Two of our readings this morning are specifically about Thanksgiving, so it is definitely time to give some real thought to what ought to be central to our practice of religion, but all too often isn’t. I must begin by saying that it isn’t easy! We look at all the horrors of the world we live in: Gaza, the Ukraine, Ethiopia, Myanmar, and it’s difficult, really difficult to feel thankful. We face the appalling fact of climate change and the potential destruction of our planet, and it becomes even more difficult to feel thankful. We must however not give way to the temptation of thinking that Isaiah, or Mary had it any easier than we do. Life has always been difficult for those living it.

The Ancient Near East was no less fraught with tensions and warmongering than is the Middle East today. The state of Judah was under constant threat from larger powers, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of all its leading citizens to Babylonia. It is not exactly known when The Book of Isaiah was written, but it is certain that these latter chapters were written after the return from exile, when the returning Israelites found that not much had been done to restore their country to its former glory. So Isaiah is reminding his countryfolk of their God, giving thanks for all he has done and will in future do for them.

After Gabriel’s visit to her in Nazareth, Mary cannot have had an easy time of it at first. Normally, sadly, there is only one explanation when a young unmarried girl is found to be pregnant. Who could believe her unlikely story: that she was with child by the Holy Ghost? It all really depended on Joseph; if he broke off their engagement it would be a tragedy, for no other young man would want her, would want to be the father of another man’s child.  Mercifully the truth was vouchsafed to him in a dream. Mary’s story was true: the child within her was of the Holy Ghost  and he need not fear to take her as his wife.

Then the story must have  begun to circulate among members of Mary’s family, reaching even as far as their relatives in the hill country of Judah.  So when Mary decided to pay a surprise visit to Elizabeth, she was greeted not with the fuss and suspicion which she had met with in Nazareth, but with a rapturous welcome and recognition of her position as the Mother of God. Mary’s response is enshrined in the Magnificat, that great song of thanksgiving both for God’s goodness to her as an individual woman and for his goodness to his people Israel, in fulfilment of his promises to Abraham and their forefathers.

What have we to learn from these two great world-historical figures? It seems almost impertinent to say it, but we must take from their examples the importance of speaking one’s thanks. We don’t have to go on at length; I find often that a short “Thanks God!” is enough especially if my attention is required elsewhere! You have all I believe lived in Edinburgh for far longer than I have, so perhaps you have got used to the spectacular beauty of the view when you come over the top of Drumbrae to see the Firth of Forth and the kingdom of Fife in the distance. I still need to say thank you.

And in the other direction are the Pentland Hills and the Scottish Borders. Should we not be thankful that we are surrounded by such beauty – and say so?! 

That’s the clue! We are all here given so much – not least the freedom just to be here and to worship God among friends. We have the joy of word and music – and coffee to follow! But how often do we give expression to our thanks to our friends and families and beyond them to the Giver of all things? 

Let’s resolve to try and do better in future!

A tough Epistle and Gospel reading this morning; both seeking to tell us what to do and how to do it. They are the sort of readings that might make some of us rebel, especially those of us that don’t like being told exactly what to do or believe. These readings are a bit like a stern parent saying:

“Just do as I tell you!” When what we might want to say is; ‘Why?’ 

‘Why?’ is a good question. These two readings, however,  are just gob-bits from larger texts of the Bible and we really can’t take them as they are without trying to see them in context. The context from which they come and were written in. In the Epistle of James the author is at great pains to point out that we cannot be passive receivers of God’s word:

“22 … be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. ²³For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; ²⁴for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. ²⁵But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.”             James 1:22-25

Be doers of God’s word NOT just listeners. I know that some  have problems with this epistle as it can at times seem to contradict the concept of ‘Justification by faith alone’. Personally, I have never been able to comprehend that doctrine for unless our faith acts as a basis for our actions towards others then what do we mean by living our faith? I cannot see that faith alone is enough, for that means you can say that you believe something and then ignore the needs of those around you and fail to live by the ways of God. You then, I think, become simply a hearer of his words and not a doer. Faith for me is something one lives, and lives out in practical and humanitarian ways; helping others as you follow the ways of God. So the command to be a doer as well as a hearer of the Word of God speaks more deeply to me than simply the command to hear God’s word. This theme is picked up in Mark’s Gospel account where he says:

“This people honours me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.”             Mark 7:6

It is very easy to; ‘talk the talk’ but a lot harder to live the talk. God is aware of this but we are encouraged to try and live his ways and to do so in non showy or ostentatious fashion. We are called to do what God expects of us quietly and naturally, day by day, helping and encouraging others gently along the way. Our faith is shown by the example we set. Our faith has repeatedly changed the world in the past and can do so again today and in the future. What we need to do is to live an active faith and not just a lip-service faith. What small step could you take to put your faith into action? You might give a donation to a charity or volunteer to do something to help others. Whatever you do live your faith and never be just a hearer but a doer as well.

“But among you there are some who do not believe.”   John 6:64

“I believe in the sun,

Even when it is not shining.

I believe in love,

Even when I do not feel it.

I believe in God,

Even when He is silent.”

Anon. Scrawled on a wall in Cologne Cathedral crypt which was bombed in WWII

‘I believe in God, even when he is silent.’

