{"id":793,"date":"2013-11-24T11:00:03","date_gmt":"2013-11-24T16:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=793"},"modified":"2019-11-19T12:07:02","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T17:07:02","slug":"a-thanksgiving-medley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2013\/11\/24\/a-thanksgiving-medley\/","title":{"rendered":"A Thanksgiving Medley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luke 23:33-43<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the full service<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Click here to hear the sermon only.<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is hard to think about Thanksgiving and not think of food in general and turkey in particular.\u00a0 So attentive are we to the meal itself that the Thanksgiving prayer we offer becomes an afterthought, unless carefully we pause to think about a prayerful recipe for a real thanksgiving, a thanksgiving medley of nourishment both for body and for soul. The meal, the turkey, we leave to you.\u00a0 But here, in sermonic guise, we offer a recipe for the prayer on Thanksgiving, a thanksgiving medley, a recipe, that is, for a thanksgiving prayer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

First, clean. To start, you might clean the outside of the prayer.\u00a0 Pluck its feathers. Wash its torso.\u00a0 Get rid of the fluff that does not feed anyway.\u00a0 Especially this year perhaps we can dispense with the note of pride, of self-congratulation that so easily enters the heart.\u00a0 \u2018Lord I thank thee that I am not like other men\u2014extortionists, liars, or even like this publican here\u2019.\u00a0 Jesus directly proscribed such prayer.\u00a0 Pluck and clean and here is what you find.\u00a0 Most of who we are and even more of what we have is pure gift.\u00a0 Our genetic makeup.\u00a0 Our history.\u00a0 Our natural surroundings.\u00a0 Our upbringing.\u00a0 Our humors and talents.\u00a0 Our religious tradition or lack thereof.\u00a0 For all our vaunted independence, we depend, utterly depend, truly depend, we are deeply dependent for what counts:\u00a0 for life, for forgiveness, for eternal life.\u00a0 For all our vaunted enterprise, we have relied on others, and we have been shaped by others.\u00a0 Is there a better city in North American in which to remember that than Boston?\u00a0 As a city, as a people, as a nation, as a church, we are the creatures of the courage of others, who in one sense or another gave the last full measure of devotion.\u00a0 Who are we kidding anyway?\u00a0 Most of what we are and even more of what we have is pure gift.\u00a0 As my friend says, \u2018if you see a turtle on top of a fence post, you know he did not get there on his own\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Psalmist knew this.\u00a0 \u2018Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for hehas looked favorably upon his people and redeemed them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paul of Tarsus also knew this. \u00a0\u201cMay you be made strong with the strength that comes from his glorious power.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is why the patterns of gratitude, day and week and month and year and all are so important to the soul.\u00a0 Good for you.\u00a0 You find a daily way to say a word of thanks or write a note of thanks to someone, somewhere, somehow.\u00a0 Good for you.\u00a0 You find a way to worship on Sunday, to bestir yourself and enter a community of faith, shoulder to shoulder with other unfeathered bi-peds, so that, if nothing else, in public you may say \u2018thank you\u2019\u2014to God, to life, to others.\u00a0 Good for you.\u00a0 You find a way once a month to be in service, in mission.\u00a0 Ministry is service.\u00a0 Today our students and others gather at noon to pack meals for hungry children.\u00a0 Tomorrow you may send off an extra thanksgiving check to the Philippines.\u00a0 Good for you.\u00a0 You find a rhythm, year by year, for arranging your finances to match hour values.\u00a0 You give.\u00a0 You give by percentage.\u00a0 You tithe.\u00a0 You make a plan and plan your giving and give by your plan.\u00a0 Good for you.\u00a0 You think hard and long about what your will, your end of life giving will be, and so model that dimension of spirituality for your children and others.\u00a0 Maybe your estate itself will include a tithe.\u00a0 Good for you.\u00a0 A daily note, a weekly worship, a monthly service, a yearly gift, a concluding bequest\u2014these are patterns of gratitude that shape the soul and heal the earth.\u00a0 Good for you.\u00a0 Be generous of spirit, like Abraham Joshua Heschel:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Religion\u2019s task is to cultivate disgust for violence and lies, sensitivity to other people\u2019s suffering and the love of peace.<\/i><\/p>\n

