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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Fr. J. D. Ousley
20 November 2005Ezek. 34/Mt. 25“On A Day of Clouds and Thick Darkness”
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
As Thanksgiving arrives, we are reminded of the imminent arrival of winter. Daylight Savings Time is over; so night falls well before dinner. The shortest day of the year is a month away. The weather is getting colder, and snow is inevitable in the weeks ahead.
We may be sympathetic, then, to the hope that the Prophet Ezekiel expresses in today's First Lesson.
In the Lesson, God makes this promise: "I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places from which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness."
Sheep grazing on a mountainside always tend to separate. When the clouds roll in, they can be hard to see; add the gloom of a storm and the sheep can be almost impossible to find.
Such a day then can be an image of the feeling we sometimes have of spiritual dislocation. We have "clouds" on our personal "horizons." We have problems that seem always to hover over us, blotting out the light of life.
The novelist, Frederick Buechner writes in one of his memoirs that "Neurotic anxiety happens to be my own particular demon." Buechner calls his anxiety, "a floating sense of doom that has ruined many of what could have been, should have been, the happiest days of my life."
Now one way to confront the mental and emotional clouds of life is suggested by the Gospel for today. In Christ's vision of the final judgment, those who inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world earned their inheritance by one accomplishment: they served the "Son of man" by ministering to the hungry and the thirsty and others in need.
But implicit in Christ's story, there is also a bit of practical wisdom. People who are depressed may discover that they feel better when they do something for others instead of worrying about themselves.
And those of us who are Christian may find an additional benefit in adopting this ministry of service. For when we serve those in need, we also serve ChristBand we find Christ.
When we help others in Christ's name, we're forced to escape for a while from our thoughts. This gives the clouds a chance to float away.
Sometimes, though, we serve others and the darkness remains. The clouds are so thick that we can't seem to get out from under them.
I think it's important for Christians to admit that there are such times, (even the most dedicated servants of Christ go through them). The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats is quoted so often that we may believe that charity is a foolproof solution to every problem.
But while Christian service is helpful, there are limits to what it will do for us. For that matter if serving others solved all human problems, Christ wouldn't have needed to tell the Parable!
Notice that Jesus didn't leave us any parables about how important it is to breathe. That's because all human beings try to fill their lungs with air! They don't need to be told to do it. Unlike breathing, feeding the hungry and clothing the naked isn't innate to human beings, and, it doesn't always make us feel better.
Fortunately, when we have trouble reaching out to others, whether for practical reasons or for psychological reasons or just because we find it hard to do — there is a second response that we can make to our personal darkness.
Remember for a moment the many clouds that over-shadowed the perilous life of the Pilgrims who gathered to celebrate the first Thanksgiving. Life had been tough for them; many of their family members and friends hadn't survived.
And yet their reaction to all the cold and the hunger and the sickness wasn't to bemoan their fate. Rather, they chose to give thanks.
They gave thanks that they had lived through the year. Through clouds and thick darkness, they had survived in what was for them a "new England." And they paused to offer their gratitude to their Creator.
Granted, like acts of charity, this approach to the clouds of life doesn't always work. Dark moods can still intervene; we may not feel like giving thanks. Our sense of spiritual dislocation is too great; feelings of gratitude appear to be beyond us.
Yet everyone who is conscious and of sound mind is able to give thanks. And everyone who is conscious and of sound mind has something to give thanks forBat the very least, that they are alive and part of God's creation.
Still, there are those clouds. Being grateful isn't as natural as breathing! If it were, we wouldn't need to devote a national holiday to thanksgiving!
The Pilgrims may have been better at giving thanks than we are. For their particular form of Christianity was intended to make them acutely aware of God's activity in the world around them. They were always on the lookout for what they called, "Divine Providence."
In fact, the Pilgrims might have been a bit too eager to see the supernatural all around them. This habit rather easily degenerates into superstition — as the Puritans themselves learned some years later, when some of their women were persecuted in the infamous Salem witch trials.
In this case, looking for signs of God's grace degenerated. The Puritans saw all kinds of random coincidences as works of the Devil!
Fortunately those trials were an aberration. It's perfectly possible to look for divine providence without falling into superstition.
Today we sing, for example, the words of the traditional Thanksgiving hymn:
"Now thank we all our God, with heart, and hands, and voices, who wondrous things hath done, in whom his world rejoices."
We give thanks to God, "who from our mother's arms hath blessed us on our way, with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
And as we offer thanks on this day, and as we express our gratitude for being able to commit ourselves to the work of this parish in the year ahead in our Stewardship Program, we also pray that we may become thankful people.
Thankful people who serve not out of duty but out of gratitude for all God's blessings upon us. Thankful people who trust in God to bring them out from under the clouds and darkness of life into God's own glorious light.
"O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us! With ever-joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us; and keep us in his grace, and guide us when perplexed, and free us from all ills in this world and the next."
And now unto that same God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, power, dominion and praise, now and forever, Amen.