Lectionary Year A, Thanksgiving Day: November 28, 2002

I visited a home recently, and there were two small children running about. They were excited to have a visitor in their hom. They brought me their toys and books, and they wanted to sit on my lap. We had great fun, and the kids were grateful for my company and I was grateful for their energy, curiosity, and open acceptance of me. I thanked the kids for their attention, and their parents for letting me enjoy their children.

The Episcopalian preacher Fleming Rutledge once commented that being thankful is to some extent an art form. [1] She quoted a baker who saw his business go up in flames as a result of a pogrom. The baker said, "Well, at least they burned out my competitor too." In another example, she noted that if the head of a household dies suddenly, one response is, "'Well, at least we can be thankful he has his sons to [bury] him.' Or if there are no sons, 'Well, at least his daughters might marry well and his widow won't want for anything.' Or if he dies childless, 'Well, we can be thankful there are no children to support'." [2] Finding something to be thankful for in the face of disaster or hard times is a gift. It is not always easy, and often in the midst of a tragedy it is awfully hard to see anything as a blessing. How do we do that?

To get at an answer to that question, it might be helpful to ask why we are here today? I think that for us, being in church, helps us feel closer to God on this day of Thanksgiving. We are thankful to God for the blessings we have, and we want to express our gratitude to God by being as close to God as we can be. We are not only "grateful for the gift of life itself, we are grateful for all the gifts of friendship, love, devotion, and forgiveness we have shared. [We are grateful to God] for showing us how to return thanks by lives of service, by deeds of hospitality, by kindness to strangers, and by concern for each other." [3] We are not here to say thank you in a vague and non-specific way, but rather we are here, in the words of the hymn, "to ask the Lord's blessing."

Thankfulness and generosity are opposite expressions of the same need to connect ourselves with God and with each other. A way of seeing and feeling this is to look at how we express love. When we fall in love with someone, it is accompanied by a stupendous feeling of wanting to give so deeply of one's self; our own needs all but seem to disappear. The generosity of giving of one's self is accompanied by a profound feeling of thankfulness for the love from one's partner. The gift of love is accompanied by the feeling of thankfulness for being loved. The more one loves, the more one is loved. [4] Over time, it becomes easier to love generously and to accept love thankfully in return. Love begets love.

God's love begets our love, if we can experience it and respond to it. I think as children we instinctively feel God's presence and God's love. As we mature, our feeling of love changes and matures, as does our ability to be thankful. "Giving thanks to God is an art form because it requires discipline and practice, but also imagination and soul." [5] The little children I was with the other evening were learning something about discipline and practice this from their parents, who were careful to instruct their children to say "thank you" and "you're welcome" whenever a toy or a book exchanged hands. From that beginning, many of us begin to take our first spiritual steps toward our relationship with God by saying prayers before meals. It is a sacred time, a time to acknowledge God's place in our lives, and God's provision for us. In time, and with God's good grace, we mature in our faith, and come to understand the truth of James' words, "Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (Ja 1:17)."

We discover that as we receive each gift from God – but especially from each other – that we are moved from the very core of our being to respond with thankfulness and reciprocal generosity. Pretty soon, we discover that we are doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive ourselves. We act upon what we have come to feel deep within our gut: we act upon our faith in the God who sustains and nurtures us, and we treat each other in godly and generous ways. We become the righteous people Matthew told us about last Sunday: We feed the hungry, we give drink to the thirsty and we clothe the naked. We do these things not because we are seeking a merit badge or a ticket to heaven, but because we are doers of the word. We have reached that mature point where our faith and belief if God's goodness is so intrinsic, we truly love God with all our heart, with all our mind, and with all our soul; we truly care for our neighbors as ourselves. And we do so gladly; thankfully. We love and care because we want to, not because we have to.

One afternoon, Tony Campolo, the famous Baptist preacher, was walking down Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. [6] I used to live and work in Philly, and I know this street well. When I lived there in the early 1980's, Chestnut and Walnut streets were where some notable street people lived. U.S. government policy under Ronald Reagan had changed, and many schizophrenics and people with other mental illnesses were no longer provided with public assistance. They were released, and many lived on the streets. Many lived on Chestnut street. As Tony walked, he noticed a homeless man walking toward him. He was covered with street grime and soot from head to toe. He had a nearly waste long beard festooned with rotted food. He was slurping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. As the man staggered toward Tony he suddenly looked up and said, "Hey mister! Ya wanna sip of my coffee?"

