It is Good for Us to Gather

St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD

November 24, 2025

Interfaith Thanksgiving Service

It is Good for Us to Gather

First, I want to begin by welcoming all of you to St. Thomas’.

Welcome to this holy place where people have been offering praise and thanksgiving since 1742.

 

Welcome to all of you who have gathered here in person and to everyone joining us online. 

Second, I want to offer thanks.

Thank you to everyone here at St. Thomas’, parishioners and staff, who helped get everything ready.

And many thanks to my colleagues for creating our service and for participating tonight.

And I also want to thank Jon Waller and everyone making beautiful music.

It is good for us to gather.

Especially in a time when our divisions can seem as deep and wide as canyons, it is good for us - people of different faiths, people with, I’m sure, differing ideas about all sorts of things – it is good for us to gather in a spirit of peace and friendship.

Especially in a time when so many struggle to pay the bills, when for many a trip to the supermarket is an occasion for anxiety and careful calculation, it is good for us to gather in a spirit of generosity, sharing some of our abundance with our hungry neighbors who line up each week at the Community Crisis Center in Reisterstown.

Thank you in advance for supporting the Crisis Center, either by dropping money into the offering plate or using the QR code on the back page of the service bulletin.

And tonight, we hold in our hearts the Crisis Center’s Executive Director, Eileen Compton-Little, whose husband, Patrick, was killed in a car crash last week.

And we promise to support Eileen as best we can during her time of grief.

It is good for us to gather.

Especially in a time when we face many real and daunting challenges, it is good for us to gather in a spirit of hope.

And while the holiday season has been in full swing for quite a while now – I think it starts sometime in late August now – it is good for us to gather, to take a breath in this sacred space, and reflect on what is most important.

It is good for us to gather.

So, about the “holiday season.” 

It’s very common for Christian clergy to critique the materialism of Christmas.

I admit that I’ve done it – I did it just now, actually - but each time I do, I feel a twinge of hypocrisy because when I was a kid I used to get so excited about Christmas.

And I wish I could say that it was the profound spiritual meaning of Christmas that got me so worked up. 

But, no, of course not, it was the gifts.

For weeks, I would wonder what I was going to “get” for Christmas, what I was going to “get” from Santa, what I was going to “get” from my parents, from my relatives.

So, by the time Christmas Eve finally arrived, I could barely contain myself – and in the middle of the night, or maybe not even that late, my sister and I would head into the living room, opening our presents as my poor bleary-eyed parents looked on.

These are wonderful – slightly embarrassing – but wonderful memories.

But, as I’ve gotten older, it’s the memories of my childhood Thanksgivings that I cherish most.

We always went to my grandparents’ house. They lived in a rowhouse in downtown Jersey City, New Jersey - a house just slightly wider than a typical Baltimore rowhouse.

Since my parents, sister, and I lived pretty close to my grandparents, we were often among the first to arrive – which was a really good thing, since it’s possible that my sister and I got to sample some of the crispier parts of the stuffing.

Year after year, as my extended family continued to grow, we all somehow crammed into just two rooms – the kitchen, where my grandmother cooked and the kids ate, and the living room, dominated by a makeshift long table right down the middle.

And, it wasn’t just family – each year there were always a few other people there, too – people who I think may have had no other place to be – there were some more distant relatives (you know, like, second cousins twice removed), there was a Dominican nun named Sister Mary Evelyn, I remember her being there once or twice..

There was Mr. Miller, who seemed very old and I still don’t know his connection to us.

There was Morris and Shirley, who owned the shade and blind store where my grandmother worked, I remember them stopping by.

I’m sure there were others I’ve forgotten.

Now, my grandparents were not wealthy people but somehow there was always space for another seat at the table, the plates were always full, there was always more than enough.

It was good for us to gather.

Although my grandmother was a very devout Roman Catholic, I don’t remember much, if any, praying at Thanksgiving. I don’t think we said grace. No one offered a blessing.

The prayer was hard work.

The grace was generosity.

The blessing was hospitality.

And it was all – all of it - thanksgiving.

And better than any Christmas gift.

In a way, I’ve imagined tonight’s service as kind of like one of those long-ago Thanksgiving feasts.

True, we are doing a good bit of praying, offering beautiful prayers.

And, sadly, there’s no crispy stuffing available.

But we’ve invited everyone, people we know well and people we’ve never met.

And it is kind of tight up here, isn’t it?

I hope that tonight’s celebration of gratitude will remind us of our blessings and give us courage to do the hard work demanded by these challenging times.

I hope that we will be inspired to be even more generous and even more boldly hospitable.

I hope that tonight is the start of a new tradition – and, in fact, Rabbi Gruenberg has already graciously offered to host next year’s service.

And, finally, through every season, I hope that we will remember that it is good for us to gather.

Amen.