Giving Thanks, In Advance

I Samuel 2:1-10

November 19, 2006

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

“If I ran zoo,

Said young Gerald McGrew,

I’d make a few changes.

That’s just what I’d do.

The lions and tigers and that kind of stuff

They have up here now are not quite good enough.

You see things like these in just any old zoo.

They’re awfully old fashioned. I want something new!”

With apologies to Dr. Seuss, I’d like to take a little poetic license this morning.

The women and men living in the world zoo,

They fight, they grab, they make such a to do!

Hatred and hunger and war everywhere,

Compassion and kindness are still much too rare.

Asian, Caucasian, Arab or African

Christian, Jew, Muslim, they’ll divide any way they can.

Make children soldiers in street gangs or armies,

Teach them to hate instead of their ABC’s.

Old grudges they keep as though precious as pearls

Needing new enemies their flags they unfurl.

They speak about justice but can’t find a way

To make sure the poorest have health care each day.

They hear from great prophets God’s call to be one,

They hear about kindness and love, but they run

Too fast to protect what they want to control

Getting plenty of stuff, but losing their souls.

If I ran this zoo, oh, if I ran this zoo,

I’d make a few changes; that’s just what I’d do.

But I don’t run this zoo; do you?

Hannah prayed and sang, and said

“There is no holy one like God,

No one besides our Rock.

Don’t be so proud and arrogant,

For God knows and has heard it all.

God breaks the weapons of those who think themselves mighty.

God makes those the world thinks weak strong.

Those who have more than enough lose everything.

Those who never have enough have more than they need.

The lonely and lost find family.

The dead come to life.

God raises up the poor from streets filled with trash.

God gives the lowest of the low a place of honor.

God cuts off the arrogant and reminds them that they cannot prevail by weapons or wealth.

God thunders in heaven! God judges the earth!

God strengthens the chosen ones.

Hannah is not imagining that she runs the zoo and can make all this happen, indeed she prays in the present tense, as though it has already happened, as does Mary in her Magnificat. Hannah is not so blind to the world around her as to think the poor are full or the weak, strong. She is not so wrapped up in the child God gave her and which she has now given to serve God that she is not aware of the reality of her people in a time of chaos in politics and religion. She knows these things, like the poor sitting with princes, have not happened yet, but she gives thanks for them because she believes with all her heart that they will. The scholar Patrick Miller says she prays this prayer of thanksgiving because she believes that “wonders have not ceased, that possibilities not yet dreamt of will happen, and that hope is an authentic stance.” Hannah and I do not preach pie-in-the-sky, but with eyes wide open we give thanks with hope for what has not yet happened because we know who runs the zoo and we have seen what God has done in the past, and we have heard just what God will do in the time yet to come, and we believe it. That faith allows us to give thanks for what is not yet happening fully, and in that thanksgiving, we do not ignore the reality of the pain of the world around us, but we proclaim the world different and empower ourselves to do what we can to make the vision reality. To pray this way is to move away from the despair of my poem and to be one with the prophets who knew that the vision of the world people hold ultimately shapes the world in which they live. To pray this way is to move away from the despair of my poem and to be one with the prophets who knew that the vision of the world people hold ultimately shapes the world in which they live. The writer Christina Baldwin says “life is a great unending opportunity to see things differently, to keep reframing disaster and discouragement into faith.” (in Whitcomb, Feasting With God, p. 88) As we come to Thanksgiving, a holiday which proclaims a world-shaping myth of our society, it is important to be clear on our vision, and on who runs the zoo, to whom we need to give thanks because we have not and cannot make the world as it should be by ourselves.

So I want to invite you to join in this different kind of thanksgiving this morning, a kind of thanksgiving that celebrates the now but not yet. I invite you to think of things for which you are thankful even though they may not yet fully be realized but which seem to you to be consistent with God’s vision of the world as you understand it. Usually in worship we invite people to lift up requests for prayers of thanks or intercession. Today, instead of doing this the usual way by passing the mike around, I want to move right into prayer with you, and even though we can’t pass the mike around, I invite you one at a time to lift up your prayers, loudly so we can all hear, and no matter what the prayer is, make it a prayer of thanksgiving. For example, I am going to pray for my brother-in-law John, giving thanks to God for the healing that is in him, even though the cancer is still there, and I’m going give thanks for the coming of peace to Palestine and Israel even though it has yet to come because I believe in God’s time and in God’s way, it will. Let us bring “prayers of impossibility” (thanks to Walter Brueggemann), knowing that what is impossible for us is possible for God.

Let us pray:

We don’t run this zoo, O God, and we know in our heart of hearts that you do. For that we are most grateful.