St. Charles Episcopal Church, Saint Charles, IL

Thanksgiving Eve - Thanksgiving RCL Year A

Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Deuteronomy 8:7-18 – Psalm 65 – 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 – Luke 17:11-19

Rev. William R. Nesbit, Jr.

To listen to the sermon that was actually preached at this service, click here. To read the text of the prepared sermon, scroll down.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Though he is much more remembered for something else he did in November of 1863, namely gave the Gettysburg Address, in that same month President Abraham Lincoln for the first time appointed a day of national thanksgiving, and every President since then has issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation setting aside the fourth Thursday of November as a holiday. Interestingly, without this proclamation there would be no Thanksgiving holiday. In general it has been seen as a harvest festival, a time to offer thanks for an abundant harvest, though recently it has become more of an orgy of capitalism, a four day festival of acquisition. With a little bit of work, I suppose one could see all this shopping as merely a different kind of harvesting, but the thanksgiving part is still missing. Few people go to church on Thanksgiving, though it is heartening to see more people involved in social outreach during thanksgivingtide. Still, where is the thanksgiving? Why is it so hard for us to say thanks to God, or to anybody else for that matter? We certainly have plenty to be thankful for, considerably more than we did in 1863, I should think. Why can't we see it?

A couple of years ago I shared an essay written by a friend of mine about seeing our blessings in strange non-obvious places. As I was riding across the state, returning from Bev’s folks house in Moline, The abundance of the harvest was clear as we passed field after field shorn of corn or soybeans. Farmers were out in tractors turning the earth in preparation for the fallow season of winter. The richness of the black earth reminded me of the hidden abundance of God. A city boy just sees a field of dirt. It takes a farmer to see the potential of rich earth.

We live in a world that works hard to dull our senses to the rich abundance of God. How can we take the scales from our eyes? What are the skills we need to hone, to both see and share the less than obvious gifts from God? One of the problems of living in a world that values acquisition alone, is that one never has enough. It is hard to be thankful for what you have when you never have enough; you are always looking ahead to your next purchase. The line between needs and wants gets so blurred that wants become needs.

This is the deep tragedy behind the housing meltdown. Housing prices were going up so fast we should have had more money than we knew what to do with. The deep blessing behind the crash is that we are remembering how to be frugal again, and perhaps why being frugal is a virtue in the first place. The tragedy is that many, far too many, are learning this lesson too late.

How do we find the strength to be thankful for things that don’t feel like gifts from an abundant God? How do we find the big picture view that will allow us to see beyond our own needs and wants? Moses got it right when he told the Israelites as they were about to enter into the promised land,

“Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God...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.”

A posture of stewardship, the understanding that all that we have, we hold only as stewards for the almighty, turns the myth of acquisition on it’s head. The near horizons of personal needs and wants expands outward into the broader vistas of the economy of the kingdom of God. It takes courage, and the strength to let go of the need to control the agenda. I wish I could say it was easy.

I offer one example. There is a group of people who have sailed through our economic crisis, largely unaffected by it, not wholly unaffected mind you, but largely. They are the people we will be serving a Thanksgiving meal tomorrow. I thank God monthly for the example they are for me of the power of simple faith. When I take the time to see beyond the dirt or tattered clothes to the humanity beneath, the eyes of Jesus twinkle back at me, and like the leper in the Gospel, my faith makes me well. They humble me and teach me in ways I cannot number, and I look forward to my monthly visit with them.

When we are baptized, we take on the roll of being the body of Christ. Our history reminds us to look back on the history of God working in our lives to give us the very real hope that God is there even when it doesn’t feel that way. It also allows us to remember to be thankful even when it doesn’t seem like we have anything to be thankful for. Thankful now because faith reminds us that looking back on this time in the future we will be able to see clearly what now is obscured. That God is abundant in grace in ways we don’t see at first, even though they are clear in hindsight. And so we are thankful to God for the generosity of both prayers answered and prayers unanswered. But even more are we thankful for the gift of his Son, and even more, the rare gift and honor to continue His mission today. Amen.