Gracious God, give us grateful hearts that we might
participate in your grace. Amen.
What is the purpose of Thanksgiving? Yes, the holiday I get – it used to be a way to mark the start of the holiday season. But, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, now Halloween functions as the time when the wreaths and holiday decorations go up. And that’s fine. It’s a way to stimulate economic spending. Thanksgiving has become a holiday about a parade, a meal, and sales. But we know that this is not how it began.
Whatever happened among
the Plymouth colonists has become the origin story for having a celebration of
thanks after the harvest. There were thanksgiving celebrations in 1777 and
1789. Sarah Hale, the editor of Boston’s Ladies’ Magazine, began calling
for the establishment of an annual day of thanks in 1846. In September 1863,
she wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln, urging him to make Thanksgiving
an annual holiday. Then, a week later, President Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving
Proclamation to thank God for all the blessings of life, even amidst the
struggles of the Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg which had occurred just
a few months prior. From time to time, days of thanksgiving were called for. 1920
saw the first Thanksgiving parade in Philadelphia, and in 1934 Macy’s held its
first parade in New York. The year 1922 was the first time an NFL football game
was played on Thanksgiving. And, finally, in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt
established the fourth Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day. The calendar
in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer includes Thanksgiving Day in the list of “Major
Feasts,” which is noteworthy as Thanksgiving is a national celebration, not one
that developed within the Church.
That’s a bit of an answer
to the question of the purpose of capital-T Thanksgiving. But what is the purpose
of lower-case thanksgiving; why do we give thanks? Is it simply because we’ve
been taught to say “bless you” when someone sneezes, “excuse me” when you burp,
and “thank you” when someone does something for you? Is thanksgiving simply a
cultural cue that doesn’t really have any meaning? Unfortunately, that is often
the case. We say “thank you” automatically without giving it any thought. But I
think we all know that is not what being grateful is all about – it’s not just
a social convention. Yes, I think it’s important to write thank you notes, but
gratitude has to be about more dutiful attention to manners.
Nor is giving thanks
something that we do for reciprocity’s sake. We do not give thanks so that
people will think that we are nice and will, therefore, continue to give us
things. Though many people can be manipulative by the way they give thanks,
that’s not what it’s all about. Perhaps you’ve heard of “competitive gratitude”
– someone gives you a gift, and so you thank them. But then they thank you for
thanking them. It’s almost as if we don’t want to end up on the wrong side of
the thanksgiving balance sheet; we don’t ever want to feel like we have
shortchanged someone a “thank you.” Again, we do not gather here this morning
to exchange pleasantries with the Almighty.
When the Church speaks of
thanksgiving, we mean something else. Christian thanksgiving is related to the idea
of Grace – the unearned favor and blessing of God towards us. Thanksgiving begins
with the confession that we are contingent beings, that we have needs that we
cannot fulfill on our own. When someone holds the door for us and we say “thank
you,” that’s a fitting response. But, in most situations, we are fully capable
of opening the door ourselves. When we say “thank you,” to God it is something
different. Our creation was not something that we were in charge of. We did not
save ourselves. The Cross was not something that we were going to get to
tomorrow, but Jesus just happened to get to it first. The gift of the Holy
Spirit which guides us and gives us life is a pure gift. The perfect gift is
one that we really need, otherwise cannot obtain, and are able to put to use. This
is what God gives us. And so our gratitude is an expression of the fact that we
rely on God’s grace to provide for us and that we receive as a pure gift, not
as a result of our deserving behavior, or nicely-worded petition, or our perfect
application of the gift. More than a nicety, Christian thanksgiving is about recognizing
God’s saving and loving Grace.
The other aspect of
Christian gratitude to lift up this morning is that thanksgiving becomes the
means by which we participate in the abundant and transforming economy of God.
