The Reverend Ronald J. Kolanowski
November 26, 2009
Thanksgiving Day

How are you today?...How are you today really?....I want you to try something.  When I ask you, “How are you today?” I want you all to say, “I AM BLESSED.”  Ready.  “How are you today?”  I AM BLESSED.  Let’s try again:  “How are you today?”  I AM BLESSED.

I AM BLESSED.  I AM BLESSED.  That’s how I was greeted each morning when I walked into the Assisted Living Building at Asbury Methodist Village in Gaithersburg, Maryland.  I walked in usually around 8:00 a.m., and the very first person I would see was Nelly, who cleaned our common spaces, hallways and bathrooms.  I would ask, “How are you today?”  And she would say… I AM BLESSED.  Then she would ask me, “How are you?”...and by then I would say, “I AM BLESSED TOO.”  Our greeting sometimes took a slight variation depending on my mood, such as  “I FEEL EXCEPTIONALLY BLESSED TODAY,”  or  “VERY VERY BLESSED.”

It struck me that Nelly’s greeting is at the heart of our message today and at the heart of Thanksgiving, when we are taking time to count our blessings.

When we ask one another “How are you doing?” so often the response is “I’m fine.”  It’s the expected response.  But when Nelly answered my greeting with… I AM BLESSED, she made me stop and take a look at my relationship to gratitude in my life.  Here she was at 8:00 a.m., vacuuming the lobby or the hallways.  Quietly, faithfully doing the work she was given, work in which she took pride, and in the simplicity and ordinariness of her labor she responds with three words that are profoundly rooted in a theology at the heart of all the great religions of the world.  Three simple words that bespeak a posture of self-acceptance, of self-love, of love of the other, and love of the divine.  In those three words she created a posture in herself and summed up all the wisdom of the world… I AM BLESSED.

How fortunate I was to hear this mini-sermon every morning.  In saying … I AM BLESSED, Nelly taught me the message of today’s gospel….“Can any of you add one single day to your life by worrying?”  … I AM BLESSED calls us to gain perspective of where we are in relation to God and the world around us.  “Look at the birds of the air or the flowers of the field; they don’t worry and yet they have all they need.”  … I AM BLESSED reminds us of the words, “Surely life means more than food, the body more than clothes.”  Her greeting reminds us to “Set our hearts on the greater things, on the righteousness of God, and all other things will come to pass.”

All of us know what it is to suffer.  We may not see or hear as well as we used to.  We come up against our limitations and finitude.  We know suffering from the loss of a loved one, from loss of a job, from rejection and betrayal of friends. 

The message today is that we have a choice to gain a new perspective, a posture of gratitude, and to stop, to really stop, like I did every morning when I saw Nelly, and say to ourselves, I’m not JUST OK today, I’m not JUST FINE, I’m not just tired; rather… I AM BLESSED.

WE ARE BLESSED whether we want to recognize it or not.  All of us here, in spite of the laundry list of problems and losses and griefs we bear…  …ARE BLESSED – not because of anything we have done…but simply because WE ARE.

Our BEING, the fact that we have been created by a God who loves us, is enough to proclaim… I AM BLESSED.  The trick to ask ourselves on this Thanksgiving Day is “What do I do with the fact that I AM?”  How do I show that blessedness in my life and make it plainly visible to those around me? 

Our awareness of our blessedness is the fruit that comes from the posture of gratitude.  It is only when we can say “thank you” that we place ourselves in a posture where we can cry out… I AM BLESSED.  Giving thanks for all that we have and all that is, is to recognize the blessings in our life. 

So…..where do I begin to say “thank you”?  I cannot name your unique places where to give thanks, but I’ll share some of mine.  First, I give thanks that somehow in the crazy muddle of my life I have found you and this place.  I give thanks for each and every person in this place: 

• For Don Hamer and Barbara Briggs, for Bert Landman, Kathie Wilson, Pam Haddad, Fran Times-Mack, Steve Foldvary, Lynda Curtis, Joe Green and Fred Bohlen; for our office volunteers, Lillian Sandford, Marianne Mallory, Gloria Cheyney, Jeanne Foldvary, Elizabeth Johnson, Peter Vreeland, Peter Wood, Penny Pearson and Peg Andrian, all of whom model ministry and service to this congregation;

• For Marilyn and Ms. Ruth and those who minister to the Seniors in our community; for  those who minister in the 12-step programs.

• For our Vestry and the ministries of outreach, pastoral care, education; the banner, altar and flower guilds; music and the arts, and for all those who provide leadership in this place

• For the beauty of this place; for the Memorial Garden and those who came before us and stand as witnesses to our faith.

• And… for those who have died this year and are sorely missed ….people like Kitty Duncan, Todd White, Grace Webb, Sally Butler, Larry Newhall, Isaline Pannell, Muriel Neall and Bob Turcotte, who were a blessing to us all.

• I also give thanks for my family…for my beautiful children; for my spouse, Art; for my nephew, who lives with us and is starting his life as an adult; for my continued recovery from my stroke. 

My friends … I AM BLESSED and …so are you.  Amen.

Copyright © 2009 by the Reverend Ronald J. Kolanowski