I love preaching at Thanksgiving. It is, for me,
a truly wonderful holiday. I suppose one reason is that we
haven't really destroyed it yet with commercial exploitation.
Another is that it's one of those rare holidays where the
pastor doesn't have to put in a lot of extra work. Maybe a
Thanksgiving Eve service. But, no Thanksgiving Festival,
no Thanksgiving caroling, no Thanksgiving Eve prayer
vigils, Thanksgiving Sunrise service........ just a nice day
at home with family and friends. I love it. So here is a
little Thanksgiving Eve offering. Thanks to Mark Trotter for
the angle. It is a wonderful sharing fellowship we have!

Fred Kane
Hillsboro United Methodist Church
Hillsboro, Oregon USA

mail to: fredkane@juno.com

"The Mystery of Thanksgiving:
Prevenient Grace, the Italian Post Office and an Antidote for Anxiety"
Rev. Fredrick C. Kane
Hillsboro United Methodist Church
Thanksgiving Eve
November 24, 1999

Text: Philippians 4:4-9 and Matthew 6:25-34

Thanksgiving is a time for me to focus on the gracious love and care of
God which has surrounded me from my birth. I know that you have felt it.
Perhaps you have not known what to call it. But, I think we all have
known it. We've known it in the touch a mother's hand, the tear in a
father's eye, the gentle word of a friend.

This gracious gift of God's love which is with us from the very beginning
is called "prevenient grace." "Prevenient" means "going before." It is
grace that goes before us. It's an important part of our understanding
as Methodists, about God and about how God works in our lives. It says
that God doesn't wait until we shape up before God is graciously working
in our lives. God is at work in the events of our lives before we shape
up. God is always there, leading us to new life. That is prevenient
grace. In his hymn "Amazing Grace," John Newton describes is as, "The
grace that brought me safe thus far."

This evening as we prepare our hearts and minds and bellies for
Thanksgiving, I invite you to focus with me for a while on this
prevenient grace that surrounds us. I think that it is a perspective on
Thanksgiving that enables us not only to be thankful for one holiday a
year, but to orient our lives to be lives of thanksgiving.

Historians argue about that first Thanksgiving. They wonder why it took
place. In fact, they argue whether or not it actually did take place, or
whether it was just part of the legend of the Pilgrims in New England.
My understanding is that it did take place and was part of the tradition
of European harvest festivals. In New England it focused on thanksgiving
for surviving a terrible first year. They almost didn't make it. They
lost many people that first winter. They planted wrong and almost
starved to death. They made a lot of mistakes, but they made it, and now
they were giving thanks.

But then it stopped. There were no more thanksgivings until President
Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday during the Civil War,
again after a terrible year in the life of the nation. A year in which
families were torn apart, lives were taken and the whole nation was in
travail.

My friend Mark Trotter thinks that Thanksgiving as a national holiday may
have stopped because the religion of the settlers turned inward. There
are two movements in religion. Religion can turn inward and focus on the
self, or it can turn outward and focus on God. The Puritans chose the
first alternative. They turned inward and focused on the depravity of
human nature. Instead of seeing nature and all of its beauty outside of
themselves, many of them could only see sin and its ugliness inside
themselves. As a result there has been a layer of gloom just beneath the
surface of American religion, and from time to time it surfaces. You can
see it in people's lives, popping up from time to time. People who
concentrate only on sin, only on the gloominess of life.

Today, that turning inward has led to a religion that focuses on "me."
It's turned inward on me, my problems, my potential. How can I "use"
religion to realize my potential? I think that it's hard to live a life
of thanksgiving that way, because when you turn inward you become
nearsighted. All you can see sometimes is your own misery. You become
blind to God's abundant grace that is all around you in the world.

Someone said that Puritanism at its worst "curdled into censoriousness."
That means it often became judgmental - censorious - because all it could
see was human sin. It became nearsighted, and when all you can see is
human sin, then all you can be is judgmental. Puritanism curdled into
censoriousness and for more than 200 years in this country, joy,
happiness, gratitude, thanksgiving for our blessings just disappeared.
It was considered inappropriate for religion. Religion wasn't supposed
to focus on those things. At least it wasn't supposed to be the core of
religion. So in that long period in our history, Thanksgiving wasn't
observed.

