Giving Thanks its Due
Texts: Joel 2:21-27; Luke 17:11-19
Thanksgiving is one of those holidays in the national calendar that spills over into church life, rather than the other way around. Similar to Mother’s Day, it’s a holiday that the government declared, and churches as a whole happily adopted. Neither of them really have any historical basis as far as the church is concerned, and as such, neither of them actually appears in the yearly church calendar.
However, unlike Mother’s Day, setting time aside to give thanks to God for the harvest and the growing season has long and deep roots in the Biblical tradition. Part of the reason it doesn’t have a set time of year in the Christian calendar is that growing seasons have different starts and ends all over the world… It would be silly to celebrate harvest thanksgiving in Australia, when they just celebrated the first day of Spring a couple weeks ago!
In essence, thanksgiving as a specific day tends to float around, depending on where people live, but marking the harvest, the end of the growing season has been around for a very long time. In ancient Israel’s culture, it was called the celebration of “first fruits,” where people would literally bring in the very first items of the harvest as a way to thank God. It’s a way to acknowledge the mystery of the growth of life, that even though we participate in it, we really don’t know why it works the way it does. We simply thank God that it does, and that we reap the benefits come the harvest season.
From Joel:
21Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things!
22Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield. 23O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God; for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. 24The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
There is a level of joy here that I think we miss in our culture. Despite our own thanksgiving traditions being originally tied to the Canadian harvest, we live in a culture where there is literally an abundance of food. It doesn’t matter what time of year, we can go into a Loblaw’s or a Dominion store, and barring any labour disputes, we can get pretty much anything that we’re looking for. Growing and harvesting food has become a professional exercise, rather than a personal one, we participate less in the actual miracle of planting, nurturing, and harvesting. We pay food production corporations to do all that work for us.
The challenge for us in society is how we can genuinely give thanks its due. Especially when we have taken abundance for granted, and we’re not actively engaged in scratching out our own sustenance from the ground ourselves. We don’t raise our own turkeys, we go out and one them from the store… someone else has already taken care of all the messy stuff.
Yet in some respects, that should give us all the more reason to celebrate thanksgiving. We now live in a society that ancient cultures would have considered to be downright heavenly because of all the abundance that we have. Yet as we know, being rich in things does not necessarily mean we’re automatically giving thanks its due. In fact, we need a bit of a reminder precisely because we tend to take our abundance for granted.
I do take some comfort in knowing that at least some things don’t change. God has been reminding us to say thank you for thousands of year now… it’s something that we teach our children… say “please” and “thank-you” and yet as we become adults, we all too easily forget to say ourselves. We need to be reminded everyone once in a while.
On the surface of it, the story from Luke’s gospel is a simple yet important reminder that we should give thanks… yet there’s a couple of odd things that come out of the healing of the ten lepers. Maybe you caught them. We’ve had this story twice already, hearing it both read, and of course, with some creative license in this morning’s Bible Theatre. As short as it is, there’s something quite profound that hides just beneath the surface.
The story isn’t the most familiar of the healing accounts of Jesus, and it only appears in the Gospel of Luke. After hearing it twice already this morning, it is getting a bit more familiar: the basic storyline has ten lepers come to Jesus, he cures them, but only one of them actually comes back to say “thank-you.” While it’s a fairly simple narrative, but it has some really profound elements that if we really think about it make us go “wait a second! Didn’t… but… hang on… What’s going on?”
Did we miss it? It’s one of those stories that if we really think about it, we need to go back and re-read it a couple of times. The things that don’t sit right eventually bubble up to the surface.
I’m guessing that most of us are focused in the sense of disappointment that comes when only one person comes back to actually say thank you. We want to identify with the one that comes back, because, of course, we would actually take time to come back and say thank you. We’ve been taught well, thank you very much… but when all is said and done, the one that comes back is a Samaritan, one of those people… an outcast among the outcasts. Doubly unclean… first for being a leper, and secondly for being someone who never belonged in the first place. The only one who gives due thanks to God is someone that they would have never expected to…
The other part that doesn’t sit right with our sense of fair play is maybe even a bit harder for us to hear. Nowhere in the story does it say that the other nine who were healed had that taken away from them. Even though they never came back, even though they never breathed a word of thanks, they remained healed.
God’s generosity far exceeds our expectation, and quite frankly offends our own sense of fair play. We know this from other parables that Jesus taught. Even though they do not return to give thanks its due, the other nine remain healed. I think if we had it our way, we’d like to see that group afflicted once again, just to show ‘em!
But that’s not how God works. God is generous, God is kind, God is gracious beyond our ability to fully comprehend. For God it’s not about whether or not we deserve it, but in the giving itself. How we reply is entirely up to us. God gives us the choice of how to respond to the gift of grace. Like the ten lepers, all ten are healed, and remain so, but only one comes back to say thank you.
To this person, Jesus says, “go, your faith has made you well.” All nine are healed, but to this one, Jesus says “your faith has made you well.”
Maybe we’re missing something subtle here. Giving thanks its due isn’t about getting a certain reward for saying thank you properly. The benefit comes from strengthening our relationship with God. It is acknowledging those moments of undeserved grace when it does come… it is being able to step back, to look around and say “thank you!”
