Trinity Parish Church - 7th Sunday after Pentecost - July 15, 2007
Colossians 1:1-14
The Rev. Rachel Endicott

I want to start off this morning with a little bit of in-sermon homework on your part.  I'm going to stop for about 15 seconds and be silent.  During this silence, I want you to think of those things for which you are thankful this morning.  Your thanksgivings can be anything you can come up with...it can be people in your life, things you have, memories that come to mind, anticipated plans that fill you with a sense of thanks, the ways that God has blessed you, and more.  So here it goes...

[silence - 15 seconds]

Now, hopefully you were able to come up with a few different things about which to be thankful.  Some years ago, I read a portion of a book entitled Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy.  In it Sarah Ban Breathnach suggests that each day we should write down three or five things for which we were thankful that day.  She said on the worst days, most of us could probably still write something simple, something along the lines that we had something to eat, a roof over our head, and saw someone we knew.  I can't say that I found her book helpful in the way she designed it, but I got a huge spiritual boost from this particular exercise.

Now some days I found I had big, important things about which to be thankful.  Other days - the sort of locked yourself out the house, had a check bounce, your hair just won't do anything and, of course you have an important meeting, kind of days - those days are the days when we appreciate having a meeting to which to go, the fact that usually we have money in our checking account, and that we have a house from which to get locked out.

Today in our New Testament lesson from Colossians, we hear several passages about prayer.  We first hear that Paul and Timothy thank God for the community of Christians in Colossae.  We hear that they thank God for the members' faith and love.

Secondly, we hear the fact that they continue to prayer, that they have not ceased praying that the members of this community will be filled with God's will, wisdom and understanding and that they may do what they called to do.

So we hear that there is thanksgiving going on, and that this thanksgiving - along with other types of prayer - goes on continuously.  It's not enough to simply give thanks once and then be done with it.  In fact, in a number of other places we called to continuously give thanks to God, to approach God in praise and thanksgiving.

So, bluntly, do we do that?  I don't know where each of you are in your prayer lives as individuals.  But I have observed as a community that we are pretty stingy, rather brief in our prayers of thanksgiving as a community.  In the prayers of the people, our weekly communal prayers, we have - in most of our forms - opportunities for petitions and intercessions, praying for our needs and the needs of others.  Many of the forms particularly invite us to pray for the saints who are separated from us by their deaths.  And the other place we're invited to respond is in the section for thanksgivings.  And more than once we've embarrassed the poor prayer leader here by having him or her lead us into this section and having silence ensue.  Now perhaps you're all praying like mad silently at this spot, but I often don't hear the same silence when we have the other prayer sections.  And lest you think I'm picking on you, I don't think this congregation is alone...other congregations I've served fall into the same habit...we hold our concerns loudly before God, but whisper our thanksgivings.

I'd like for us to think about this in response to God's calling us to be people or prayer, particularly people of praise, adoration and thanksgiving.  Are we responding as God would wish?

I recently read about an interesting religious community.  This community is the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.  They are a Roman Catholic religious order based in the Melrose section of the Bronx.  They - in contrast to many other Roman Catholic religious orders - are growing and having new men join the order.  And the order isn't an order for sissies...they jokingly say their motto is "No bling-bling, no sweet thing, Christ is King."   (NY Times, 4/22/07)  They not only are devoted to evangelism and simplicity, but they take their dedication to poverty, chastity, and obedience so far as to begging for even the food the order eats.  And yet one of the friars, the vocations director the Rev. Luke Fletcher, talks about his extreme gratitude for the "friar suppliers", the network of donors who support the food needs of the order.  And this gratitude seeps into the web of prayer...

"For example," Father Luke said, "when I sit down at breakfast and I pour my cornflakes, I say a prayer for a guy named Charlie who donated the cornflakes.  And when I pour the milk, there's a woman named Uriko who gives us milk every month, so I pray for Uriko.  The whole day, that vow of poverty has its effect in a sense of gratitude."

Wouldn't it be amazing if those of us who haven't taken a vow of poverty could have that same sense of gratitude and thanksgiving to God and for our neighbors and all the blessings of our lives!  Now, I'm guessing that when we did our 15 second exercise earlier most of you came up with something or perhaps a number of somethings for which you are thankful, which is a blessing in your life.  And in speaking with a number of you individually, I know you've said things to me about which your are profoundly thankful to God...thankful about relationships, about work opportunities, about retirement opportunities, about being sober, and about so much more.  This past week I even met someone in the courtyard who was thankful for the beauty of the lacy hydrangeas planted there...

Today at the Prayers of the People, I'd like to encourage you to share those blessings within community before our God.  I'd encourage us to be as enthusiastic about our thanksgivings as we are about our concerns.  Thank God for those God has put in your path.  Do not cease in your prayers!