Of course Christmas wasn't observed as a celebration in this country for
a long time. We don't remember that. We think it's been around forever.
But, for a long time Christmas was observed by fasting, which can be the
height of self-centeredness. Fasting doesn't get rid of the self,
fasting focuses on the self. Fasting emphasizes me. Ask anyone who has
tried to diet. All you think about is yourself.

Many of the hymns in our Hymnal reflect this focus on the self. Someone
once criticized many of the so-called Gospel songs that emerged in the
revival days of the 19th century as going up the scale: do, re, me, and
getting stuck on me, me, me. A lot of religion still does that. It gets
stuck on me and if that's all that you can see is "me" then it's hard to
be thankful.

The other possibility in religion is to focus on God and on God's grace.
That's what our texts for this morning do. Jesus teaches us how to
improve our vision in Matthew's Gospel. He offers us what I call "eye
exercises," to get us to look beyond ourselves and to see the grace of
God in the world all around us.
Not only does God work preveniently in your life before you are aware of
it, but God is at work outside of your life in events, in history, and in
nature. That's why Jesus uses nature as a metaphor for grace. If you
want to see how God works in your life, he says, "Consider the lilies of
the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin."

Emily Dickinson was sitting in Amherst, Massachusetts in the middle of
the 19th century. Amherst was the center of the old Puritanism - of
religion turned inward. Old Emily rebelled against it. She refused to
buy into that kind of religion. She had her own way of being religious.
She wrote, "'Consider the lilies' is the only command I always obeyed."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, living at the same time, likewise rejected this old
religion. He took Paul's instruction to the Thessalonians, "Pray without
ceasing," and revised it to read, "Observe without ceasing."

That's what Jesus is telling us to do - observe. "Consider the lilies of
the field..... Consider the birds of the air." Jesus is giving us an
antidote to anxiety. He says, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious
about your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, or about
your body, what you shall put on." Don't look only at yourself. That's
what he is saying. Look outward. Improve your vision. See God's grace
all around you in the world. See that as a metaphor, as a sign, a
symbol, if you will, of how God takes care of you.

Don't look at your misery. "Behold, the glory of God has come upon you."
Don't look only at your own mortality, see the renewal and the rebirth
present in nature all about you. God does the same for you. Don't look
only at your own failure, your own mistakes, your own weaknesses. Look
around and see the glory of God surrounding you.

Why are you anxious about your life? Why are you anxious about what the
future holds for you? "Consider the birds of the air." God takes care
of them. "Are you not of more value than they?" If you are able to look
inward at your own frailty, but then look outward at God's majesty, you
are able to see grace all around you.

That is called a sacramental view of life. Some Christians object to it.
They say that the term "sacrament" ought to be reserved only for those
acts that Jesus commanded - the Lord's Supper and Baptism. They want to
squeeze God's grace into those rituals. But God can't be squeezed into
rituals. God can't be squeezed in between the walls of a church.
Because there's too much grace. God is excessive in giving us grace.
It's everywhere.

A sacrament is a sign of God's grace. Jesus is saying that nature is
sacramental. "Consider the lilies of the field." You can see a sign of
God's love for you there in the fields. Consider the Oregon State Beaver
football team and their first winning season in decades. Sheer grace!
"Consider the birds of the air." They are all signs of God's grace.
They don't deserve grace any more than you do. But, God loves them
still. God cares for them. God even cares for Ducks - even the
University of Oregon kind. God has a love affair with you and with me
and with the world. Look around and you will see that. You can see the
grace beneath the outward and the visible. Focus on that. Focus on that
mystery.

"Mystery" is another word that needs resuscitation in our time. A
mystery isn't something we haven't figured out. A mystery is that
presence surrounding us that we will never understand. And we don't need
to. To recognize that mystery that surrounds our lives is to enhance our
lives.

It's ironic that in our times it's the scientists who are discovering
mystery, and not always theologians. More and more theologians try to be
rational and scientific while scientists are becoming more and more
comfortable with mystery. Scientists were led by Einstein who saw
mystery in nature and called it God. Other scientists took courage from
that and said, if Einstein can do that I guess that I can, too. So there
have been a lot of scientists like Paul Saltman who wrote, "In doing
science I find myself committing a series of religious acts. I believe
scientists are very religious persons."

Or there is Loren Eiseley, a paleontologist, who wrote remarkable books
about nature, and who followed Emerson's advice to, "Observe without
ceasing." Eiseley says that we should approach each day with
astonishment. He warns us that, "The world is a miracle we've grown
accustomed to." The ability to see that the world is a miracle, that the
world is a sacrament, a sign of God's grace, is the antidote to anxiety.

