Thanks-Living
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Sermon Given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
November 23, 2014
Why is it human beings so often cling to lives of bondage? What is it about freedom that makes us want to run the other way? I’ve often asked this question of myself. Why did I cling so tightly to a straight identity for so long? Why did I initially resist my call to ministry so vehemently?
Fear would seem to the be the most obvious reason. Fear that arises from all the how? who? when? and what ifs? that flood the mind when the heart begins press to against its bonds. Fear that isn’t entirely without justification. For there are legitimate fears associated with choices and decisions like coming out as gay or leaving one career to pursue another just as there are for countless other decisions or situations we encounter in our lives related to our relationships, addictions, finances, illness, even religious faith and politics. But it is not fear alone, in my experience that keeps people bound. It is that, “Liberation is costly.” A truth expressed in our responsive reading this morning.
This truth hit the ancient Israelites hard according to the story of the Exodus in the Hebrew scriptures. Initially joyous as they began their journey out of bondage bondage in Egypt, they soon found themselves faced with some of its less joyful realities. There’s a lot of work that comes with liberation. No longer were the basic needs of shelter, food and drink provided to them as before. There was a lot they needed to work through, figure out, and adjust to. The wilderness is like that. It tests our capacity to endure liberation. No one knows freedom who hasn’t journeyed in the wilderness. The cost of liberation is having to journey through the wilderness and it is fear of making this journey that keeps people in whatever bondage they are living.
The scriptures tell us the Israelites “grumbled” as they journeyed toward the promised land. Many wanted to return to their old life in bondage, which while bitter, was nonetheless predictable and familiar. Yet, through triumph and trials, they pressed on and learned to bear the cost of freedom and reap its reward.
Many have drawn parallels between the experience of the Israelites in the wilderness as told in the Hebrew Scriptures and the story of the Pilgrims who established the first official Thanksgiving to God at Plymouth Colony in 1623. Its not hard to see why. The people we today know as the pilgrims began as a band of roughly a hundred people, a third of whom were members of a persecuted Puritan group known as the English Separatist Church.
In 1620 they left what was then for Europeans the known civilized, even if oppressive, world. They journeyed across the ocean and quite literally entered the wilderness of the North American landscape. It couldn’t have been easy emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Indeed, we know it wasn’t. More than half of them perished in the first year. Surely, the cost of liberation weighed heavily on their hearts and minds. The temptation to return to England must have arisen in most, if not all of them from time to time even as they celebrated what has come down to us as the first thanksgiving day celebration in our nation’s history. A celebration which, according to Pilgrim Edward Winslow, took place in 1621, two years before the establishment of the official holiday. Conspicuously absent from Winslow’s first hand account of that first unofficial thanksgiving in 1621, as Jane Rzepka reminds us, is any mention of giving thanks.
This discovery at first may seem odd. But is it really in light of what we ourselves know or have experienced as the cost of liberation in our own lives?
The noted art historian Johannes A. Gaertner wrote, “To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch heaven.”
So many of us are used to thinking of gratitude as something we express with words or an action we take, but Gaertner raises this idea of living gratitude. When we speak or enact gratitude we do so in response to something we have already received. When we live gratitude we are not responding to something that’s already happened, but rather manifesting deep and profound faith as life in the wilderness unfolds before us, faith beyond conditions, faith beyond fear, faith beyond certainty.
The first thanksgiving it would seem was really more a celebration rooted in living gratitude, which I call thanks-living. The celebrants of the first thanksgiving still had much time in the wilderness ahead of them. This might explain why the expression or act of giving thanks at Thanksgiving came later. As Rzepka observes, “It’s only later, looking back, that we understand the gravity or our harsh winters, the fragility of daily life, the preciousness of hopes for years to come. We get through it, we celebrate, and then, finally, the thanksgiving comes.”
That day the Pilgrims first set aside to eat, drink, and be merry in the face of all the hardship they experienced was an expression of thanks-living, of the faith that helped them carry on in the wilderness, to bear the cost of liberation. In time, the place of entry into the wilderness faded from view behind them and they could then look back, see and appreciate how far they’d come. The perspective afforded by the passage of time and experience in the wilderness would bring with it not only celebration, but the giving of thanks. Thanks not only for the making it through, but for the journey itself.
The great spiritual teacher Henri Nouwen said, “We are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all (the joy and the sorrow) that has brought us to the present moment.” The story of that first Thanksgiving lends weight to Nouwen’s assertion.
Every one of us will be called out of some form of bondage and into the wilderness during our lives. Most of us will find ourselves frequent travelers upon its difficult terrain. There we will find our faith, regardless of form or in whom or what it is placed, challenged. We will be tempted to return to the familiarity of our bondage and no one ought judge us if we do. We can always try again.
