Issue #393
11/26/2013


Giving Thanks for Hope

Michelle Angalet, Associate in Ministry, Assistant to the Bishop - ELCA Southeastern Synod shares her Thanksgiving Day thoughts.
 
 As we find ourselves this Thanksgiving week, nestled between Christ the King Sunday and the first Sunday in Advent, I am having no problems coming up with lots of things for which I am thankful.  As a person of faith, I think about the bounty that I have been given as a child of God - my family, my health and a healthy family, a roof over my head and plenty of food to put on the table; not to mention a God who I know loves me no matter what, a God who, we will soon hear in our Advent and Christmas readings, was willing to take on flesh and become one of us.  
Why is it, then, that I can so easily be distracted by what I don't have (and somehow think that I need)?  I know I am not alone in this reality.  Many of us live with a recognition of the abundance that we have been given but too often slip into what seems to be a default "scarcity" mentality.

Recently, a pastor from another denomination and country visited the Southeastern Synod office.  He has been attending one of our synod's congregations and is discerning a call to ministry in the ELCA.  His story has given me a different lens through which to approach this Thanksgiving Day.  The message he proclaimed so angered local leaders that he was forced to flee his homeland for fear of his life. Proclaiming the gospel was not a freedom he possessed.  It is hard to imagine what it is like to live in a land where that freedom isn't a given.  I realize it is a freedom I take for granted.

Jesus knew what it was like to live in a place where proclaiming the gospel could get you killed.  This Thanksgiving, I find myself thinking about people who live in places where there is no hope.  Jesus' gospel proclamation gave people hope.  His message was, and still is, music to the ears of the oppressed, the sick, the lonely, and the dying. In places where the gospel challenges authority, how will those who need to hear it, hear it when it is silenced? 

Jesus and his church answer this question.  Through its proclamation of Jesus' message of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation, the church carries on Jesus' work. Two thousand years later we see that the gospel, a word of promise and hope, cannot be silenced.  It may be thwarted, it may be unwelcome in places, and the church may be imperfect in its proclamation of it, but there is no silencing the gospel.  What was done on the cross and revealed in the empty tomb was done for the sake of the world.  It cannot be undone and it cannot be silenced.

This year I am especially thankful for the freedom to proclaim the gospel.  I am thankful for hope and for the way in which it is a light than cannot be hidden under a bushel, even when people  try, or we fail to protect the light as we should.  This Thanksgiving, as the church finds itself between proclaiming Christ the King and waiting for a Savior to come, I pray that the Holy Spirit blows life into Christ's church to be bold in its message of hope and love.  Christ is King!  It is a message full of abundance, and the only one that can really help us see that we lack for nothing.


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Synod calendar

 

November 28 -29

Thanksgiving Holidays

Synod Office Closed

 

View the entire synod calendar
here

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ELCA Southeastern Synod
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Atlanta, GA 30303
404-589-1977