I ran across a wonderful example of this, thanks to the Italians. I
understand that they have a word that describes this ability to trust
this mystery that surrounds us, to allow God, in other words, to be in
charge, and not to worry about the future. The word is "arrangiarsi."
It means, "making the best of things." Don't worry about it. Do your
best and leave it alone. Put the future in God's hands.

I think that Jesus is saying the same thing. Maybe Jesus was really
Italian. He says, "Do not be anxious for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be
anxious for itself. Let the day's troubles be sufficient for the day."
That's like, "Make the best of it and don't worry." It's similar to two
of my favorite rules for living: First, don't sweat the small stuff and
Second, it's all small stuff.

Father Eugene Kennedy teaches at DePauw University in Chicago and has a
wonderful story about the Italian post office. He points out that the
ideal in America is efficiency. We try to be efficient in all things.
We even have efficiency experts. We hold up efficiency as the standard
for all performance, all behavior. But in Italy, efficiency has assumed
it's proper place in the hierarchy of values, and this story of the
Italian post office is an example.

There was a national strike in Italy. It caused the whole government to
grind to a halt. One result was that the mail piled up in the post
offices and couldn't be delivered. In this one post office it was so bad
you couldn't walk through the building.

Now in America we'd feel a compulsion to deliver all that stacked up
mail, every single bit of it must be delivered. But in Italy the post
office runs by "arrangiarsi." So when the strike ended the postmaster
arrived at this little post office, saw the mail stacked up everywhere,
and decided to sell the whole mess for scrap.

Now that's a solution that would horrify most of us. But, I want you to
think about this. There is something very satisfying about it. In the
first place, a lot of people didn't get mail they didn't want. Now I am
sure that you never get any mail you didn't want! Second, this post
office was cleared of all of this debris. Third, the paper shortage was
alleviated to a certain extent - the post office did it's bit for
recycling. Besides that, the post office made a little profit on selling
the stuff.

But, most important, there's a certain mystery to it all. We don't know
what letters were lost. Some bills were not delivered, so grace was
extended to hundreds of people. Some bad news was not delivered. Some
relationships remained unbroken by "Dear John" - or "Dear Luigi" letters.
Who knows what did or didn't come about because all that mail was sold
for scrap. Life is just a whole lot more interesting with this mystery.

I imagine that some of us believe that if the mail wasn't delivered, the
world would come to an end. Many of us are beginning to feel that way
about email. What if email couldn't be delivered anymore? My advice is,
"think Italian." The world goes on. Because life doesn't really depend
on us and it certainly doesn't depend on our efficiency. That's hard for
us to swallow sometimes, but life doesn't depend on us being efficient,
or right or righteous.

Saint Paul discovered that in his life. He was in jail. Christians
living in Philippi wrote him a letter and it was hand delivered by
Epaphroditus and Timothy. They were all concerned about Paul. So he
wrote back. That's the letter we have in the New Testament called the
Letter to the Philippians.

He writes to say, "Thank you, but you really didn't need to do it. I
mean, I appreciate it and all that, but I'm doing fine." This letter to
the Philippians is an amazing letter. He's an apostle, so he's got to
put some theology in it. That's in the second chapter. "Have this mind
among yourselves, what you have in Christ Jesus, who did not consider
being like God, something to be grasped but emptied himself..." That's a
summary. It's there in the second chapter and it's one of the most
amazing things ever written and Paul writes it to this church.

Then he turns to more personal matters. He talks about Epaphroditus and
Timothy. And then he says, "Rejoice." He's in prison. He sits there in
a dungeon and from his cell he says, "Rejoice!" Then he starts in
again, talking about mundane things in Philippi, how they are having a
church fight there, and Paul says to them, "Knock it off." Then he says,
"Rejoice!"

Then he talks about himself. It's a confession. He says, "I can rejoice
in all situations now. I know how to be brought low and I know how to
abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing
plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things in him who
strengthens me. So rejoice. Again, I say it, rejoice."

"I have learned the secret." What's he talking about? What is this
secret of going on in all circumstances, of rejoicing in al things? I
think that it's something like "thinking Italian," or as Jesus put it,
"letting tomorrow be anxious for itself." Paul put it this way, "Have no
anxiety about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication,
let your requests be made known to God." Lift them up to God and then
forget them. "And the peace of God which passeth all understanding will
keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." Amen.