Thanksgiving Reflections

(Isaiah 65:17-25)

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.  But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating, for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight.  I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it or the cry of distress.  No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime, for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat, for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.  They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord—and their descendants as well.  Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.  The wolf and the lamb shall feed together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, but the serpent—its food shall be dust!  They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

First, a disclaimer: I preached this sermon (or something similar) in 2007.  I often check out my old sermons, not because I think they are so great, but because they are in my voice and are authentic to me.  So here goes:

Now, the scripture text that you just heard is a beautiful thing.  In it, Isaiah gives us hope on a level that is rarely reached in any literature.  I think it’s a lovely way for us to begin this Thanksgiving week.

This is the prophet’s vision of the new creation: God’s dream for the way that life can be.  Isaiah tells us about Jerusalem as a joy, its people as a delight, there will be no more weeping, everyone will be long-lived, there will be homes for all people, food for everyone, in fact, we’ll grow our own food and share, and finally, the wolf and the lamb shall feed together.  They (the humans and all other creatures) shall not hurt or destroy anything in all God’s holy mountain. 

In the spirit of this wonderful text, this seemingly too-good-to-be-true world, I offer you a couple of Thanksgiving stories as a reminder that “It could happen!”

I was part of a book club with my clergy colleagues when I lived in Wellington, and one of our members told us a remarkable story during one November’s meeting.

It was in the years before our storyteller Doug had answered his mid-life call to ministry.  As Thanksgiving approached that year, he was thinking that he wanted his family to do something different.  He wanted to go somewhere and help people who needed them.  He kept it to himself because he expected resistance from his wife and kids.  He anticipated that they would insist on keeping their wonderful traditions with the meal they always shared with family sitting all around the table. 

He was amazed when his wife took him aside and said, “I’ve been thinking that our family needs to help someone this Thanksgiving.”  That confirmed it.  Now, the hard part would be letting the kids know.  They ran into the resistance they had expected, but the parents had decided and were firm about it.  It helped that some friends in the church with kids the ages of theirs had decided they, too, would be doing this.

Now, the task was to find where they were to go.  Doug talked with his pastor who referred him to the United Methodist Committee on Relief who sent him to a pastor in Illinois who was coordinating help after major floods had taken place along the Mississippi River.

They were instructed to come to this pastor’s little church in Illinois near the River.  They were to arrive on Wednesday night and sleep there, and then would be given their instructions and what they would need.  They set out on that day before Thanksgiving and got there in time to throw out their sleeping bags and eat the takeout they had grabbed on the way into town.  The pastor met them and got them set up for the next day.  They slept as well as folks do on cots in an unfamiliar setting.

Their assignment the next day was to help an older couple whose home had been completely flooded.  The house was slowly being rehabbed, and it was time to put up the dry wall.  Though this crew didn’t have many skills, they did know how to nail up dry wall. 

They had been told that the old couple may or may not come to greet them while they were there.  It turned out that they did.  The woman came in to give them some cookies, though her husband had stayed outside.  She told Doug that the old gentleman just could not believe that these people were actually giving up their Thanksgiving in order to help them, and he felt, well, embarrassed. 

So it was going on 7 when they finished and cleaned up and headed back to the church.  They had purchased some things to make sandwiches for their dinner.  Doug and his wife looked at each other when they got on the road.  They knew their kids were thinking about the relatives and the meal they had missed and–about home.  Doug admitted that he felt sad himself.

When they arrived at church, the lights were all on, and there were lots of cars around the building.  Doug, then, remembered that the large family who owned all the farmland around the church were scheduled to have their Thanksgiving meal at the little church because they didn’t have enough room at their houses.  He was thinking, “Oh, they’re still here.  We’ve come back too early.” 

When they dragged in, all dirty and tired, they were greeted by a bunch of people and told that the family had waited to eat until they arrived and that, of course, Doug and his family and friends were to join them for their Thanksgiving feast.  They washed up, joined the folks in the fellowship hall, and the food was blessed.   This family had planned that they would sit with the workers.  Every other seat was saved for their new friends.  They were welcomed as their own.

Yes, there are folks who give themselves in the way that Doug and his family did.  And there are people who are as hospitable as the family in the church.  This is not a made-up story.  It’s about people like you and me.

My second story comes from a book that my book club had read many years ago.  It’s called The Language of God, a Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins.  I tried to find this book on my bookshelf this week, but wouldn’t you know, it was one of those that I gave away when I moved!  Collins was the leader of the International Human Genome Project.  This group had labored for more than a decade before the summer of the new millennium when they presented the first draft of their work, that is, mapping the DNA of our species, the hereditary code of life.  To give you an idea of the enormity of this task, understand that their result used a four letter code, and a live reading of it at a rate of 3 letters per second would take 31 years of full 24 hour days.

