(An introduction and a sermon preached at the Wesley Foundation at UVA during today’s Thanksgiving celebration. Our scripture was Psalm 100.)
Four score and seventy years ago President Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address. It’s one of the most remembered and quoted speeches. Clocking in at a concise 272 words, it’s also one of the shortest. Lincoln was half wrong when he said, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” We remember his powerful words at least as well as we do the event of the battlefield at which he spoke.
For the 150th anniversary of his monumental and brief speech, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation issued a challenge to write something to remember Lincoln or merely in the spirit of his Address, by writing it in 272 words. Internet pastor circles picked this up and took it as a challenge to write sermons the same length. This is why tonight I bring you the 272-word sermon…
Giving thanks is the first prayer most of us learn. I’m so glad these are my parents…I love going to the park, thank you for this place…God is great, God is good, Let us thank God for our food. Giving thanks is a gateway prayer for all others.
Some days we forget, too busy for thank you. Some days our hearts are too broken to recognize what’s worth our gratitude.
That first prayer, so easily arrived on our lips, takes more work as we age.
So we gather at this table each week and pray together The Great Thanksgiving, reminding ourselves of the taste and texture of God’s good gifts. With open outstretched hands, we receive. We come as thankful guests, nourished by what we cannot provide for ourselves.
This is the context for all other gifts, tables, feasts. Jesus gathered with friends, took bread and wine, gave thanks to God, and fed them. Do this in remembrance of me, he said.
At this table and the one on Thursday. But also at O-Hill and even when there is no table. What we do here helps us to recognize where, when, and how to do it other places.
Until our thanksgiving is closer to those spontaneous childhood prayers – joyful, immediate, unedited.
I hope your feast is tasty and your family offers prayers and words of thanks together this week. I hope you recognize at that table, an image of this one. And I hope our feasting here helps you in every day to practice forming the words on your lips and in the deepest part of your heart: Thanks be to God!
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photo credit: © 2008 Tony Fischer, CC BY 2.0