Thanksgiving

Homily for Thanksgiving/Harvest Celebration with Piedmont Church

Sunday, November 22, 2015

The Graves Chapel Council members and I are glad to have this special opportunity to extend our deep gratitude to Piedmont Episcopal Church for all you have done for the chapel over the years.  Without your dedicated help and financial support of the chapel, our doors likely would have closed forever after the great flood of 1995.  We thank you.  We are very grateful that we continue to be a sister parish of Piedmont Church, and we hope to welcome you to our services and events in the future.

At this time, I would like to have members of the Chapel Council who are present today to stand. I am grateful to all of you for your wisdom and hard work as we endeavor to make Graves Chapel a vibrant center of community life in Graves Mill. Although the chapel is a mission of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, and I am licensed as an Episcopal lay preacher by the bishop, our council and those who worship here come from a variety of Christian denominations.  We are an ecumenical community. At the first meeting of the council, we agreed that our motto would be borrowed from these words in Isaiah 56:

“All who keep the sabbath and hold fast my covenant, these will I bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people."  

We sincerely hope to make everyone feel welcome here.  

            In this place, in tranquil and lovely Madison County, and here in Graves Mill, where the landscape is beautiful during every season of the year, even as winter approaches, we acknowledge on this day that we have much to be grateful for. In the past year, though we have endured illness or hardship, grief or stress of one kind or another, we understand that such things are simply in the nature of human existence. Tough times are unavoidable. Today, and on Thursday, when Thanksgiving is officially celebrated, we are reminded that, in spite of the difficulties we inevitably face, God is good and we are blessed in many more ways than we are challenged.  So, we give thanks today for life itself, for the beauty of the earth, for fresh air to breathe, for clean water and wholesome food, for the love of family and friends, for safe shelter. We also give thanks for this great country of ours and for the freedoms we enjoy. We give thanks for the men and women of our military who protect us and keep our country strong. We give thanks for all who work to maintain peace and order. 

            Did you know that the observance of Thanksgiving as a national holiday occurring on the last Thursday of November began in 1863, when our nation was embroiled in Civil War? When he made the proclamation establishing the holiday, President Abraham Lincoln said these words: “I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for our deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.”

            

           As much as we see war and violence throughout the world, and we often become fearful and worried about attacks that might arise in our own country, can we ponder for a few moments these words that established a day of national Thanksgiving? At a time in our history when brother took up arms against brother and battles raged across farm fields right here in Madison County, the President and the people were able to acknowledge God’s loving presence in their lives. It was in the hope of peace and the healing of all wounds that Thanksgiving was established.  In the very act of turning our hearts in prayer to God and giving thanks for our blessings, however meager they may seem to us at the time, we open the door to peace and brotherhood.  Gratitude itself is a peacemaker and a healer.

We pray that it may always be so!   AMEN.