Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
We don’t really need a special Thursday in November to give thanks to God, do we? Thanksgiving is our priestly duty as baptized believers. This is what priests do. They offer sacrifices. Thanksgiving is a sacrifice, an offering to God for all His blessings not only to us, but to the whole world. Faithful hearts are also grateful hearts. We are thankful for all the gifts of creation. We are thankful for our own lives. We are thankful for God’s preserving gifts of clothing and shoes, food and drink, house, home, and family. We are thankful for the good land He has given us, for our freedoms, and for the protection He provides for our bodies and lives. And all of this, the Catechism reminds us, God gives us “out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in (us).” And we, His children, say “thank you.”
We thank God for the gifts of our redemption: for the coming of His Son, Jesus Christ, into human flesh; for His perfect life and death; for His resurrection; for His atonement for the sin of the world; and for His governing of all things. We thank God for the gifts of the Spirit; for the preaching of the Gospel; for the Church and for faithful pastors; for our own rebirth in Holy Baptism; our refreshment in the Holy Supper; our fellowship together with all the saints in Christ; the resurrection of our bodies, guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus; and the sure hope of eternal life. The least we can do is to say “thank you.”
Moses spoke to Israel on the threshold of the Promised Land. “Remember the Lord,” he said. Remember that He brought you out of Egypt, that He fed you when you were hungry, that He trained you to live by every word that proceeds from His mouth. And now He is bringing you into a good and rich land, where all the blessings of life are easily gotten. All of this was a foretaste of the feast to come, a preview of heaven itself, where God sets the table and His people eat and drink in freedom and joy.
But Moses also knew the impediments to thanksgiving. He warned them to watch out. After they had eaten and were full in their comfortable homes, after their work was paying off and their investments were multiplying, they would forget the Lord. They would begin to believe that their own reason and strength had gained them everything, that they were dependent on no one. They did all these things. They made idols of the image in the mirror.
“Remember the Lord, your God,” Moses would tell them, “for it is He who gives you the power to get wealth.” He causes the rain and the sunshine in their season. He gives grain to the sower and bread to the eater. He gives life and all that you have, and He can take it all away in an instant, if He decides that is what is best for you. Our every moment we live out of the goodness of His hand.
It is so easy to forget about the Lord because He actually hides behind the means He uses. We think of the farmer, the baker, the grocer. We note our own hard-earned income, our strength, our power, our intelligence, our skill. We forget about the hidden Lord who works in, with, and under this created order. We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but bread never simply materializes out of nothing. God works through means. And those means easily become idols which we bow before and worship.
Idolatry brings anxiety; anxiety happens when our false gods let us down. We thought the money would hold out, that our health was secure, that the economy was strong. “Be anxious for nothing,” the apostle says. “That’s easy for him to say,” you might be thinking. “He wasn’t facing what I face.” Maybe. But Paul was in prison when he wrote those words. Picture Paul in a jail cell, writing, “I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.”
So, what do you do? Paul says: “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Ask Him whatever you wish. Talk about whatever is causing your anxiety, and do it with thanksgiving. Are you hungry? Pray for food, and thank God for your hunger. Are you lonely? Pray for a friend, and thank God for the solitude. Are you sick? Pray for healing, and thank God for your illness. Only faith in the crucified and risen Christ can pray that way.
As James reminds us in his Epistle, faith is seen by its works. This kind of thanksgiving at the feet of Jesus is the fruit of true faith in the Lord, to whom we are indebted for our very lives. He is the Word through whom all things were made. The turkey and the cranberries, the potatoes and the pumpkins, and yes, even that good bottle of wine: all are His gifts, given in blessing to you. You are cared for by God more than you could ever care for yourself. Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered, as are all your days. No detail of your life is too small or unimportant. You are precious to Him—as precious as the blood of His Son that purchased you from sin and death.
He pours down every good gift on us, without any merit or worthiness in us. “For all this it is our duty”—our privilege, our priestly responsibility—“to thank and praise, serve and obey Him.” “Let us bless the Lord. Thanks be to God.” In the name of the Father and of the Son (†) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.
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