I was horrified, devastated, by the massacre in Paris on
November 13, 2015. The details of that tragedy were almost too gruesome to hear
about. I share in the sorrow of so many good citizens – in France and around
the world. I want to cry out that the world has far, far, far more good and
righteous citizens than it has vicious and evil ones.
However, as I reflect upon that awful event, I have found
myself thankful for something. Here in the United States of America, we
approach the Thanksgiving holiday; and it is often our practice to prepare for
that day by wondering what it is we are thankful for. So, here is what I am
thankful for this year:
I am thankful for faithful preachers. In particular, I am
thankful for the good and faithful preachers who preached on Sunday, November
15, 2015, less than two days after the Paris horror. Most of them completely
revised what they were going to say that day. Some of them didn’t know what
they would say until they stood in the pulpit on that Sunday morning.
And they weren’t all Christian preachers. I am thankful for
the Muslim imams, and Jewish rabbis, and all sorts of other religious leaders
who rose to speak on Saturday and Sunday to their shocked and sad parishioners.
I am thankful for the preachers who are called to speak to
us week after week. Some of their sermons get passed around on the internet, or
tweeted about, or mentioned in some random media piece. But most of their
sermons do not. Most of the good preachers of the world are remembered only
locally. They will never be made famous by headlines. The world is filled,
FILLED, with great preachers who are known mostly by their local and ordinary
and faithful listeners.
And it is precisely in those local and faithful places that
the preachers make a difference. Faithful preachers who rise early on Saturday
morning to revise their sermons make a difference. Faithful preachers who try
to find God’s grace, and God’s gospel, in the midst of sadness and sorrow make
a difference. Faithful preachers who cry with their parishioners about
injustice and horror make a difference. Faithful preachers who listen to their
parishioners all week so that they, the preachers, can assemble some message of
relevance in their context – they make a difference.
The world needs something different from what we saw on our
television screens this past Friday evening and Saturday, images of violence
and evil. In the midst of covert violence and networked terror, the world needs
places that gather people of good will and faith and hope. Those places are
called churches, and mosques, and synagogues, and all sorts of other names.
Most of them, the fantastic overwhelming majority of them, are places where we
learn about goodness and love and hope. God wants to defeat violence and terror
in the world, and God uses local communities of faith to do that, generation
after generation.
I am thankful for the ordinary preacher who gathers the
courage and spirit to speak to a wounded congregation every week. I don’t know
her name in the church down the road. I don’t know his name in the parish
across the country. But I know that those preachers are working, working hard
and faithfully to proclaim God’s goodness and love in a world that is often
wounded and pained.
So, this Thanksgiving, I give thanks for faithful preachers.
Even the bad ones, who stumble and screw up and get the particulars wrong.
Their spirit is usually right. They are trying to show us that God is
ultimately good. Local congregations are the places where we learn this message
the most often, and the most routinely. Churches and synagogues and mosques are
where God gathers people who are sorrowed and pained, for just that reason; we
need to hear messages of hope and healing.
Across the world, in the days after the Paris massacre,
faithful preachers rose to speak good against evil. They rose to speak love
against terror. They actually do something like that every week, whether we pay
attention to them or not. This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for them.
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