November 24, 2024

It Ain’t Just a Big Dinner

I’d like everyone to open their red hymnals to number 18, “All People That on Earth Do Dwell.”  Keep the hymnal open in front of you as we proceed; you’re going to need it.

This simple, brief Psalm 100 that Jim read this morning may seem like rather lean gruel to feed an entire sermon, but as we all prepare to sit down to a sumptuous feast this Thursday I’d like to remind us that there is as much meaning and power hidden beneath the lines of this psalm as there is hidden in our annual Thanksgiving dinners.  In fact, I intend to argue this morning that thanksgiving can change your life, not to mention the world.  It ain’t just a big dinner.

Psalm 100 is one of the most familiar of all the 150 of them.  Many of us cut our teeth on it in Sunday school.  But it has a fuller and richer background than most of us have ever considered.  It was a sort of liturgical hymn (or, actually two hymns stuck together) reserved for the occasion of the thank offering.  In some respects, it’s a relic of the first Thanksgiving – which did not happen when the pilgrims sat down with the Indians; it happened thousands of years ago.  The thank offering in ancient Israel was a special service of gratitude to the Lord that involved a great feast and offerings.  When all the worshipers approached the Temple for the service of thanksgiving and thank offerings it was a great, solemn procession.  And as they came to the gates of the Temple, a choir at the front of the procession would sing a hymn which consisted of the first three verses of this psalm. We’re going to be that choir this morning.  I’d like you to sing the first two verses of the hymn, “All People That on Earth Do Dwell” which is a rephrasing of this Psalm 100.

 

[The congregation sings verses 1&2]

 

Then, another choral group waiting at the temple gate would sing another hymn in response (which consists of verses 4 and 5 of the psalm).  We’re also going to be that choir this morning and sing together the last two verses of our hymn.

 

[The congregation sings verses 3&4]

 

Thank you for being our two choirs.  You can put your hymnals away now.

 

Additionally, this psalm is a kind of creed – a concise statement of the core affirmations of Judaism.  The elements of this creed are: The Lord is God (in other words, Yahweh is the ruler of the Universe), God is the creator of all that is, we (the Israelites) are God’s people, God is good, God’s kindness is eternal, and God’s faithfulness endures forever.  This is their shared religious faith in a nutshell.

So, get this picture: there is a great feast and celebration, and all the people join in a huge procession to the Temple, the choirs sing these words antiphonally, and every Israelite knows them by heart.  They are the essence of their faith, the great affirmations that bind them together as a people.  It’s like one enormous family coming together for a Thanksgiving dinner and finding common purpose and spirit in the joy of their shared heritage.

But you and I know that this blissful oneness is extraordinarily rare around our real Thanksgiving dinner tables.  Aunt Martha who loves to hear the sound of her own voice drones on about absolutely nothing while everyone is obliged to nod approvingly while glancing at the clock.  The in-laws who are on the opposite side of the political spectrum are all there because they have to be invited, but everyone trips over their own tongues trying to avoid any potential land mines of conversation topics.  Johnny shows up with a new girlfriend who, to mother’s absolute dismay, is covered in layers of Goth make-up.  And just when everyone seems to have their annoyances and frustrations in check, Sarah speaks up and asks about leaving after dinner to go see her friend, which sets dad off on a tirade about how she doesn’t respect the family traditions, Junior jumps in to her rescue, and all the sudden we’re off to the races.  Does any of this sound familiar?

Well, the blissful picture of that ancient thank offering celebration is also not entirely on target.  In fact, there was in ancient Israel a long standing dispute between the Levitical priests and the prophets.  There were even divisions among the priests about correct interpretation of the Torah, and its applications to daily life and worship.  We see those divisions still brewing in the time of Jesus, who was himself a bit of a renegade coming from a more liberal region and challenging the Jerusalem rabbinate.  You know about aunt Martha, and the in-laws, and Johnny, and Sarah, and Junior at the Thanksgiving table, so you know that those ancient priests and prophets and their followers did not leave their differences at home when they joined the procession to the Temple.

But here’s the thing.  They did join the procession; and they did bring their thank offerings, and they did sit down together at the great feast; and they did all hear these magnificent words sung by the choirs as they approached the holy gates.  It was a time to be thankful for the Lord’s blessings, and in that gratitude they found a strange kind of unity in the midst of their not insignificant differences.

