November 25, 2012, "Thanks Giving"

II Samuel 9 Mark:13:1-8 There are two vastly different starting points for a life of faith. One searching for what is spiritual in innocence, experiencing the world around us as new and grand, awesome and beyond reason. Exploring for ourselves what God's Plan might be for us. The other spiritual in thanksgiving after innocence was lost. When you are newly weds, it seems as though you are the discoverers of “love.” When you give birth to a baby, you witness a newborn's cuticles and eyelashes. When you have gone away to college and experienced life on your own, being presented with ideas and thoughts you never knew... Everything is new, all life is different, as you and loved ones journey to meet family, as together you prepare a holiday meal, as together you buy a tree creating memories for the first time. All of life, seems to have been created for you this day. And life is far bigger, more wonderful than ever you imagined life could be. This has been the theme of spirituality throughout recent years. After the turn of the Century, as we came to recognize the search to master and know, did not provide all of life's answers. Through a fresh examination of the Sacred Texts, trying ancient Spiritual Disciplines, acts of hospitality and discerning what is meant in Hospitality, The Church (and believers) have found new faith in mission and missiology. But there is another starting point, which has served believers for hundreds of years. We go to the shore, certain that while there are high tides and low, the waves only come so far. Building bricks, steel and concrete blocks are cemented together for all time. The World's Economies support one another in growth and expansion. We have seen hurricanes (not tornadoes) but hurricanes in Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio. Tsunamis have come ashore with a force that wipes away cities. We have seen steel twisted and concrete become rubble. The roller coaster of Atlantic City that turns our stomachs over was not the one made of steel and wood, but the wind and waves and fire and snow that have changed the coastline. “Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, there will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines, this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.” To have done without during economic depression, to have lost your job, your career and to survive... to have lived through the devastations of war, bombardment and killing... to have had Cancer or Mental Illness, any chronic disorder and come through to the other side, creates a feeling of thanksgiving, that inspires belief, that perhaps God has a plan for us more grand than that we would die and be buried. How do we live, when we have survived surviving? When our deepest fears and greatest accomplishments have been resolved, what then? The Puritans had fled generations of religious extermination. As at the decree of a Catholic Queen protestants were put to death; following which when a Protestant Monarch sat upon the throne, the Catholics were expelled. In hope of a new and different life, they spent everything they had to charter ships for the new world. But the voyage had been delayed and they arrived too late for planting. The Pilgrims endured the first harsh winter in this new world, with disease and starvation and cold, knowing only that they could not go back. The indigenous peoples showed them how to plant and hunt in this wilderness, and the first Thanksgiving was about giving thanks to God for hope beyond everything they had ever known. After the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, and WWI and WWII there was an attitude of thanksgiving, simply for being alive. Our Scriptures this week are about the practice of faith after everything we have lived through is done. Jesus' disciples asked “Tell us when this will be, what will be the sign when all things have been accomplished?” Our Old Testament Lesson names a time when The Promise has been fulfilled. The children of Abraham, those who crossed the Red Sea into the wilderness with Moses, those who crossed the Jordan to fight against the Canaanites, are settled in the land. After the time of the Judges when each one did what was right in his own mind, they came together as a nation under a king, who has now been replaced by a dynasty. David the Shepherd boy, anointed by Samuel, who slew Goliath, who fought against Saul's army to be the Beloved Shepherd King of Israel sits on the Throne in peace. After everything has been done, David asks so is there anyone of the House of Saul who is not dead? One of the servants of King Saul is found, who tells a story from the earliest days of this civil war. That decades ago when David's guerrilla warriors first attacked the capital city, King Saul and his son Jonathan were fighting on the battlefields. Surprised by an attack on the Palace in the night, the nursemaid took up the toddler child of Jonathan, grandchild to Saul, in his blankets. As she rushed to get out of the King's Palace she tripped, and the full weight of the woman landed upon the infant child crushing his tender legs. All these years, the last surviving member of the House of Saul has been in hiding. King David sends his troops to find this lame child of Jonathan, the grandchild of Saul called Mephibosheth. Imagine that you are the last surviving member of the family of the former King. All your life, there has been war and killing, while you have been in hiding. Your legs, both, were broken by those trying to hide you away. Your life, your whole identity has not been about the pride of being royalty, the power of being a grandson to the King, but instead your identity has been about “shame.” For all the decades of your life, you have lived in the shadows, hiding, broken, knowing that as the surviving member, there was a reward for killing you, your secret cannot be found out. Then one day, as you are hiding in a hovel, in a forgotten little town, there is panic in the streets. At the horizon, you can see the flags and standards of the Soldiers of the King. You have been found out. Your secret has been revealed. The battalion of soldiers has come for you. They pound upon the door, crying out your name, and you are overcome by the shame of your family, the shame of everything that has happened in your life. Unable to walk, you balance on your crutch, as the door bursts open, and the soldiers of your family's enemy grasp you by the shoulders and legs and carry you out into the sunshine. The troops carry you, not as a redeemed hero, but as the child of the vanquished. They carry you where you most do not want to go. They carry you to the Capital City, to the Palace where your legs had been broken, to the thrones where your father and his father had ruled, and now instead King David sits. But instead of an order of execution, the King of Israel pronounces a blessing upon you. Your image, as the broken child of the hated king, is broken. Your shame is destroyed, as King David describes that for ever more you and your descendants will have a place at the King's Table. The King will not eat, until you are there. What happens when all the accomplishments are over, when the battle is finally done? Then Shame is redeemed. Images of hatred and loss are destroyed. Peace is not about the absence of war, but about the redemption of the lost. What do we do when we have survived the Cancer we believed would kill us? We live life in giving thanks to God, taking on challenges we never believed possible, because we have survived survival, and life itself has become a blessing. This Thanksgiving, may we do more than cook a bird, than watch a parade and a game and gorge ourselves to sleep. Instead, at this time of giving thanks to God, may we redeem the shamed. May we search for the lost of our lives, destroying the images which divided and separated us. This Thanksgiving, may we give thanks to God that we have survived surviving and are able to give thanks.