Worship is from the etymology of the word, a work of the people. Work of the people gathered together in praising God. It’s important to say that, because it’s a way of our remembering that it’s not just the work of the preacher, but the good work of the people together. We come together to worship. It’s something we do together, a kind of an offering we lift up together before God, before God who gathers us. And gathers us always around the Word. The Word enriches us. It feeds us, and we go forward from worship back into the world.

 

And because the work is the work of the people, one of the things that a good preacher needs to be able to do is to know when to let the people lead and get out of the way. Sometimes the preacher should focus more on being seated and let other people lead.

 

Today feels like that kind of a day to me. It feels today like a day when the choir is leading in worship. And I, appropriately, am playing second chair. I won’t say second fiddle, but second chair anyhow. I want to lift up to you that I think that is a good thing. In fact, I think it is a biblical thing.

 

I think it comes out of the scriptures of Thanksgiving that we are reading today. I have taken several scriptures and tried to string together different scriptures that call us to thanksgiving. Whether it’s Psalm 65 (a rich psalm that has all of these agricultural images in it…) Thou crownest the year with thy bounty. A psalm that the Pilgrims read as they came to Thanksgiving, so their own accounts tell us.

 

Or whether it’s from Leviticus, the admonition out of the holiness code to the people… Take at least one day of the week. You shall have one day that shall be holy unto the Lord, and it shall be a day for thanksgiving, says Leviticus. That’s particularly what this day, this Sabbath, should be about. Giving thanks to the Lord.

 

Or whether it’s from the story of Hannah who, after a long journey of hard times, found herself blessed and gave thanks to the Lord. Again and again and again, the scriptures call us to thanks giving.

 

One of the things the scriptures teach us is that it is good to give thanks. And that’s the whole point of this sermon. I’m tempted to sit down right now. But I’m not quite there.

 

That’s the sermon, right there. It is good to give thanks. Not simply, it is appropriate. It is a right response in worship to give thanks, but also it is good for us. It nurtures our faith. It builds up our response as the people of God. It is appropriate for us to give thanks, and it is good for our immortal souls to give thanks. It helps us become further who God imagines that we can be.

 

One of the ways in which we find it good for us to give thanks is because it draws together into thanksgiving, which is why it’s appropriate on Thanksgiving Sunday for the choir to lead and for the preacher to be seated. And I’m getting there.

 

Because when the choir leads, then we have a clearer sense that somehow we are doing this together. That it’s a harmony. That it’s a chorus not just of the choir, but of all of the people of God who join their voices with Creation in lifting up thanksgiving.

 

It is good for us to give thanks because it draws us together into community. It knits us more closely together as a people in harmony. Some more in harmony than others. But in harmony, lifting up our voices of thanksgiving before God.

 

Here’s the point: It is good for us to give thanks.

 

Pat Miller, who teaches Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, says, “The psalms help us to see that when we are giving thanks, we are probably at that point closer to God’s design for us that at any other point, because indeed we join our voices with the whole work of Creation, which is lifting up thanks together. So that our voices are added with the music of the spheres, which also serve like the birds of the air or the gift of rain, all of these acts of God’s creation to give thanks to God together.”

 

In thanksgiving, we take a step closer to what God imagines us to be doing. It is good for us to live in an attitude of gratitude.

 

C.S. Lewis studied for a long time this question of why it is good for us to give thanks. He said he understood from the scriptures that we should, but he was trying to understand why. And then he went to hear a wonderful choir sing in concert once in London. At the end of their rousing performance, perhaps like you all singing the Haydn here today, at the end of the performance, he noticed something. Suddenly the audience was motivated to stand and burst forth into spontaneous applause. And after long, sustained applause, do you know what the choir did? They sang again! It was an encore. And their thanks led to more music. After they had given that further encore of music, do you know what the audience did? They applauded more. And Lewis said, How long will this go on?

 

In some way, the relationship becomes an engaging one. A gracious act leading to gratitude, leading to thanksgiving, leading to closer fellowship, leading to more graciousness, leading to the spiraling upward nature of our intimacy with God.

 

Observe this spiraling effect of our thanksgiving, which is hardwired deep into our souls, helping to confirm what the psalmist said, “This is why you were made.”

