A Time to Give Thanks - Luke 1: 68-79

We are entering Thanksgiving week. Statistically, this is the most traveled week of the entire year as people fly and drive to meet those whom they love. It’s a time for eating and celebrating life. But in the midst of the preparations this past week, I’ve found myself thinking about some of the families I worked with at Hershey Medical Center this past summer. For those families who lost loved ones in June, July, and August, this is really the first major holiday they have to face without them. And further, it’s a holiday that is about celebrating and giving thanks. As I’ve thought about those families, one in particular sticks out in my mind. I walked with a mother from the birth to the death of her son, eight days later. That baby changed my life and rocked my view of God. I loved him. And I was paralyzed when life support was removed from his little body. I was angry at God for letting this little one come into the world only to take him away so quickly, but his mother, at the age of 19, taught me something on the day of his death – that it is possible to be thankful for something that seems so tragic, so unfair. She turned to me through her tears, holding her baby for the first time right before he was about to breathe his last breath and said how thankful she was that he came into her life. Even if it was just for eight days. Even if he will never be able to grow up, he touched the world, and changed it by his very presence. And that is what she was thankful for. Her song of weeping said that he mattered, and that he was a blessing.

There is this something about difficulty that makes thanksgiving possible. How could you be thankful for something that you didn’t know could exist. How could this teenage girl have known what love was without a birth that lead to a loss? How could you be thankful for the fragility and beauty of life if death was never experienced? How could you be thankful for what you have if there was not a time in your life when you didn’t have as much?

Life is all about such paradoxes. In a series of moments all that we once held dear could be lost or regained. So maybe this Thanksgiving, those who are most thankful are those who have struggled, not those who have suffered not. Isn’t that what Zechariah’s song over John is really about? Here is a man whose tongue had been silenced by God for the duration of his wife’s pregnancy because of his unbelief. Utter silence for nine months. But when the boy was born his lips spoke again to breathe his name, “John”.

What is the first thing Zechariah, the one who had been mute for the better part of a year, say after “his name I John” this song of prophecy, thanksgiving, and celebration. Now maybe Zechariah just had a whole lot of time to think about God in his time of silence, but maybe he was just so overwhelmed by the glory of God as his burden was lifted that he realized what he really had. There is something about processed suffering that brings sharp clarity. Zechariah would never be able to sing this song if he was bitter at God for what he had endured. No, here is a man who had worked through his grief in order to get to the celebration. Or someone like the young woman with the child who only saw eight days inside of a NICU who understood something much bigger than her own personal situation.

This song of celebration is filled with proclamations of what God has done. And notice that it is not just what God has done for Zechariah, but for the entire nation of Israel, all of God’s people. There is something in this thanksgiving that emerges from puts things into a much broader perspective that makes us look past ourselves. God has looked favorably on his people, all of them, and redeemed them. He has risen up a horn of salvation to proclaim that a servant is coming from the house of David. God has been true to his word. He has saved us from our enemies, those who hate us. He has showered us with mercy, He has remembered the covenant that was made with those long since passed. And because we have been rescued, because we’ve come from this place of suffering, we can serve God without fear. We can celebrate this holy one because of where we’ve come from. And this is our message to share. We have come so far; we’ve come this far by faith. By the tender mercy of a God who loves us, and causes the sun to break the dark sky open, giving light to shine on the path that will lead us to peace. This is why we give thanks.

What a message Zechariah has to sing! When was the last time we ever took this perspective, ever sang a song of praise as soon as we emerged from a dark time or a bleak moment?

I can say that is not my first response. A few weeks ago I had a very bad start to the week that just seemed to keep escalating in each moment, until the crowing glory moment, I hit a deer with my car. Well maybe not hit so much as caught mid leap, but it did major damage to the front hood of the car as the majority of what lies underneath it. But as I now have a safe distance from that moment, from that week really, I can start to look back and praise God for what I was given and what I learned in that time of trial that my dad has lovingly named my breakdown week.

Some of the things that emerged were seemingly small – but these powerful moments that have lead me to give thanks to God. For example, the car I am currently driving does not have a cd player, so I rely on my ipod for music instead of my favorite cds. And what should happen when you hit “shuffle” but that song start to play that I had long since forgotten about. The one that got to me during my eight hours on the road this week is from the musical “Godspell”: “When will thou save the people? Oh God, of mercy, when? The people, Lord the people!” Not oh God, when will you save me. No, us, Oh God, when are you going to save us, because collectively we are not in a good place, we are all in a world of darkness, but only some of us have eyes to see it. When will you save us, so we can have the veil that covers our eyes lifted and our lips unmated so we can sing of your thanksgiving and many blessings?

We are about to enter the season of preparation, the season of advent, starting next week. Today, as we look forward to that day, we celebrate Christ’s Kingship. His glory. Zechariah may not have known it, but his song was as much about his own son as it was about Jesus, the one yet to be born. We celebrate that in a particular moment in time this unbelievable thing happened, God gave us something to sing a song about, even in the midst of poverty and Roman oppression. In the midst of suffering, God came down to us. And for us he suffered, replacing his royal crown with one of thorns. And on the third day, the Son of God rose and conquered death. So we sing a song of thanksgiving. For not only did we suffer, but another suffered for us so that we may be free.

Zechariah is not singing a song of what he wants God to do, like sitting on Santa’s lap with a wish list. No, Zechariah sang of what God had been doing for ages and what God was going to continue to do. When are the moments that have lead you to sing a song of deep thanksgiving and what lead you to that moment? For God does save us. The God of mercy rescues us even from our darkest moments of despair. The true question is not if God intervenes, but if we are attuned enough to realize it, and give thanks both for what God has done in the past, where we have been, and where God is going to lead us to in the future. Amen.