November 18, 2007
(Jimmie Johnson)

Isaiah 65:17-25

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord--and their descendants as well. Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent--its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

Psalm 100

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord is God. It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name. For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

Matthew 5:14-16

You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

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That’s why today on this Sunday before Thanksgiving, the Session members last October at their monthly meeting voted unanimously to empower me--just a short while from now in the liturgy--to ask all who are 75 years of age and older to come and stand at the front with me
so that we can all join hands and sing “O Beautiful for Spacious Skies.” Then just as loud and raucous as we can be, I will lead the rest of us to yell at the top of our lungs: “Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray!” for you wonderful, “tough as nails sweeties” that Tom Brokaw has rightfully labeled The World’s Greatest Generation. We do this because you lovies, perhaps feeling your age now, saved our nation twice. First you saved us economically, by surviving the great Depression. And second, in the face of our enemies who wanted to destroy us and all free people, you turned the tide of the war on the European and Pacific fronts
from defeat to victory.

If you were born around 1932 or earlier, you have lived through the two times of the greatest darkness our nation has known since the Pilgrims paused to give thanks following their hellish first year in which the vast majority of them perished. In the face of such odds and with the help of some American Indians, these Pilgrims through tears uttered thanksgiving to God for life and for this land and its promise to become a city set on a hill.

When the sun rose that first Thanksgiving morning, those pilgrims had been through horror. The majority of them had died. The survivors had lost everything. They were barely alive. But they decided to give thanks for what they had going for them rather than be done in by what had gone against them. And what they had going for them was a faith they all shared. A belief, a trust in Benevolent Providence! Mysterious? Absolutely! Beyond defining and certainty? Absolutely!

But still those Pilgrims trusted an unseen Benevolent Providence reaching out to them through the helping hands of native Americans--- people of color. Here the majority reached out to the minority known as the European colonists—those pink skinned, by that time, sallow, grey skinned, surviving pilgrims. And the Pilgrim immigrants offered thanks. And that is the origin of the holiday that would become known to us in time as our national holiday of Thanksgiving.

How do we get to a place in life where we as a people give thanks? How do we find thanks expressed in the vibrant hope of Isaiah where believers believed in the face of all evil and destruction that there is coming a time where “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain”? How do you get to such hopefulness? How do you kneel in the snow, as the pilgrims did, knowing the bodies of those you love could not be buried before the coming of the next spring time when the ground would not be so frozen and you could dig your loved ones a proper resting place? How do you kneel in the snow and give thanks? How could you be possessed of a vision for your new homeland when the new land and home you hoped for were so bleak and dangerous?

God doesn’t zap thanksgiving into us as if it is some kind of joy juice injected directly from God. How does thanksgiving happen? No, God still doesn’t zap thanksgiving into us. It still comes to us today through our own asking for help and through the grace that is mediated to us through the touch, voices and love of others that God uses to help us grow wider and larger horizons when our present ones are full of despair, defeat and confusion.

That’s why we come to this peculiar place. The church is still the place above all places that has the singularly entrusted mission of offering hope! That’s really the purpose of First Presbyterian Church of Waco: helping each other find the wisdom to grow a larger horizon by giving thanks when we are living through a time of darkness! That is singularly what we are about, and when we do this, we are at our best and truest selves as a congregation!

Soren Kierkegaard is one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Denmark has not produced another like him since his death in the nineteenth century. He is known still as the Great Dane. He also happened to be a Christian who sought to believe in his thinking and think in his believing and realized such a paradox between thinking and believing always meant a leap of faith, a restless certainty. Kierekegaard wrote these words: “How very joyous it is to give thanks when into our lives, You, O God, have poured from above every good and perfect gift. But there comes a deeper joy and peace when a person can give thanks in the midst of misfortune, abandonment and hopelessness--when it seems his own thoughts have betrayed him, when all reason has left him, when there is only discouragement and disillusionment. Ah, to give thanks then! When the odds are against us, when there are those who would seek to convince us that we are without hope and without God in our world, then in such times we need more than ever to hold on to Him Who holds fast to us!”

Kierkegaard understood better than most of us North Americans the beautiful strength of pausing to give thanks. That’s what this Sunday in the worship year is about for us today, a
congregation gathered on the eve of the National Day of Thanksgiving, and we are ready to give thanks at this perilous and peculiar time in our national and planetary life.

We are pausing to give thanks to God, yes! Above all else. But we are pausing as well to recognize and give thanks and to ask for help one more time from you, the world’s greatest generation, in the winter of your life and in the time when you know the day will soon be over. Will you, again, give us, who are your sons, and daughters, your grandchildren and great grandchildren, will you give us one more request of you, you who as a people in time of great darkness thought of those of us yet unborn, will you allow us to say “thanks” to you and thanks to God for the generation you were and still are in earth’s history and our particular North American history?

And will you before you leave us one day, will you again show us that greatness is not about having the most or being an empire, but about growing generous, large horizons of hope for all
and about standing up to terror and defeating evil not only through battle but by goodness and mercy and compassion as well. Will you help us to remember to be a nation that is respected in the world for shining brightly the light of God as your generation did during the Great Depression and World War II? Will you help us to be a light in the world’s darkness
for God’s glory, to shine the light not of empire and victory through power, but the light of good works and a victory through justice for all!

You the 75 year olds and older ones have looked death, defeat and despair in the face and did not blink first. You 75 year olds and older have had to stare the demons of your own racism in the face and overcome. You survived the crash of our national economy and gave thanks. You threw back all enemies in a world war and kept our land fair and free, and you gave thanks. You had to face up to your own failures when it came to race and gender. You had to overcome hatred and ignorance. You had to undergo change. And staring those demons in the face, you didn’t blink and you did change.

Teach us your children one more time to give to your grandchildren and their children the wisdom to pause and give thanks! Let us in a moment give thanks to God for you! The elders who govern this congregation believe it should be done in every congregation of this land, and so do I. Let it begin with us here at the corner of 11th and Austin, at old First Presbyterian, a 151-year-old congregation that is still not afraid to give thanks and be possessed of a great hope and show forth the light of God’s glory.