But if we press on, we will learn bearing the cost of liberation requires thanks-living, of allowing the faith we mustered to enter the wilderness to be refined and reshaped, to become detached from certainty, desired outcomes, or empirical justification, and emerge open to life as it comes to us. This doesn’t mean we will suddenly be able to joyfully or patiently bear every adversity we encounter. Challenging events, people, and circumstances will continue to exist. That will not change. But we will. Thanks-living allows us to live differently, it helps us push through fear that we might live into and engage life as it unfolds before us. It helps us to resist the temptation to run away or pretend what is before us doesn’t exist.
Earlier I mentioned two significant events in my own life in which I was called into the wilderness, coming out as a gay man and answering my call to ministry. Being gay had always felt like having some sort of mark or target on my back. As long as I was closeted, it remained hidden, though I was always fearful others would discover it. Coming out meant willfully displaying that mark so to speak.
In the wilderness I learned to let go of my habit of praying for that mark to go away and began thanks-living, to have faith beyond fear, faith manifest by living with that mark in full view and too bad if others didn’t like or approve of it. It wasn’t an easy process and there are definite risks to being out even today. Its been nearly twenty years now since I came out...long enough to look back and give thanks for having made the journey. I am a much healthier person emotionally and spiritually than I was before.
My call to ministry landed me another wilderness experience and let me tell you, there were grumblings. This one really messed with my head inspiring daily eruptions of how’s and what if’s that led me to initially condition my willingness to even entertain this whole idea of ministry on being able to have a clear view of the the entire journey start to finish.
When I presented my spiritual director with these conditions, he laughed at me and from then on I began to slowly let go of my need to know every detail of the journey and began thanks-living, to proceed in faith without certainty, faith manifest by accepting opportunities to face fears and potential failure. The road behind me is not as long with this one, but when I do pause and look back, I am beyond grateful.
This morning we’ve explore several stories of people’s journey through the wilderness....the ancient Israelites Exodus from Egypt... Henry’s Hike to Fitchburg as told and visualized by children and adults in our church family...the Pilgrim’s journey to what was for them a new world...and my two examples from my own life. Each journeys that involved risk, required faith manifest through thanks-living, and in the end, inspired giving thanks.
In a few short days, Thanksgiving will be here and we will gather in numbers great and small, alone or with family or friends. And we will pause to give thanks. Before that day comes I invite you to consider your thanks-living stories. Those times you were called into the wilderness, bore the cost of liberation, and from which you emerged able to look back and give thanks.
Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanks-living.
Amen and Blessed Be.
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Sermon Given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
November 23, 2014
Why is it human beings so often cling to lives of bondage? What is it about freedom that makes us want to run the other way? I’ve often asked this question of myself. Why did I cling so tightly to a straight identity for so long? Why did I initially resist my call to ministry so vehemently?
Fear would seem to the be the most obvious reason. Fear that arises from all the how? who? when? and what ifs? that flood the mind when the heart begins press to against its bonds. Fear that isn’t entirely without justification. For there are legitimate fears associated with choices and decisions like coming out as gay or leaving one career to pursue another just as there are for countless other decisions or situations we encounter in our lives related to our relationships, addictions, finances, illness, even religious faith and politics. But it is not fear alone, in my experience that keeps people bound. It is that, “Liberation is costly.” A truth expressed in our responsive reading this morning.
This truth hit the ancient Israelites hard according to the story of the Exodus in the Hebrew scriptures. Initially joyous as they began their journey out of bondage bondage in Egypt, they soon found themselves faced with some of its less joyful realities. There’s a lot of work that comes with liberation. No longer were the basic needs of shelter, food and drink provided to them as before. There was a lot they needed to work through, figure out, and adjust to. The wilderness is like that. It tests our capacity to endure liberation. No one knows freedom who hasn’t journeyed in the wilderness. The cost of liberation is having to journey through the wilderness and it is fear of making this journey that keeps people in whatever bondage they are living.
The scriptures tell us the Israelites “grumbled” as they journeyed toward the promised land. Many wanted to return to their old life in bondage, which while bitter, was nonetheless predictable and familiar. Yet, through triumph and trials, they pressed on and learned to bear the cost of freedom and reap its reward.
Many have drawn parallels between the experience of the Israelites in the wilderness as told in the Hebrew Scriptures and the story of the Pilgrims who established the first official Thanksgiving to God at Plymouth Colony in 1623. Its not hard to see why. The people we today know as the pilgrims began as a band of roughly a hundred people, a third of whom were members of a persecuted Puritan group known as the English Separatist Church.
In 1620 they left what was then for Europeans the known civilized, even if oppressive, world. They journeyed across the ocean and quite literally entered the wilderness of the North American landscape. It couldn’t have been easy emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Indeed, we know it wasn’t. More than half of them perished in the first year. Surely, the cost of liberation weighed heavily on their hearts and minds. The temptation to return to England must have arisen in most, if not all of them from time to time even as they celebrated what has come down to us as the first thanksgiving day celebration in our nation’s history. A celebration which, according to Pilgrim Edward Winslow, took place in 1621, two years before the establishment of the official holiday. Conspicuously absent from Winslow’s first hand account of that first unofficial thanksgiving in 1621, as Jane Rzepka reminds us, is any mention of giving thanks.
