Thank you. It’s great to be here with you all. My name is Matt, I’m the pastor at St. Paul’s church up the road. And it’s always a joy to partner with something like this with the church. I like to say the church at Milltown as the Apostle Paul did. They didn’t have different names of churches. It was just the church at Ephesus, the church at Phillipi. So we are the “church at Milltown” all gathered together today and I want to read from one of Paul’s letters, Ephesians.
So if you have your Bibles, you could turn there with me Ephesians chapter one, verse 15, to 23. “For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus in your love towards all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of Revelation, the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your heart and lighten that you may know what what is the hope, to which he has called you. What are the riches, his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe according to the working of his great my, that he worked in Christ when He raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand, and the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”
Here is our Thanksgiving message: Rather than remind us of what to give thanks for I would like to call us to be people who live lives that demand Thanks. Paul here starts by thanking God, for the saints, for those who follow Jesus. Paul constantly in the scriptures calls us, followers of Jesus, Saints. He’s telling us through this, this word here, that he’s thankful for us. Why? That was my first question, as I was reading this tex, why is Paul thankful for the saints? Well, Paul tells us. He’s first thankful for their faith. So today, I am too I’m thankful for the faith of the saints of the followers of Jesus.
Our faith has been put to the test recently has it not? With this world, that we’re living in the pandemic, the election, the kind of the turmoil that we’ve seen in 2020, it’s been crazy. And so we have faith. We have faith that Jesus opposes evil, that Jesus defeated death, and that he conquered the grave. Jesus is a God, who doesn’t stop us from dying, but Jesus is the God that raises the dead to new life. That’s the hope that we have. And so Paul is thankful that we have faith in that. Today, I want to remind you of that faith, that that we have hope that Jesus has defeated death, that we will raise the raise to new life.
Paul’s thankful for their faith, but also their love. It’s easy to love people we like, right? It’s hard, it’s harder to love people we don’t like or that are different than us. Or sometimes our spouse, or our kids, or parents, or those folks that just simply annoy you. I don’t know about you, if you live in Milltown, when you cross the road by Dunkin Donuts, people try to run you over. I don’t feel a lot of love in that moment. Right? But But God has called us to love even those those folks. But also not just that, but but to love in a way that we take care of people’s needs. We take care of our neighbors needs we take care of those that live near us that we interact with. And we take care of not just people’s felt needs but all their needs. So we we’ve had a Community Food Bank, that we’ve been operating through this pandemic and and that that very tangibly meets felt needs, people need food, people need clothing, we provide that that thing. But also, the love that Paul talks about here is, is meeting people’s belonging needs or psychological needs or emotional needs as well. And so as as saints as followers of Jesus, that’s our call as well. To live a life of love, love of neighbor, love of enemy.
Thanksgiving is a time of year, where I’ve learned that if I take the focus off myself have a much more pleasant Thanksgiving. I remember a time when I would go home for Thanksgiving, my parents at the time were living in Michigan and and we were driving from New Jersey out to Michigan to visit them and, and my kids were really little. I don’t know if you’ve been around like little toddler kids, they’re a lot of energy and they take a lot out of you. So I was really looking forward to just dumping them off on my parents so I could kick back and relax. I remember that caused a lot of tension in the house because my kids are destroying stuff as they’re not used to toddlers with nothing baby proofed and they’re destroying all the stuff, and my parents are getting upset. Meanwhile I’m just kind of laying there like, I’m out. I’m home on vacation. I learned that Thanksgiving that probably not the best attitude to have going into something like this, that it’s about me. I know that some of the best Thanksgivings I’ve had is when I go with a posture of how can I help? How can I serve? How can we all serve and help each other and love each other. When people have love, we look out for others. Jesus doesn’t just save us from something, from sin and death, but he saves us for something, he saves us for faith and love.
