The year was 1933, and the place was a large congregation in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania called Shadyside Presbyterian Church.

 

The minister at the time, whose name was the Rev. Hugh Thompson Kerr, had served as the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1930, and wanted to find a way to use the celebration of communion as an opportunity to celebrate the growing hope for a greater ecumenical unity amongst the various parts of Christ’s Church.

 

And so, on the first Sunday of October, Rev. Kerr and members of the congregation instituted a practice that came to be known as World Communion Sunday, when churches of various denominations both celebrate our unity in Christ, and continue to set before our eyes the vision of a time when the followers of Christ in this world will sit together around a common table and be in communion together.

 

This vision and hope of Christian unity is about more than the church, however.  This table, and the Gospel itself, reminds us that this world that God loves is meant to be a community of neighbourliness, of love, of peace, and of harmony between all people, and with the natural world itself.  And one of the main reason for this is that at the heart of the Jewish and Christian visions of the world is the belief that there is one sovereign God who rules over all.

 

As the author of Psalm 8, which we sang this morning, stated so long ago, “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

 

Sovereign and majestic in all the earth.  Not simply sovereign and majestic over certain groups, or certain people, or certain parts of life – sovereign and majestic over all. Which means that to strive together towards a harmonious community, a communion of faith, in this world, is not only for the sake of the church – it is also for the sake of this entire world that this sovereign and majestic God so deeply loves.

 

But today is not just World Communion Sunday.  It is also Thanksgiving weekend, at least in Canada.  Since our beloved neighbours to the south, including those who founded the practice of World Commuion Sunday, celebrate Thanksgiving at the end of November rather than the beginning of October, World Communion Sunday and Thanksgiving never fall on the same weekend for them.

 

But for those of us on this side of the border, it is not uncommon for World Communion Sunday to coincide with our Thanksgiving celebrations.

 

As it does this year.

 

Today, at least in this country! — we join together, on this World Communion Sunday and on Thanksgiving weekend.

 

I have always found Thanksgiving to be a rather unique holiday.  After all, it is one of the few, if only, holidays that is based on an emotion, that being gratitude, rather than a person or an event.  Most of our other cultural holidays are connected to an event or to a person.  Valentine’s Day might be about love, but it is connected with St. Valentine.  Christmas might be about giving and generosity, but it is connected with the birth of Christ.  Canada Day may be about civic or national pride, but it is based on the historical date when the Constitution, or British North America Act, took effect in 1867.  These, along with so many of the other holidays in any given year – Victoria Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Remembrance Day — might invite us to ponder some particular theme, but all of which do so by remembering an individual or group or historical event.

 

But not Thanksgiving.  Yes, there may be stories about pilgrims and turkeys and First Nations peoples sharing food; and yes, it is more than mere coincidence that we celebrate Thanksgiving at the time of agricultural harvests in this part of the world.  But Thanksgiving is more than pumpkin pies and pilgrims, it is more than turkeys and turnips, it is more than agricultural harvests and overflowing cornucopias.

 

Thanksgiving invites us to remember the transforming power of gratefulness; to express our appreciation for the many blessings of our lives, both those that we are aware of, on a regular basis, and those that we so often take for granted.

 

Thanksgiving invites us to articulate a spirit of gratitude for the incredible and countless blessings that are poured out upon us by this wondrous mystery who is sovereign and majestic Lord over all the earth.

 

Which makes celebrating World Communion Sunday, on Thanksgiving weekend, entirely appropriate.

 

Because gratitude and communion go hand in hand.

 

As most of you know, there are a number of words that are used, across the Christian tradition, to describe the sacrament that we are about to celebrate.  Some refer to it as Holy Communion, some call it the Lord’s Supper, some refer to it as the Mass.

 

And some refer to it as the Eucharist.

 

The word “eucharist” is based on the Greek word eucharistia which translates into English as gratitude or as thanksgiving.  In the liturgical practices of the church, we articulate this gratitude or thanksgiving in the “Great Prayer of Thanksgiving” which precedes the celebration of communion.