This discovery at first may seem odd. But is it really in light of what we ourselves know or have experienced as the cost of liberation in our own lives?
The noted art historian Johannes A. Gaertner wrote, “To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch heaven.”
So many of us are used to thinking of gratitude as something we express with words or an action we take, but Gaertner raises this idea of living gratitude. When we speak or enact gratitude we do so in response to something we have already received. When we live gratitude we are not responding to something that’s already happened, but rather manifesting deep and profound faith as life in the wilderness unfolds before us, faith beyond conditions, faith beyond fear, faith beyond certainty.
The first thanksgiving it would seem was really more a celebration rooted in living gratitude, which I call thanks-living. The celebrants of the first thanksgiving still had much time in the wilderness ahead of them. This might explain why the expression or act of giving thanks at Thanksgiving came later. As Rzepka observes, “It’s only later, looking back, that we understand the gravity or our harsh winters, the fragility of daily life, the preciousness of hopes for years to come. We get through it, we celebrate, and then, finally, the thanksgiving comes.”
That day the Pilgrims first set aside to eat, drink, and be merry in the face of all the hardship they experienced was an expression of thanks-living, of the faith that helped them carry on in the wilderness, to bear the cost of liberation. In time, the place of entry into the wilderness faded from view behind them and they could then look back, see and appreciate how far they’d come. The perspective afforded by the passage of time and experience in the wilderness would bring with it not only celebration, but the giving of thanks. Thanks not only for the making it through, but for the journey itself.
The great spiritual teacher Henri Nouwen said, “We are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all (the joy and the sorrow) that has brought us to the present moment.” The story of that first Thanksgiving lends weight to Nouwen’s assertion.
Every one of us will be called out of some form of bondage and into the wilderness during our lives. Most of us will find ourselves frequent travelers upon its difficult terrain. There we will find our faith, regardless of form or in whom or what it is placed, challenged. We will be tempted to return to the familiarity of our bondage and no one ought judge us if we do. We can always try again.
But if we press on, we will learn bearing the cost of liberation requires thanks-living, of allowing the faith we mustered to enter the wilderness to be refined and reshaped, to become detached from certainty, desired outcomes, or empirical justification, and emerge open to life as it comes to us. This doesn’t mean we will suddenly be able to joyfully or patiently bear every adversity we encounter. Challenging events, people, and circumstances will continue to exist. That will not change. But we will. Thanks-living allows us to live differently, it helps us push through fear that we might live into and engage life as it unfolds before us. It helps us to resist the temptation to run away or pretend what is before us doesn’t exist.
Earlier I mentioned two significant events in my own life in which I was called into the wilderness, coming out as a gay man and answering my call to ministry. Being gay had always felt like having some sort of mark or target on my back. As long as I was closeted, it remained hidden, though I was always fearful others would discover it. Coming out meant willfully displaying that mark so to speak.
In the wilderness I learned to let go of my habit of praying for that mark to go away and began thanks-living, to have faith beyond fear, faith manifest by living with that mark in full view and too bad if others didn’t like or approve of it. It wasn’t an easy process and there are definite risks to being out even today. Its been nearly twenty years now since I came out...long enough to look back and give thanks for having made the journey. I am a much healthier person emotionally and spiritually than I was before.
My call to ministry landed me another wilderness experience and let me tell you, there were grumblings. This one really messed with my head inspiring daily eruptions of how’s and what if’s that led me to initially condition my willingness to even entertain this whole idea of ministry on being able to have a clear view of the the entire journey start to finish.
When I presented my spiritual director with these conditions, he laughed at me and from then on I began to slowly let go of my need to know every detail of the journey and began thanks-living, to proceed in faith without certainty, faith manifest by accepting opportunities to face fears and potential failure. The road behind me is not as long with this one, but when I do pause and look back, I am beyond grateful.
This morning we’ve explore several stories of people’s journey through the wilderness....the ancient Israelites Exodus from Egypt... Henry’s Hike to Fitchburg as told and visualized by children and adults in our church family...the Pilgrim’s journey to what was for them a new world...and my two examples from my own life. Each journeys that involved risk, required faith manifest through thanks-living, and in the end, inspired giving thanks.
In a few short days, Thanksgiving will be here and we will gather in numbers great and small, alone or with family or friends. And we will pause to give thanks. Before that day comes I invite you to consider your thanks-living stories. Those times you were called into the wilderness, bore the cost of liberation, and from which you emerged able to look back and give thanks.
Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanks-living.
Amen and Blessed Be.
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