Thanks-giving cannot make us all agree.  Being thankful cannot heal every rift.  But thankfulness can bring people together around the table.  And that’s not nothing.  If people who prayed to the Almighty using different names could nonetheless find common cause in their thankfulness, and if that table of thanksgiving were large enough, maybe we could get a lot of folks around it: Russians and Ukrainians, Palestinians and Israelis, Sunnis and Shias, American Christians and ISIL Islamists.  That may sound a little like “pie in the sky” but I tell you it may ultimately be the only way we finally save ourselves from mutual destruction.  If humanity is given enough time to grow up, we just may discover that in shared thankfulness there is not only this strange kind of unity, but there is a major shift in perspective, and there is abundant joy to be found.  And that joy can conquer tyrants and all their armies.

William Willimon writes about a friend of his who “was active in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.  He helped organize churches to protest against, to march against, to defy, and to attempt to overturn the unjust, racist laws.  ‘One of our most potent weapons,’ he said, ‘was joy.  The oppressors just can’t stand for the oppressed to be joyful.  By refusing to be miserable, we were refusing to let our oppressors define us.  We took charge of things.  We turned things around and demanded to be the final word on the situation.  Joy is a powerful protest against the forces of death and injustice.”  Willimon says, “So is thanksgiving.”¹

But the unity, the joy, and the enlarged perspective that grow out of thankful hearts is not only for the high and mighty, it’s for you and for me.  As all the characters in our family dramas gather ’round the turkey and dressing we have an opportunity.  It is the chance to test out the power of thanksgiving to change our lives – to find out if, indeed, being truly thankful together helps us to affirm common ties, injects into our lives a bit of joy, and causes us to see our points of view, peccadillos, and personality clashes in a whole different light.

There’s a great Fred Craddock story from the time when he was Professor of Preaching at Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  He was asked at the last minute to teach an adult Sunday school class.  Fred was a little reluctant because he didn’t have much time to prepare but the one who called him told Dr. Craddock that it was an easy lesson, the familiar parable of the Prodigal Son.  So Fred agreed to do it.  When the class started, Craddock read the parable from the King James Version of the Bible, right down to the place where the prodigal son came back home and the father came out to greet him.  But at that point Fred continued as if he were reading from the Bible, and said, “And the father said to his son, ‘How dare you show up here after all the shame you’ve brought on this family!  You’ve made your bed.  Now lie in it.  Don’t come back here again until you’ve gotten a haircut and a decent job.’”  Craddock stopped.  There was a long silence.  Finally, someone sitting in the back row said, “Well, that’s what he should have said.”²

You and I know how the story actually came out.  There were hugs and tears, and a great big, family dinner.  It all happened because the father was so filled with thankfulness that his son was home that he could not scold, complain, or even offer a brief sarcastic shot.  His world had been changed.  He couldn’t get past his joy.  The older brother, you may recall, couldn’t get past his bitterness.  He was unable to find that thankful heart that could have changed him.  So he sat on the stoop and pouted.  He missed out on the family dinner.  Thanks-giving changes everything.

Your Board of Trustees is initiating our annual stewardship campaign.  They’ve mailed out pledge cards for the coming year.  But perhaps this time could also be used as an opportunity, as Nowell and Mike did this morning, to share our stories of life in this church family, to discover your hopes and disappointments, and your joys and celebrations.  Today, following worship we are all invited to help decorate for the Christmas season. Linda Bevan is providing salad rolls as a special luncheon treat.  Maybe we could take the opportunity to give thanks – to give thanks for one another, thanks for our mutual dedication to the work of the kingdom, thanks for the church and its ministry and mission.  We might consider our salad rolls to be a kind of shared meal of thanks-giving.  I hope you will all come and join in the celebration. And I hope that spirit of joy and thankfulness will carry all the way to Thursday and beyond.  After all, it ain’t just a big dinner.

¹ William Willimon   Pulpit Resource, August16, 2009.

² This story has been retold and adapted over time.  What may be the original version is found in: The collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock, Westminster John Knox, 2011, p. 175.