This past Thanksgiving Day I was called on to do a Word and Communion at St. Scholastica Church. This is the homily I gave for that Word and Communion.
HOMILY FOR THANKSGIVING – 2017
Thanksgiving is a holiday in which we pause in our busy lives to be grateful. Grateful for the relationships we have in our lives, especially with those we love and befriend. Grateful for the blessings with which God has given us. Grateful for work and meaning to our lives. All of this part of our lives interacting with God.
For some, however, this day and the rest of the holiday season is a time of great sadness in which they find little to be grateful. This past Tuesday, I facilitated my separated and divorce support group. I ordered special made cupcakes for the meeting knowing that those cupcakes may be the only thing that is positive in their lives this week. Some families are so broken and so dysfunctional that they don’t even gather in fragments to eat a meal together. One participant will bring her blind brother to Perkins for a Thanksgiving meal. Many will sit home, alone, eating a turkey T.V. dinner.
This coming Tuesday I will co-facilitate a support group for families who have lost a loved one to suicide. Though the loss grows less as the year passes, they continue to mourn the absence of that loved one who has died, always wondering whether they could have done anything to help save their loved one’s life.
Oh, that all supplications to God for healing would have the happy ending of the 10 lepers in the gospel story today! And, yet the chronically ill, those acutely ill in hospitals will not have their illnesses so readily and completely cured.
The questions is how to give thanks when there seems to be little for which to be thankful? How do we give thanks when life appears empty of meaning, when our personal losses overwhelm all the good we have? How to give thanks to God in the midst of adversity and suffering?
St. Paul, in the second reading, answers this question. As we read many of the letters of St. Paul, he states the same answer to the questions I have just posed. St. Paul was arrested, whipped, schemed against, tortured, beaten, almost executed by stoning, and eventually would be jailed and martyred by the Romans. Yet, St. Paul always was giving thanks to God for all his suffering? Was he delusional? Was he serious? He was absolutely serious.
In the second reading, St. Paul writes to the Corinthians these words, “God is faithful, and by him you were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” That for which St. Paul is so grateful is the relationship he was with God through Jesus Christ. St. Paul knows that in the midst of his suffering, God is ever by his side, always in relationship with him. It is this intimate relationship with which St. Paul has with God that fills him with such great thankfulness and joy.
This is not an entirely new concept introduced by St. Paul. In Psalm 23, we hear the psalm writer express, “Though should walk through the Valley of Death, I fear no evil for you are at my side.” The writer of this psalm knows full well that his relationship with God will not prevent hardships in his life. However, the psalm writer knows that he will not have to endure those hardships alone, for God will be right by his side through all the suffering he may have to endure.
Back in 2002, I was involved in a head-on collision that altered my life. The severe injury to my left leg indirectly led to all the joint replacements I have had in recent years. However, the most life altering thing that occurred in that accident was the irreparable damage done to my right hand. Unbeknownst to me and the doctors, all the ligaments in the right hand had been shredded in the accident. Because the damage to the left leg was so severe, the surgeons had to focus on the leg. By the time they noticed the damage done to my right hand, they could do little to restore my hand to full function. The hand surgeon told me he could restore 60% of my hand, but not 100%. This was more devastating than the damage done to my left leg. I earned my living as a musician. I directed church music. I was a professional pianist, and, all of a sudden, my livelihood, the joy of playing music at a professional level ended. I was angry! This loss was too great.
Over time, while I continue to mourn the loss of being able to play well, (I can fake it, but it will never be as good as it once was), I began to give thanks to God for once having had the ability to play piano so very well. I give thanks to God for giving me a gift that not many people have. I once was able to play professionally and I am forever grateful to God for that wonderful time in my life.
Many of our stories at this Thanksgiving do not have the happy ending of the lepers in the gospel story. However, in spite of the losses we have in our lives, we are still able to give thanks for the relationships with others we once had. We are still able to give thanks to God for the gifts we once were able to use. And, most importantly, we give thanks for the relationship that we will always have with the God who created us and has loved us to death. As St. Paul states so very well today, “God is faithful, and by him you were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
