Online Sermons
The Last Sunday in Pentecost : November 22, Leslee Sandberg
[Ed Note: We transfered the readings for Thanksgiving Day to this weekend.]
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online SermonsWhen I first realized that I would be preaching on the Sunday of Thanksgiving, my thoughts went to past Thanksgivings as I was growing up in Peru, Illinois. My Dad was a high school and community college teacher and my Mom was a stay at home, house cleaning, laundry and iron doing, shopping, cooking and bridge playing Mom. I was an only child and cousins, aunts and uncles lived quite a distance away from us. So we had Thanksgiving dinner for the three of us. Turkey, dressing, cranberries, pumpkin pie….. We were not wealthy but we had abundance of food, shelter and love.
Our lessons today for Thanksgiving have a theme of abundance. As we read and heard the Old Testament lesson, the people of the time had experienced a natural disaster – a plague of locusts. I have never seen anything like a plague of locusts but I can imagine that it is a scary thing. Here is a description by author W.M. Thomson: “The number was astounding: the whole face of the mountain was black with them. On they came, like a living deluge. We dug trenches and kindled fires and beat and burned to death heaps and heaps, but the effort was utterly useless. Wave after wave rolled up the mountainside and poured over rocks, walls, ditches and hedges – those behind covering up and bridging over the masses already killed. It was perfectly appalling to watching this animated river as it flowed up the road and ascended the hill above my house. For four days they continued on toward the east….” Descriptions of the aftermath sound just as awful. “When locusts have passed, the terrain looks as though it has been swept by a scorching fire.
This was a natural disaster – just as the Flood of 2008 was a natural disaster. And although it is a metaphor for the assaults on Israel and Jerusalem and the misfortune of God’s people, there is a lesson from this ancient prophet for us today. Joel visualized the victory of God over God’s enemies and God’s presence to God’s people eternally.
So what does that have to do with us today and the beginning of the Thanksgiving week?
In the year 400 BC there was disaster and loss. In the year 2008 in Cedar Rapids, there was disaster and loss. In 2009 and 2010 and thereafter, there will be disaster and loss. Each day people experience their own personal disaster and loss. Whether that is in Swaziland where people are dying of AIDS and other illnesses, who have a lack of food and water…… or here in Cedar Rapids and Iowa – right smack in the middle of the Heartland, the Bread basket of America.
Just this past week you may have read in the newspaper or seen on TV or the internet that more Americans are going hungry. Hunger is on the rise. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million. In 2008, the report found nearly 17 million children – more than one in five across the United States – were living in households in which food at times ran short. And the number of children who were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million. Among people of all ages, nearly 15 % last year did not consistently have adequate food.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack attributed the marked worsening in Americans’ access to food primarily to the rise in unemployment, which now exceeds 10% and in people who are underemployed. The USDA report found that most families in which food is scarce contain at least one adult with a full time job, suggesting that the problem lies at least partly in wages, not jus the absence of work.
Last year, people in 4.8 million households used private food pantries, compared with 3.9 million in 2007.
So where is God in all of this? Just as Joel, the prophet, had a vision of God’s victory over enemies, so can we today. God was with Israel and the Exile. God is with the people of Swaziland, the hungry and unemployed in the United States and in Cedar Rapids and our local communities. The enemy is poverty and through our abundance we can be God’s messengers of love and hope.
We are blessed by God’s abundant love every day. How do we share that love? We can have an abundant life if we share our abundance – our gifts of food, companionship, hospitality. This is the time for Thanksgiving – not only for the abundance of food that so many of us will have and share this week but a time for giving thanks – thanks for life and significant people in our lives and for hope that the world will be a better place for our children and grand children.
So what are you most thankful for – especially this past year? Large or small? Please take a moment right now to close your eyes and reflect on the abundance in your life.
Next let’s each of us write down those thanksgivings. Hopefully they will fit on a 3 by 5 card that each of you will take from the stack at the end of the pews. Spend a couple of minutes right now – take a card, find a writing instrument and write down your Thanksgivings. Finally then you will put that card in the offertory as it is passed around in a few minutes. And we will offer these thanksgivings – out of our abundance – to God.
Please send your card on when the offering plate passes by. And then remember to write some of those thanksgivings on the UTO poster near the nursery!
Now let us turn to how we express our thanks for God’s never ending love for us and the opportunities we have right here at Christ Church to share that love. We are a Jubilee Ministry congregation. That is pretty significant in the life of the Episcopal Church. What does it mean? Since 1997 we have been designated by the Presiding Bishop and Executive Council of the Episcopal Church as a Jubilee Ministry Church. We had to go through an application and review process along with a site visit. It means that the people of Christ Church have a heart for mission. That we take seriously the Jubilee call to be a ministry of joint discipleship in Christ with poor and oppressed people wherever they are found, to meet basic human needs and to build a just society. It is charitable works for people in need AND advocacy – to be a voice for them.
Martha has been asking us “Why are you a member of Christ Church and what does this congregation mean to you? For me, it is yes, the liturgy, the worship, music AND the community. I stress the word community. It is a community of care. You are models for me and constant reminders of God’s love. You care for each other, you may have disagreements but you care. You share. Out of your abundance you support Jubilee ministry – you mentor at our Summer Reading Camp, your work at the food pantry, you bring in food and blankets for our guests at the pantry. You are at work in the communities in which you live, modeling God’s love and sharing in your abundance. You live out Matthew 25.
We all have an opportunity this holiday season to share our abundance with the guests of Loaves and Fishes Pantry – a partnership between Christ Church and Westminster Presbyterian Church. The pantry is located on Third Ave in an older house owned by Westminster. Our Jubilee budget here supports the pantry’s yearly purchase of food through HACAP. We have volunteers who show up faithfully on Tuesdays when the pantry is open – each week now, consistently, more than 100 people show up for their bag of food AND the fellowship and companionship that the volunteers bring. This year we are collecting blankets again – new or gently used – to be given in January. This year also through Christ Church Community Ministries (formerly known as Outreach) we will be collecting toys for children for the guests of the pantry. Parents will choose the toys for their children and the Westminster youth will wrap each toy. Christ Church Community Ministries will be supporting families at Johnson School, Inn Circle and our own members with holiday meal gift cards.
Please share your abundance. Bring in the food items on the shopping list (show card), contribute some extra this month – what favorite non-perishable foods can you bring? Donate financially to help purchase the gift cards for hungry families. Bring in a toy for a child. Share your abundant warmth by bringing in a blanket or two. Buy a loaf of December herb bread – some of the proceeds will go to Community Ministries.
Give thanks to God for this church, its people and their abundance.
What will you share, out of your abundance, this holiday season?
AMEN.