President Clinton, when honoring those on the team, said this, “Today we are learning the language in which God created life.  We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.”

Collins, in his book, tells us how, as a scientist, he came to belief.  He closes the chapter entitled “Truth Seekers” with these words, “Let us seek together to reclaim the solid ground of an intellectually and spiritually satisfying synthesis of ALL great truths.”  …As I recall, this book is a good read.  The thing I want to share with you today is a story Collins tells that, when he was in a time of struggling, brought him back home to faith.

Dr. Collins, a physician, had traveled to Nigeria in the summer of 1989 to volunteer in a small mission hospital in order to provide an opportunity for the missionary physicians there -to attend their annual conference and recharge their spiritual and physical batteries.

The conditions he discovered there were worse than he had anticipated.  Of course, all medicine in America, even then, was quite technologically dependent, and he knew it would be different in Nigeria, but, even then, he was appalled.  He found an environment that was completely unregulated and a health care system that was, well, primitive.  Still, he had hoped to make a significant difference in the lives of the many he expected to care for.

Once there, he was overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems, the constant stream of patients with diseases he had rarely, if ever, seen.  He was frustrated by the lack of lab and X-ray support and began to wonder why he had ever thought this trip was a good idea.

One afternoon a young farmer was brought in by his family with progressive weakness and massive swelling of his legs.  Taking his pulse, Dr. Collins was startled to note that it essentially disappeared every time the man took a breath.  Though he had not ever seen this classic sign, he knew it meant that the man had accumulated a large amount of fluid in the sac around his heart, and it would soon take his life.

The cause was undoubtedly tuberculosis, but the TB drugs would not act quickly enough to save his life.  The only chance to save him was to perform a highly risky procedure of drawing out the fluid.  When this was done in the US, it was by a highly trained cardiologist who was guided by an ultrasound machine in order to avoid cutting the heart and causing immediate death.

When he explained this dangerous situation to the farmer, the young man calmly urged Dr. Collins to proceed in spite of the risk.  Here’s the story in his words: “With my heart in my mouth and a prayer on my lips, I inserted a large needle just under his sternum and aimed for his left shoulder, all the while fearing that perhaps I had made the wrong diagnosis, in which case I was almost certainly going to kill him.”

“I didn’t have to wait long.  The rush of dark red fluid in my syringe initially made me panic, fearful that I might have entered the heart chamber, but it soon became apparent that this was not normal heart’s blood, but the fluid around his heart….  The young man’s response was dramatic.  [His pulse normalized almost at once] and during the next 24 hours the swelling rapidly improved.”

At first Dr. Collins felt elated, then he realized he had only made a small dent in this person’s problems.  Who knew if this young man would even have access to the TB drugs or if he would suffer a recurrence of the symptoms or if some other disease would take him.  The chances for a long life for his patient, were poor at best.

Dr. Collins tells the story: “With those discouraging thoughts in my head, I approached his bedside the next morning, finding him reading his Bible.  He looked at me quizzically, and asked whether I had worked at the hospital for a long time.  I admitted that I was new, feeling somewhat irritated and embarrassed that it had been so easy for him to figure me out.  But then this young Nigerian farmer, just about as different from me in culture, experience and ancestry as any two humans could be, spoke the words that will forever be emblazoned in my mind: ‘I get the sense you are wondering why you came here,’ he said.  ‘I have an answer for you.  You came here for one reason.  You came here for me.’”

This fine American physician began to understand what it means to be in harmony with God’s will.  It is humbling to realize that sometimes we are not in the world to change the whole world (although, ironically, Dr. Collins’ genome work would do this); we may not be here to make an impact on millions of people, but, rather, when one person’s life is changed because of our presence in it, it is enough.  When we seek God’s will with loving intention, it is, in Dr. Collins’ words, “the sweetest joy that one can experience.”  And we may find our purpose for that moment.  It probably will not be a huge, grandiose thing, but, rather, the simple desire to help one person, to do good, to find goodness in our hearts.

These stories are glimpses of the new heaven and the new earth that Isaiah lifts before us today.  They give me hope that the wolf really can feed with the lamb and that it is possible for human beings to cease hurting and destroying each other and our earth.  …Wouldn’t that be something?  I hope you hear this as a small ray of hope in this Thanksgiving season….  Amen.