Grace and peace be with you all from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ.

Amen.

This evening it is good for us to gather together for worship.

In speaking about being thankful tonight, I want to begin my sermon by saying that I am grateful for our shared partnership in the Gospel.

I am grateful that we can come together as a community to give thanks to God for blessings received.

I have been a pastor now for twelve years and every year of my ministry I have joined up with other churches for an ecumenical Thanksgiving service.

Starting back in my first congregation out in Iowa I have had a part in a community Thanksgiving service for the past twelve years and I don’t plan on stopping – I want to keep this important ministry going.

I begin my ministry in rural Tama, Iowa.

The tradition in that small community that I was called to was always to share in a community Thanksgiving service.

And so, between the two Methodist churches, the Presbyterian church, the Catholic church, and the Meskwaki Tribe Assembly of God church we joined together every Thanksgiving to give God praise as a community.

For those four years that I was in Tama I always found it so incredibly meaningful for everyone to come together each Thanksgiving for worship.

I am grateful still that I am able even now to participate in a community Thanksgiving service that has grown in size over the years.

I certainly want to thank Chapel on the Hill for hosting this years’ service.

We are grateful for this service.

Besides being grateful for tonight’s community service… what are you thankful for this Thanksgiving.

The Apostle Paul says in Philippians to rejoice in the Lord always.

For the Apostle Paul, to rejoice in the Lord meant that you not only expressed gratitude and thanksgiving through your actions but to rejoice in the Lord meant that you felt something internally – you felt something in the heart.

Paul believed that to rejoice meant you actually had an experience of God’s grace and mercy that compelled you to rejoice in all circumstances.

Through the inner experience of God, you outwardly expressed your joy and delight and praise.

What do I mean by this?

When I was ten years old, I developed a great passion for the game of basketball.

I would go out and shoot baskets in our basketball hoop over the garage again and again and again.

For hours and hours, I worked on my shot.

In the rain, in the snow, in the wind I would fine tune my basketball skills.

I had a love for the game.

There was this profound joy that I found in basketball.

I even purchased a rim that was smaller than the actual size of a standard basketball rim -that fit over the standard rim – in order to improve my shot.

It was called the accurim.

The accurim turned a standard basketball rim from being eighteen inches in diameter to being twelve inches in diameter.

Now a standard basketball has a diameter of about 9 inches so when shooting at a hoop that has the accurim attached to it you had to be extremely accurate in your shot.

If you were off just a little the basketball would bounce of the accurim.

The purpose of course in using that device on your rim was to improve your shot by forcing you to get the basketball right in the middle of the rim.

At that time, I also sent in the mail a check for sixty dollars to get a book that guaranteed anyone that read the book some ten inches on their vertical jump – if they followed the plan highlighted in the book.

But from my memory the accurim did improve my jump shot but that expensive book that I sent away for, which turned out to be not a book at all but really just a pamphlet, I discovered that reading that pamphlet did not greatly improve my jump.

In other words, after reading that pamphlet I still could not dunk the basketball.

Although to this day I still have dreams in my sleep of dunking the basketball.

But in real life not so much.

Oh, I had dreams back then to become an NBA star like my hero Michael Jordan.

But by my sophomore year of high school while sitting on the bench during the games I had to rethink my NBA career.

But my love for the game and the joy that I still get even now from basketball whether it is simply in shooting hoops at the Y or in watching the Milwaukee Bucks on television or my favorite thing in watching now my daughter play basketball at the Williams Bay school I am grateful for that simple game of getting the basketball.

I don’t play basketball just because I enjoy the game.

I feel the game as I play.

It is an inner feeling – it is a deep commitment to the game that flows from that inner feeling of joy.

To be grateful is to not only show your joy and your love for something it is to feel that joy and love for something.

God doesn’t just want us to carelessly offer up praise and thanksgiving.

God wants us to deeply feel that praise and thanksgiving in our hearts, our minds, and our souls.

God wants us to experience his joy and his grace so that our hearts spill out his praise.

Now it is your turn.

Think about something in your life that brings you great joy.

Sometimes just thinking about something that brings us joy can ignite these deeper feelings within us.

Then ask yourself this question: “Why do I feel this way about that?”

Why does this thing bring me so much joy?

Because whatever that thing is it may be leading you or pointing you to something very significant.

That thing might be helping you to understand yourself in a deeper way.

Once you got it – hold onto this feeling.

The way you feel about that thing that brings you such great joy is the same feeling that God wants you to feel towards him.

And more than that because whatever that thing is – in my case it is basketball but it will be different for you, whatever that thing is it pails in comparison to having a life-giving relationship with God.

Nothing here on this earth compares to God.

God is the source of all life and joy and wonder and God is the source of our happiness.

In the Gospel of John, we hear that Jesus is the bread of life who gives life to the whole world.

He is the one who satisfies our hearts and our souls.

As much as I love basketball it is nothing in comparison to my relationship with Jesus who is the true bread from heaven.

He is the Word made flesh, the Alpha the Omega, the beginning and the end.

He is everything to us.

When we receive him and his love and his grace, we overfull with gratitude and thanksgiving.

You give him thanks and praise because your praise flows out of a heart that has been touched by God.

On Thursday we will celebrate the day of Thanksgiving.

This coming Thanksgiving Day take a moment to express your joy and your gratitude to God.

Let God fill your heart, mind, and soul in such a way that you overflow with praise to him.

We have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Mostly we give thanks for our faith in a gracious God who gave his Son to us.

For Jesus was faithful to God and to us even going so far as dying on the cross demonstrating his commitment and love to those he cares for so very much.

His love is for you and me.

It is not a love that we only hear about it is a love we feel, we know, and we experience – it is a love that tell others about and it is a love that we rejoice in.

Let us pray: