Sermon Preached at Northbrae Community Church, November 20, 2005 – Thanksgiving Sunday By Ron Sebring

Erma Bombeck [Redbook, October, 1992] told a story of an 8 year old, little girl.

Christina, her name. She had cancer.

That’s a hard thing for an adult to hear. For a child, I can hardly imagine.

Christina fought it.

Staying indoors for weeks on end …,

Watching other children playing in the yard, outside her window.

But with some of the miracle drugs of modern medicine and a strong will, she made progress toward beating it.

As she got better, she ventured out and joined the other children.

"What do you want for your birthday?" her mother asked.

"I don’t know," she replied. "I have two sticker books and a Cabbage Patch doll. I have everything I need."

Such a precious gem of wisdom!

So beyond the capacity of many adults.

And born of a tough time.

Thomas Ken lived in England during the early 17^th century, in the 1600s.

He left his orphanage to be raised by his sister and her husband.

He studied at Oxford and became ordained with the Church of England.

Ken’s gift and problem was that he was so outspoken.

A chaplain for royalty, he pointed a long bony finger at kings and heads of state, denouncing corruption.

I picture him denouncing hedonistic intoxication and reminding them of the oppressed masses.

Ø King George II seemed to appreciate his boldness.

He gave Pastor Ken honors and promotions.

On his way to chapel, King George is known to have remarked, with a smile, "I must go and hear Ken tell me my faults."

Ø The next monarch, James II, took offense.

He arrested Thomas Ken and threw him in the Tower of London.

After hard times in prison, flogging, starvation, Thomas Ken eventually won acquittal.

He retreated to a quiet life where he wrote hymns.

In his day, people were not allowed to sing hymns as we know them, today.

Hymns could only contain words from the Psalms, and other portions of the bible.

Thomas Ken broke tradition to include hymns written to convey faith in the poetry of common expression.

This revolutionized worship experience for Protestants.

Grateful for life and its goodness, he wrote three hymns of thanksgiving to be sung in the morning, evening, and at midnight.

The morning hymn went like this.

This is how Thomas Ken started his day:

Awake, my soul, and with the sun

Thy daily course of duty run,

Shake off dull sloth, and early rise,

To pay thy morning sacrifice.

Direct, control, suggest, this day,

All I design, or do, or say;

That all my powers, with all their might,

In Thy sole glory may unite.

Then he closed this hymn with the same verse used in all three hymns.

Four lines that have been popular among Protestants for 300 years, sung in churches every Sunday.

It’s what Protestants call, the Doxology.

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Doxologies, in one form or another, are expressions of thanksgiving.

Popular in many of the World Religions, both today and throughout time.

Some formalistic, some spontaneous, and always, with a spirit of thanksgiving.

Jewish synagogues employed them in their rituals.

The Apostle Paul laced his letters to different churches with doxologies.

The closing phrase of the Lord’s Prayer is an added doxology.

Since the 4^th century, the Catholic Church has had two that have survived to this day.

Ø Known as the Greater Doxology, it is called "Gloria in Excelsis Deo" and is used in Mass, except during Advent and Lent.

Taken from Luke 2:14, the song the angels sang above the manger,

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace among those with whom God is pleased."

Ø The Lesser Doxology picks up on the Trinitarian formula and goes like this:

"Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."

Here at Northbrae, we have our own doxology:

Praise God, the Love we all may share;

Praise God, the Beauty everywhere;

Praise God, the Hope of Good to be;

Praise God, the Truth that makes us free.

Love, Beauty, Hope, Truth. Enveloped in Praise. Nice! Beautiful words.

While not original with us, it is a long tradition, here at Northbrae.

We have documents up in our historical room: these lines go back to our very beginnings. This so reflects who Northbrae is!

"Doxology" is taken from the Greek word, "Doxa."

At one level, it simply means "opinion." At another, it means "glory, honor, praise."

A doxology is an expression of gratitude.

· The point is not the wording, its theology.

· The point is the felt expression of gratitude.

Unless it is felt, it’s nothing but empty wind.

· One person can be theologically correct, and totally miss the point.

· Another can be theologically primitive, and yet find life’s glory.

Doxology is not an indoctrination of faith, but a spontaneous expression of "Thanks-living"

Thanks-living is like a river. We are either in it. Or not.

To be in it means:

· Sounds and colors are crisper and brighter.

· We are alive and energetic about what we can do.

Not to be in it means:

· We can let grumpiness overtake us. Little things bother us.

· A prevailing sadness forms an overcast umbrella over our day.

· Routines lose their meaning and we become bored with life.

Like that little cartoon character of many years ago. I forget his name.

He walked around with a rain cloud over his head.

It was always raining, and rained only on him.

Water is an interesting substance.

It is necessary for life: it carries the vitality that is life.

Water cleanses things, dissolves things, absorbs things and carries them away.

Karl Jung, in studying alchemy, suggested that water is an archetype for feelings, a symbol for the Collective Unconscious, which finds expression in our feelings.

Feelings, not thoughts, are what reach down to the very center of our being.

Feelings, with eddies and currents, symbolically purified by water.

Like tides that either cleanse or erode the shores of our souls.

Feelings run the gambit from course to fine.

Babies are bundles of raw emotion.

When they are angry, they want the whole world to know it.

Adolescents gain more control of their emotions.

But still, feelings are next to the surface and can take over.

Ideally, as we grow older, feelings become more refined.

But this is not always the case.

We get stressed, and revert back to our more intense emotions.

Hurts and pains and suspicions and insecurities. Disappointments.

Our minds become preoccupied with their reinforcing images.

Thanks-living is the distillation process. It removes excess, purifies and refines images, drawing out their lessons. We don’t want to extinguish feelings. With thanks-living, we want to refine them. Purify them. Polish them.

So in giving thanks for our fear, we refine fear and develop prudence.

In giving thanks for our anger, we refine anger and become more skillfully assertive.

And in giving thanks for depression … now what? Gratitude for depression? …

If we can refine our depression, we become more reflective, and eventually meditative, and reach down into the deep wells of Wisdom.

Years ago, I visited with a mother about her son.

I served as a youth director in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

This young man came by our home at 2:00 in the morning. Rang the doorbell.

He was on his way to commit suicide, but stopped by to see me first.

We managed to get some help for him.

He worked through his crisis. A lot of baggage from his past, he carried.

Somewhere along the way, I dropped by to visit with his mother.

We sat in her living room, and through tears, she reflected on his growing up.

There was an old piano next to us, and a piano bench.

She pointed to the bench: it had a long scratch in it, darkened with age.

She explained.

When her son was small, that piano was brand new, and she was very proud of it.

She had saved a long time to purchase it.

As a small boy, her son scooted across that bench with a pocketknife in his pocket, and it cut the deep scratch.

This mother reached over and ran her finger along that scratch.

"Back than," she said, "I was so angry! I thought he ruined this bench."

"Now, I wouldn’t trade this bench for the world."

"For it reminds me of what is really important in life."

How so precious and short, our time with our children!

How fleeting, those moments upon which our destiny turns!

How so permanent, the words we release!

"Why can’t we appreciate it when we have it?" she asked.

That woman gave me back something I had lost. She gave me back my doxology.

Right now is the only time we have.

And in our moments, we have everything we really need.

If we lose our doxology, we lose our sense of life.