Sermons from the Pulpit

Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, Thanksgiving Sunday, November 19, 2000, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.

I Samuel 1:1-18, 20, 24-28; Matthew 6:25-34

As long as he lives, he is given to the Lord.
    -I Samuel 1:28

     She left him there! Barely weaned from the breast he was, and his mother up and took him to Shiloh and went on home and left him in the hands of this doddering old priest. That was the deal she had with God: if God gave her a son she would give her son to God. And God did, and she did. It was her way of giving thanks.

     So with that in mind, what are we going to do for Thanksgiving?

     We do not associate Thanksgiving with sacrifice and sadness. We think of it as feasting, joy, and perhaps praise to God. Yet I tell you, this is a thanksgiving story.

     Long before Thanksgiving was ever a festival, thanksgiving was an attitude, and our Thanksgiving festival is a trivial self-indulgence if it does not still affirm and honor thanksgiving as a way of being in the world.

     But an attitude of thanksgiving is not a thing that you can bring about by giving it its own special date on a calendar, is it? Hannah knew that: Every year she wept and would not eat on the day when her family went up to Shiloh to feast and worship. Now clearly her husband Elkanah was a prosperous man and a good provider. Clearly he was nuts about her. Clearly he was not disappointed in her for having no children. Clearly he was puzzled at the persistence of her unhappiness in the face of his devotion. Yet she could not count her blessings - it was not just her womb that was closed; life itself was barren for her.

     But that changed. Notice when it changed. The change did not wait until she was pregnant or had her baby. She was in the temple praying. She went through this painful little comedy in which Eli mistook her intensity and accused her of being under the influence. She explained herself to Eli as a woman sorely troubled, pouring out her soul to God. And Eli, bless him, saw his mistake and wished her the fulfillment of her prayer. And that was the moment of change: Then she could eat and drink again, and her countenance was sad no longer, and she even burst into a song of praise which we did not include in the reading because it is too long.

     It was not Samuel's birth that turned Hannah into a giver of thanks. It was that encounter with the old priest. She didn't need her personal agenda fulfilled before she could become joyful. What she needed was to know that she was not alone, that somehow this old man was with her, and somehow God was with her too, saying, "Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant you your petition which you have made." He didn't even know what she was praying for. She didn't need him to. It was enough that in the name of God he was with her and wished her well. Doesn't seem like a lot to ask or to give, but just try living without it.

     She gives the boy up! She doesn't need to cling to him. He is not her happiness. She loves him, of course - how could she not? - but she hands him over, and it's old Eli who becomes his father, and calls him "my son." And by the way, Eli's two real sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were as unattractive as their names, a pair of fun-lovin' frat boys and ne'er-do-wells who had no business inheriting the priesthood from him; Eli's prospects and the prospects for religion in Israel were a whole lot more barren than Hannah's, until Samuel came into Eli's life, Samuel who grew up to be the last of the Judges of Israel and the first of the prophets.

     Never underestimate how much of God is revealed in these ancient stories, how much of God and of the life of God's people. Don't sit around waiting for pronouncements and proverbs and kernels of wisdom to fall from the lips of the wise and the godly; listen to the stories, get inside them, let them get inside you, they can change what makes you tick, they can enable you to give thanks not just on Thanksgiving Day, not just when things are going your way, but at all times and in all circumstances.

     To know that God is with you and to trust that God will take care of you, even if you have no idea how; to know also that you are not the only child of God, but there are others in God's hands with you, God has a whole handful of you, you are not singular but plural: That's what does it, that's what makes thanksgiving possible. That solidarity. That alone is enough. And nothing else can be enough, hard as we may try to make it so.

     It becomes a matter of dedication - of devotion, a word that's not in fashion but a good word. Praise and thanksgiving are not just a periodic activity, they are the reason why we exist.

     This means thanksgiving is possible and necessary in hard times as well as good times, according to the excellent example we have in our ancestors the Pilgrims, who invented this festival barely six months after their governor, William Bradford, made the following entry in his journal:

     March 24, 1621. This month thirteen of our number die. And in the three months past, dies half our company; the greater part being in the depth of winter, wanting houses and other comforts, being infected with the scurvy and other diseases, which their long voyage and unaccommodate condition brought upon them; so there die sometimes two or three a day. Of a hundred persons scarce fifty remain; the living scarce able to bury the dead; the well not sufficient to tend the sick.

     and so on. Thanksgiving that doesn't gloss over misfortune and grief, but doesn't surrender to them either.

     Thanksgiving is making a joyful witness to the grace of God in our lives. Sometimes that means singing hymns or hoping against hope. Other times it can mean taking one's witness into places where its truth is being denied. I have an example in mind that I wish I didn't have. If you read Friday's News-Letter, you know that the notorious Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka and some of his congregation are coming to our town tomorrow, two blocks from this spot, proclaiming a gospel of hatred and loathing and insult and doing it in the name of our Bible, our God, and our Christ.

     The ministers of the Exeter area churches don't all agree about many things, certainly not about sexual morality, but they agree that the Gospel according to Fred Phelps is blasphemy. Tomorrow the clergy of the local Catholic, Episcopal, Missouri Synod Lutheran, United Methodist, and Unitarian-Universalist congregations, and the pastors of four different congregations of the United Church of Christ, including your three pastors, and the school minister of the Academy, and the chaplain of Seacoast Hospice, will be seeking, and I hope finding, a constructive and non-confrontational way to answer that blasphemy with Jesus' summary of the law, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself. That also is thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, I think.