TEXT: Psalm 65

How many of you have had at least one very happy Thanksgiving? OK, now how many of you have had at least one completely miserable Thanksgiving? The holidays are a time when both our joys and our sorrows are heightened. We put in so much effort to make the day a success that what might be a minor infraction on other days becomes a capital offense on a holiday. Not bringing the rolls you said you would bring might get you a lecture on forgetfulness on a regular night. Forget them on Thanksgiving and you will probably get that lecture for the rest of your born days. On the flip side, you might be a complete waste of space most of the year, but if you carve the Thanksgiving turkey, you might never need another virtue.

But it is not only that the little things get magnified on holidays. The very real pains and losses of our lives are felt most keenly at these times that focus so heavily on family and togetherness. When someone who should be at the table is absent...due to death, estrangement, or distance...the pain is felt more keenly. When society is feasting and you have no food at all, no home to live in, or just the barest of necessities, it hurts more. I have had some wonderful Thanksgivings and I have had some completely miserable ones. And I am always aware of how hollow it sounds for a preacher to get up in a pulpit for Thanksgiving and tell everybody to count their blessings. Some don't have to count very high.

So how do you preach Thanksgiving in the midst of the real pain that goes on? What does it mean to be thankful when life seems like a burden at best. As I struggled and prayed about that, I kept coming back to the illustration of our National Anthem, The Star-spangled Banner. When I really looked at it, I realized that the anthem is a song of thanksgiving. We sing only the first verse, but Francis Scott Key wrote four, the last of which reads:

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Our national anthem is a song of thanksgiving to God for deliverance during the War of 1812, after a bombardment of Fort McHenry, which guarded Baltimore, Maryland. That first verse, the one we sing at the opening of sporting events and other occasions, talks about the descent into darkness and the type of security we find there.

As the song begins, night is falling and we have one last glimpse of the flag "in the twilight's last gleaming." Then comes night--a night of fear and war and uncertainty. Is the flag still flying? Has the fort been taken? Don't know. It's dark. Can't see the flag. But every so often, there is a sudden glimpse of the flag still flying. How is it revealed? In the light of gunfire -- bombs and enemy rockets exploding. Then it is darkness and uncertainty again. The end of the first verse is a question: "O say, DOES that Star-spangled banner yet wave?" No one will know for sure until morning comes.

I want to give you that picture from our history as a picture of our lives with God. There are times of peace and daylight when it takes no effort at all to see God waving freely in our lives. It is as obvious as the sunlight--we can count the stars and stripes on God's banner and know without a shadow of a doubt that God is in control and providing us with care, protection, and love. It is easy at those times to be thankful.

But then there are other times. Times when the enemy sneaks up the Potomac River and the day turns to twilight. Is that God up there? We might get one more glimpse, and then nightfall comes and everything is dark. Is God still up there? Don't know. It's dark. Can't see. And in those times we get only quick glimpses of God. And we're not really sure we want those, because we only get those glimpses when bombs explode, and then we're plunged into darkness again. It is a night of fear, uncertainty, danger and even death. It's not unwarranted fear. It's a real war. People are really screaming in real pain. Real bombs bursting, and it's too dark to see what's happening to anybody else but you. And there's nothing to do but wait it out and see if you live to see morning.

Now I want to leave Ft. McHenry hanging in the balance for a moment and jump to the end of Psalm 65--and you're going to have to trust me here that there is a connection. In verses 12 and 13, we are about as far from the pains of war as we can get. We have not people but creation, shouting and singing together for joy. Nature is singing a song of thanksgiving. Some people see this as romanticism in poetry. Giving human attributes to non-human things and imagining something as neutral as nature doing something it's really not capable of doing.

I see it as showing us the truth about what it means to be thankful. No, the word "thanks" is nowhere in the Psalm. But the whole psalm is a psalm of praise and thanksgiving for what God has done, and when it talks starting in verse 9 about how God cares for the earth, the earth responds in thankfulness with shouts and songs of joy. And the point I want to pull out of this is that the earth expresses its thanks to God by becoming what God intended for it to be. The pastures give thanks by overflowing, the meadows feed the flocks, the valleys produce grain. They give thanks to God by fulfilling their purpose and place in Creation.

I want to say that our thanksgiving should be no different. Yes, it's nice to SAY "thank you," and to express our thanks in various concrete ways. But I think that the truest form of thanksgiving has to do not with what we say or even do so much as with what we become. When we search out the purpose for which we were created, both generally as human beings and individually as the uniquely gifted people that we are, we are living our thankfulness. We respond to the gifts and the care of God by blossoming into our truest selves.

A lot of times we shake our heads or snicker at those who talk of trying to find themselves or who say they don't know who they are. Lots of insipid pop psychology and strange new-age rituals leap to mind. But I think the core question of "Who am I?" or with a theological spin, "Who has God created me to be?" is one of the core faith questions that has to be answered before we can fully live a life of faith. Our truest praise and thanksgiving to God is to find that answer and with God's help to become that person.

