Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. I hope and pray the day brings you time of joy, comfort and time with those who are special to you. I hope you have time to pause and give thanks for the blessings God has bestowed upon you and yours.  

Thanksgiving is a two-fold process – it is about being thankful for the gift, AND giving thanks to the giver! 

There is a special place in my heart for Thanksgiving, for my ancestor, John Howland, was on the Mayflower. In fact, he is best known in history books as the young man who was blown overboard during a storm while crossing the Atlantic. He was rescued by way of an anchor rope. Some say I inherited his coordination (or lack thereof).

When we think of the first Thanksgiving, we picture a celebration that is warm and cozy, with a lavish spread and over-indulgence as we know Thanksgiving to be today. But these images are not so true. After two months of confinement on the Mayflower, the pilgrims anticipated the balmy weather of Virginia, which they had been told to expect. However, already weakened from the voyage, they landed in a bitter winter storm in  December, 1620.  

They arrived in New England with only enough food to make it through the first winter. They planted a communal garden in the summer but the settlers didn't know how to plant Indian corn and the crop was small. In November of 1621, more pilgrims arrived without adequate provisions. Governor William Bradford was worried when he calculated that there was only enough food for six months if everyone took half their rations. 

After a second hard winter, another ship arrived in May of 1622, with seven more pilgrims and some letters, but no food! The food supply was almost gone and the people were starving. People began stealing from the community garden. The communal garden idea wasn't working. Another ship arrived later in 1622 with some food, but not much. The daily ration was down to a quarter-pound of bread a day.

Yet another winter passed, and in 1623, the settlers decided to parcel out the land to individual families and let the families tend their crops. When they planted their seeds, they were deeply concerned about the success of the gardens. Governor Bradford noted that they really meant it when the prayed for their daily bread! 

In the autumn of 1623, the harvest of the pilgrims private gardens was now a great success. In this spirit of deep gratitude to God, Governor Bradford declared a day of Thanksgiving. A time of Thanksgiving? Of the eighteen wives on the Mayflower, only five remained alive for that first Thanksgiving Day three years later, in November, 1623. The children fared a little better, but only because, in many cases, their mothers made the supreme sacrifice. Only one half of the ship's original roster survived to eat that first meal of Thanksgiving!

So, although we may picture a well-fed people, surrounding a festive, food-fare, it is better for us to recall that this first Thanksgiving Day was an act of praise and gratitude to God:

    For a little bread instead of none!

    For a slim hold on life in place of death!

    For a glimmer of hope in an otherwise uncertain future!

It was not what they hoped for, but God was with them, and they thanked God for all that was good.

And on that first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims placed on their plates five kernels of corn to remember the great suffering of the first settlers, the severe rationing that they suffered through. Yes, they remembered to say Thank You!

What are you thankful for? Do you find it difficult to give thanks in all circumstances?  I encourage you to pause, reflect, and rejoice in what blessings God gives you this day. When all is prepared, and you gather together with loved ones, take a moment, and say thanks. Thank God for all that he has given us. For all that is good is a gift from God!  

Peace - and Happy Thanksgiving!  

Pastor Charlie

Musical Medley

For this week's entry, some song selections from the acapella group, Straight No Chaser.  Lisa and I enjoyed their concert last weekend.  What is so wonderful about their music is their ability to work together to make one beautiful sound. Always looking for the sermon material in every day life, I am reminded of St. Paul's words to the Corinthians (this is from Eugene Peterson's transliteration, "The Message" - 1 Corinthians 12 - selected verses):

God’s various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God. He decides who gets what, and when.

You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) 

Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.

I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.

But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of.   The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.

We are gifted with different skills, abilities and talents that, when used in collaboration with others in the body of Christ, beautiful things can happen!

The group Straight No Chaser is made up of 10 guys who met at Indiana University and started a group while on campus back in the mid 90's. In 2008, a video of one of their Christmas songs went "viral" and a recording company picked them up. Now they tour quite a bit, and have some great songs with incredible harmony. What was fun to see in person was how much they seem to love what they are doing.  It shows through in their music.  

Here are some of my favorites.

And this is the video that has come to define the group.


Have a wonderful week!

Peace,
Pastor Charlie

Fellowship

There is nothing like taking time to sit down to visit with friends and loved ones. Unfortunately, we don't often find the time in our packed schedules to do that. I find it hard to put on my calendar time for fellowship, but when it happens, I find it to be a blessing beyond measure.

This past Sunday at Epiphany was Stewardship Sunday. This year, we introduced a new program called "New Consecration Sunday." Since we worship on Saturday too, we changed it to "Consecration Weekend." Pastor Steve Kimm from Peace Lutheran Church in Beavercreek preached and led us through the process of filling out our Estimate of Giving cards at the Far Hills campus, and I led the program at the Austin campus. Being a new program, I confess I was anxious about how the program would be received, what the response would be, and hopeful that all the pieces of the worship and celebration would come together as planned. I give thanks to God for a wonderful group of volunteers and staff members who stepped up to help out this past weekend. What a blessing they all are!

One of the key elements of this stewardship program is a celebration meal after each service. Well, a congregation that worships six times on a weekend makes this a logistics challenge (as someone once told me, we don't have problems, we have opportunities!). To make this happen, we had desserts available for the Saturday Night worshippers and breakfast/brunch available for the Sunday service attenders. Would we have enough food? Would the food be warm? Would there be room for everyone to sit? What about those coming to the last service - would they eat before the service? These are the questions that kept me up at night (I don't remember covering ANY of these questions in seminary!). Thanks to the army of volunteers and the Little Miami River Catering Company, I found that I had nothing to fear. We had plenty of food for Saturday Night and for Sunday Morning at BOTH campuses. Attendance was up, the food was delicious, and the response of the congregation toward giving for the coming year looks very positive.

All that was great. But the one aspect I overlooked is the importance of fellowship. With our worship schedule, as well as our own personal schedules, our time at church on a Saturday or Sunday is somewhat limited to worship and education times. Then we head out the door to the next item on the agenda. What I experienced this past weekend was the joy of fellowship. We took the time to sit down and share a meal together and to visit. No set agenda. No topic for discussion. Nothing but food and fellowship.

When I was done with worship and the breakfast at our Austin campus, I came up to the Far Hills campus to check on things. When I entered the gathering space, I saw people lingering after their meal visiting with one another, and enjoying the time and space. This was a good hour after the service they attended was over. How great to see the community taking time to be together. The comment I heard from so many was, "We need to do this more often." How true.  How true.

We are called to community. We are called to be the body of Christ.

Selected verses from Romans 12:

As in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function,  so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another... Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;  love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.  Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Thank God for the community of saints.  Thank God for fellowship. 

Peace,

Pastor Charlie

Autumn

This past weekend, we traveled north to Cleveland to see our children and celebrate our daughter's birthday. While it was a rainy, cold weekend on the lake, the colors of the trees and fields were breathtaking. God has an incredible array of colors that are on display this time of year. 

So I thought I would gather some pictures together and some music and put together a celebration of the season. The images used in this slideshow (outside of four or five that I took) come from the web site "The Big Picture." This site is hosted by the Boston Globe newspaper. Every week or so, the web site posts pictures focusing on a season, an event, a group of people or a place that is timely. The images are fantastic - I often find myself saying, "I wish I could take pictures like that." The web site address is: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/

The music for the video is a song by William Ackerman called "The Visiting."  I think the song fits the images well.

Thank God for the beauty of creation!

Peace,

Pastor Charlie