 

You can see it any time you see a grandmother pick up a new grandbaby. Or maybe when you saw William and Elizabeth pick up Will. If you watch her hold him for a moment, before too long, you’ll see her smile at him. She’s not going to be able to keep from it. Nor is any grandparent nor any other new parent. Nor any one of you, pretty much. Before very long, there is something within you that will be smiling at the face of that baby. I tell you, God made you that way!

 

What happens when you look at that baby and smile that way? The baby is going to smile back. At some point, the baby is going to lift up some kind of a smile in response to you. And in turn, what is that grandmother going to do? She is going to squeal. She is going to make a noise. She is going to say something to the grandfather watching the football game across the room, “Look! Look at this baby smile!” and she’ll squeal. What will the baby do in turn? The baby will squeal back and make a noise back, and up goes the spiraling relationship of intimacy as they are drawn together.

 

This is hardwired into who God has made you to be. We are made to give thanks.

 

Praise leads to gratitude, which leads to thanksgiving, which leads to the increased intimacy of fellowship with God. It is good for us to give thanks. It is appropriate and it also nurtures us. It is good for our immortal souls.

 

Finally, it is good for us to give thanks because it is a witness. It is a witness we make in the world to ourselves and to the world around us. It is a part of our evangelism. It is a part of our saying God is good, and God is worthy of giving thanks to. And this is the nature of our relationship with God. Our joining into harmony together, working in harmony, pointing towards God.

 

When I was in Haiti, I found a fellow who taught me something about thanksgiving. He was an old Haitian farmer. A lot of the people in Haiti are farmers, especially in the rural provinces. They have a hard life as a farmer. All the farms are small. He had a farm about the size of this sanctuary room. His farm, like almost all the other farms there in Mombin Crochu, was on the side of a hill. I mean it was at a steep angle. And it’s hard ground. It’s clay ground. Grey clay and red clay. You have to work at it hard with a hoe or a hatchet or a machete to break it up. He would get up (I saw him do this) from before sunrise in the morning and work with a hoe or a machete, turning up that ground trying to loosen it, until after the sun had set at night. It was such hard work, he had to tie himself to a tree with a rope around himself, to keep himself from falling off the side of the mountain while he worked the ground that way. That’s a hard life.

 

He came to the clinic one day to get some eyeglasses that you had sent him. The only way he could get eyeglasses. And when he put the eyeglasses on, I wish you could have seen his face when he could see again for the first time. I got to look at his fingers, and they were like gnarled roots. They were so tough and rugged. His face, his countenance, had the kind of appearance of one who had spent his life outside working in the elements. He wore a kind of a straw hat, a bowed hat. It looked more like a bowl than a farmer’s straw hat. And that he had on his head every time I saw him. I felt sorry for him.

 

On Thursday night, as we were preparing to leave the next day, I thought about these people and how hard their life was, and what they had to give thanks for. A group of them came to the hospital to thank us for being there, and he came with them. He was a part of a band that gathered. It was a primitive band, but they were making beautiful music.

 

He played the banjo. It was a homemade banjo. He had made it out of a box-gourd like thing. It had about three strings across it. And with those tough, gnarled fingers that were like tree roots, he could pluck that thing and start playing some Haitian tunes. I couldn’t tell the words, but they were singing thankful songs. They were happy. And they were lifting up gratitude not only for our being there, but for their life together and for, according to their lyrics as they sang their own music, for the way God had blessed them.

 

I came to the conclusion that Steve Martin was right. You just can’t play the banjo without being happy at some point, without giving thanks.

 

It was a lesson to me. A lesson about where thanksgiving comes from. Sometimes it’s easy to give thanks. Sometimes it’s hard.

 

Then we give thanks perhaps because there is someone near us who can’t. Part of why we lift up a witness of thanksgiving is because there may be someone near us who can’t speak the words that day. Who is in the middle of a Job day. Who can’t find it within their voice to say a word of thanks.

 

And then the community, on their behalf, lifts up thanksgiving whether it be with Haydn, or the piano, or the banjo, until the time comes when their voice comes back and they can add their harmony into the voice of creation that is giving thanks as well.

 

It is good to give thanks. It is not only appropriate and a part of the way God has made us, but it is good for our immortal souls. It is our witness in the world. It binds us together in community, and enables us to become more fully the people of God.

 

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2006