Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Invisible But Essential Thanksgivings "
Date: November 20, 2005
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Ephesians 1:18-25

Did you take the little assignment I suggested in the Carillon for this week of Thanksgiving?  It was to make a list of all the things for which you are thankful.  Look over the list.  How many are visible and tangible, and how many are invisible?

It’s not hard for us to count our blessings, is it?  Most of us could quickly and easily jot down a rather lengthy list, including thanks for family, for friends, for food, for clothing, for cars, for a home, for the second home in the desert or the mountains or the time share in Hawaii, for the boat, for a job, for health, for freedom, for opportunity, and so on.

But think about this.  If we follow this logic, then it means that if we lack these things, we cannot give thanks.  We can count our blessings only if we have stuff to count.  However, the apostle Paul encourages us to give thanks for nothing.  In fact, he offers us the example of his own thanksgiving for nothing at all – not one physical, material, tangible thing.

Instead, in his letter to the first century Christians at Ephesus, Paul gives “constant thanks” for things which are not visible or tangible:  Faith in the Lord Jesus, love toward the saints, a spirit of wisdom and revelation, the riches of God’s glorious inheritance and the immeasurable greatness of God’s power (Ephesians 1:15-19). 

His prayer rather reminds me of one a church member here lifts up on many Sunday mornings on her blue prayer card:  “Thanks to God for answered prayers, God’s Grace, infinite Love, and the promise of each new day.”

None of these blessings can be seen, touched, purchased or possessed –  like food, clothing, cars, boats or homes.  And yet, they are the very greatest gifts we could ever receive.  To give thanks for the nontangibles, or, even in the midst of despair and suffering, to offer to God what Scripture calls praise for God’s abiding presence.  Praise is the recognition that it is all about God and not about me.

In Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic book The Little Prince, the fox character is saying goodbye to the little prince, and as he leaves he says, “And now here’s my secret, a very simple secret:  It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeats, so that he will be sure to remember.  This fox’s insight is right in line with what the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians:  “We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)

It is the unseen that is eternal.  What is essential is invisible to the eye.  In his prayer of thanksgiving, Paul refuses to focus his gaze on the things that can be seen, because he knows that these things are temporary.  Instead, he looks only at the essential and eternal things that are invisible to the eye.  When he counts his blessings, he lists absolutely nothing you can buy, and nothing you can own – only faith, love, a spirit of wisdom, a spirit of revelation, God's inheritance, God's power.

The story that I shared with the children earlier is our story.  The Pilgrims were the founders of our branch of Protestantism, the Congregational church, in America.  Those first English settlers in America landed in December of 1620 in Massachusetts, and within one month 10 out of the 17 fathers and husbands who were on that ship, the Mayflower, died.  Within a couple months only four of the mothers and wives were alive out of the first 17 couples.  And by Easter almost half of the pilgrims had died.  They landed in the middle of winter without provisions, without shelter, without any knowledge or experience of how to live in this New World on their own.  It took a huge toll, and yet in the fall of 1621 they celebrated and they gave thanks to God.  It was amazingly difficult those first years.

On another continent about 25 years later there was a Lutheran pastor named Martin Rinkart.  He lived in Eilenberg in Saxony and it was during the siege of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).  Eilenberg was a walled city that was surrounded by Swedes and there were 800 homes burned, and the people within suffered from the plague, from starvation, and it got to the point where the pastors within that town, within that village, were burying 12 people a day.  Pretty soon the pastors themselves started to die and Martin Rinkart was the only pastor left.  He was conducting 50 funerals a day, can you imagine?  Fifty funerals a day.  I felt overwhelmed a week ago when, on one day, I dealt with three families planning various aspects of memorial services for their loved one.  Rinkart buried over 5,000 people that year, including his own wife.  When the war ended a year later in 1648 he sat down, and listen to the words that he penned.  Think of the circumstances under which they were

written as you sing them for our closing hymn today:

Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,

Who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices;

Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way

With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

This was a man who knew horrors beyond all we can think and imagine, getting on his knees and leading people in praise and thanks to our God, not for all the visible, tangible things they had lost, but all the invisible but essential things that remained—the very things for which Paul offered thanks:  faith and love, a spirit of wisdom and revelation, and the immeasurable greatness of God’s power.

When you gather at your family Thanksgiving table this Thursday, I hope you will hold hands and offer a word of thanks.  If you’re a guest at someone else’s home, why not ask them in advance if someone can offer a prayer of Thanksgiving.  As you sit there holding hands with family and friends, doubtless you are thinking thankful thoughts for their very presence in your life.  As you smell the good meal on the table in front of you, surely you want to offer God thanks for the food and the hands which prepared it.  But pause to offer God great and good thanks for those very same essential but invisible tenets which Paul lifts up today:  our Christian faith and love, God’s spirit of wisdom and revelation, and the immeasurable greatness of God’s power.

Thanks be to God indeed.