Thanksgiving Day 2005 

The Rev. Dr. Judith A. Davis, Rector ©
Psalm 65
Christ Church + Washington Parish
November 24, 2005

You are worthy of all praise, O God, for you have created and are creating all things, and for your glory they are created. Amen.

Psalm 65 ends with these words: “let them shout for joy and sing.”  Thanksgiving is a time to shout for joy and praise God for all our blessings. Thanksgiving, of course, came about as an agricultural festival in our country. Agricultural festivals have long been a tradition of people of faith.  Indeed, they are a part of great antiquity and, common to many religions. Among the people of Israel in the Ancient Near East, three agricultural festivals were kept as pilgrimage feasts: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.  Our own Christian observance of the agricultural feast of Thanksgiving Day is not only rooted in faith traditions, but was taken up and extended to be a national holiday for the whole of the new American nation by an act of the Continental Congress. Every year, the President of the United States proclaims this day as a day of national thanks, as you heard in President Bush’s proclamation as our second reading.

The scripture passage that always seems most appropriate to me on Thanksgiving is Psalm 65, classified as a hymn of praise.  Indeed, this day is a day in which our chief mission is to offer praise and thanks to God for our abundant blessings of the fall harvest and, thereby, of other blessings as well.  Let us hear the words of the ending of Psalm 65 in versions other than the Prayer Book:

I have a book on psalms called Swallows Nest.  Listen to these words of Psalm 65:

“You crown each year with your bountiful goodness. Great plenty springs up in the wake of your footsteps! The pastures of the wilderness drip with dew. The hills are clothed with green gladness. The meadows are filled with flocks. The valleys are covered with grain. Everything sings and dances together with joy, celebrating your bounty.”[i]

And hear this version from Nan Merrill’s book “Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness.”

You crowned your years with abandonment,
Inviting all to Eternal Life.
In the desert flowers come forth, the pastures flourish giving food to the poor. The valleys rise up.
May all the peoples dance and sing together with joy.[ii]

 

Psalm 65 reminds me that we were created to praise God for all God’s gifts to us.  The psalm ends with everyone dancing and singing and praising God. That reminds me of my Aunt Mabel’s funeral several years ago. I mentioned in the sermon that Aunt Mabel had been a belly dancer in her youth and you could see these good old Southerners squirming in their seats. I said that at the end time we will all be singing and dancing around God’s throne forever praising God. Finally, when we were back at the house, one of the very proper Southern Baptist gentlemen came up to me and said, “I can’t believe you said Mabel would be dancing in heaven. You know we Southern Baptists don’t dance or believe in dancing.” And, without skipping a beat, I said to him, “Then you won’t know how!”  So our chief mission is to praise God, and thereby to help God’s people.

We do give God thanks for the harvest and we pray that God will make us faithful stewards of God’s great bounty to provide for our necessities and, as our Collect says, to relive all who are in need, both to the glory of God’s Name.   We have so much to be thankful for and we take so much for granted.  Oh, we mean to thank God all the time for our blessings, but we get too busy or too preoccupied or whatever and forget to mention those thanksgivings all the time.  When I was in a church in New England and we would do the Prayers of the People on Sunday, no one ever said out loud what they were thankful for and people hardly ever mentioned any intercessions, although the clergy would pray out loud for people. One of the things I love about Christ Church is that we’re happy to add our intercessions and thanksgivings.  One Sunday a friend of mine from North Carolina was visiting. We had served on several Cursillo teams together and we were always saying out loud those thanksgivings and intercessions.  So, when we got to the prayers of the people, my friend, in a very loud voice, said, “I’m just so thankful for my friend Judith and for visiting this church and for this glorious day and for all God’s blessings.”  You should have seen those Swamp Yankees squirm that someone was actually praying out loud with joy and vigor.  I know that sometimes we face difficult times and find it hard to stop in the midst of those times to give thanks and yet there are many times when we can surely think of at least one thing for which to be thankful.

So, now I want to ask you to do something we’re not accustomed to doing in church.  I want you to take notes during the sermon.  What I want you to do is write down five things you’re thankful for on your bulletin somewhere and we will offer them at our time of praying in our hearts or aloud. Don’t worry; no one is going to see them but you.