God is than religion, and faith is deeper than dogma.\u00a0 Man\u2019s most precious thought is God, but God\u2019s most precious thought is man.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To give thanks means first to pluck the bird\u2019s less generous, more self centered, less magnanimous feathers, one at a time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Second, season.\u00a0 Cleansed, our prayer is ready for a little seasoning.\u00a0 Personal seasoning.\u00a0 Real gratitude is real personal.\u00a0 Prayer is intimate.\u00a0 Prayer is personal.\u00a0 Like a sermon.\u00a0 Utterly personal.\u00a0 Like a photograph.\u00a0 Utterly personal.\u00a0 A prayer of thanks is thanks for what makes a personal difference.\u00a0 For a friend sent along by life\u2019s surging current.\u00a0 For a spouse met.\u00a0 For a child.\u00a0 For a child saved from death in a car accident.\u00a0 For a lawsuit avoided or weathered.\u00a0 For an assault survived. For a family fence mended.\u00a0 For a vocation.\u00a0 For a vacation.\u00a0 For an exciting new job.\u00a0 For breath, for breadth, for board.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The eternal flame, which Jacqueline B Kennedy imagined atop the president\u2019s grave, is a flickering reminder to us all of what his tragically foreshortened life gave our common life.\u00a0 I hope this holiday season that you will keep a sort of eternal flame flickering atop your life as well.\u00a0 Our span of life, threescore and ten, upon this earth, is starkly brief.\u00a0 Yet each soul carries an eternal flame, a lasting marrow, a heavenly destiny, a personal dimension.\u00a0 You have an angelic prospectus.\u00a0 You want to live, to speak, to choose, to act, to do\u2014and especially to pray\u2014with a recollection of eternity.\u00a0 Under the aspect of eternity, sub specie aeternitatis.\u00a0 Mrs. Kennedy, in the days following her husband\u2019s murder 50 years ago, found the grace to send a handwritten note of condolence to the wife of a Dallas policeman who had also been killed in those same hours, by the same gunman.\u00a0 There is an eternal flame flickering in such an act, in such a kindness, partly because it so personal.\u00a0 \u201cOthers may not understand what you are going through\u201d it seems to say, \u201cbut I surely do\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We went north toward Montreal in 1981 to serve two little churches with two little children and too little money.\u00a0 We went to Montreal in order to study for a PhD so that one day we could come to Boston and teach in the school of theology and preach in Marsh Chapel and offer pastoral care to an academic community of 40,000.\u00a0 Be glad for what you do not have, for it is the doorway into what you will have.\u00a0 That summer of 1981 we were given a car, and old red Ford Mustang convertible, anno domini 1973.\u00a0 A real boat, v8, white top, black interior, and rust to the horizon.\u00a0 Said the donor:\u00a0 \u2018it will last you 6 months.\u00a0 Leave it in a field\u2019.\u00a0 It lasted 10 years.\u00a0 It was such a thoughtful and such helpful gift\u2014the right thing at the right time in the right way\u2014that no words could ever convey our gratitude (Hart on gift).\u00a0 No formal note—\u201cDear Aunt Esther, in life\u2019s many vicissitudes it is so important to be made mindful of those who help\u2026blah, blah, blah\u2026\u2019 No. Thanksgiving is a personal shout, a cry from the heart:\u00a0 Thank You!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alice Walker appeared on late night television a while ago.\u00a0 She said two stunning things.\u00a0 \u2018At middle age\u2019, she said, \u2018I am learning to slow down so that whatever life intends for me will have an easier time catching up\u2019.\u00a0 Then, after minutes of complements for Nelson Mandela, and what he did for South Africa, she reflected:\u00a0 \u2018of course, he is a great leader, but the point is that each one of us is to be our own great leader\u2019.\u00a0 Personal. Personal. Very personal.<\/p>\n

This is why our friends are so deeply, lastingly meaningful to us.\u00a0 Our north country friend Max Coots wrote one Thanksgiving:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:<\/i><\/p>\n

For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are….<\/i><\/p>\n

For generous friends with hearts and smiles as bright as their blossoms;<\/i><\/p>\n

For feisty friends as tart as apples;<\/i><\/p>\n

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we’ve had them;<\/i><\/p>\n

For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;<\/i><\/p>\n

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the other, plain as potatoes and as good for you;<\/i><\/p>\n

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels Sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem Artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;<\/i><\/p>\n

