{"id":713,"date":"2017-11-29T10:46:33","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T15:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=713"},"modified":"2017-11-29T10:46:33","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T15:46:33","slug":"thanksgiving-sermon-now-dont-forget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2017\/11\/29\/thanksgiving-sermon-now-dont-forget\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving Sermon – Now Don’t Forget"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now, Don\u2019t Forget<\/h1>\n

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY<\/a><\/h2>\n

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor<\/h2>\n

Thanksgiving Sunday \u2022 November 19, 2017<\/h2>\n

Deuteronomy 8:11-20<\/a><\/h2>\n

Click below to hear the sermon preached<\/h3>\nhttps:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/now_dont_forget-112817-11.09-AM.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

It was a fall day in 1975; I was the newly called minister of the Seattle Congregational Church, not even ordained yet. Standing in the coffee hour crowd, I was fumbling toward conversation with a man in the church I\u2019d only just met. He was in his 90\u2019s, a new experience for me. Thinking about such a long life, so much history, I said something about how he had lived from horse and buggies to the jets. He gravely agreed and mentioned having been a horse doctor in Kentucky when he was young. I asked him what he thought the most important change had been over the course of his lifetime. He thought for a moment, and then quietly said, \u201cNo more quarantine signs.\u201d He explained that when he was young, it was common to have epidemics and all that could be done was to quarantine families and he told me about his memory of the yellow signs. I\u2019d never seen one; I\u2019d never thought about one. Yet here he was remembering a wonderful progress that had made something I never knew vanish. He remembered a blessing I\u2019d forgotten.<\/p>\n

What do you remember from this past week? this past month? this past year? The morning, John has helped us to remember an event we didn\u2019t witness: the moment when this home where we worship first began to take shape. Now I\u2019ve been part of a big church building project so even though he didn\u2019t mention it, I know this: before that shovel ever turned over, there were meetings. There were long meetings, endless meetings. Someone had to convene the first meeting to discuss moving the church\u2019s home and I\u2019m guessing it wasn\u2019t a popular idea at first. Someone had to argue the point; Congregationalists don\u2019t change easily. Someone had to come up with numbers, costs, benefits, and the church must have voted. I imagine that memory stuck around for years. Probably some people got mad, some were joyful, some just remembered all the hard work. Now we come here every Sunday. Hundreds come here for concerts and events. We don\u2019t remember the vote; we don\u2019t remember the work. But if we don\u2019t remember that it took those things, \u2028we miss the full memory of the blessing. Thank God we have John to remind us!<\/p>\n

The author if Deuteronomy is doing the same thing for an ancient people \u201cTake care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments\u2026,\u201d [Deut 8:11], he says. Here you are in the Promise Land; remember how you got here, remember who brought you here. You didn\u2019t do it on your own; it took more than your effort, more than your hard work, it took the inspiration and blessing of God. But the truth is they do forget. They become prosperous and oppress the poor. They envy the accomplishments of other peoples and demand a king, despite God\u2019s warning of the terrible things a monarchy will bring. They make hierarchies: rich and poor, righteous and despised. They violate God\u2019s covenant over and over and finally are destroyed because of it. The first third of the Hebrew Scriptures is all about God\u2019s faithful work to create a covenant community; the second third is prophets preaching about the need to return to the covenant the people have forgotten.<\/p>\n

Memory leads to thankfulness. When we forget, we forget God\u2019s blessing and we\u2019re left with the idea that we did it, we accomplished it, and then we are left with ourselves and we are a poor substitute for God. This week we will celebrate Thanksgiving, for Congregationalists, our family story. In 1620, a small group of our fathers and mothers in the faith landed in Massachusetts after a difficult voyage. Half of the 103 settlers were there because of their faith, our faith. The others had been recruited because of their skills. Almost none were farmers; almost none knew how to trap and fish and do the things that would be required to survive. At first they got along by stealing corn from abandoned Indian storages; a measles epidemic had swept through the area before their arrival, leaving much of it abandoned. They built shacks, they learned to plant corn. Many of them sickened, others starved. By the end of the first year, the few that were left, however, seeing in their survival the blessing of God held a harvest feast: the first thanksgiving. The settlement survived; others arrived and settled on Cape Ann and then in Boston. The new colony grew and though it remembered and observed thanksgiving, it forgot the principles and blessing which had inspired it. With a couple of generations, these Puritans were fighting the same native communities which had nurtured their fathers and mothers and persecuting others, just as they had been persecuted in England. They forgot the blessing with which they began.<\/p>\n

Memory leads to thankfulness. We gather here, warm and safe in this wonderful home; we must never forget its source. For its source is the blessing of God. If we forget its purpose, if we forget our purpose, then like others, we will fail. We may look great failing. Success in fact often leads to forgetting. When we succeed, we like to think we are the ones who succeeded; its easy to see our own efforts, harder to remember God\u2019s inspiration. But if we miss the lesson of Deuteronomy, we can never truly succeed. <\/p>\n

That message is clear, he message is simple: remember where you came from, remember who you are, remember who brought you here. We live from the blessing of God; we live in the river of purpose which is to invite all into the covenant of love which is God\u2019s purpose. When we do this, when we live this, remembering how God has blessed us, we hope for the future, because God is not only in the past but guarantees the future as well. At many tables this week, people will be invited to share something they are thankful for, something from the past. Here\u2019s a suggestion: share something you hope as well. For memory leads to thankfulness and thankfulness leads to hope.<\/p>\n

For many years, my mother lived in Florida and my visits were necessarily short and infrequent. Now, you know, when you are a mother, you never stop being a mother. So my mother never stopped trying to improve me. It\u2019s an endless task, as my wife could also tell you. Nevertheless, my mother never quit. Before I left, she would have a variety of suggestions for what I should do. And just before I left, she would tell me again and add these words, \u201cNow don\u2019t forget\u201d. <\/p>\n

Thanksgiving is meant for us to remember God\u2019s blessing and invite us to live in hope. <\/p>\n

Thanksgiving is meant for us to remember to be a blessing and invite others to hope. <\/p>\n

Thanksgiving is meant to share again the story of how God has blessed our fathers and mothers and intends to bless us. Now don\u2019t forget, thanksgiving says: don\u2019t forget how much God loves you.<\/p>\n

Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now, Don\u2019t Forget A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor Thanksgiving Sunday \u2022 November 19, 2017 Deuteronomy 8:11-20 Click below to hear the sermon preached It was a fall day in 1975; I was the newly called minister of the Seattle Congregational Church, not even ordained yet. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[101,39,109,108,13,1,2],"tags":[129],"class_list":["post-713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-after-pentecost","category-exegesis","category-matthew","category-scripture","category-theology","category-uncategorized","category-worship","tag-thanksgiving"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":727,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions\/727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}