John 6: 25-35                                                                                                              Rev. Dr. Galen E. Russell III

Deut. 26: 1-11                                                                                                                               November 26, 2025

“Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.”

Happy Thanksgiving! It’s a joy and an honor to be here. Thank you.

Prayer: O holy God, you are Lord of the planting, growing, and the harvest. Will you please speak to our hearts as we praise you, thank you, and let your word impact our lives. We pray in the name of Christ Jesus, who is the Lord of the harvest. Amen.

Tomorrow’s a big day, isn’t it? How many of you love this holiday the best of all? [raise hands] Several hands. How many of you are going to watch football? Yep, me too. How many of you are going to eat yourself silly? Me, too. No doubt.

If you’re cooking, you get to smell all the wonderful smells from the foods being prepared. If you’re going to someone’s home, when you walk in, ah, all those wonderful smells!

 The best smell of all is the smell of bread, I think. Fresh bread from the oven. My son loves baking bread, and every Thanksgiving, he brings bread right from the Dutch oven pot. And there’s other kinds of breads, too… if you have stuffing, it’s all bread cubes. Or croutons on your salad. If you have pies, pie crusts are basically bread. Some crusts top and bottom. Apple pie. Pumpkin pie. Ah…. Salivating yet?

It’s good to salivate a little. It’s good to get ourselves ready to celebrate a little. We are privileged to have food for our bodies. Let’s celebrate that bounty tonight and tomorrow.

Jesus teaches, however, that on the spiritual journey, it’s not salivating for worldly bread that’s important. He wants us to salivate for God. He wants us to crave God. Jesus wants us to believe that he is the One whom God sends. The one who is the bread of life, who is the true bread from heaven. The one who gives life to the world. He wants us, I believe, to desire the spiritual food that endures for eternal life, which is God’s realm, right here and now. Because we know that all other all other worldly food for the body will fail spiritually.

So, I know sometimes it’s a challenge for us to distinguish between craving Jesus and God when our humanity makes it so easy to crave worldly things. I mean Jesus saw right through the crowd when they were searching for him. He was like, “I know why you are searching for me. It’s because your bellies got full when you and thousands of others got fed from just from a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish!” You’re not searching for me because you saw a work of God!

And he goes on to teach them that back in the day of the ancient Israelites, it was not Moses who gave them bread, the manna from heaven, it was God. And God provided for them with worldly food that filled their bellies, sustaining them in the wilderness.

They all knew that story. The story of Moses, the Great Liberator of the Israelite people. Those who knew the Jacob and Joseph story, who led them from the bondage of Egyptian slavery, who stood on the precipice of eternity and the promised land of abundant resources, and gave them instructions to give God the first offering of this new land. It was to be an offering of worldly fruits of the ground, fruit that would be grown and harvested, fruits that contain seeds to grow new plants and produce new fruit.

And then, did you notice this? That all the Israelites AND the “aliens” were to celebrate together! Because it was God who gave all the bounty to everyone.

So I did some research—the “aliens” among them probably refers to all the non-Israelites, foreigners, probably some Egyptians, probably others who believed in idols and false gods, probably some pagans—those were the “aliens” living among the Israelites. They were a mixed bag! And God told them to celebrate together.

And to be honest, that really got my attention this past week as I prepared this sermon. Because in our mixed bag of people of faith, of who we are as people in our community of Elizabethtown, each of us can affirm that God is the one who gives new life to the world. And Jesus is the One whom God gives to the world as the bread of life. Bread that never runs out. Bread that satisfies all spiritual hunger, all spiritual thirst. Jesus, the living bread, the Christ, gives life to the world.

So, people of God, people of this mixed bag living in Elizabethtown, and I know you know this, but it’s worth repeating—especially on Thanksgiving Eve—Christ is our huge bounty. From God. Christ is God’s huge spiritual bounty given for the world. The spiritual gift from God is for everyone. The entire mixed bag of us! God works Christ into our lives. Let’s thank God for that. Let’s celebrate that!

 And then, let’s work out what God works into us. Because I think we’re on the precipice of something really important here. I mean we’re past the elections. We’re past the first school board meeting since the elections. We’re past the first Borough Council meetings since the elections.

And all the worldly bounty we have—whether it’s the goodness of our town and its people, or our great land with its abundant resources, or our privilege, or our government which is intended to be of the people, by the people, for the people—all this bounty we have I think is fruit, filled with seeds that can very possibly produce more good fruit. If we work it out.

What if we combine those worldly fruits within our community with the spiritual fruits that God works into us? And we know God works Christ into us what the fruits of the Spirit are from Galatians 5—gifts that are God-centered:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control… what if we combine just one tenth of the fruits of the Spirit that God works in with our worldly fruits of God’s bounty? What do you think might happen?



I think that could make us a shining community on the hill. A community that shows a mixed bag of God’s people working together. A community that views differences not as obstacles but as opportunities for the Holy Spirit to create something new, something more in us. More bounty to share.

This new growth that can come from working together and celebrating our differences, I think is the bounty that we are invited to celebrate this year.

So, tonight and tomorrow, we give an offering of thanks and praise to God for all the bounty we have.

But it’s the next days, the days after that I think God encourages us to live into. Live into God’s bountiful gift of Christ—when you’re shopping for gifts on Black Friday. Live into God’s gifts of Christ’s Spirit—on Saturday, when you’re putting up your tree, the day before Advent begins. Live into the Advent season on Sunday—as we begin again to prepare for the birth of Christ, God’s great gift of life-giving bread for the world. Living into God’s bounty is not a test of faith. Living into what God has worked into us IS faith.

 It mirrors God’s faithfulness because God gives us the bounty of Christ. The presence of God in all our circumstances. Can you see how faithful God is? Great is God’s faithfulness. Morning by morning new mercies we see. All we need, God provides. Great is God’s faithfulness. Let us stand and sing. Amen.