A THANKSGIVING MORNING FESTIVAL SERVICE
November 25, 1999

BULLETIN PREFACE:

"Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever."
Psalm 136:1

Landing at Plymouth Rock in late 1620, the Pilgrims faced a devastating
winter. Less than 50 of the original 110 who had sailed on the Mayflower
survived. That they did was partly thanks to the Native Americans who
befriended them. The following autumn brought a bountiful harvest, which
the remaining colonists celebrated with 91 Indians in a feast of
thanksgiving that lasted three days. It is unlikely that the first
Thanksgiving featured our favorites such as turkey or pumpkin pie. There
was no flour, butter, milk, or cider; potatoes were still considered
poisonous by many. However, it did include venison, fish, lobster, clams,
watercress, berries, dried fruit, and plums. George Washington declared a
National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789. But not until 1863 did President
Lincoln proclaim an annual Thanksgiving Day-thanks to Sarah Josepha Hale,
who had campaigned for the holiday for 40 years. In 1941, President
Franklin Roosevelt established the fourth Thursday in November as the day
we now celebrate in gratitude to our generous God. But as Christians
saved by grace and greatly blessed, shouldn't every day be
"Thanksgiving"?

Prayer: God of every good and perfect gift, help my gratitude to become
thanks-living. Amen.

GREETING: (FROM PSALMS 33, 45, 65-67, 92, 111)

Pastor: It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to God's
name.
People: Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord,
the people whom he has chosen as an heritage.
Pastor: God visits the earth and waters it;
He enriches it greatly and provides the people with grain.
People: The Lord crowns the year with bounty,
the pastures of the wilderness overflow.
Pastor: Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of His praise be heard,
who has kept us among the living.
People: We will give thanks to the Lord with our whole heart!
God provides food for those who fear Him;
He is ever mindful of His covenant.
Pastor: The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, has blessed us.
ALL: May God continue to bless us; let all the ends of the
Earth revere him. Amen.

The Lord be with you. And also with you. Let us pray together:

PRAYER FOR THE DAY
(ADAPT. FROM SUE ELLEN HERNE, MOHAWK, 20TH CENTURY)
Thank you, Creator of the universe,
for the people gathered around us today.
We give thanks for the things of the earth
that give us the means of life.
Thank you for the plants and animals that we use as food and medicine.
Thank you for the natural world,
in which we find the means to be clothed and housed.
Thank you, Lord, for the ability to use these gifts of Creation.
Help us to see our place among these gifts,
not to squander them or think of them as means for selfish gain.
May we respect the life of all you have made.
May our spirits be strengthened by using only what we need,
and may we use our strength to help those who need us. Amen.

HYMNS:
We Gather Together
For the Fruits of This Creation
Now Thank We All Our God

SUNG PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION:
Come, Holy Ghost, Our Hearts Inspire (v. 2)

HYMN FOR PRESENTATION OF THE OFFERING:
What Gift Can We Bring

SCRIPTURE LESSONS:
Deuteronomy 8:7-18
II Corinthians 9:6-15
St. Luke 17:11-19

CLOSING PRAYER OF BLESSING:
(J.M. TODD, ENGLAND, 20TH CENTURY)
Most gracious God, you crown the year with your goodness.
We praise you that you have ever fulfilled your promise that,
while earth remains, seedtime and harvest shall not cease.
We bless you for the order and constancy of nature,
for the beauty of earth and sky and sea,
for the providence that year by year supplies our need.
We thank you for your blessing on the work of those
who plowed the soil and sowed the seed,
and have now gathered in the fruits of the earth.
And with our thanksgiving for these blessings, accept our praise,
O God, for the eternal riches of your grace in Christ our Lord;
to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit,
be all glory and honor and worship, forever and ever. Amen

SERMON:
November 26, 1999 - THANKSGIVING DAY
Rev. Nina George Hacker
Sermon: " Thanks-giving is Thanks-living "
Deuteronomy 8:7-18 (remember the Lord your God)
II Corinthians 9:6-11 (God will provide so that you may be generous)
Luke 17:11-19 (the one who turned to Jesus and gave thanks)
__________________________________________________________________

I have a confession to make. I'm a city gal. Born in Washington DC,
raised in Chevy Chase, Maryland, schooled in Paris, France, lived most of
my adult life in Boston, Hartford, and New York City--I don't know the
first thing about "bringing in the sheaves." The closest I get to sheep
is counting them when I can't sleep. And those "amber waves of grain"?
Morning toast and breakfast cereal's how I know 'em. My only acquaintance
with cows is limited to admiring that beautiful Black Angus herd I see
from Woodfield Road. And my most recent experience with plowing was when
a woman in a beat-up Civic plowed into the back of my VOLVO at the
intersection of Norbeck and Old Baltimore Roads, last fall. . . . Well,
you get the picture.