For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter;<\/i><\/p>\n

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;<\/i><\/p>\n

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;<\/i><\/p>\n

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;<\/i><\/p>\n

For all these we give thanks.”<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A sermon does not conclude the preaching for the week.\u00a0 A sermon begins the preaching for the week.\u00a0 The point of a sermon is found in your active, personal articulation of faith.\u00a0 In a journal.\u00a0 In public speaking.\u00a0 In a simple devotional at a meeting.\u00a0 In the shower.\u00a0 And, this Thursday, in a thanksgiving prayer.\u00a0 Sit down ahead of time and right it out.\u00a0 Make it personal.\u00a0 Season it so.\u00a0 Season it properly.\u00a0 Find your tongue.\u00a0 Season it personally.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Third, cook.\u00a0 Cook the prayer.\u00a0 Cook it in experiences of adversity. Let the adverse experiences of life make our prayer and our soul tender.\u00a0 If nothing else, our own hurts make us more empathetic to others. One of my forebears in the ministry, long ago used this line and it has stuck.\u00a0 It is nothing to remember a line for thirty years, when it is a real sentence: \u2018Let the heat of adversity make us tender\u2019. \u00a0Sometimes nothing else will.\u00a0 This is a difficult point.\u00a0 When I heard my friend utter the line, because I knew his experience, I wept.\u00a0 There is no way finally to understand, let alone justify, the heat of life at its worst.\u00a0 But we can pray that such adverse experience will humanize us, that such heat will make us tender.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Let the bird cook, simmer.\u00a0 Cooking makes the bird tender.\u00a0 Life\u2019s heat can make us tender too, if we will allow the time and heat and patience to hold us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Think again of Paul.\u00a0 \u2018Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint us because the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit that is given to us.\u2019\u00a0 Think again today of Christ, the Redeemer, who himself entered the darkest sphere of suffering, mocked as a common criminal but carrying through the cross, and the crosses of all life, a remembrance of paradise.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the radio congregation today, and in the visible congregation today, there are many who know this well.\u00a0 You have graciously preached this sermon in your own lives.\u00a0 You have faced adversity and so become spiritually sensitive.\u00a0 You have felt physical pain but have learned redemptively to manage your suffering.\u00a0 You have suffered loss and survived.\u00a0 You have managed suffering redemptively.\u00a0 You have worn the ancient clothing:\u00a0 \u2018afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed; and you do not lose heart, for though the outer nature is wasting away, the inner nature is being renewed every day\u2019.\u00a0 For all the heat, your Thanksgiving prayer this year will be most tender and most sweet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here is a Thanksgiving medley, a recipe for a prayer at Thanksgiving.\u00a0 Clean it.\u00a0 Season it. Cook it.\u00a0 Cleanse it of pride.\u00a0 Season it in person.\u00a0 And allow the heat of adversity to make it tender.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was this recipe that my BU religious life leaders on Wednesday perceived in Dean Howard Thurman\u2019s exemplary prayer:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today, I make my Sacrament of Thanksgiving.<\/i><\/p>\n

I begin with the simple things of my days:<\/i><\/p>\n

Fresh air to breathe,<\/i><\/p>\n

Cool water to drink,<\/i><\/p>\n

The taste of food,<\/i><\/p>\n

The protection of houses and clothes,<\/i><\/p>\n

The comforts of home.<\/i><\/p>\n

For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

I bring to mind all the warmth of humankind that I have known:<\/i><\/p>\n

My mother\u2019s arms,<\/i><\/p>\n

The strength of my father<\/i><\/p>\n

The playmates of my childhood\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

The tears I have shed, the tears I have seen;<\/i><\/p>\n

The excitement of laughter and the twinkle in the<\/i><\/p>\n

Eye with its reminder that life is good.<\/i><\/p>\n

For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

I finger one by one the messages of hope that awaited me at the crossroads:<\/i><\/p>\n

The smile of approval from those who held in their hands the reins of my security;<\/i><\/p>\n

The tightening of the grip in a simple handshake when I <\/i><\/p>\n

Feared the step before me in darkness;<\/i><\/p>\n

The whisper in my heart when the temptation was fiercest<\/i><\/p>\n

And the claims of appetite were not to be denied;<\/i><\/p>\n

The crucial word said, the simple sentence from an open<\/i><\/p>\n

Page when my decision hung in the balance.<\/i><\/p>\n

For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

I pass before me the main springs of my heritage:<\/i><\/p>\n

The fruits of labors of countless generations who lived before me, <\/i><\/p>\n

Without whom my own life would have no meaning;<\/i><\/p>\n

The seers who saw visions and dreamed dreams;<\/i><\/p>\n

The prophets who sensed a truth greater than the mind could grasp<\/i><\/p>\n

And whose words would only find fulfillment<\/i><\/p>\n

In the years which they would never see;<\/i><\/p>\n

The workers whose sweat has watered the trees,<\/i><\/p>\n

The leaves of which are for the healing of the nations;<\/i><\/p>\n

The pilgrims who set their sails for lands beyond all horizons,<\/i><\/p>\n

Whose courage made paths into new worlds and far off places;<\/i><\/p>\n

The saviors whose blood was shed with a recklessness that only a dream<\/i><\/p>\n

Could inspire and God could command.<\/i><\/p>\n

For all this I make an act of Thanksgiving this day\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

All these and more than mind can think and heart can feel,<\/i><\/p>\n

I make as my sacrament of Thanksgiving to Thee,<\/i><\/p>\n

(Dear God), in humbleness of mind and simplicity of heart.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i>~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luke 23:33-43 Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is hard to think about Thanksgiving and not think of food in general and turkey in particular.\u00a0 So attentive are we to the meal itself that the Thanksgiving prayer we offer becomes an afterthought, unless carefully we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2414,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions\/2414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}