A Pilgrim's Thanksgiving
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"A Pilgrim's Thanksgiving" by John Fitzgerald
A Pilgrim's Thanksgiving
by John Fitzgerald
Psalm 100
Christ the King Sunday has always been one of my favorites. Admittedly, it falls just before Thanksgiving and Advent. Churches sizzle with preparation and excitement. And I do too. But this moment, the end of our liturgical calendar is a glory. We celebrate the lordship of Jesus, the ascendency of the incarnation to its rightful place in our lives and in all creation.
Its mystery is the mystery that creeps into all our faith stories. It moves up stream against the thundering demands of our existence. They insist that we should affirm the power and importance of the world’s priorities. It is so hard to focus on what’s really going on as we proclaim Christ as King that it gives us stiff necks and pains in various body parts trying to steer the mob in directions that make no sense to them. The two passages from Luke given to us for this Sunday express the whip saw perfectly.
Mary is one of my heroes. She was the first disciple, she refused to allow her potential as a good girl, a good wife, a good mother to drown her calling, and she knew that God had chosen her to be a prophetic moment for all who would come after. She also knew the price she would have to pay for that privilege and she did it with a will. She was a warrior of the light.
So why does she come up to help us to get a handle on Christ the King?
When I was a sprout, my mother asked me who the most important people in my life were. That was easy. My father and she. She nodded and thanked me for considering her as a candidate. She asked me why I considered them to be so important. That was easy too. Because they loved me. She nodded and told me that she hoped when she asked me that question again that I had the smarts to remember my basis for evaluation. ‘When people are willing to love you it makes them the most important people in the world.’ She hoped that I would have a cloud of people that I considered important, because it would mean that I knew I was loved. And she hoped I would remember that when I was trying to figure out what kind of person I wanted to be. Did I want to be an important person, or something else?
Mary got that. She knew she was loved and that changed the way she looked at the world and how she considered herself. She was important to God, loved by God. So she knew what was going on in her life was important and she claimed that as her MO.
In spite of the world’s judgement of her as a failure according to its categories of power, importance, even goodness, she was a child of God, a messenger of God’s good news, and a proof that God’s love was changing the world. It changed her, it allowed her to go through the loneliness of her pregnancy, the destruction of her family’s expectations, the ostracism of her culture, the discomfort and fear of the conditions of her first delivery and still see God’s hand using her as a sign of love for all the world. And so she sang the song of a prophet. A thundering affirmation of everything God was doing. Oh yeah girl! You know what’s going on. Tell it like it is!
There is a wall in front of my desk that has pictures of folk I consider to be heroes, Jerry Garcia, Robin Williams, a man who died of AIDS, my wife, my mother, my brother, my father, Sir Francis Chinchester, some firemen I knew from 9-11, Mariano Rivera, Eli Manning, Martin Luther King, President Obama, and Mary. Quite a crew.
Somehow each of them allowed me to see what it meant to have courage in the face of adversity and to remember who they were, success or failure. They are all people, human people full of limitation and fear, just like I am. But somehow they held on to their own sense of purpose and value. And so I value them, and I feel a bit more able to be valuable because of them.
I want to be a hero. I guess that means I gotta listen to the boss, you know the king, you know, the Lord, you know, Jesus. He loves me. And that’s a fact.
Time to shine.
John Fitzgerald lives in Leesburg, Ohio, with his wife Carolyn and has served as pastor at the Leesburg Friends Meeting for the past 27 years. Cornfield Cathedral (Fairway Press, 2013) is the second book authored by Pastor Fitzgerald. John has earned a Master's of Ministry Degree from the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana.
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StoryShare, November 24, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"A Pilgrim's Thanksgiving" by John Fitzgerald
A Pilgrim's Thanksgiving
by John Fitzgerald
Psalm 100
Christ the King Sunday has always been one of my favorites. Admittedly, it falls just before Thanksgiving and Advent. Churches sizzle with preparation and excitement. And I do too. But this moment, the end of our liturgical calendar is a glory. We celebrate the lordship of Jesus, the ascendency of the incarnation to its rightful place in our lives and in all creation.
Its mystery is the mystery that creeps into all our faith stories. It moves up stream against the thundering demands of our existence. They insist that we should affirm the power and importance of the world’s priorities. It is so hard to focus on what’s really going on as we proclaim Christ as King that it gives us stiff necks and pains in various body parts trying to steer the mob in directions that make no sense to them. The two passages from Luke given to us for this Sunday express the whip saw perfectly.
Mary is one of my heroes. She was the first disciple, she refused to allow her potential as a good girl, a good wife, a good mother to drown her calling, and she knew that God had chosen her to be a prophetic moment for all who would come after. She also knew the price she would have to pay for that privilege and she did it with a will. She was a warrior of the light.
So why does she come up to help us to get a handle on Christ the King?
When I was a sprout, my mother asked me who the most important people in my life were. That was easy. My father and she. She nodded and thanked me for considering her as a candidate. She asked me why I considered them to be so important. That was easy too. Because they loved me. She nodded and told me that she hoped when she asked me that question again that I had the smarts to remember my basis for evaluation. ‘When people are willing to love you it makes them the most important people in the world.’ She hoped that I would have a cloud of people that I considered important, because it would mean that I knew I was loved. And she hoped I would remember that when I was trying to figure out what kind of person I wanted to be. Did I want to be an important person, or something else?
Mary got that. She knew she was loved and that changed the way she looked at the world and how she considered herself. She was important to God, loved by God. So she knew what was going on in her life was important and she claimed that as her MO.
In spite of the world’s judgement of her as a failure according to its categories of power, importance, even goodness, she was a child of God, a messenger of God’s good news, and a proof that God’s love was changing the world. It changed her, it allowed her to go through the loneliness of her pregnancy, the destruction of her family’s expectations, the ostracism of her culture, the discomfort and fear of the conditions of her first delivery and still see God’s hand using her as a sign of love for all the world. And so she sang the song of a prophet. A thundering affirmation of everything God was doing. Oh yeah girl! You know what’s going on. Tell it like it is!
There is a wall in front of my desk that has pictures of folk I consider to be heroes, Jerry Garcia, Robin Williams, a man who died of AIDS, my wife, my mother, my brother, my father, Sir Francis Chinchester, some firemen I knew from 9-11, Mariano Rivera, Eli Manning, Martin Luther King, President Obama, and Mary. Quite a crew.
Somehow each of them allowed me to see what it meant to have courage in the face of adversity and to remember who they were, success or failure. They are all people, human people full of limitation and fear, just like I am. But somehow they held on to their own sense of purpose and value. And so I value them, and I feel a bit more able to be valuable because of them.
I want to be a hero. I guess that means I gotta listen to the boss, you know the king, you know, the Lord, you know, Jesus. He loves me. And that’s a fact.
Time to shine.
John Fitzgerald lives in Leesburg, Ohio, with his wife Carolyn and has served as pastor at the Leesburg Friends Meeting for the past 27 years. Cornfield Cathedral (Fairway Press, 2013) is the second book authored by Pastor Fitzgerald. John has earned a Master's of Ministry Degree from the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana.
*****************************************
StoryShare, November 24, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