As I mulled over my unfamiliarity with the agricultural life that many of
you know quite well, I thought about what a harvest is: To harvest crops
is to bring them in, out of the cold and storms. Harvesting is a
sheltering, a keeping, after growth, at year's end. And so, this
Thanksgiving Day, I'd like us to look back on how we have grown this past
year. At this time when our farmers are giving thanks for a bountiful
yield, can you thank God for what He has brought to fruition and
harvested in you? What, in our lives, by divine grace, has been safely
gathered in, sheltered from the storms of life? What, in our spirits,
thanks to the Lord's help, has been safely stored against the cold of
evil or protected from the blight of sin?

Has a relationship been restored? A financial difficulty been resolved? A
health problem cleared up? Some of you are saying, "Yes! Yes! Thank God!"
While others are mourning, "No, that did not happen for me." If that's
your situation, do not be discouraged! God's Word in Psalm 125 [v. 6]
promises: "Those who go out weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall come
home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves." In one translation
[NRSV], that Psalm is subtitled, "A Harvest of Joy." Because if the seed
we sow is according to God's commandments, and it is fed and watered by
God's faithfulness and love, we will each reap a harvest of joy--but in
God's time, not ours.

Different crops have varying rates of growth. Some take longer and bear
fruit later than others. But no matter how long it takes, Our God is in
the business of bringing in the sheaves--through the healing, restoring
work of Jesus Christ. First Corinthians 9:10 encourages us: "Whoever
plows should plow in hope, and whoever threshes should thresh in hope of
a share in the crop." We can "plow" and "thresh" "in hope" because God is
in the business of harvesting His own.

But you know, every harvest of a good crop requires sorting out what is
not beneficial. Field pebbles need to be shaken out. Chaff has to be
blown away. Job 4:8 warns us: "Those who plow in sin and sow trouble will
reap the same." Is there something in our spiritual crop that God needs
to shake out? Are there sins tied up in our sheaves, that we ought to let
Jesus blow away? Can you ask the Holy Spirit today, right now, to sift
you from the ways of this world, shake you loose from your complacency
about sin, so that you can have a share in the crop of salvation, of
eternal life?

You say, well, it's not that easy. I'm a prisoner of my addiction. I'm
helplessly caught in a destructive pattern. I'm stuck in fear, unable to
make the choices that will move my life forward, into the light. Some of
you are battling chronic pain or grief that eats up your days and nights
like locusts gnawing a field to death. The lepers in today's Gospel
lesson were suffering too. They were stuck in a desperate situation. Not
only physically diseased, but social outcasts despised by society. And
I'm willing to bet that before Jesus passed their way, they had no hope,
no possibility of things improving.

If you are still waiting for your blessings to ripen, remember the ten
lepers and how they must have despaired. Yet Jesus came to them. He met
them on the road, right where they were. If you seek His help as they
did, Jesus will meet you where you are. He knows the road you are
journeying. How can you trust Jesus? By remembering that He loved you
enough to give His very life for you. How much more will that same
ever-living Lord reach out to heal, restore, renew, and make us thankful,
if we will just approach Him in faith, as the lepers did?!

When the lepers approach Christ, they address Him, "Jesus, Master." By
calling Him "Master," they are confessing their utter dependence on His
power and authority. They cry out, "Have mercy on us!" confessing their
need for His healing compassion. And because He is the One who is, was,
and will ever be Our Healer, Jesus cures them. But why does Jesus send
them away? As a good Jew concerned to follow the laws of Moses, Jesus
directs them to go to the priests for the ritual cleansing that was
required upon recovery from an illness.

Nine of the lepers do as they are told. But a tenth--who we learn is a
Samaritan, and not subject to the Jewish law--returns to Jesus and offers
his profound thanks. I mean, think of it! In our time, the miracle this
man experienced would be like suddenly being delivered from AIDS. While
Jesus certainly did not begrudge the other nine their healing, He says to
this man, "Your faith has made you well." The Greek text carries the
further connotation of wholeness and even, of salvation. In effect, Jesus
is saying, "Your faith has made you whole." That's because God wants to
bless us beyond mere cure. What Jesus is asking of us is that we make Him
Master of our lives; that, like the lepers, we confess our weakness, our
spiritual sickness and need. And, He asks that, like the Samaritan who
returned, we have faith and openly express our thanksgiving for what God
has done.

