variations on giving thanks





A happy Thanksgiving to you all. 
We’re awfully close to the tipping point, right before the holiday-season falls completely into the clutches of the advertising world. After tomorrow, from Black Friday until December 24, each day will be just one more excuse to get you to buy more stuff, accumulate more goods.
So how about it? On these last minutes before the season of packed parking lots, another meal with the in-laws and overpriced gadgets; let us pause and just give thanks.

That’s what it seems our lessons tonight are all about, right? 
Stop your worrying, and give thanks. The prophet Joel tells us not to fear, and instead to be glad and rejoice. 
Jesus in the Gospel, invites us to the consider the lilies of the field, how they neither sow nor reap, and yet God provides for them… 
So, go on then, stop worrying and be thankful. 

That’s the temptation tonight; to take this wonderful eve, as merely one more opening to tell you to listen to Jesus, to quit your worrying and just be thankful, for one dang-gum moment! *“If you want to be an upstanding Chris­tians you should give thanks. Jeez”*

But I’ve come to the conclusion that to speak like this, pays attention neither to how your life actually works nor to what Jesus’ death and resurrection have actually done for you. If I were to stand before you tonight, and just tell you to be thankful, I would ignore how such thanks actually comes about. 
I mean, who in the world has ever become thankful because they decided to? Who has ever given up worrying because they kicked they habit? 

No, trust, the opposite of worry, only comes about when someone so trustworthy makes you a promise so sweet, you can’t help but wait for the promise to come true.

And that’s exactly how it works with thanksgiving, too. 
You might tell someone thanks because your parents brought you up to be polite, to say please because that’s what you ought to do. That’s not the something as having a thankful heart, though. 
It’s not the same thing as bursting with gratitude because you know how much you owe the person you’re thanking. 

Demands like “Be thankful!” have never done us much good. While they can get us to drum up some outward action like shaping air and teeth and tongue into the sound “tha-nk you;” they simply can’t make you thankful. Something as good as saying, “Be thankful,” can’t change your heart. The Law couldn’t make it happen, and neither can a misguided pastor standing in front of you on Thanksgiving Eve…

So then, if the Gospel isn’t just one more admonition, a demand to quit worrying and be thankful, then what is it?
I’ll give you a clue: This word from God comes to place your whole life under the light of God’s judgment and Christ’s redemption. Its aim is not to tell you to decide to stop worrying and be thankful for once. The aim of the Gospel is to make you thankful, to dispel your fear; to give you faith, to save you, save you from the devil, the world and your sinful self.

Here’s the thing, we just heard from Jesus. “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat and drink, what you will wear,” he says. Reminding us that life more than these things.
And then. Then we will turn around, leave here, go home, head to bed and then promptly wake up tomorrow frantic because your husband forgot to clean the bathroom; or pacing, biting your tongues because the wife is upstairs changing her outfit again.
And perhaps in that moment, Jesus’ words will ring; and you’ll know the truth about yourself. Or maybe not. Perhaps you’re like me, and God can’t be so subtle with you. Well then, allow me to state the obvious; we’re not good at trusting, are we? We worry. We’re fearful creatures. We’re not thankful… 

When Luther died in 1546, his companions in Eis­leben went through the pockets of his robes, and they found a scrap of paper on which he’d written these words: “We are beggars. This is true.” 

He meant there’s no­thing any of us truly deserve from God, except wrath and judgment. We come before God, worried and afraid; in a word, ungrateful. We haven’t been the upstanding Christians we know we ought to be. In fact, we’ve been the sort of folks we hear about on the news and shake our heads at.

And yet…
And yet Jesus, our Lord and savior, come to us anyway, and invites us to his feast. A feast that puts all our thanksgiving meals to shame. A feast you don’t have to worry about making sure to take the turkey out in time, or what you will wear. At Jesus’ feast everything is prepared, and all are invited. 
And that’s the thing, isn’t it?
When you know you deserve nothing, and yet that Jesus gives you absolutely everything; when you realize the true state of affairs; there’s nothing you can do but give thanks, true thanks. 
When you know for yourself that you haven’t listened to Jesus, that you haven’t done what he said; and then hear that the heavenly father cares for you anyway; you can’t help but give thanks to this kind of God.

It’s no different from what Luther talked about in the Small Catechism when he explained what baptism means for daily living: “It means that the old creature in us with all sins and evil de­sires is to be drowned and die through daily contrition and repentance, and on the other hand that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in right­eousness and purity forever.”
And that is why a sermon saying you ought to be thankful, doesn’t do the trick. It misses the truth of Jesus’ death and resurrection. If all you needed was just to give up worrying and learn how to trust, you wouldn’t need anything more than a how-to manual for successful living or moral aptitude; a copy of “Godliness for Dummies” would be perfectly suitable for you. 

But you wouldn’t need a savior. You wouldn’t need someone to save you from your anxiety, your ungrateful heart. 

To tell you to be thankful, would be to forget the very thing that gives you something to be thankful for. To admonish you to knock off the worrying, would be to forget the very thing that can actually dispel your fear, hold your trust; your Lord’s death and resurrection for you. 

A lecture on 7-steps to a more thankful life on this fine evening, would be to leave out the most important part of this story and your’s: the event that tells the truth about your beggarliness, and at the same time raises you up to new life. 
For it is Jesus on the cross who changes everything for you.
It’s all a matter of faith, you see. 
And it’s faith that will dispel your fear, make you thankful.

So get ready you ungrateful beggars, you worry-warts; for Jesus is about to dispel your fears again, to give you something you can’t help but trust. 
Hear his word again, “Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat and 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 the air; they neither run to the grocery story, nor cut coupons to afford the big turkey, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not more value than they?”

You are claimed by one who is absolutely unafraid of your darkest secret and deepest shame. You belong to Jesus, despite what’s in your bank account or wardrobe. No longer does your future depend on either your past or your resolve to make things better, for Christ comes to raise you from the dead and bring you salvation all on his own power, his own holiness, his own lust for life.

Now you no longer need to decide to be thankful, for our Lord has given you everything and eternity, too. 
You are given something that elicits your gratitude. 
And in that new life, suddenly all God’s good gifts come to be seen as our Lord’s horn of plenty. Your sweet potatoes with marshmallows. The warmth of your bed on a crisp November morning. Your beloved family gathered around your table tomorrow and those you’ve lost who are gathered around God’s heavenly table. Your future. Your past. Your every single breath and heartbeat. These come, not just as another thing you should be grateful for, but an actual part of the salvation God has set out for you from the beginning of time.
The word for you tonight is not, “Be thankful;” but “don’t worry, you have a heavenly father who provides for you, who cares for you.”

How’s that for something to be thankful for?
Well, that and a blessedly short sermon. 

Amen.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

in measured hundredweight and penny pound

i take flight

anywhere you wanna go