A sacrifice of thanksgiving

Dear People of Christ Church,   

This week, I'm still mulling over what it means to "do" Lent-what offering could we possibly make, what could possibly be meaningful to God?  One idea from Scripture that has struck me particularly forcefully lately is a line we heard from Psalm 50 from our Tuesday Eucharist:

For every wild animal of the forest is mine... 'If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High.

And again, the prophet Isaiah on Ash Wednesday-we don't really quite know how to honor God. On that day, we hear that God chooses a fast of justice-making, not just a fast of abstinence. God wants service to the oppressed, not liturgies and ritual. 

Psalm 69 says something like this, too:
I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify God with thanksgiving.  This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs.

We don't offer sacrifices of animals anymore, but that doesn't mean this comparison has nothing for us.  As I wrote in this space last week, there is something "to" giving things up, not so much for stopping that particular behavior, but to make us more mindful of what we might experience without it.  On another level, though, somehow it can feel more 'worthy" to do things that are hard.  Making a sacrifice of just "thanksgiving" somehow doesn't seem like it would be enough. (note that I'm not even getting into all the theology about Jesus' sacrifice-for sure it's linked, but let's leave it off the table for now)

But, but, but. What if we took seriously the idea that we can offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving? What if gratitude to God could shape us more and more in God's image? What if offering thanks actually is hard because it's so simple?  Or if we were really thankful for the fact of our own lives,  maybe we'd spend more of them doing the work of God?   Thanksgiving for gift of life is something that everyone-of every circumstance-can offer. Gratitude to God for life isn't about the stuff of our life-not about your house or your car or lack thereof.  It's about understanding that it's not that you would have nothing if not for God, it's that you would be nothing. Let me say that again: it's not about having nothing if not for God, it's about not being in the first place.  And that's quite a paradigm shift.

So give whatever you can-obviously. Give your money, give your time, give your abstinence from whatever it is you're giving up. But remember, too, as winter turns to spring, the pleasure of oxygen drawn deeply into lungs, the strength of tiny crocuses coming up from underground.  Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving, for your life and for all there is.

Blessings, 
Sara+

Get Over Yourself: Gratitude and Prayer

Dear People of Christ Church,

This Sunday, I'm excited to welcome the Rev. Elise Feyerherm to preach at Christ Church-thanks, too to her for help with blessing animals on Sunday, too. Elise moved to Waltham this summer to join her husband, John, who teaches at a Roman Catholic seminary. Elise will be hanging out at Christ Church while she looks for a permanent position, helping out here and there and lending her beautiful voice to our choir. She has a PhD in Church History from Boston College and was ordained priest in Ohio a few years ago. 

Otherwise, things are pretty much humming along for fall; our Tuesday night conversations are such a pleasure, and stewardship season will kick off on October 20. On Sunday our blessing of the animals went well, with special guests Bear, Momo, Sasha, Scout, and Wilbur behaving themselves in an entirely exemplary fashion. We blessed pictures of cats and dogs, dolls and stuffed lizards and dolphins, and Ken Johnson even brought the weekly Tribune picture of a cat in need of a home, to remember pets who aren't so fortunate. See more of Kristin's great pictures here. 

It's a lot to be grateful for, this full parish life. Gratitude is, on the surface of it, a simple response to good; I'm thankful that our handicap bathroom is finally in progress. I'm thankful that Suzanne is organizing the parish Fieldstone Fair again. I'm thankful that first grade is going better than kindergarten for my son, that my raspberry bushes are still exploding berries into October. I'm thankful for shelter, work that I love, health, wholeness. Simple gratitude for simple pleasures. 

The complicated part (there's always a complicated part, isn't there?) is to discern-to think, pray, and somehow figure out-how that simple gratitude can inspire us to move beyond ourselves. This is the pattern of God's life: taking on human being as Jesus was a divine self-emptying. Somehow that self-emptying is how, and who, God is. In doing so, we are given a pattern for how we can come near to God, how we can participate in that divine Life. Gratitude can be a practice of de-centering, of acknowledging that what we have and who we are isn't our sole accomplishment and possession, but God's. And if it's not just ours, then we can take the hint that it's not supposed to end with us. 

How? It's another one of those "hardest to learn is the least complicated" things. One of the classic ways is in contemplative prayer, the silent meditation that the Buddhist tradition teaches so well. Somehow by sitting in silence in the presence of God, we're given a little wiggle room to separate out our own freight train of thoughts and emotions. Another thing a lot of people do is to have a gratitude journal or prayer practice, where the intentional recognition of gifts received helps you remember that you're not quite so much the star of your show. What works for you? What works for you when you need to get out of your own way?  

Blessings,

Sara+