Scripture: Psalm 100 (from The Message, a Contemporary Paraphrase)
A Thanksgiving Psalm
On your feet now—applaud God!
Bring a gift of laughter,
sing yourselves into God’s presence.
Know this: God is God, and God, God.
God made us; we didn’t make God.
We’re God’s people, God’s well-tended sheep.
Enter with the password: “Thank you!”
Make yourselves at home, talking praise.
Thank God. Worship God.
For God is sheer beauty,
all-generous in love,
loyal always and ever.
Sermon: Why Give Thanks?
If a magical genie—from a lamp or a bottle-- were to appear in front of you and say, “I grant you one wish that will come true right now.” What might you wish for? An interesting question to ponder, isn’t it? If you knew your wish would be granted immediately, what might you wish for? I invite you to think about it; we can talk about it at Zoom coffee hour later…
About 10 years ago, famous people all over the world were asked this same question by the editors of a popular magazine. And there were some very interesting replies.
I read about how one famous person answered that question in a way that really impressed the magazine editors. (And, just so you know, I don’t know who the famous person was, he or she was simply referred to in the article as a “well known and much-loved celebrity.”)
But here’s what the famous person said: “I’d wish that I could be given a greater ability to appreciate all that I already have.” Let me repeat that.
In other words, this person was saying, “I’d like to be even more thankful than I am now.” (Note: the source for this anecdote is the Whole People of God online curriculum, for the date 11/23/08)
Wow. To be honest, that was the last thing I was expecting a celebrity to say. I confess I had a stereotype of “shallow celebrity” in mind, and I figured their answers would focus mainly on material things, like maybe “A house in the south of France,” “Paid college tuition for all my grandchildren,” “A private yacht to go with my private jet.” (Or, maybe I was just projecting how I would answer the question if I were a celebrity!) Or, I thought, I guess it’s possible that some celebrities might wish for more altruistic things like, “A cure for Covid, cancer and the common cold,” or “Peace on earth,” or “food enough to feed everyone in the world who is hungry.”
But, the last thing I expected was a famous person who wanted to be even more thankful than they are right now. Why would they want that? Why give thanks?
I believe an answer can be found in our scripture reading for today, Psalm 100, which is entitled, “A Thanksgiving Psalm.” Scholars believe this particular Psalm may have been written in the time of King David, which was roughly 1000 years B.C. It could have been one of the Psalms sung by David and the ancient Hebrew people as they celebrated and gave thanks for the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. Scholars believe it also could have been sung down through the centuries at annual New Year Festivals to celebrate and give thanks for the reign of God on earth—past, present, and future. (New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Vol. IV, p. 1064-1065.)
Whatever its exact origins, Psalm 100 reminds people of their deep connection to God. When the Psalm talks about “worshipping” God with thanksgiving, it is actually hard to convey in English exactly what that means. In our culture, we’ve tended to think of “worship” as something we do in a church building, for an hour, once a week, on a Sunday. During this Covid crisis, we have been forced to redefine what worship means--and this Psalm can help us continue to do that. The Hebrew word for the verb “worship” used in this Psalm is abad, and it means “to orient one’s whole life and existence to a sovereign master.” (Ibid, p. 1078.) Let me repeat that.
So, if we pair this all-encompassing understanding of worship with the act of thanks-giving, we get a powerful answer to our question, why give thanks? We give thanks because the act of giving thanks is the primary means by which we break through the illusion of self-sufficiency. We give thanks because the act of giving thanks is the primary way by which we align ourselves with God’s Love, which is the true Source of all things.
