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Thanksgiving Day
Almighty and gracious Father, we give thee thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them. Make us, we beseech thee, faithful stewards of thy great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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Scripture citation(s): Luke 17:11-19; Deuteronomy 8:7-18; II Corinthians 9:6-15
A Sermon by
Fr. Daniels
on
Luke 17:11-19; Deuteronomy 8:7-18; II Corinthians 9:6-15
✛
Thanksgiving
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I read once that Thanksgiving is the most uniformly observed of the American holidays. Its popularity crosses regions and political parties, even cultures and religions. It is a truly democratic holiday, meant for everyone, wherever your ancestors came from, and whenever and however you got here. Just today, there is an article in the newspaper, written by a second-generation immigrant, with the succinct headline: “Eat turkey; become [an] American.”
It is a universally beloved holiday in this country, and I can think of several reasons why that may be. There is, of course, Thanksgiving dinner, and I wouldn’t want to minimize that. I grant that it may not be universally beloved: cardiologists may not be as fond of it, of course, and what happens on Thanksgiving afternoon is the kind of thing that drives nutritionists crazy.
But there is another reason, I think, that Thanksgiving may be so democratically popular, and it may have to do with some deep, almost primal intuition about our dependence on things that are external to us. Dependence: the sense that, no matter how hard we’ve worked, and whatever we have honestly earned by the sweat of our brow, there may be some quiet recognition that we are still the recipients of things that exceed our own abilities to acquire for ourselves. We are the recipients of the benefits of community life, the benefits of families, however configured, we have been given many opportunities.
In our reading from Deuteronomy, Moses is in the middle of a long speech about the covenant: what it is, how you honor it, what it all means. The covenant that was being given to Israel was the assurance that their home would be a land of promise: “a good land,” he says, “of brooks of water” and wheat, olive oil and honey, with everything that they could need. Like Americans, the Israelites liked to eat well, too.
But Moses cautions them: in that coming time of abundance, he says, do not forget the Lord your God. When all of these things have come to pass, remember where you came from; remember what it was like in Egypt; and remember who it was that took care of you; who took you out of Egypt; who made you a flourishing people. Do not let it be the case, Moses says, that a couple of years hence you end up saying “My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth.” When you sit back and see all that you have, do not forget that it is all a blessing. Do not “Forget the Lord thy God,” he says. Do not forget that it is all a gift.
But this goes deeper than only the material blessings: the brooks of water and honey and olive oil. It is even deeper than the gifts of our families and communities. More basically, and fundamentally, we have been given the gift of life itself.
This may seem like a silly thing to remember: yes, we’re all alive Joel, thank you; you didn’t need to come to church to be reminded of that. It can be difficult to get to this parish on Thanksgiving Day, especially if you come from the west side; to be told that you’re alive may be a bit underwhelming, and certainly not worthy of the hassle of coming to church today.
But even our aliveness is a great, cosmic gift. God created the world out of nothing, for no reason at all, other than his graciousness. It isn’t only the lives of you and I that are gifts, but the existence of anything at all. The Israelites had been led into the Promised Land. But in a deeper sense, not only they, but everything that is, had first been led into existence itself, and that can only come from God. I suggest that there is something worth giving thanks for.
If it is, then it seems all the more appropriate that we celebrate this holiday with worship. Not only with a thanksgiving dinner, and not just with any kind of worship, but the worship of the God of Israel, who is revealed in Christ. Because if life itself is a gift, then how much more is the gift of eternal life. How much more the promise that has been given to us of resurrection.
After all, it doesn’t have to be this way. There is no necessity that makes eternal life with God inevitable. But the opportunity for it has nonetheless been offered by God, through Christ, for no reason at all other than God’s own graciousness: it is grace that allows for a resurrection into eternal life.
But I must be honest: I say these words—“resurrection”; “eternal life”—but I have to tell you that I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I sort of know what regular life is, and that it’s a gift; I sort of know what happens when people’s lives are changed, and we say that they are spiritually resurrected. But I don’t really know how actual resurrection works, or what eternal life really is. All the time I say to people, “The promise of resurrection is the promise of being drawn up into the divine life of the Triune God for eternity.” Don’t tell anyone, but I actually don’t really know what I’m talking about. I have no idea what “being drawn up into the divine life of the Triune God” really, concretely, means.
Usually I would feel bad about this—after all, you didn’t need to come to church today to be aware that I don’t really know what I’m talking about (we might hold that truth to be self-evident)—but I take comfort in the fact that I’m not alone in this. I think we see it in the fact that St. Paul, at the end of our second reading today, writes, “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.” I’ve always found that a curious phrase: God’s gift of eternal life, Paul says, is unspeakable. It’s curious especially coming from St. Paul, who usually left very little unspoken. But the verbose St. Paul recognized that eventually he came to a place where even his own words failed.
Because I can thank my family, for example, for being my family; I can thank the police officers on the street today for keeping the crowds safe; I can even thank God for calling me into existence. But at the gift of eternal life I may be simply overcome; I am out of my depth; my words are inadequate, because, Paul says, the gift itself is unspeakable. We are dealing here with the mystery of mysteries, and words fail.
But though our words may be inadequate, perhaps that gratitude is able to be enacted anyway, and we heard already what that enacted gratitude may look like. In our reading from Luke, ten lepers were cleansed; nine headed on to the Temple, but one Samaritan returned to Jesus. When he came to Jesus, he didn’t only shake his hand and say “thank you,” but the leper recognized the presence of God in Christ, and so he fell on his face in worship. Words by themselves may have been inadequate. But the act of worship is a good start.
That’s one of the reasons, I think, that the Eucharistic prayer is called the “great thanksgiving.” The word “Eucharist” itself means “thanksgiving.” It is our own recognition of an ultimate dependence on God, not only for the short time that we walk the surface of the earth, but forever. Created persons have been blessed not only with created gifts—like families and turkey—but blessed with the gift of the possibility of divine life—even if we can’t articulate exactly what that will entail.
But we do know that we are dependent on God’s graciousness to make new life possible, and so it is God’s graciousness that we celebrate in the feast of the Eucharist—and Eucharist, my friends, is something that you did have to come to church for.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
