As preached by Brother Luke
Holy Wisdom Church
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!
Back in the late 1950s and
early 1960s my family attended a Methodist church. It had a huge Cross at the
back of the sanctuary. The church was used by a Jewish congregation on
Saturday. They did not want to display that symbol during their service so they
hung a large cover over the cross. For Christians, the Cross is the central
symbol of the promise and cost of our salvation. Yet, for many Christians, the
promise is much more palatable than the cost.
When the pilgrims
celebrated the first Thanksgiving in this land in 1621 they could not know that
only a few years later their settlement and all its inhabitants would be wiped
out. We still remember and honor that celebration, but conveniently forget
about the cost that they later paid.
We don't want to think of
our Thanksgiving holiday as a time to give thanks for disasters. After all,
Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate the many wonderful blessings we have
received and hope to continue to receive. And this is good to do, even if we do
not do it as often as we might. But giving thanks for bad things, mishaps,
disappointments, tragedies, this is another story. St Paul says give thanks to
God for all things. [1 Thessalonians 5:18] That is a hard calling. This was the
theme of one session of a recent on-line class we took, taught by Fr Sergius
Halvorsen of St. Vladimir's Seminary. He called it radical thanksgiving.
The Eucharist we celebrate
and the communion we will receive today is the body and blood of Christ
"shed for you and for many." The Greek word eucharist means
thanksgiving. As communion, it is the ultimate symbol of the transformation of
something horrible into a blessing and a grace. Every time we receive communion
we are participating in a Eucharist, a thanksgiving celebration of the
destruction of the "last enemy," death, which opens the gates of the
kingdom of God for all who believe.
God has given us life
knowing that life includes both good and bad things. We are born and we die,
and in addition to our many joys, we have to traverse many interim deaths--the
pains, and disappointments of life--before the final one. But as Christ tells
us, he is with us in all things. All of our life comes from God and is in God's
hands.
We celebrate and enjoy the
good, the pleasant, the happy times but we also have to live through the bad
things, mishaps, disappointments, and tragedies. How do we transform these? How
is God a part of that? We look to Christ's life and teachings for the answer.
We see him transforming peoples' lives in healings, in praising and supporting
their faith, in constantly reaching out to help others and finally in freely
giving up his life on the cross for us. Even on the cross he forgave his
executioners and offered the kingdom to one of the thieves. He conformed to God's will.
At matins this
morning we sang a portion of the beautiful thanksgiving Akathist hymn written
in 1934, by a man in a Siberian prison who was soon to die. The title of the
Akathist? Glory to God for all things. He was facing death while thanking God.
In such a situation it would be perfectly natural and understandable to harbor
in one's heart the feelings of distrust, abandonment, despair, dismissal, pain,
and rejection. However, this prisoner transformed a situation of horror into a
life affirming experience by crafting a paean of praise to God for all things.
He brought to mind what is good to transform what is bad.
In this morning's
gospel Christ tells us not to worry. God provides everything we need. This is
true in the largest sense. The source of all goodness, the source of our very
life, is God. But when the hard times come, as they inevitably will, the thanks
we offer to God gives us the strength and support to transform us and these
trials as we go through them. To change our heart and our mind from despair,
anger, rage, and despondency to hope, perseverance, peace, and even joy in the
assurance that God is with us and we are in God's hands, to the end of time.
Glory be to Jesus Christ!