Okay, sometimes it really is difficult to be thankful in all
circumstances. Sometimes, the best response is just to smooth things over
and go on. (This will give me the excuse to tell my favorite Thanksgiving
anecdote). Throughout much of my childhood, it was customary for my
mother and me to spend Thanksgiving with a friend of hers who was married
to a prominent official in Ithaca County, New York. We'd travel north to
their very wealthy home and farm, for the holiday weekend.

One year, our hostess had invited a large group of Ithaca's movers and
shakers to attend the Thanksgiving feast. It was a formal affair, with
guests dressed in velvets and silks. The long, elegant dining room was
decorated with silver candelabras and elaborate cornucopias. Under a huge
gilded mirror ran a sideboard the length of the entire wall, flanked on
either side by the dining room doors.

With utmost care, the servants had laid out the banquet with the
glistening turkey and goose, the mounds of perfectly cooked vegetables,
the tureens of steaming soups and pumpkin soufflé. What they hadn't done
was remember to close the one door that led to the kitchen. Just as my
mother and her friend were about to announce the meal and fling open the
dining room doors, through the one that was ajar ran one of our hostess's
temperamental Burmese cats. With unparalleled agility, the cat leaped
onto the sideboard, from which the women hysterically attempted to shoo
it away.

Panicked, the cat saw as his only means of escape the door on the far
end. And so, most unceremoniously, he ran--with all four paws --right
through every course of the waiting feast, mashed potatoes still clinging
to his tawny feet as he landed by the dining room door, only to find it
closed, and two berserk females on top of him. I was charged with
removing the animal. As I departed for the barn, I could hear my mother
saying, "What can you do? Just smooth over it, put on a smile, and keep
on going."

Sometimes, that's just what we have to do. Smooth things over, put on a
smile, and keep on going. . . .

"Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
It is right, and a good and joyful thing,
always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty
Creator of heaven and earth."

Familiar words? These centuries' old phrases open the Great Thanksgiving
of every Holy Communion in which we share. Thanksgiving to God is at the
very heart of the Eucharist. In fact, the word "Eucharist" comes from the
Greek word "Evcharistia"--meaning, "to give thanks." This thanks is no
empty expression of ritual gratitude. To ensure that it is not, what
follows the Evcharistia is the "Anamnesis," or "remembering." The
Deuteronomist exhorts the people of Israel to remember all that God has
done for them, and to be thankful. How can we be thankful if we forget?
Remembrance is essential to giving thanks.

That is why, in the Communion liturgy, together we recall aloud God's
saving deeds of old, God's mighty acts in Jesus Christ, and the
institution of the Lord's Supper in relation to Jesus' sacrificial death
for our sins. Here I would echo St. Paul: "Thanks be to God for His
indescribable gift!" Yea, even salvation through Jesus Christ!

Just as God does not forget us, we are not to forget God. We are to
remember and be thankful. "Remember, and be thankful" is at the heart of
the Hebrew consciousness in the Old Testament, that continually looked
back to Israel's deliverance from slavery in Egypt as the hallmark of
God's power and care for His own. Remember and be thankful is also the
core of universal Christian worship, the Sacrament of Holy Communion.
Appropriately enough, two Sundays of Holy Communion "bookmark" this, our
Thanksgiving celebration. Let us prepare our hearts for the sacrament
again this coming Sunday.

Meanwhile, have you ever tried recording at least one thing each day for
which you could thank God? Even if you've done this spiritual exercise, I
urge you to try it again! You'll be amazed at how many blessings you can
count, if only you make the effort to remember. Remembering what God has
done, made possible, or mercifully prevented doesn't just provide us with
a sense of self-satisfied gratitude. Rather, as the Deuteronomist
teaches, to remember is an important corrective to our own egos. Human
nature hasn't changed much since the days of ancient Israel. We humans
still tend to pat ourselves on the back when things go well--but blame
God if they go wrong.

The Bible warns us never to forget that God and God alone is the source
of all that we have, all that we are, and all that is to come. And
because of this, it is our spiritual duty to share God's gifts and our
blessings with others.

Today's Epistle links God's nature as our provider with the discipleship
responsibility of being generous givers. Few farmers hoard what they
harvest. They must part with their crops so that both they and their
neighbor may eat. As Christians, we can't hold on to what isn't ours to
start with. I'll say it again: We cannot hold on to what is not ours to
begin with. Psalm 24 declares: "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness
thereof, and they that dwell therein." And if everything we have really
belongs to God, how can we not share God's things with those whom He
created, loved, and for whom He sent Jesus to die? St. Paul emphasizes
that it is God who makes it possible for us to be as generous with others
as God has been with us, so that, through our generosity, thankfulness to
God will all the more abound.