Now I want you to turn in your bulletin to the Litany of Thanksgiving on page 5.  This will be the basis of our prayers in just a few moments, but now I want to work through a few of these prayers with you.  I want you to go through your list and see what you have in each of these categories.

For the beauty and wonder of creation…. I love to go for walks on the beach and sometimes as I stand there in the cool wind and sea mist, I gave thanks for the ocean, for God’s creating it for our use, and especially for its place of being a spiritual home for me, locally, but also at Block Island and other favorite beaches in my life.  As you know, I went to New Mexico in May for the first time and as I sat atop Chimney Rock at Ghost Ranch outside Santa Fe in Abiqui, I was overwhelmed at this different landscape of God’s creation and I was incredibly thankful.  I was also incredibly thankful that the vast expanse of big sky and mesas and mountains could be as wonderful for me as the beach is. And I was thankful I could make the hour-long climb up to Chimney Rock after having fallen earlier in the week and bruising some ribs.  The view from up there was incredible to me. Think about those places in your own life for refreshment and awe.

For our daily food and drink, our homes and families, and our friends.  I love to cook and enjoy cooking with whole foods and I give thanks for our grocery stores and whole foods markets and, in the greater Washington area, good Asian markets. I’m glad we have the ability to shop and provide what we need, for the opportunity to buy produce that was unavailable year round when I was a child. I give thanks for our farm share that Anne and Jamie and I had this summer; what a joy to receive our weekly bags of fresh organic produce and to be creative to cook what was in each week.  I give thanks for my home with Anne and Jamie and the rectory, with Jamie’s nursery in is bright colors and his imagination and play. I give thanks for my Dad, who is 92, and for my family and friends.  Let us remember our homes and our food and our gatherings of feasting with those we love.

For the communion of saints in all time and places.  I give thanks for the saints whose feast days we celebrate in the liturgical year, like C. S. Lewis, whose feast day is celebrated now in our liturgical calendar and for his literary gifts to us. I remember all those for whom we gave thanks on All Saints Sunday and all those known and unknown who prepared the way for us here in this place.  There are still copies of the “All faithful departed list” in the Parish Hall. As we remember those whose lives have enriched ours, Let us give thanks for those who have gone before us in this parish and in our lives.

For the great mercies and promises given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Well, this is what we are about.  We are here to praise God for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life as the prayer of the General Thanksgiving in Evening prayer says. We are here to praise God for the power of the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ, who was born in our own flesh and lived as one of us, and sinless, was raised from the dead that we might have eternal life.  The whole purpose of our lives is to praise God, the psalmists tell us and my friend Walter Bruggeman, a Biblical Scholar from Georgia, says. Here we have a day set aside to praise God for all our blessings, for our freedom, for our safety, for our country, for our neighbors, for our parish, for our family, for our friends. 

So let us be thankful this day for the blessings we cannot remember to name and let us try as our liturgical year ends this week, that during Advent, we will remember to pause and thank God for something every single day that is a blessing for us.  I think if we journal our thanksgivings in a little grocery store notebook, or on other paper, we will be surprised that by Christmas we will have filled many pages with blessings.  I would encourage you to do that so that next year at Thanksgiving you will get out your list and smile as you remember all the things that have been blessings in your lives.

Let me return to Psalm 65. It ends this way:

“In the desert flowers come forth, the pastures flourish giving food to the poor.

                  The valleys rise up.

 May all the peoples dance and sing together with joy.”[iii] 

In May I saw flowers come forth in the desert and I was amazed that those beautiful yellow flowers on the cactus could bloom in an arid and bleak place.  So, if God can bring forth blooms in the desert, God can bring forth blooms in our lives as well even when we feel we are in an arid and dry place.  I hope you can give thanks this day for all that Christ Church and Capitol Hill have been for you and all the blessings of your life. As the psalmist says, “May all the peoples dance and sing together with joy.”  I pray that you can sing and dance in your hearts for all your blessings this day and prepare for that great day when we and Aunt Mabel and all we love will sing and dance forever around God’s throne.

Let us pray: Giving and forgiving God, you created the good earth and blessed it. Give us glad and generous hearts that we may rejoice and give thanks for the abundance of your creation, the depths of your mercy, and your care for all. Free us from all fear and worry that, trusting in your goodness, we may always praise you for your mighty deeds and give you thanks for the bounty of your gifts. We make our prayer through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[iv]