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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Some of you may have heard me tell the story of when I first lived north of the border, and I asked my friends to tell me the background of their second-Monday in October celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving. When they spoke of Puritan Pilgrims and Native Americans at the Plymouth Colony in what is now Massachusetts, I replied that that was the story of American Thanksgiving! In fact, Canada can claim an even earlier origin to a day of National Thanksgiving, just as there are also claims of earlier and other celebrations elsewhere in what is now the United States, including Texas, although none of those are said to have influenced directly our modern holiday.
The three Readings appointed for the Day of Thanksgiving that we observe this evening may not have directly influenced our modern holiday either, but they are nevertheless relevant for us to consider, especially as they lead us to realize how “God moves us to give thanks.” In the Old Testament Reading (Deuteronomy 8:1-10), Moses’s final sermon summarizes how the people are to bless (that is, “praise” or “thank”) the Lord their God: both for the blessings that He had given them while leading them in the wilderness and for the blessings that He was about to give them by leading them into the Promised Land. In the Epistle Reading (Philippians 4:6-20), St. Paul not only models thankfulness for the Philippians but also writes to them about how their thanksgivings and requests can address their anxiousness. And, in the Gospel Reading (Luke 17:11-19), Jesus heals ten lepers, which healing sadly moved only one of them to return to Jesus in order to thank Him.
One leper out of ten is only ten percent: I wonder if we do any better. Sure, some families have Thanksgiving meal traditions of naming one thing for which they are thankful. But, the other 364 days of the year, they and we may not pause even to pray before and after meals in our busy, multi-tasking lives, even when we do not eat every meal at our desks. We may let our work, direct deposit, the grocery store, and the debit card so remove God’s provision from our senses and minds that we forget that He gives us our food at the proper time and opens His hand to satisfy the desires (the “needs”) of every living thing. We may get so frustrated about what we think of as wandering through the wilderness of our lives that we are neither content with nor thankful for the Lord’s leading us, feeding us, clothing us, and keeping us healthy (or at least alive). We here tonight may think ourselves more thankful than those who are not here tonight, especially those who are not on the road or in church elsewhere, but the reality is that we all fail to be as thankful as we should be, for we are all sinners who, apart from faith in Jesus Christ, on account of our ingratitude, other sin, and sinful natures, deserve death here in time and torment in hell for eternity.
The Lord our God disciplines us, as Moses mentions in the Old Testament Reading, so that we keep His Commandments by walking in His ways and by fearing Him. When we fail to keep His Commandments in those ways, the Lord our God calls and thereby enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our ingratitude and our other sin, whatever it might be. God also forgives our sinful natures. God forgives us for Jesus’s sake.
The leprosy in the Gospel Reading is a good reminder of the consequences of sin in the world, consequences such as our sicknesses and failing bodies, and Jesus’s miraculous healing in the Gospel Reading is a good reminder of Who Jesus is and the benefits of what He has done about sin in the world, benefits such as our forgiveness, life, and salvation. Jesus is true God in human flesh, and so He is able to act with the all the power of God through His human nature. Yet, Jesus did not always so act, but Jesus humbled Himself to die on the cross in order both to live the obedient life we fail to live and to pay the price for our failing to live that life. Jesus not only cleanses the ten lepers, but Jesus also saves the one former-leper who through faith was moved to return and praise (or “thank”) Him as God. We may not receive the same sort of miraculous healing now, but, through faith in Jesus’s death and resurrection for us, we also already have received forgiveness, life, and salvation, which certainly include a miraculous transformation of our bodies on the Last Day.
The way the Lord God fed the people with manna in the wilderness, the Old Testament Reading said, was to help them know that they do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. That manna was a type of the food for the way that the Lord God continues to give us now in the Sacrament of the Altar. As part of our distributing that Sacrament to those who are Baptized, instructed, examined, and Absolved, we thank God for His mercy, and we even sometimes refer to the Sacrament as “the Eucharist”, which English word comes from the Greek words used for thanking God in today’s Epistle and Gospel Readings (a synonym of the word used for “blessing” the Lord in the Greek of the Old Testament Reading). Yet, our thanking God is not the first or most-important thing in the Sacrament! Rather, the first and most-important things are God’s giving us Jesus’s Body with bread and Blood with wine, and so giving us forgiveness, life and salvation. With such gifts, “God moves us to give thanks.”
As I reflected on what we usually think of as the first Thanksgiving on American soil, I was struck by the Pilgrims’ waiting until after the bountiful harvest to give thanks, since they could have just as easily (and perhaps should have, or maybe even did) similarly give thanks for surviving the preceding brutal winter (although I suppose that in the Spring they did not have a bountiful feast of food in order to eat and be full). We do not necessarily give thanks and pray for all of our circumstances, but, as St. Paul writes, we certainly can and do give thanks and pray in everything, and thereby we are not anxious, but the peace of God guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. When we pray in the Lord’s Prayer “Give us this day our daily bread”, we are praying not only that God would lead us to realize that He certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we are also praying that He would lead us to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving. In addition, we practice what we have learned and received and heard and seen in leaders such as St. Paul, and so we are content in whatever situation we are in. Whether facing plenty or hunger, abundance or need, we can do all things through Him Who strengthens us.
With a deeply divided country this year, some people are making connections between Thanksgiving 20‑16 and Thanksgiving 18-63, which, even though it came in the midst of the Civil War, President Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation intended to be the first Thanksgiving celebrated by all the states on the same date. (Last time I checked, I could find no evidence President Obama had even issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation this year!) Regardless of our political loyalties, on this holiday when secular and sacred purposes are so closely connected, we can be sure that “God moves us (as repentant sinners) to give thanks”, chiefly for His gift of salvation in the Sacrament of the Altar. And, with St. Paul, we can say that God will supply every need of ours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. So, to our God and Father be glory (including “thanks”) forever and ever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +