Thanksgiving Eve

November 25, 2009
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Fargo

Psalm 126; Matthew 6.25-33

For us—here and now—on this night before Thanksgiving, that word—Thanksgiving— immediately conjures up images. We are reminded of all those Thanksgiving Days of our past. Those images of turkeys, pilgrims, of food and football and parades, of family gatherings—good and bad—they’re all there with that one single word. And it seems that over the years, as I’ve attended or participated in Thanksgiving Day services, I invariably will hear some priest or pastor get up and sort of put down Thanksgiving Day as being too commercial or too secular. I can only shrug at such thinking. Personally I think any attempt by anyone to think about what they are thankful for and to be truly thankful in any way is a major plus.

But I will admit that for us, as Christians, Thanksgiving Day is not necessarily a special day, outside of the traditional Thanksgiving trappings. For us, we celebrate a kind of Thanksgiving every Sunday and every other time we gather together for Holy Communion. After all, the word we use for Holy Communion is Eucharist. Eucharist simply means, in fancy Greek, Thanksgiving. So, in an sense, every Eucharist we celebrate together is a Thanksgiving feast.

But, what is Thanksgiving really? I mean, it’s great that we understand each Eucharist is a thanksgiving. It’s great that we take a special time each year to count our blessings and express our thanks either to God or to each other. But what it is it really?

One of the best ways I think Thanksgiving is encapsulated for me is an a prayer that I pray every day. Every day in the Daily Office of the Book of Common Prayer, there is a wonderful prayer is that is prayed. The Prayer is called The General Thanksgiving. In so many ways it gives voice to what we as Christians believe regarding Thanksgiving. The prayer goes like this:

Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we your unworthy servants give you humble thanks for all your goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all whom you have made. We bless you for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for your immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies, that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up our selves to your service, and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory throughout all ages. Amen.

This prayer is a slightly updated version of a prayer written by Bishop Edward Reynolds of Norwich in England and it is believed to be inspired by a private prayer Queen Elizabeth I issued in 1596. It is not hard, as we hear this prayer, to believe that a fuller version of this prayer may have been a Eucharistic prayer. The prayer thanks God, if you notice, for being creator, preserver and redeemer. Creator, preserver, redeemer. These three aspects of God are important for us to recognize. In them we see that God is not some passive Deity in some far-away heaven, but is actually active in us and in all of creation.

Now there are a few points in this prayer I would just like to draw out. In this prayer, we thank God for God’s “goodness and loving-kindness.” That’s always a good thing to be thankful for. We then bless God for “our creation, preservation and all the blessings of this life.” What is so beautiful about that petition is that in our thanksgiving we are not only thankful for the things we have been giving, but we thankful too for the fact that we are here and we are being taken care of. Now that alone would suffice for most prayers of thanks. But the prayer, a bit later, asks this of God:

We pray that will be given “such an awareness of [God’s] mercies
that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth [God’s] praise,
not only with our lips, but in our lives,
by giving up ourselves to [God’s] service
and by walking before [God]
in holiness and righteousness all our days.”

Thanksgiving then becomes not just an act of gratitude to God for all that we have been given. It becomes action. In our moment of Thanksgiving, we understand that we simply can’t just sit complacently in a kind of fuzzy warmness that God has provided us with everything we need. We rather must turn around in that sense of gratitude and “show forth God’s praise/not only with our lips—with what we say—but in our lives—in our very actions—and by attempting to give ourselves over to God’s service. We are to walk before God—in a sense we are to be the presence of God’s goodness in this life.

When we look at Thanksgiving from this perspective, we see how essential and vital this time of thanksgiving is to our lives as Christians. Thanksgiving, in a real sense, is almost synonymous with a kind of joy. In our thanksgiving, in our gratitude, we find ourselves joyful. And joy is an emotion that stirs and compels us to act.

In our Gospel reading for tonight, we find Jesus issuing some stern words to us. “Do not worry,” Jesus says. Do now worry about “things.” But rather “strive for the kingdom of God”

If we listen closely to what Jesus is saying, we realize that when we worrying is not action. Worrying is what keeps us from acting. It cements us in place, in fear. But rather, he says, “strive. When we strive, finally we are doing something. We are moving forward. We are making an effort.

Worrying is the exact opposite of joy. Worrying is not what one feels when one is truly thankful. Whereas the joy we experience in our thankfulness compels us and charges us to spread that joy, worrying saps our energy from us. It draws us inward and isolates us—from God and from each other.

As the Swiss New Testament scholar Eduard Schweizer once said: “We are not to worry because worry drives out joy and makes action impossible, and God is encountered in acts. The choice is not between action and passivity, but between two different kinds of action.”

So, in a sense, we find that Thanksgiving produces joy and joy produces action and all of it is a response to God’s goodness in our lives. This is what we do when gives thanks. This is what we do at this altar when we celebrate the Eucharist. And it is what we do in our lives as Christians. For us, as Christians, Thanksgiving isn’t something we do on occasion. It isn’t just something we do once a year, at harvest time. Thanksgiving is something we do every time we come together. Thanksgiving is a way of life for us as Christians. Thanksgiving is a spiritual act. And it’s more than that, even.

Thanksgiving isn’t something we do, necessarily. Thanksgiving is the way we live. As Christians we live in a state of constant thanksgiving. f we are truly thankful, we will see moments of grace around us all the time. e see, at times, those moments, when God breaks through to us—in moments we neither ask for nor anticipate.

And still, despite us and our own needs and fears, anxieties, God does break through to us. In those moments when God does, all we can do is give thanks. Here, at the altar, we find God breaking through to us. And as we gather together, as we come forward to participate in Holy Communion with God and with one another, all we can do is give thanks for this incredible moment in our lives. And as we go from here, out into the world, we take that sense of thanksgiving with us and we share it by word and example. We go with our sense of thanksgiving unencumbered by such deadening and sapping energies such as anxiety.

So, let us come forward to this altar and go out from here with those words of Jesus ringing in our ears, “Do not worry.” Let us hear his words to us, “Strive for the kingdom of God, and God’s righteousness” And as we do, as we shed our worrying, as we strive for the Kingdom of God, we will then hear the words of our psalm singing aloud in our hearts:

“The Lord has done great things for us
and we are glad indeed.”