| Rector’s
Sermon
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Sixteen years ago and a few weeks, this story of the ten lepers had enormous significance for me and my family. It was October 11, 1992, when your new Rector, mustache and all, ascended the chapel pulpit for his very first sermon at Christ Church. A lot has changed in those sixteen-plus years, not the least of which is that we don’t ascend that chapel pulpit on Sundays, but including the fact that the Rector no longer has a mustache — a few more gray hairs, but no mustache. What piqued my memory of that day was that this story of the ten lepers Jesus healed was the gospel appointed for that Sunday and was the basis for my sermon. For those who are interested in these sorts of things, up until this year the gospel for Thanksgiving Day has always been a section of the Beatitudes from Matthew, And yet, the ten lepers is all about gratitude which is, in essence, what we are all about on Thanksgiving Day, or at least what we ought to be about. And so sixteen years ago I said that I was grateful for three things: the welcome my family and our dog Biscuit and our fish Nelson had received when we moved in five days before, I was grateful for the parish’s rummage sale which had been held three days after we moved in and three days before my first sermon, and then finally that I was grateful for the ministry we had all been called to exercise: my ministry as your Rector and your ministry as parishioners here. I have to say that I am no less grateful today for those things than I was then. In fact, if it’s possible I am even more grateful for my family’s being a part of this family (sadly, however, minus Biscuit and Nelson) and how today the four of us are all here plus Elizabeth and Marnie’s guys, Mike and Matt, who have felt no less welcomed as a part not just of our family but of this extended family of Christ Church. I also remain no less grateful for the rummage sale and the outreach in which we take such deserved pride. At Christ Church outreach includes the rummage sale, but it also includes Christmas Angels, soup kitchen, Meals at Home, support of ministries in Mexico, the Sudan, and Kenya, Heifer project, and the New Trier food pantry. And, finally, I am no less grateful today than I was sixteen years ago for the common ministry in which we are engaged, a ministry that finds its focus and nourishment in what we do from Sunday to Sunday and days like this, our worship and our spiritual nurture in the Eucharist, a Greek word that means thanksgiving. What hasn’t changed in this interim is the connection between anxiety and gratitude or the need for a connection especially since if there is any other word to describe where we find ourselves on November 27, 2008, it’s the word anxiety. In my own life, just like yours, I’m worried about a 401K that’s tanking, I’m worried about the price of food, I’m worried about this year’s stewardship effort at Christ Church, I’m worried about the economy in general because everyone is worried about that. Anxiety has an especially chronic, pernicious quality that’s corrosive spiritually and emotionally and even physically when we are dealing with so much that’s beyond our personal control. And so I, for one, need Thanksgiving Day to pull me up short, to take a 2 x 4 of gratitude and apply it to my most anxious parts, and then to practice Thanksgiving every day beyond today because there is always something for which I can be grateful. Perhaps this practice of gratitude needs a particular callisthenic, an exercise that develops gratitude muscles, chipping away at those anxious edges and applying new layers of resiliency and focus. Its’ as if we need to talk ourselves through the gloom and doom of thinking all is lost, all is negative. I’m not suggesting that we pretend bad things don’t exist. Quite the opposite. They do exist and threaten to overwhelm us without God’s grace and spirit in whatever darkness of soul we find ourselves. Helen Keller certainly had every reason to be anxious and despondent when she understood fully what it meant to be blind and deaf at the same time. Can anyone imagine not just the limitations that imposed but the despair she had to have felt in coming to understand that everyone else enjoyed a sensual richness she would never have. But listen to what she had to say after a walk in the woods when her companion remarked that nothing exceptional had occurred. Helen said, And so, we need to practice gratitude to God, specifically to God, just as the one leper out of the ten who were healed turned back to find Jesus and do exactly that. It needs to be something we do every day, perhaps several times a day. It’s medicine for the soul, life-giving, hopeful. And so just to get us into the mood, let me offer a prayer composed by Dean Sam Candler of Atlanta: A PRAYER FOR THANKSGIVING 2008 Dear God of Grace and Glory, We have given you our anxiety in these last several months. The world is now full of our anxiety; we have infected the world with worry. We have a choice this week, and throughout our lives. When St. Paul told the Philippians not to worry about anything, It is impossible to be anxious and to be thankful at the same time. We offer thanks this day, thinking not about yesterday, We give thanks for grace, for your grace, AMEN. The Very Rev. Sam Candler |
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