Now take that question and let's go back to Ft. McHenry. I don't know of anyone who has come to grips with that question without going through some form of that dark night of uncertainty and doubt--and for some it has been many dark nights. I have had many such, but the darkest was the three-year-long night that followed my divorce. And the deepest night was my first night alone in Atlanta as I waited to start seminary. Dear friends had moved me up there, but they were on their way back home. I had no husband; I had no job. I had to give up my two dogs in order to move to the small apartment. I had to sell things that had been dear to me in order to make ends meet. The grand piano I had inherited from my Great Aunt, for whom I was named, and whom I had loved deeply. My French Horn that had traveled with me since Jr. High School. I felt like I literally sold the music out of my life.

I knew no one--a country girl in a strange city. I was surrounded by boxes with no help to unpack them, signing what was left of my life away to educational loans, and I spent that first night sobbing on an unmade mattress. I realized then that I had no idea who I was. All I had was the memory of the flag in the twilight's last gleaming--the memory that I had felt God's calling into the ministry. All I had was a memory of daylight, a recollection that once I could see God clearly and had a sense that God loved me and cared for me. But it was just memory, because now it was dark, and I couldn't see God or sense what was happening to anybody else but me. I went through the next two years of school hoping that flag was still there, only getting glimpses of it when bombs went off.

Morning came after that night, just as it does in the second verse of our national anthem:

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes.
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream:
"Tis the star-spangled banner! O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!"

The battle for our souls...the battle for who we are...is fought in the night. It is won or lost in the night. Daylight comes only to reveal what has been accomplished. In the Christian tradition we believe that Christ fought the battle in the night of the Cross and the tomb. Easter morning merely revealed who had won. In Jewish tradition you might think of it as Jacob wrestling all night with the angel of God. All through the night the outcome is uncertain. But then in the morning is victory and a new name for Jacob, who becomes Israel, the father of a nation. In Buddhist tradition it might be the emotional night of self-deprivation and ascetic living of the young Buddha, unsure what flag was above the fort until time under the Bo-tree brought the morn of Enlightenment.

As we approach the holidays, and especially with Thanksgiving this week, our lives seem to beg the question, "How can we give thanks to God during the night?" When Thanksgiving comes in a time of darkness, how can we talk about thanking God? I think the answer is that we thank God by allowing our lives to become thanksgiving--that is to become who God created us to be, who God has called us to be as a grateful response to God's presence.

But can I do that in the darkness? Yes. In fact, it may be that we do it most truly in the darkness. What is faith but a trust that God has provided a bridge when we can see none? It requires little faith to respond to God when it is daylight and God's presence is so unmistakable you can count the stars and stripes. But to respond to God in the darkness, when you're not really sure whose flag is flying over the fort? That's where our faith matters most.

My life is my way of thanking God. I discovered in my deepest night what I had known in my heart from infancy: I was created to bring glory to my God, and to proclaim the Gospel of love. My personal calling is to accomplish that through the ordained ministry. Some days I get up to preach God's love and feel God closer than my breathing. Other days I preach the goodness of God when it seems like the biggest lie I have ever told. Sometimes I believe what I say; other times I say things to help me believe them again. All of it is faith...it's just that some of it is faith in the daylight when all is clear, and some of it is faith in the darkness when all I can do is hope and pray that God's flag is still flying over the fort of my life.

That, to me, is thankfulness. I thank God by being what God has called me to be even at the times when it seems like God is a million miles away. I will say that God is good; I will proclaim that God is love; I will entrust my life to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob even in the red glare of the rockets of war. Why? Because I know in my heart that my true homeland is in God, and I have chosen to live my life in full allegiance to that country.

Like Jesus, I have found that in God's country death is swallowed up in the victory of resurrection. Like Jacob, I have found that my identity is found most truly in the struggle. Like the Buddha, I have found that enlightenment comes when I stop trying to attain it myself through human means and simply let the grace of God's love feed me and wash over me. There is no other response for me but a life of faith that proclaims my thankfulness -- nothing else to do but the work to which God calls me.

My challenge to you is not to remember to give thanks. It isn't even a challenge to say "thank you" to God when you don't feel the least bit thankful. It is a challenge to let your life become thanksgiving -- to take the leap of faith that puts your whole life in God's hands even when the fight is perilous, the night is dark, and it seems like life in God's hands ought to be safer and more comfortable than this. That is the thanks that God wants from us, the response of our lives that almost has to shout, "I trust You" so that it can be heard above the exploding bombs; the response that continues to proclaim "God is good," even while dodging bullets and hiding in foxholes; the life that continues to give in love even when the only response seems to be enemy fire. Thanksgiving in the darkness is thanksgiving at its best.

Amen.

(c) 1999, Anne Robertson