When we offer thanks to God we are reminding ourselves that God is always
willing the good for us. Yes, calamity may happen, but God does not cause the catastrophe;
rather, God is with us in such difficulties and seeks to redeem calamity and transform
them into something new and beautiful. So when we say something like “praise
God from whom all blessings flow,” we are putting ourselves in a position to
notice and receive those blessings even when we are not looking for them.
Our receiving of God’s
grace with graciousness is the pattern of a holy and happy life. The
Benedictine monk, David Steindel-Rast has written and spoken extensively about gratitude.
Gratitude, he says, brings perspective and possibility to life. Gratitude helps
to find abundance in the midst of seeming scarcity. Gratefulness is not about
wearing rose-colored classes or having a positive and optimistic attitude. No,
gratefulness is grounded in knowing that we are always held in the love of God,
and, because of that, we can trust that all shall be well. Gratitude opens possibilities
whereas stinginess, selfishness, and entitlement close us off. And, ultimately,
gratitude leads to the sort of peace and joy that the world cannot give nor can
it take away because gratitude connects us to God’s limitless grace and favor.
This economy of giving
and receiving Grace through gratitude is exactly what St. Paul is writing about
in Second Corinthians, “The point is this,” he writes, “the one who sows
sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also
reap bountifully.” At the time, there was a severe famine and St. Paul was
working to raise funds to help those in need. He says that he doesn’t want to
resort to compulsion or guilt, but rather wants Christians to participate in
God’s abundance. By sharing their resources abundantly, they connect with the
abundance of God.
Later in the passage that
we heard, he ways “Your great generosity will produce thanksgiving to God through
us; for the rendering of this ministry (meaning their donations) not only supplies
the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God.” In
other words, gratitude is a way of participating in the work of God. Because
God is a cheerful giver, when we emulate God by also being a cheerful giver, we
are participating in the holy economy of Grace. Thanksgiving grounds us in Grace.
And it is not only
towards God that we offer our thanks. Showing gratitude to others is just as
transforming. When we say “thank you” not only after someone has passed us the
gravy, but when we name a gift that someone has given us and acknowledge it as
a symbol of love, that love has the chance to flourish. Someone does something
good for you, and you genuinely acknowledge that, so the love they showed you
is reflected back to them and it becomes an economy of love.
I’ll tell you that I’ve
had a few people recently go out of their way to thank me for my ministry. Yes,
serving as the priest here is my job and I’m paid for it. It’s also a tremendous
honor and privilege to serve as the Rector of St. Luke’s. But when people
showed me gratitude for what I do – it absolutely brightened by day. And with the
radiance of that gratitude in my heart, I’m sure that I carried it with me and,
I hope, that gratitude flowed out of me in the form of a deeper love for
others. Today, a day when we are thinking about gratitude, think about who has
given you a gift and how you might tell them how much you value that. Yes, I
know today is busy – there’s a turkey to cook and all. So maybe today you just
make a list of those people that you are grateful for and then over the next
week or two, you work on reaching out to them in gratitude. It’s a lovely
spiritual discipline that puts us in the flow of God’s economy of Grace.
I’ll close with a quote
that I ran into recently that pulls a lot of this together. William Law, an Anglican
theologian of the 18th century wrote in a sermon, “Would you know
him who is the greatest saint in the world? It is not he who prays most or
fasts most; it is not he who gives most alms; but it is he who is always
thankful to God, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness and
has a heart always ready to praise God for it. If anyone would tell you the
shortest, surest way to all happiness and perfection, he must tell you to make
a rule to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you. Whatever
seeming calamity happens to you, if you thank and praise God for it, it turns
into a blessing. Could you therefore work miracles, you could not do more for
yourself than by this thankful spirit; it turns all that it touches into
happiness.”
For the beauty of this
world, for the gift of life, for the blessing of love, we give our thanks to
God. And by giving thanks, we participate in the blessed economy of grace. Later
today, many of us will gather around tables to celebrate and be grateful. First
though, we gather at this Table to be nourished by the abundance of God’s love.
