persons a day—[nearly 5,000] in all. In May of that year, his own wife died. By the end of the year, the refugees had to be buried in trenches without services.

Yet, [despite] living in a world dominated by [fear and] death, Pastor Rinkart wrote the following prayer for his children to offer to God:

Now thank we all our God, With hearts and hands and voices;

Who wondrous things hath done, In whom this world rejoices.

Who, from our mother’s arms, Hath led us on our way,

With countless gifts of love, And still is ours today.”[1]

And that, you might recall, is the very first verse of the hymn we sung today in our processional, a hymn he wrote, even while serving Christ in the most dire of circumstances. Perhaps then we can take this hymn to heart in these difficult days, and remember, as he did, that no matter how dark things may be, the light of Christ is always stronger.

This is not to say we must be all Pollyanna like every single minute of every single day. That is absurd. Even Jesus wept, got angry, had angst, needed time alone and away from everyone, and worried about his followers. We don’t get Easter without Good Friday – they are intertwined like darkness and light, or faith and doubt. In fact, that is our faith – that when we celebrate Christ’s birth, we are hearing also of his impending death. At Easter, Good Friday and the cross is ever present too.

Being thankful is not about everything being good and right in our lives and in the world, but about recognizing that through it all – the good, the bad, and everything in-between – God is with us. Christ strengths us. The Holy Spirit dwells within us and guides us forward to a new day. Pastor Rinkart expressed this very thing, when in the second verse he wrote:

“O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!”

“Through all our life be near us, and guide us when perplexed.” Yes, that is a prayer we can all say, and one that is always answered. That God is always near us and guiding us when we are troubled – whether we take that guidance or not. I say that last bit because honestly, sometimes we are like that parody of horror movies when one sign says “Safety This Way!” and the other says “Warning – Danger Ahead!” and we think – what the heck, it doesn’t look all that dangerous to me. This is when God does a face palm.

Yet despite our unwillingness at times to listen to the Holy Spirit guiding us, and despite the troubles we often find ourselves in, if we think about it, if we really give it some prayerful thought, we will find that there is, for most of us, quite a lot to be thankful for at this moment.

If you lay your head down at night and you are warm, with a roof over your head, give thanks.

If you do not leave your home in the day amidst bombs reigning down, air sirens announcing incoming drone strikes, tanks rolling through your street, or machine gun fire piercing the air at all hours, as those who live in war zones do, give thanks.

If you are able to eat when you are hungry, drink when you are thirsty, stop taking any drug or alcohol with ease, or live without the internal demons of mental illness, give thanks.

If you are not facing a first holiday season without someone you love, or are not spending those days in the hospital as a patient or caregiver, give thanks.

If you are not facing deportation to a place you fled out of fear for your life and those of your children, or if your children were not kidnapped by our government at the border, give thanks.

And if we cannot find it in our hearts to be thankful for what we do have, even if it is only a little, then let us remember and give thanks at least for those who labor for the food we eat, who toil to protect and care for others while we sleep, for our friends, for our family – however we define it, and for this place we call our parish home.

That last one, well it isn’t a given you know.

The pandemic and the early years afterward wiped out our endowment as we struggled to get our nursery school going again. And like many parishes, our average Sunday attendance – those who come here in person – is half of what it once was in the days before 2020. Yet by God’s grace, and the prayerful efforts of each of you, our parish leadership, and the staff of both the church and the school, we just may finally see a balanced budget sometime in 2025, and begin to rebuild the endowment for future generations.

This is not a guarantee, of course, but I believe all of you will step forward out of gratitude for what this place means to you, and what it means to all who search for a church that will truly welcome them – just as they are – no exceptions.

And so today, in that spirit of thanksgiving, we bring forward our pledges to this church – in support of the important work we do here and from here to love and serve Christ in all people.

We also bring forward our gifts of groceries for those who are in need, and for animals and the shelters that care for them, our way of loving our neighbor, as we are commanded by God.

We do this because we understand something about what Jesus was saying in the gospel we just heard this morning. In it, Jesus said, “I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you…? Therefore do not worry, saying, `What will we eat?’ or `What will we drink?’ or `What will we wear?’ …But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

It may seem that Jesus is a bit off his savior rocker with this – I mean, we do have real world concerns, do we not? How to keep that roof over our heads, how to care for those we love, how to take a step forward in these impending dark days of our nation and the world? But Jesus isn’t saying these hardships or concerns are not real, nor is he dismissing them out of hand, though the author would have it seem that way. What he is saying is that worrying will not help (or in his words, “not add one single hour to your span of life”). Doctors would tell you it will actually do the opposite – reduce your life span. Instead, Jesus tells us we should strive for the kingdom of God, and God’s righteousness, and all the other things will fall into place.

Well, what the heck does that mean?

Jesus was always tel...

“Now Thank We All Our God”