Paul closes this text and he prays for us. He thanks God for us. And then he prays for us. He prays for us that we would be thankful that we that we would understand the glorious inheritance that we have in Christ Jesus. We all have a family we’re a part of over the years as as folks pass on. Maybe you’ve received an inheritance I remember the first time ever received an inheritance it was only a couple thousand dollars from my grandma when she passed. I was so excited as we had just gotten married. We can get a honeymoon. We took that inheritance and went to Jamaica. We understand this idea of inheritance leads something good or exciting for us. Paul wants us to know that you have a great inheritance in Christ Jesus, you are nothing new this but you are part of the family of God, you have God’s name on your back. You are part of his family and he has a great inheritance waiting for you. Jesus describes what’s waiting for us is this great banquet, he goes, I’m going to prepare a feast for you. I’m going to create this great wedding feast, and he’s been preparing that wedding feast for thousands of years. I know when my mom prepares feast for us, it’s maybe a few weeks or a few days. It’s grand! Could you imagine what the feast will be like? That Jesus been preparing for 2000 years? I don’t think there’s a mistake that Jesus’ first miracle recorded was turning water into wine. The best wine is waiting for us.
Finally, Paul reminds us in this prayer that that Jesus is our king. That he controls all authority and all power both in this world and the next all Dominion above and the heavens and on earth. Jesus is king. He is not President Elect, he is not to be president, but he is actually president of the universe right now. He is in charge. Living under his rule is subversive. Worldly governments like we just voted on recently want us to give them our allegiance, first and foremost. Giving Jesus our allegiance before we give our local government allegiance is very subversive. In fact, the early Christians were killed for that subversion. And so we know that Jesus is our true king and president of the universe. The principalities of this world lose power. It’s in Christ’s kingdom, that you are loved that you are cared for, and we take care of each other all our needs were met.
The early church describes it as this. I love the Act 2 passage. Think about this for a second, as I read from the message, everyone was in awe, all those wonders and science done through the apostles. And all the believers lived in wonderful harmony holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned, and they pooled their resources so that each person’s need was met. They followed a daily discipline of worship in the temple, followed by meals at home, every meal of celebration, exuberant and joyful as they praise God. People in general liked what they saw. And every day their number grew as God added to those who are being saved. You see, this is what we get when we live in Christ Kingdom when we proclaim Jesus is king. This is what we have to look forward to and to be thankful for.
What if this Thanksgiving we lived out of the knowledge that Jesus is king and his kingdom is everything we’ve been searching for? Everything we’re so passionate about in life to get to strive for we already have access to to that in Christ kingdom? What if Our Lady of Lourdes, Methodist Church in Milltown and St. Paul’s starting leading this way, with an alternative community built on faith and love in our world? What if we started to put aside denominational labels and affiliations and Protestant and Catholic and all of that, and just started living as a family of God and Christ’s kingdom built on faith and love. I believe we would transform not only our community here in Milltown, but we would transform the entire world. That’s what happened in this early church. They just lived faith and love out in the world and people are drawn to it and the world was transformed. Christ’s Kingdom truly can transform our world. It’s not a republican world or a democrat world. They are not going to transform our world, but Christ’s world will transform.
This is not so much of a reminder what to be thankful for. Yes, we are thankful Jesus defeated death. He resurrects us We are thankful for that. We’re thankful for our rich inheritance. The fact that Jesus is our king, we don’t have to worry about voter fraud. It’s already been decided. But this is a Thanksgiving call. It’s a call to live as an alternative community built on faith in Jesus’s defeat of death and living out Jesus love to our world. If we as a “Church at Milltown” live this way, we would change our community.
I’m going to close and I want to read a Thanksgiving prayer. Almighty God Father of mercies, we are unworthy servants give you humble thanks for all your goodness and loving kindness to us and all and all whom you have made. We bless you for our Creation, preservation and all the blessings of this life, but above all for your measurable love and the redemption of the world, by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace for the hope of glory, and we pray give us such an awareness of your mercies that was really thankful hearts, we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but our allies by giving up ourselves to your service, and by walking me for you and holiness and righteousness all of our days through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you, and the Holy Spirit be honor and glory throughout all ages. Amen.