Excerpts from the Thanksgiving sermon

For the many blessings we have in our lives, we’ve been conditioned to take the credit for that success. There is a myth that if you work hard enough, you will succeed. And the flip-side is that if you haven’t succeeded, it’s because you haven’t worked hard enough. Such thinking doesn’t account for disabilities, systems of power and control that uphold the white, middle-class, educated male as the ordinary average person.

Just as the North American dream of hard-work-equals-success needs careful thought, we should also be careful with Jesus’ words, “Your faith has made you well”. This is a dangerous statement given the flip-side – those who don’t become well don’t have enough faith. This is not the case. The other 9 lepers were still healed. They didn’t stop to say thank you.

The one person who stopped to give thanks, made a connection that the others didn’t. His healing didn’t depend on the work of the priest. His healing came out of his own personal faith and not one dictated by others. The Samaritan went into the world free to be his own theological explorer.

We can take our faith into our own hands. We have the ability and know-how to do this. We are called to participate in our own faith and not simply take what history, tradition, and ministers give without making it our own story first. I will say things that you don’t agree with, by all means, I invite that, it shows you’re paying attention and more importantly thinking for yourselves, that you are making your faith your own. Although you can agree with me too and still be thinking for yourselves and making your faith your own.

So much of what happens to us is out of our control. We can’t even control our feelings, let alone weather systems or our immune responses. So we reach out to a source of power and strength greater than our own; we turn to God. Our relationship with God can follow two different paths: fear or love, offering bargains and appeasement or thanksgiving and commitment. What we can control is how we respond, with thanksgiving or complaint.

Can we take our attitude of thanks and translate that into acts of kindness and goodness? Prayer isn’t as much a conversation with the divine, maybe in the way that we think traditionally saying our prayers mean. It is partly offering to God what is going on in our lives, it is also listening to what the spirit is telling us; but it is also as simple and difficult as being aware of God’s presence -- in this community of these churches, and also in the wider expression of faith in the world.