Tony was stunned. He really didn't want any. But, and as Tony put it, he knew that the right thing to do was to accept the man's generosity. He took a sip and as he handed the cup back to the man he said, "You're pretty generous, aren't you, giving away your coffee? What's gotten into you that you're so generous?" The old man said, "Well the coffee was pretty good today. I figure if God gives you something good, you ought to share it with people!"

Tony thought that the made was setting him up. He was sure the next words out of the man's mouth would be a pitch for five dollars. So Tony asked, "I suppose there's something I can do for you, isn't there?" The homeless man replied, "Yeah there is! You can give me a hug!" (Tony said that to tell the truth, he was hoping for the five dollar pitch.)

The homeless man put his arms around Tony. Tony suddenly realized that the man wasn't going to let go. People were staring at Tony, who looked like a well-dressed businessman, hugging this dirty, filthy, smelly homeless man. Tony was embarrassed! But little by little, he began to experience reverence. He heard a voice echoing down the corridors of time, "I was hungry; did you feed me; I was sick, did you visit me; I was the homeless man on Chestnut Street, did you hug me?"

Tony's thankfulness to the homeless man's offer of his coffee, and the man's thankfulness at Tony's willingness to accept his gift together created a whole new situation. The homeless man teaches us something about the idea of what constitutes a gift. The homeless man felt in his heart that the good coffee was a gift from his creator. It was a gift from God, and his gratitude to God was infectious. He needed to share it, and Tony just happened by. Tony's willingness to overcome his initial reluctance gave rise to eventual feelings of reverence. Gratitude on the part of both men was soul-enlarging. It was liberating. Gratitude brought forth a response of loving reciprocity. [7]

The reciprocity of love is one of the things that gives us freedom. Instead of feeling coerced into doing something that we think we have to do out of a sense of duty, we go about life doing things for others because those actions give us pleasure, and connect us through love and thankfulness to each other and to God. As James tells us in his epistle, if we can "look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, [we will] be doers who act." And by our actions of love and gratitude toward God and each other we - you and me - will inaugurate the Kingdom of God here on earth.

Moses said to all Israel: This entire commandment that I command you today you must diligently observe, so that you may live and increase, and go in and occupy the land that the LORD promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember the long way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

Therefore keep the commandments of the LORD your God, by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the LORD your God for the good land that he has given you.

[Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today. If you do forget the LORD your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the LORD is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God.]

You are to be praised, O God, in Zion; *
to you shall vows be performed in Jerusalem.

To you that hear prayer shall all flesh come, *
because of their transgressions.

Happy are they whom you choose
and draw to your courts to dwell there! *
they will be satisfied by the beauty of your house,
by the holiness of your temple.

Awesome things will you show us in your righteousness,
O God of our salvation, *
O Hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the seas that are far away.

You still the roaring of the seas, *
the roaring of their waves,
and the clamor of the peoples.

Those who dwell at the ends of the earth will tremble at your marvelous signs; *
you make the dawn and the dusk to sing for joy.

You visit the earth and water it abundantly;
you make it very plenteous; *
the river of God is full of water.

You drench the furrows and smooth out the ridges; *
with heavy rain you soften the ground and bless its increase.

May the fields of the wilderness be rich for grazing, *
and the hills be clothed with joy.

May the meadows cover themselves with flocks,
and the valleys cloak themselves with grain; *
let them shout for joy and sing.

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act - they will be blessed in their doing.

If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Jesus said, "I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you-- you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

[1] Fleming Rutledge. "The Thankful Life." The Bible and the New York Times. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 20-24.

[3] From the table liturgy for the Feast of Thanksgiving. Edward Hays. Prayers for the Domestic Church: A Handbook for Worship in the Home. (Leavenworth, KS: Forest of Peace Publishing, 1979), 115-116.

[4] In the movie Moulin Rouge, the narrator sings that "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love, and be loved in return." This sentiment is in line with the idea that the generous giving of love begets love in return. Thankfulness for love returned seems to invoke the desire to give even more of one's love.

[6] Tony Campolo. "Sharing Coffee." Let Me Tell You a Story. (W Publishing Group and Thomas Nelson Publishing, 2000), 29-30.

[7] Rutledge, 23.

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