Good evening!  To paraphrase tonight’s lesson from Psalm 133, it is indeed good and pleasant to come together in unity to give thanks to God. 

Tomorrow we celebrate a uniquely American holiday.  Thanksgiving is full of honored traditions and predictable events.  For instance, we know that today is the busiest travel day of the year, as people board planes, trains and automobiles to be with their loved ones for the holiday.  We know that tomorrow morning, long-standing high school rivalries will be played out on the football field.  We know that Friday will be the biggest shopping day of the year as people buy gifts for Christmas and Chanukah. 

We know that tomorrow, in one form or another, nearly everyone in this country will sit down at home or at a restaurant, in prison or in an outreach mission, to eat a meal.  And we know that many people will pause to give thanks to God tomorrow -- perhaps for the only time during the year. 

 

For that’s what Thanksgiving is all about; it’s the day on which we are reminded to give thanks – and to direct our thanks to God, from whom comes – in the words of James, which we just heard – “Every good and perfect gift.”  But how do we make Thanksgiving more than just a stopover on the way from Halloween to Christmas?  How do we make thanksgiving not just a day on the calendar, but a way of life, a life lived in praise to God?

 

Writer and theologian Frederick Buechner suggests that “We learn to praise God not by paying compliments but by paying attention.”[1]  In order to offer praise to God for God’s blessings, we first have to become aware of how God has blessed us.  We have to pay attention.

 

This is what Moses is telling the ancient Hebrews in our reading from Deuteronomy.  As they are about to enter the Promised Land, he entreats them to "Remember all the ways in which God has led you these forty years in the wilderness.  Your clothing did not wear out and your foot did not swell these forty years."  In other words, were you paying attention?

 

The writer of Psalm 78 has paid attention; the psalmist remembers how God delivered the Israelites with these words: “He divided the sea and led them through; he made the water stand firm like a wall… he brought streams out of a rocky crag and made waters flow down like rivers.”

In Judaism and Christianity, the Psalms are the vocabulary of thanksgiving, of appreciation, of paying attention.  In that sacred prayer book, we find the spectrum of human emotion; it’s all there – doubt and faith, and grief and hope, as well as praise and thanksgiving.  Listen again to these words from Psalm 95: “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord… Let us come before him with thanksgiving… In his hand are the depths of the earth, the mountain peaks belong to him, the sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.”  In this prayerful poem of praise, the psalmist is paying attention – paying attention to the wonders of God’s creation.

 

Like the Israelites before them, the Pilgrims ventured forth to a new land, and they were undoubtedly filled with uncertainty.  Perhaps their only assurance was knowing that God was going with them.  But they also brought with them their attention.  That first winter in Plymouth almost destroyed their colony; only 50 of the original 103 lived through it, and the survivors were weak and sickly.  But they received help from the Wampanoags.  One of them, Squanto, had learned some English from earlier visitors, and he helped them survive by showing them how to plant and tend corn.  It was the Indians and the Indian corn that saved them that first year, and the Pilgrims knew it.  And so they paused in the midst of their hardship for a feast to express their gratitude to God and to the Indians who saved them.

 

And what about us?  Do we praise God by paying attention?

 

A Rabbi recalls a Passover Seder with a medical student who had spent the better part of the previous year in the hospital with complications due to Crohn’s disease.  The Rabbi writes that the student “had had multiple surgeries.  His life was always uncertain.  He couldn’t [make] plan[s] [for the future]… Every other one of us at the [meal] was in relatively good health at the time.  When we went around the table, each offering something we were [thank]ful for, this man said he was grateful for his health.  None of the rest of us had had to pay attention to our health, and so none of the rest of us expressed gratitude for [it].”[2] 

 

Are we paying attention?  True praise must first be observant.  But it’s hard to be aware of all that is around us when our culture beckons us to activities which distract us or turn us inward.  If yesterday’s launch of the new X-box wasn’t enough, last week, I heard on the news a warning to T riders: don’t get too absorbed listening to your iPods because it will make you an easy target for muggers.  Our inattention not only keeps us from being grateful, it can be dangerous.

 

From Baytown, Texas comes this story.[3]  A woman named Linda Estrada was called to the hospital to identify the body of her husband.  Jose had gone for a jog that day and, coincidentally, another jogger along the same trail collapsed and died of a heart attack.  Through an unfortunate mix-up, Linda was summoned to the hospital to identify the body of her husband.  A sheet covered the jogger’s remains, a tube snaked from his mouth, and his eyes were taped shut.  In her distraught condition, Linda just assumed the body was that of her husband.  She signed the death certificate and joined other grieving family members in the hospital waiting room.  Meanwhile, Jose – alive and well – finished his jog and drove home.  When he heard the news of his purported demise, he raced to the hospital and, to the astonishment of his brokenhearted family, strode into the waiting room.  Linda clung to him and laughed and cried – and gave thanks to God that Jose was alive.  Now that got her attention!  She was never so grateful for her husband as when she thought she had lost him.

 

The ability to pay attention does not necessarily happen all at once.  For a long time, many of us have been wearing symbolic blinders and listening to our metaphorical iPods – or Walkmans or headphones, depending on your age.  Unless we’ve had an overwhelming experience like Linda Estrada, it is hard to change our ways overnight.  But we can train ourselves to be more observant and aware.  We can learn to pay attention, and once we become aware of all that God has given us, of all our blessings, then we can choose to be more grateful.

 

The late priest and writer Henri Nouwen wrote:  “The choice for gratitude rarely comes without some real effort.  But each time I make it, the next choice is a little easier, a little freer, a little less self-conscious.  Because every gift I acknowledge reveals another and another until, finally, even the most normal, obvious, and seemingly mundane event or encounter proves to be filled with grace.”[4]

 

A life of thanksgiving is built through awareness.  The more we are aware, the more we begin to understand how vast our blessings really are, and how beautiful and amazing God’s creation is.  From attention comes gratitude, and from gratitude comes joy.

 

But I know that not all of you are experiencing joy this holiday.  Indeed, this has been a difficult year for people around the world – the Southeast Asian tsunami, the hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, the earthquake in Pakistan, the war in Iraq which has now claimed more than 2000 lives, and the on-going threat of terrorism.  Along with our private griefs and losses, it may be difficult for some of us to get our hearts and minds into an attitude of gratitude. 

 

But in the midst of our heartaches and sorrows, can we take a moment to say thank you, God, for that which we do have?  Thank you, God, for food and shelter; thank you for love and friendship; thank you for life itself; thank you for bringing us through the dark nights of our soul; thank you for sustaining us even when we walk through the valley of the shadow; thank you, God, for letting nothing separate us from your love.

 

And so, what do you have to be grateful for, right here, right this minute?  I invite you to look around this sanctuary; do you see people in your lives for whom you are thankful?  I know I do – I see my clergy colleagues, and I am grateful to God for their fellowship and support.  I also see people from the First Congregational Church, and I give thanks to God for my church family.  I see Peter, my husband of almost 10 months, and honey, I thank God every day for you!  I hope we can all look around and be thankful for the other members of God’s family who are here tonight, for our friends and family, and for all the ways God has blessed us.

 

And so, tomorrow, begin your Thanksgiving celebration by taking off your blinders and headphones; unshackle yourself from all that prevents you from seeing and hearing; liberate yourself from the things that distract you from being aware of all of God’s blessings in your life.  Tomorrow and every day, give God your thanks by, first, giving God your attention.  Amen.

 

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