Now, I know I don't have to preach to this parish about giving generously
to those in need. Here at [this] Church, you are always raising money for
Nicaragua; sending funds to the United Methodist Committee on Relief;
conducting drives for canned goods; helping those of lesser means through
the Thrift Shop; sharing with one another; and taking food to the elderly
through Meals on Wheels. In just a few minutes, we will be collecting an
offering for [community service agency] to feed the hungry of this
community.

Of this kindness and generosity, I am sure Jesus would say, "Well, done,
thou good and faithful servants!" But as our sisters and brothers from El
Bijague, Nicaragua reminded us when they visited recently, we could still
give more.

And I don't think St. Paul is only referring to material goods. Some of
us really don't have enough to share much with others. But Paul says,
"You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity." Generosity
of spirit is equally vital to Christian discipleship. Not only should we
thank God, but we need to express appreciation to one another. How often
do you thank the garbage man? The store clerk? Your kids? Your spouse?
Thank someone today for who they are, or for making your life what it is.
We are called to be generous with our thanks, and to give of ourselves in
love and kindness, in thoughtfulness, compassion, and self-sacrifice. It
is these traits of our Master Jesus that we ought to offer abundantly to
one another.

If we didn't think we were blessed before the Kairos delegation came,
learning more about the scarcity and struggles of their lives should
certainly have revised our notions of how we are blessed, in every area
of our existence. I mean, when was the last time you simply thanked God
for electricity? Or flush toilets? Or a bed to sleep in? Or the car,
telephone, TV, fax machine, computer, you not only take for granted but
are usually annoyed with? Like those very first Pilgrims at Plymouth
Rock, we too would have nothing, without God's providence, overflowing
generosity, kindness, and love. Have you been feeling sorry for yourself
lately? I know I have. Hey, we're alive and we were able to get out of
bed and come here today! This is the day that the Lord has made, let us
be glad and rejoice in it!!

Dear friends, as those saved and loved by Jesus Christ, our attitude
should be one of gratitude. First Thessalonians 5:18 exhorts us to "give
thanks in all circumstances." My mother was once the Country Director for
Peace Corps in a tiny Pacific Island nation called Tonga. A place, Mom
says, "usually only known of by stamp collectors and Methodists" (who
mission-ized the country). While she was there, an earthquake and a
typhoon, or Tsunami, hit the 6-by 2-mile island one night. She was
trapped in her flimsily constructed house right by the beach. As the
electricity went out, and the ground shook and rocked the walls back and
forth, Mom said the rats that lived in the rafters began to fall out on
her. All around her house, the native Tongans were banging on pots and
pans and screaming hideously to "drive the evil spirits of the earthquake
away"--so much for Methodism!

She was never so frightened in her whole life, but this Bible verse came
into her head. "Give thanks in all circumstances." Mom said her first
reaction was, "God, are you crazy?!" Then feeling pretty nuts herself,
she began thanking God aloud for the earthquake, the tidal wave, the rats
falling on her in the dark, the frightened Tongans howling around her.
And she says a peace came over her amidst this horror, such that to this
day she has never again experienced fear.

Our attitude of gratitude should be daily. Hourly. Minute by minute.

Jesus told the man who thanked Him, "Your faith has made you whole." And
I believe we are going to experience that wholeness when we are able to
translate our thanks-giving into thanks-living. What do I mean by
thanks-living? It's living out our gratitude to God in the ways today's
Scripture lessons teach us.

>From Deuteronomy:
Remember the Lord your God and all He has done for you.

>From St. Luke:
Turn to Jesus in faith and give thanks.

>From Second Corinthians:
Give without reluctance or under compulsion, but with a cheerful heart.

* Remember.
* Be Thankful--to God and to one another.
* Give--to God and to one another.

That's what today is all about. That's what being a Christian is all
about! Turning to Jesus in faith, sowing our seed according to God's
will, and trusting in God's timing in order to reap a harvest of joy.
Equally, thanks-living is what the Eucharistic liturgy expresses as the
pastor prays this concluding prayer:

". . . . that we may be for the world the body of Christ,
redeemed by His blood.
By your Spirit, make us One with Christ,
One with each other,
And one in ministry to all the world . . ."

As Advent comes, it presents us with an opportunity to receive Christ
into our hearts, either for the first time, or anew. For Christ and
Christ alone is the guarantor of that wholeness we so greatly need.

And so, this day, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us go forth to
feast and fellowship with one another; to remember the needy in our
prayers and with our gifts; to recall and recount what God has done for
us; and to turn to Christ with faith and thanksgiving, that we may reap a
harvest of joy. As Christians, every day can and should be Thanksgiving.
So should our days also become thanks-living. AMEN


******************
Grace & Peace, Nina
Rev. Nina George Hacker
Interim Pastor, Wesley Grove UMC, Woodfield MD