And this prayer, this Eucharistic prayer of thanksgiving, invites us to reflect on the whole scope of blessings that the sovereign and majestic God has poured out upon us.

 

We will give thanks, in that prayer, for the wonder and beauty of creation, and for God’s unceasing faithfulness to us and to all of reality.

 

We will give thanks, in that prayer, for the calling of the people of Israel, for the giving of the Law, for the visionary proclamations of the prophets.

 

We will give thanks, in that prayer, for the gift of Jesus Christ, in whom and through whom we have caught a glimpse of the fullest revelation of God’s grace and love — and whose birth, life, words, actions, death, resurrection and ascension remind us that following him and placing our trust in his ways is, indeed, the pathway to salvation.

 

We will give thanks, in that prayer, that our lives and our world are broken and suffering, confused and frustrating, weary and worn out — partly from the sins that we ourselves have committed, and continue to commit; and partly from forces entirely beyond our control.  And yet, we give thanks that Christ took all of that brokenness upon himself on the cross, and freed us from the consequences of that brokenness, giving us both the experience of, and the hope for peace and for a new and abundant life, which itself is a reason for joy and for gratitude.

 

We will give thanks, in that prayer, for the gift of the Holy Spirit, sent to guide us and inspire us, to challenge us and comfort us, to assure us of God’s continuing presence and faithfulness to this world.

 

We will give thanks, in this prayer, for the Church of Jesus Christ, for the inspiration of our ancestors, for the friendship and encouragement of each other, for the gift of that community of faith, of hope and of love that continues to carry the good news of God’s forgiving love, through time and to the very ends of the earth.

And we will give thanks, in this prayer, that the sovereign and majestic God – this God whose power the Psalmist saw in the heavens, the moon, the stars, the diversity of life on land and sea, and in the glorious, sacred reality of every human life – invites us to take the simplest of things – a loaf of bread and a cup of wine – and remember the magnitude of God’s love and power and grace.

 

There is a lot that is woven into this Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, this Eucharistic prayer, as it leads us towards this table of communion with a prayer of gratitude upon our lips.

Which is right and good — because we all have a lot that we can be thankful for.

 

But we are also invited to remember that this sense of gratitude is not meant to be confined to a ritualized sacrament or an annual Thanksgiving holiday celebration.  Rather, living life with gratitude – each and every day — can have a profound and powerful effect lives, our minds, our spirits, our souls – and on our world.

 

The monk and scholar, David Steindl-Rast, recently did a TED talk about the power of gratitude and its relation with contentment, joy and happiness in life.  He made a number of important points in that short presentation, not least of which was the observation that we sometimes live out of the wrong understanding of the connection between gratitude and happiness.  That is, he stated that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but rather it is gratitude makes us happy.

 

Let me repeat that – because it is both true and important.  It is not happiness that makes us grateful, but rather it is gratitude that makes us happy.

 

The way to find happiness, he suggested, is to live gratefully, and the way to live gratefully is to remember that each and every moment of our existence is a gift that is given to us, each and every moment is an opportunity to open our eyes to opportunities to give thanks, and as a result, each and every moment is an opportunity to increase our sense of gratefulness, our contentment, our joy.

 

Steindl-Rast’s presentation ended with a profound and remarkable articulation of the connection between gratefulness, joy, happiness, and the transformation of our world.

 

He stated,

 

“People are becoming aware how important gratefulness is and how this can change our world.  It can change our world in immensely important ways, because if you are grateful, you are not fearful; and if you are not fearful, you are not violent.  If you are grateful, you act out of a sense of enough, and not of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share.  If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people and you are respectful to everybody, and this changes this power pyramid under which we live.  It doesn’t make for equality but it makes for equal respect, and that is the important thing…A grateful world is a world of joyful people.  Grateful people are joyful people, and the more and more joyful people there are, the more that we will have a joyful world.”

 

So let us come to this table with a prayer of thanksgiving on our lips.

 

And then let us go from this Table, in joy, to change the world.

 

Thanks be to God.

 

Amen.