This week I handed in the first paper for my Doctor of Ministry program. It has been 15 years since I last had to produce papers or complete assignments for school. While it is certainly different and new at the doctoral level, a lot of those memories and feelings from another time in my life have been on my mind. 

When I was in high school, I remember the pressure I felt to do well. I was a busy kid with sports, music and church. Most nights of the week I had one or two practices for either a sports team, orchestra or musical group. I also remember how classes and homework started to take on more importance, as doing well was an important step in getting into university. 

When I would feel particularly stressed or burdened trying to balance school and extracurricular activities, I would workshop with myself worst-case scenarios: What if I failed a test? Failed a class? Couldn’t graduate? Didn’t get into university? 

Somehow imagining the worst of what could happen and then thinking of backup plans allowed me to worry less about the things on my plate and actually get them done. 

At present, worst-case scenarios globally and all the problems that the world is facing these days are not a good place to start. For instance: What would happen if just one of the many people with their hands on the little red button actually pressed it? Or what would happen if COVID suddenly became two or three times as deadly? Or what if the Earth’s temperature keeps rising? 

Those are worst-case scenarios for which only prayer and mutual consolation can help. 

Then there are those of us who are worried about the cost of bananas, losing a job, sharing with a loved one a particularly vulnerable feeling, singing the wrong note in choir, making a mistake on our taxes or any number of things. Sometimes just playing out the worst that could happen is a way to realize that the worst might not be as bad as we feared, or that following through with a plan B might not be so difficult. 

As congregations and faith communities face a lot of change and big questions, it is easy for us to fear bad things happening and do everything we can to avoid worst-case scenarios. 

However, allowing ourselves the time and space to slow down and consider just what might come next after the worst-case scenario could alleviate a lot of our worries and stress. 

In fact, as followers of Jesus, we know that God is not one to run away from a worst-case scenario, but to face it head-on… and then surprise us all on the Third Day with the news that on the other side of the worst-case scenario, there is new life. 

Change is in the air. It is that time in the fall when the lingering warm summer days are interrupted by cool winds blowing from new directions. Some might say, “Winter is Coming” but there is still the fullness of fall to experience. The leaves are mostly fully changed and falling now. But the turnover of seasons is in the air in other ways. 

Manitobans have just voted in a new Premier and governing party. Change and new directions have been promised. 

Climate change is never far from our minds these days, with hurricanes, floods, and hotter-than-ever months on record. 

More local to us, we are surrounded by sister congregations in transition, with pastoral vacancies dotting the Lutheran landscape in significant ways. 

Change has arrived, and I don’t know about you but I can feel it in my bones. Things that were headed our way in 2019, but that were delayed or re-directed by the pandemic are finally landing at our feet. 

You have heard me say this before, we will not escape these forces of change. Congregations and communities of faith are experiencing all kinds of change too. There is a lot of technical or functional change that is happening. Declining resources have meant that congregations are re-working how they provide ministry. Re-configured staff, partnerships with sister congregations, building rentals and so on. But it isn’t just technical change, it is just a matter of figuring out the puzzle of how to match the available resources to the possible ministry configurations.

There is also deep change afoot. The kind of change that requires true deep transformation. Transformation in how we understand ourselves as people of faith. It is no longer enough to feel obligated to come to church out of a sense of duty or habit. We have too little precious time to spend on things we don’t care about these days. I can see that following Jesus is more and more at the center of why people are coming to church in 2023 than at any other time in my ministry. 

And with that shift, the ways we do ministry are changing. I can see people who no longer receive or consume the ministry of the church but are rather fed by it. Fed to turn around and serve in their own expressions of the gospel promise. 

If there is any part of all this stressful change that is going on around us that is life-giving, it is this one. As we are stripped of our excess as communities of faith, our focus is shifting to that central experience of being forgiven sinners trying to follow Jesus’ call to serve the world. 

Of all the change that is in the air these days, that is the one that gives me the most hope!

As someone who grew up with cats, I confess that I did not piece together that when a dog needs to go outside, so does the dog owner (at least while she is a puppy). Now as a puppy owner, I find myself standing out in the backyard waiting for the dog to do her business far more than I thought would ever be necessary. Between that and twice daily walks to the school pick-up/drop-off location, I have found myself standing out in the rain more than I ever imagined necessary this week. 

All the grey skies, fall leaves and rainy streets give the sense of a dreary fall movie, maybe a movie about a family coming home for Thanksgiving and being stuck together for a comedic and/or miserable weekend. 

Thanksgiving is one of those occasions that we celebrate without thinking too deeply about, lest we get lost in a vortex of existential turmoil. Think about it too much and it might start to hurt your brain. 

Taking an opportunity to give thanks for the blessings that we have received in life is certainly a worthwhile endeavour. But where does the duty to give thanks begin and end? And just what are we thankful for? 

Thankful for our material possessions, or that we aren’t unfortunate enough to be poor?

Thankful for an abundance of family and friends in our lives, or thankful that we are not alone?

Thankful because Jesus or Grandma or our 3rd-grade teacher told us to be, or thankful because of genuine gratefulness?

Thanksgiving, in that sense, is an odd occasion then. It could perhaps come across as mandatory gratefulness. Yet, gratefulness is a learned skill that needs to be practiced to truly embody it. 

It makes sense then that, as Canadians (and Americans a little later), we make sense of this occasion for gratefulness by gathering around a meal. The opportunity to eat together is the great equalizer, putting the strong and mighty next to the weak and lowly, all the same at the table. 

And even though Thanksgiving is not a church holiday, gratitude and thanksgiving are deeply connected to faith. In fact, ‘Thanksgiving’ is one of the names that we call Holy Communion. The Greek word for Holy Communion, Eucharist, means thanksgiving. In the Eucharist, we pray, giving thanks to God for all that God has done for us. Yet we also recognize that our thanks are insufficient. Somehow, God still comes and joins us to the Body of Christ in the Bread and Wine. 

The true Thanksgiving might just be that of God towards us. God’s faithfulness toward and gratefulness for creation. 

Maybe that is the best way to understand Thanksgiving. We can never express our true gratitude and thanks to God for this life of abundance, but God’s love and gratefulness given for our sake make true Thanksgiving possible.