I’m
delighted to see you all this morning. Your being here this morning
means that you didn’t overdo it TOO much on food and football.
But
if Thanksgiving has become a time to give ourselves permission to
do everything in abundance, a time to add on a few pounds that we
need to lose now even before the holidays kick into high gear, it
nevertheless has a wonderful spill-over effect as well. A powerful
spirit of generosity seems to take hold of us. We reach out in amazing
ways to share that abundance with others. We share food and love and
hospitality. We open our homes and our hearts and our checkbooks and
we reach out. It’s a beautiful holiday in which the spirit of
God just seems to take us over and even those of us who might be a
bit scroogy at other times become generous and magnanimous. It’s
as if the blessings of God are so abundantly apparent that we can’t
help but share.
Let
me give you a few examples, just from our congregation, which are
truly inspiring and bring to mind just what kind of people and place
this is as we welcome our newest baptized member into the family.
Last
Sunday you gave generously to the launch of the new Family Place Food
Pantry which will open for the holidays. With food collected both
from the congregation and the Preschool families, we collected more
than we ever have before. I saw one faithful couple struggling into
the narthex, both loaded down with bags of canned goods and food.
The wife told me that all year long she buys whatever is on sale and
saves it to bring for our food drives here at church.
Others
of you invited members of our armed forces to your Thanksgiving meal,
expanding your table to make a place for young people, far from home
and family, longing for the joy of hearth and home.
Many
of you—children, youth and adults—spent part of your Thanksgiving
Day at our annual Community Thanksgiving meal at the Santa Monica
Civic Auditorium serving some 2,800 people who would otherwise go
without. As Cindy McQuade, who helps make this come together every
year, said: “It certainly is a day of abundance and abundance
shared. It comes closer to the FIRST Thanksgiving than anything I've
ever participated in. Everyone comes, brings, contributes, thousands
eat. It all comes together in Joy. Before we open the doors at 11
a.m. to serve the meal, all the volunteers gather in a huge circle
inside the Civic auditorium and pray together. I always encourage
my volunteers to try and be there for the prayer. We’ve all
been working at our separate stations, busy, busy, and then this brief
powerful moment and hush as we clasp hands, reflect and let the doors
of our hearts and the doors of the Civic burst open.” What a
beautiful testimony to the power and the infectious joy of expanding
the table to share with all.
And,
The Bridge group of our young adults in our congregation hosted a
dinner here in the Fireside Room for international students from Santa
Monica College, introducing them to the generosity, hospitality and
gratitude that mark Thanksgiving Day. Nearly 20 international students
came, most from East Asia (Japan, South Korea, China), and a couple
from Peru. At this same event last year the students were impressed
with all of the different kinds of food. As one Bridge member, Amy
Armstrong, said: “We all have things we expect to see on the
table and those vary as so many of us come from a wide variety of
places around the U.S., and we wanted to share these traditions with
the students. Things that appear so commonplace to us were completely
amazing to them. We all remember how the students took pictures of
the turkey, because this was the first time they had ever seen that.”
She went on to say: “I just know there is a lot of gratitude
for all of the food, and excitement and adventure of trying something
new. I know students this year who are excited because this will be
their first American Thanksgiving. And that is part of my overall
mission - to be a welcoming place for these who find themselves in
a strange place with seemingly strange traditions.” This sense
of overwhelming gratitude for God’s goodness and abundance that
we feel so powerfully now at Thanksgiving time is a mark of who we
are as disciples of Jesus Christ. We are following his example and
his way. Gratitude and generosity are hallmarks of his life and of
his kingdom. This is why he instituted “this great sacrament
of the table” as the primary way by which we remember him and
the kingdom he came to inaugurate.
What
a witness we have in this last meal that has become our sacrament
of the Lord’s Supper. For even on that night, his last meal
on earth with his closest disciples and friends, the very night in
which one of them would betray him and he would be handed over to
arrest and crucifixion, even on THAT night, at THAT meal, at that
extended table of hospitality and sharing, he took bread and he gave
thanks.
It
was in Jesus’ bones to offer the traditional blessing of thanksgiving
and praise, regardless of everything and anything else going on that
night. First, praise to God. “Baruch atah adonai, eloheinu,
melech ha'olam, hamotzi lechem min ha'aretz.” “Blessed
art Thou, O Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who brings forth
bread for the earth. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, ruler of the
universe, who brings forth the fruit of the vine.”
And
this is why one of the names for this sacrament is the very word,
Eucharist, from the Greek word for “Thanks” because it
begins and ends in thanksgiving to God.
Jesus
took bread and gave thanks, and then that spirit of gratitude overflowing
in him spilled over into a sharing with his disciples. He took bread,
and gave thanks, and broke the bread and shared it with them all.
This great sacrament of the table holds the very presence of God and
the keys to the kingdom of Christ Jesus. It’s all here—the
praise, the gratitude, the hospitality, the overflowing abundance
of grace, the promise of life and life everlasting.
And
so, in this eucharist, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, this
great table sacrament, the Holy Spirit is still powerfully at work,
overflowing these gifts, transforming us into the life-giving sacrament
for the world, the sign of God’s life and light and love to
the world. Transforming us into a welcoming place, a place of prayerful
service reaching out to the lonely and the hungry and those who are
far from home or who have no home. Transforming us into a people of
praise and gratitude, a people of hospitality and generosity. A people
from whom self-giving love flows outward and embraces all God’s
children with food and love and grace and joy, all the in great example
of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who poured out his love for
abundant life for all God’s children.
May
gratitude for all that has been inspire us with hope and trust for
the future, that as God’s people, our joy and generosity will
infuse with world with renewed hope and peace.
Thanks
be to God….
Notes:
A Eucharist Sourcebook. Liturgy Training Publications. Chicago, 1999.
©Patricia
Farris , 2006. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
First
United Methodist Church
1008 Eleventh Street
Santa Monica, CA 90403
www.santamonicaumc.org
(310) 393-8258
God's
Immeasurable Bounty