St. Paul's On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

Thanksgiving Day, 2007

Deuteronomy 8:1-3,6-10, 17-20

James 1:17-18, 21-27

THANKSGIVING

To Have Awareness is Necessary for Kingdom Seeking

God Is Validated In Neighborly Giving

I invite you to relax for a moment, get comfortable, put both feet on the floor, and be aware of your own body and mind for a moment, for which you can take very little credit. You were born with it, its combination of genes and cells and talents and infirmities. We can add or subtract to it to some degree, but it was basically given to us by God, and all we can really be is thankful. And whether we are thankful or not, it is still ours, still given to us and to the world by God.

I want you to turn around and look at all these other people who are here tonight, who came from many places and many conditions. You can take no credit for them either – and even our families have both aspects of ourselves and aspects of God in them.

Each one of us is an independent creation, treasured by God and given by God to everyone else. We can take no credit. We can only be thankful.

I want you to envision the world around you, the air we breathe, the trees we walk under, the ground we walk on. We can take no credit for any of that. The very globe we inhabit is made by God whether we know him or not or thank him or not. It is still there, gratis, for our use and our love – especially our love, I hope, these days. But love it or not it is given by God. Whether we thank him or not it is still given by God. Your neighbors are given by God; we each, individually, are given by God.

All given by God, whether we thank him or satisfy him or work for him or not. Such is his grace.

So much to be thankful for! Such is our thankfulness; that even thanks is not necessary to keep the love of God coming.

Wherever we look we see the Kingdom of God around us. All that is necessary to see it – is to look for it, is to open our eyes and be aware of it. Oh my, it is beautiful. You are beautiful. Each parish here tonight is beautiful.

St. Paul's is given the grace by its very name to know that the scales have fallen from our eyes so we can see the kingdom of God all around.

St. Mary's is given the grace by its very name to give birth to that which will save the world all around.

Trinity is given the grace by its very name to be the very dance of the Godhead.

All Saints is given the grace by its very name to understand itself as the people of God.

What a lot we have to be thankful for, my friends, if we simply become aware of ourselves, and what God has already done.

God has given us so many gifts, whether we know it or not. When we do know it, when we recognize it, when we recognize how like the swallows and the lilies we are clothed and fed and loved, and when we pass on these gifts to others, we are truly his children and we truly give thanks.

When we pass on these gifts, we become more truly ourselves.

When we love, and give of ourselves to neighbor and stranger and friend, we literally extend our selves into their lives by our gifts – those gifts God has given first to us, for which we can take no credit.

We can take no credit for receiving them from God. They came from him, not from us. But they also can come from us, to others. When we give them to others – as God gave them first to us – we can take all the credit in the world. Then we become doers of the word, not hearers only. Then we look in the mirror and not only admire what we could be when we have primped and combed and beautified ourselves. We go away and become the beautiful person we were meant to become – the beautiful child of God, imitating God.

Every week in the Eucharist at St. Paul's I recite these words of St. Augustine at the Breaking of the Bread, “See what you have become; Receive what you are; You are the Body of Christ.” God has made us into Christ, one body in this town and villages of Ossining, and Briarcliff Manor and Scarborough. We extend ourselves just a little outside ourselves tonight as we come together in one place to thank God for what he has done – in our lives, in our churches, and in the wide world all around - “a good land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills” as it says in Deuteronomy, of the Promised Land.

Now we go out into our land, a similar “land of flowing streams and springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills,” here beside the Hudson.

In our land and our world there are people in need of comfort or food or clothes or love. The land itself is in need of mercy. We can do that. We can give of ourselves. We can give of the gifts that God has given us.

We can get no credit for the gifts we have. God gave them to us, gratis. They are ours, whether we thank him or not. Such is his grace.

If we give them to others, using our lives to benefit theirs, then there is more Thanksgiving yet. But the Thanksgiving is not ours, this time, it is God's. For he is pleased. We are using his gifts for the bounty of others.

Amen