Could you imagine writing those words during that dark chapter of our history? Whoever did so had great faith and an even greater hope. Their words imply that their faith was not based on despair  but on a hope of something greater than the pettiness of humanity.  Three short sentences that suggest God is there even when it is impossible to discern him; by comparing God to the sun and to love, things we know to exist by experience. We all know how the sun feels on our skin and we all know what love feels like but we cannot see love or even the sun on a cloudy day or at night; yet we know them to be true experiences because of the ways in which we have encountered them in the past. Past experience is important because when you cannot sense God you have to ask yourself the question is it worth continuing to believe?

Belief in God is always going to be  problematic, even for those of us who claim to do so. What do you or I or any believer mean by the word ‘God’? If all of us here today wrote down what we mean by God we would probably all give different answers for there are as many different interpretations of the word ‘God’ as there are individual human beings. This is nothing to be worried about, far from it.

I think it is wonderful that God can be experienced by each of us in our own unique and very personal way. It just helps to show us how multifaceted God is and how much God is beyond our total conception. We all express God through the way or ways in which we personally experience God. If we had all of eternity to compare every individual’s experience of God we might just be able to make a beginning of a definition of God.

All the crumbs and minute particles of our individual belief or faith are what together we found our belief in God upon. We do not believe alone, and it is this realisation, that gives us hope in God, in Jesus and in each other. Because faith, no matter how shaky our own might be, is a corporate act as well as individual belief. It is together we believe and not alone. 

I want this morning to go off piste in my sermon. I’m not going to address any of the three readings which we have just heard, important though they are. I want instead to share with you a passage of theological writing which I first read many years ago and which has deeply influenced my thinking and praying since then.

It comes from a book entitled The Shape of the Liturgy, which was written by an Anglican Benedictine monk, Dom Gregory Dix of Nashdom Abbey It was published in 1945. It is a monumental work and, frankly, a very hard read! It traces the development of what we call the Communion Service, otherwise known as the Lord’s Supper, or the Mass, or the Eucharist, from its institution by Jesus to the time when Dom Gregory was writing. Eucharist simply means thanksgiving. I was delighted to find when first I went to Greece that the modern phrase for “thank you” is still “ev charisto”. It took me right back to Dom Gregory and our services of worship.

There are two reasons why I want to share this passage with you. First, because at the beginning of my ministry among you, it will tell you something about me and my beliefs. But second, and much  more important, because Dom Gregory reminds us of some things central, vital to our Christian religion, of which we can all too easily lose sight.

Hear now the profound spiritual wisdom of that amazing monk: 

“At the heart of all liturgy is the eucharistic action, a thing of absolute simplicity – the taking, blessing, breaking and giving of bread and the taking, blessing and giving of a cup of wine and water, as these were first done with their new meaning by a young Jew before and after supper with His friends on the night before He died.... He told His friends to do this henceforward with the new meaning ‘for the anamnesis’ [that is, the recollection] of Him’, and they have done it always since.

Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it, to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness, to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetich [worship] because the yams had failed; … for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so, wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop, who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonisation of S. Joan of Arc – one could fill many pages with the reasons why people have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei – the holy common people of God.

To those who know a little of Christian history probably the most moving of all the reflections it brings is not the thought of the great events and the well-remembered saints, but of those innumerable millions of entirely obscure faithful men and women, every one with his or her own individual hopes and fears and joys and sorrows and loves – and sins and temptations and prayers – once every whit as vivid and alive as mine are now. They have left no slightest trace in this world, not even a name, but have passed to God utterly forgotten by men. Yet each one of them once believed and prayed as I believe and pray, and found it hard and grew slack and sinned and repented and fell again. Each of them worshipped at the eucharist, and found their thoughts wandering and tried again, and felt heavy and unresponsive and yet knew – just as really and pathetically as I do, these things.... The sheer stupendous quantity of the love of God which this ever repeated action has drawn from the obscure Christian multitudes through the centuries is in itself an overwhelming thought.”

(Dix, Dom Gregory,  The Shape of the Liturgy  1945; 

Dacre Press, pp. 743 – 5)

That’s the end of the quotation. I know it’s a lot to take in at one go. But I hope that maybe you will remember three things:

First, the historicity and universality of the church. This rite, this Eucharist, has been performed over centuries, around the world, in all possible circumstances, in response to our Lord’s command.

Second, we who participate in it, we – you me, all of us - are members of “the holy common people of God”.  “The holy common people of God”. What a powerful description, and what a privilege.

And finally, we are all too aware that none of us is perfect. That we try and try again to do better, and fail. Let us remember that millions before us have tried and failed and millions after us will try and fail, and yet all are held within the love of God as shown in the Eucharist. 

The extract from Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians set  this morning is entitled in my Bible; ‘Rules for the new life’ and good words they are too. For life is never straight forward and sometimes we can leave things unsaid or undone that we would have been better off sorting out before the sun set on the day. It can be all too easy not to put things right as soon as possible and that can lead quite easily to estrangement or malice; neither of which are healthy. Paul tells the Ephesians, and it applies equally to all of us too, that we should always:

• Speak the truth at all times
• Try not to be malicious when angry
• To be honest in what you say
• To share what you have
• To hold your tongues and to think before speaking
• To be kind and compassionate
• To be ready and willing to forgive

These rules Paul suggests are the hallmarks of living a life based on the doctrine of living in the love of God. I wholeheartedly agree with Paul’s words and I suspect it is based on his own experience. Having a few rules or guidelines in one’s life is a good way of trying to love a good life and a life that is not selfish or hedonistic. Let his words seep into your being and refer to them every so often to remind yourself that we Christians are called to live a life based on love - the love of God.