May 25, 2025 – Sixth Sunday of Easter
Psalm 138.1-8
Colossians 1.3-12
Thank-You Notes
Sixth Sunday of Easter
I received a very nice thank-you note Monday evening at our Middlesex Association Annual Meeting. For the past seven years I have served on the Association’s Executive Committee/Committee on Ministry, and I was also Association Vice-Moderator for two years. On Monday night the assembled Association presented me with a nice box of chocolates from The Village Chocolatier in Guilford along with a thoughtful thank-you card, as I concluded my terms in both positions. Clearly they appreciated very much the fact that I was leaving.
I have never been very good at sending thank you notes myself. I do write them from time to time, but I could probably do it more often. Both my daughters, on the other hand, are very good at writing thank-you notes, thanks in large part to the fact that their Mom instilled it in them when they were young. Debbie is also very good at writing them, so I suppose three out of four Froggatts is not too bad…
Both of our scripture readings this morning might be considered thank-you notes, after a fashion. “I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart… I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness…” Psalm 138 is one of the psalms of thanksgiving in the psalter; depending on how you count, there are about fifteen of them, and they belong to two general types, individual songs of thanksgiving and community songs of thanksgiving. Psalm 138 is among the former: “On the day I called, you answered me; you increased the strength of my soul.” As people of faith, you and I regularly pray for many things. We pray for those who grieve or are ill, we pray for ourselves and for members of our families, we pray for our community, our nation and our world, we pray for peace and understanding, we pray for those who have no others to pray for them, we pray for all manner of things. One of the things Psalm 138 reminds us to do is to include a word of thanks in our prayers. It was the 13th century German priest and mystic Meister Eckhart who wrote, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is Thank You, it will be enough.” If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is Thank You, it will be enough. As someone with a spotty record of thank you notes, this is something I need to keep reminding myself, to send a prayerful thank you note to God.
“In our prayers for you,” Paul wrote to the Colossian church, “We always thank the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith and of the love you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” You might say this is Paul’s thank you note on behalf of the Colossians, an expression of gratitude to God for the faith and witness of the church.
I often think of Memorial Day as a time to express our gratitude, to say thank you to the women and men who gave their lives in service to our country. All across the nation tomorrow communities will honor and celebrate the memories of those ordinary yet also extraordinary citizens. We will do this with music, with parades, with flag-raising and rifled salutes, with speeches and moments of silence, and yes, with prayers. I am always touched by our Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day celebrations, especially by the children who come out for them. It serves as a reminder of the legacy we pass along to future generations, a legacy of sacrifice, of service, and of gratitude. Even if we only say it twice a year, it is a time to say thank you and to express our gratitude.
Last month our church donated $25,000, given to us by a local family, to six different mission-oriented organizations within our church orbit. This month we began receiving thank you notes from those organizations, and I want to share them with you this morning, because they are addressed to you and to all of us. Remember, it is because of our church’s visible and recognized commitment to community engagement and faith-filled outreach that the sum was entrusted to us for distribution.
We received a thoughtful hand-written thank you card from Aaron Page, Chester’s Parks and Recreation Director for $2500 we gave to the town for summer camp scholarships. Aaron wrote,
“On behalf of the Chester families who depend on Chester Parks & Rec Summer Camp for quality [youth activity] during the summer months, Thank you for allocating the very generous scholarship donation from the anonymous local family. This gift will allow two children from Chester to attend six sessions (weeks) of Park & Rec camp at no cost to the family. We are very grateful for your partnership in service to our community.”
From The Rev. Amy Hollis, director of Shoreline Soup Kitchen and Pantry, came the following.
“Thank you for your very generous donation of $5000 to the Shoreline Soup Kitchen and Pantry. To quote the words of a SSKP guest, “I am blessed to have the support of the community; my family is forever grateful,” your support is a blessing to us and our community. We are grateful for the many ways our congregations in the shoreline area have participated in efforts to provide food for the needy – through donations, gifts, volunteering, food drives and sharing your facilities with us.”
There is more to Amy’s thank you note, but these words capture the heart of her message.
Rob Bibbiani, Executive Director of Tri-Town Youth Services, writes that our donation of $5000 came at a particularly opportune time, since TTYS recently had to return a grant of exactly $5000, and additionally learned their total annual funding from the state is “very much in limbo this year.” But then he goes on to say how our gift is being used, and I thought you’d like to hear this.
“I wanted to let you know that we will be applying the majority of the funds for a new project that was initiated and will be facilitated by Program Manager Abby Roccapriore (who grew up in Chester, nee Abby Watrous). The project entails the design, construction and maintenance of a vegetable garden that will provide fresh vegetables throughout the growing season for the Deep River Food Pantry… The garden will be overseen by 7th, 8th and 9th grade students who will also serve as mentors to elementary school volunteers, and the initiative will include adult volunteers to provide weekly education regarding agricultural concepts and practices. We envision this as a simple yet important opportunity to build community through a multi-generational effort of good will and good works.”
This is a pretty cool project folks – and you helped make it happen.
David Santis, Executive Director of Covenant to Care, a recipient of $2500, wrote to say,
“Your gift makes it possible to do what we do best – support Connecticut’s most vulnerable children. Through your generosity, you join a group of individuals and organizations throughout Connecticut, committed to providing basic, essential goods to children who are neglected, abused and impoverished. With your help, together, we are on our way to reaching 1,000,000 children in need.”
And finally, directly on the heels of celebrating Katie Wilcox last week and her work at Lady Doak College, come these words of gratitude from the College Foundation Board President, Roopa Ravikumar: “We were blown away by this unexpected and extremely generous donation [of $5000.00]. The United Church of Chester’s gift is vital in helping us to continue the important work we do… to serve the women of the Lady Doak College community.” Roopa and I will be chatting soon to discuss the ways they will be using the gift.
As Paul wrote “In our prayers for you, we always thank the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith and of the love you have for all the saints,” please allow me to do the same with a thank you note of my own. Thank you. Thank you for being the kind of congregation that inspires others to give, and to give generously. Thank you for being the congregation whose outreach-oriented heart is recognized and valued throughout the community. Thank you for being folks who make this house of worship a warm welcoming place. Thank you for your openness to new ideas, to new ways of doing mission. Thank you for saying Yes when you’re asked to step up and do something a little extra for our church and its wider fellowship. And most of all, thank you for your partnership in ministry – you make my job, my calling, a gratifying one, which is to say, you make my heart grateful as we work shoulder to shoulder and soul to soul, to serve God in this blessed church and far, far beyond her. Amen.