Thursday, November 28, 2024

My Best Day Ever

Sermon for Thanksgiving Day
Nov. 28, 2024

As we gather in gratitude this morning, I want to tell you three quick stories.  Later, as you say grace at your Thanksgiving table, you can add your gratitude for the gift of a short holiday sermon.

The first story is a scene from a movie that came out 36 years ago, The Milagro Beanfield War.  It’s a great film, equal parts comedy and drama, about a village of Hispanic Americans in New Mexico who stand up to a huge corporation diverting the community’s water supply for a golf course in the desert.  One particular moment captures the film’s heart.  One of the village elders, a wisdom character, lives in an adobe shack.  He’s scraping by, and his body is rebelling against him with the pains and indignities of aging.  Yet, as he struggles to get out of bed in the morning, his first words are these:  “Thank you, God, for letting me have another day.”  Now, his situation makes you think maybe not waking up in the morning would be the easier option.  But the old man has grown wise enough to know that being grateful for each day is what makes each day worth living.

Here’s the second story.  It’s one I’m sure several of you have experienced as you serve people in need.  Years ago now, when I first started at St. Andrew’s, I joined the team volunteering at the Kansas City Community Kitchen, now known as Nourish KC.  In those days, we stood along a serving line, each of the volunteers offering a scoop of casserole or a serving of salad or a piece of cake.  So, the volunteers had the chance to talk very briefly with everyone who came through the line that day.  There were people of all ages and colors.  Some were clearly in pain; some were silent; some wanted to engage.  We would talk with the guests as they passed by.  It was usually a simple, “Hey, how you doing?” – you know, that greeting we all give over and over, a question that doesn’t expect a real answer.  And the guests’ answers were equally predictable: “Fine” or “all right” or “OK, how ‘bout you?”  But when I said, “Hey, how you doing?” to one man, he stopped to answer.  He looked at me, and smiled, and he said, “I’m blessed.”  Now, since then, I’ve heard people give that answer many times – usually folks in situations far tougher than mine.  But I can still see the man from whom I hear it first – someone wise enough to know that being grateful for each day is what makes each day worth living.

Here’s the third story.  It happened just last week at St. James Church, as volunteers from St. Andrew’s and volunteers from St. James were serving an early Thanksgiving meal to people from the neighborhood.  We’d never tried this before, so of course we didn’t know what to expect or exactly what to do.  The food was fabulous, expertly prepared and abundant.  I’d signed up to bus tables, living into gifts from my high-school days.  And, as so often happens in situations like this, we had more volunteers than we needed; so I found myself walking around a lot, making small talk.  Some of that happened with guests as they came to the buffet; I’d say “Hi” and thank them for coming.  Some of that happened with St. Andrew’s folks; I’d say “Hi” and thank them for coming.  Then I met up very briefly with a fellow volunteer from St. James.  He was about my age, and he’d signed up to bus tables, too.  He was diligent, watching closely for empty plates.  You could tell the work mattered to him and he wanted to do it well.  At one point, our paths crossed, and I offered the standard, “Hey, how you doing?” not expecting anything more than a nod.  But as he passed by, he became much more than a man bussing tables.  He became an angel.  You know, in Scripture, angels are God’s messengers, sent to share an unexpected holy word.  And so, when I said, “Hey, how you doing?” this middle-aged angel slowed down in his work just enough to look back to me and say, “It’s my best day ever.”  Then he smiled and walked on.  But he’d been a messenger of heavenly wisdom: that being grateful for this day, this very day, is what makes this day worth living.  It’s the best day ever because it’s the one I’m living right now.

It’s relatively easy to take that point of view as you’re dining on a feast of “rich food” and “well-aged wines,” as the prophet Isaiah described the heavenly banquet (25:6).  Most of us will get a preview of that heavenly banquet today as we gather to share great bounty with the people we love most – the people many of us have in mind as we write our gratitude on the leaves that we’ll read from the altar later.  Today, it’s relatively easy to say, “It’s my best day ever.”

And that sense of gratitude can rise in us regularly in our foretaste of the heavenly banquet here, this feast we receive at God’s altar every Sunday.  Every blessed time we come and offer ourselves, Jesus comes though, providing not just the “bread of angels” (Psalm 78:25) but his own Body and Blood, his gift of himself to share resurrected life with even such as us.  We come here each week to make Eucharist, which in Greek means “thanksgiving.”  And as we stretch our hands across the rail and into heaven for a bite of this thanksgiving meal, we get a glimpse of what “my best day ever” will someday be.

            For now, for me, the call from the angel at St. James was to decide that “my best day ever” is true.  Not just at the altar rail, not just at a Thanksgiving feast – no matter what, it’s true.  And, the angel said, I need to choose to live each day that way – even in the long, slow, slogging seasons when one hard day just runs into the next.  Ever since I saw that movie The Milagro Beanfield War more than 30 years ago, I’ve been pretty good about saying to God each morning, “Thank you for letting me have another day.”  But I think the angel at St. James is asking me to take it up a notch: “Thank you, God, for my best day ever.” 

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