I remember learning about the power of giving thanks when I was a child—about 7 years old. I had gone to visit my grandmother in Tennessee, and on a shelf in the living room of her apartment was a beautiful, blue glass bottle with gold designs painted on it. (Looking back, I think it was actually a wine decanter, but, at age 7, what did I know?) At age 7, to me, it looked just like the bottle in the 1960’s TV Show “I Dream of Jeanie,” and I remember wondering whether or not my grandmother’s bottle actually could be magic. I mean, I knew it wasn’t magic—because when no one was looking, I actually took it down off the shelf and peered inside. I rubbed it. No genie. But, nevertheless, that whole summer’s visit in Tennessee, I spent quite a bit of time just staring at that bottle, concocting stories in my imagination about how it could have been magic: how some mystical stranger--in my mind it was a gypsy--had snuck into my grandmother’s apartment under cover of darkness, chased by thieves, and had hidden the bottle there in plain sight-- where no one notice it, surrounded by nick-nacks, specifically her collection of ceramic salt and peppershakers and a little Humel figurine with the foot partially broken off. In my mind, the bottle was just waiting for the right person to break its spell and unleash iits true powers. And the right person was, of course, a small child from the magical city of Revere, Massachusetts.
Well, to make a long story longer, after I got back home to Massachusetts, my grandmother packed up the glass genie bottle and mailed it to me. It was such a sweet gesture!! I remember opening it and thinking, “Wow! What a present! And it’s not even my birthday!” I called her up on the phone and thanked her for it. We had a good conversation.
But then my mother told me to write my grandmother a thank you note for the bottle. “Why?” I said, “I already said ‘thank you’ over the phone, isn’t that enough?” My mother said it wasn’t enough-- that thank you notes are very important, and receiving a thank you note from me would really make my grandmother feel good. I didn’t agree. I thought sending a thank you note to my grandmother was unnecessary overkill. Had I been older I might have protested more, but I was young and at that age, I still did what my mother said without much complaint.
So, I made my grandmother a card out of construction paper. I drew a picture of the genie bottle on the cover, and on the inside of the card I wrote my grandmother a little poem, in rhyming verse. (I still remember what I wrote: “Thank you for the genie bottle that is blue and gold; it is very pretty, too, for that’s what my friends told.” Emily Dickinson, watch out, here I come!) I gave the note to my mother who addressed it and popped it in the mail.
The next summer, when we went back to Tennessee for our annual visit, I stopped in my tracks when we entered my grandmother’s living room. There on the shelf where the blue glass genie bottle used to be, surrounded by the ceramic salt and pepper shakers and the Humel with the broken foot, was a little gold picture frame, and inside it was the construction paper thank-you note I had made. At the time, still being a kid, I didn’t have enough of a vocabulary to describe how I felt when I saw the note up there on the shelf with her treasured possessions. But now, looking back, I think I can articulate it. I felt… humbled that some little thing I could do to show my thanks could mean so much to someone else… honored that my grandmother had my thank-you note up there on display for all her guests to see… and connected—connected to someone who loved me enough to notice what I was interested in and to turn around and give it to me as a surprising, wonderful gift.
My thank you note to my grandmother meant more to her than I had any idea it possibly could!! And her acknowledgment of my thank you meant more to me than I ever could have imagined. I mean, 51 years later I am still thinking about it!
It occurs to me, now, that my grandmother’s genie bottle was magic—but the magic did not reside in the bottle itself—it resided in the act of giving it as a gift-- AND the act of giving and receiving the thanks associated with it.
Perhaps our giving thanks to God functions in the same way—it humbles, honors, and connects us to the One who loves us more than we could ever ask or imagine, the One who is the source of all things, the One who gives us surprising, wonderful gifts every day, even in the midst of a pandemic. God doesn’t take away our pain or grief, but God is present with us in the midst of it--giving us gifts each day, such as:
· A phone call from a friend…
· A yellow goldfinch that lands on our windowsill…
· A dog or cat who is our companion…
God gives us a multitude of gifts that we simply have to open our eyes to notice.
Why give thanks? Because in the words of the Scripture:
God is sheer beauty,
all-generous in love,
loyal always and ever. Amen.
(adapted from a sermon first written and preached—by Marlayna—on Nov 24, 2011 and then edited and preached again on Nov 19, 2017)