It is in giving thanks that we discover what it is to be whole people… to be made well. The reason that we say thank you to God on Thanksgiving is not for the individual material things that we have. It is about strengthening our relationship with God… saying thank you for the very gift of life, for the opportunity to be a part of this vast and mysterious universe, and to share that sense of wonder and playful awe of simply being a part of life. This is something we ought to be doing all the time, but like children who need to be reminded to say “please” and “thank you,” celebrations like Thanksgiving help remind us to give thanks its due.
Amen.
Thanksgiving is one of those holidays in the national calendar that spills over into church life, rather than the other way around. Similar to Mother’s Day, it’s a holiday that the government declared, and churches as a whole happily adopted. Neither of them really have any historical basis as far as the church is concerned, and as such, neither of them actually appears in the yearly church calendar.
However, unlike Mother’s Day, setting time aside to give thanks to God for the harvest and the growing season has long and deep roots in the Biblical tradition. Part of the reason it doesn’t have a set time of year in the Christian calendar is that growing seasons have different starts and ends all over the world… It would be silly to celebrate harvest thanksgiving in Australia, when they just celebrated the first day of Spring a couple weeks ago!
In essence, thanksgiving as a specific day tends to float around, depending on where people live, but marking the harvest, the end of the growing season has been around for a very long time. In ancient Israel’s culture, it was called the celebration of “first fruits,” where people would literally bring in the very first items of the harvest as a way to thank God. It’s a way to acknowledge the mystery of the growth of life, that even though we participate in it, we really don’t know why it works the way it does. We simply thank God that it does, and that we reap the benefits come the harvest season.
From Joel:
21Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things!
22Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield. 23O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God; for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. 24The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
There is a level of joy here that I think we miss in our culture. Despite our own thanksgiving traditions being originally tied to the Canadian harvest, we live in a culture where there is literally an abundance of food. It doesn’t matter what time of year, we can go into a Loblaw’s or a Dominion store, and barring any labour disputes, we can get pretty much anything that we’re looking for. Growing and harvesting food has become a professional exercise, rather than a personal one, we participate less in the actual miracle of planting, nurturing, and harvesting. We pay food production corporations to do all that work for us.
The challenge for us in society is how we can genuinely give thanks its due. Especially when we have taken abundance for granted, and we’re not actively engaged in scratching out our own sustenance from the ground ourselves. We don’t raise our own turkeys, we go out and one them from the store… someone else has already taken care of all the messy stuff.
Yet in some respects, that should give us all the more reason to celebrate thanksgiving. We now live in a society that ancient cultures would have considered to be downright heavenly because of all the abundance that we have. Yet as we know, being rich in things does not necessarily mean we’re automatically giving thanks its due. In fact, we need a bit of a reminder precisely because we tend to take our abundance for granted.
I do take some comfort in knowing that at least some things don’t change. God has been reminding us to say thank you for thousands of year now… it’s something that we teach our children… say “please” and “thank-you” and yet as we become adults, we all too easily forget to say ourselves. We need to be reminded everyone once in a while.
On the surface of it, the story from Luke’s gospel is a simple yet important reminder that we should give thanks… yet there’s a couple of odd things that come out of the healing of the ten lepers. Maybe you caught them. We’ve had this story twice already, hearing it both read, and of course, with some creative license in this morning’s Bible Theatre. As short as it is, there’s something quite profound that hides just beneath the surface.
The story isn’t the most familiar of the healing accounts of Jesus, and it only appears in the Gospel of Luke. After hearing it twice already this morning, it is getting a bit more familiar: the basic storyline has ten lepers come to Jesus, he cures them, but only one of them actually comes back to say “thank-you.” While it’s a fairly simple narrative, but it has some really profound elements that if we really think about it make us go “wait a second! Didn’t… but… hang on… What’s going on?”
Did we miss it? It’s one of those stories that if we really think about it, we need to go back and re-read it a couple of times. The things that don’t sit right eventually bubble up to the surface.
I’m guessing that most of us are focused in the sense of disappointment that comes when only one person comes back to actually say thank you. We want to identify with the one that comes back, because, of course, we would actually take time to come back and say thank you. We’ve been taught well, thank you very much… but when all is said and done, the one that comes back is a Samaritan, one of those people… an outcast among the outcasts. Doubly unclean… first for being a leper, and secondly for being someone who never belonged in the first place. The only one who gives due thanks to God is someone that they would have never expected to…
The other part that doesn’t sit right with our sense of fair play is maybe even a bit harder for us to hear. Nowhere in the story does it say that the other nine who were healed had that taken away from them. Even though they never came back, even though they never breathed a word of thanks, they remained healed.
God’s generosity far exceeds our expectation, and quite frankly offends our own sense of fair play. We know this from other parables that Jesus taught. Even though they do not return to give thanks its due, the other nine remain healed. I think if we had it our way, we’d like to see that group afflicted once again, just to show ‘em!
But that’s not how God works. God is generous, God is kind, God is gracious beyond our ability to fully comprehend. For God it’s not about whether or not we deserve it, but in the giving itself. How we reply is entirely up to us. God gives us the choice of how to respond to the gift of grace. Like the ten lepers, all ten are healed, and remain so, but only one comes back to say thank you.
To this person, Jesus says, “go, your faith has made you well.” All nine are healed, but to this one, Jesus says “your faith has made you well.”
Maybe we’re missing something subtle here. Giving thanks its due isn’t about getting a certain reward for saying thank you properly. The benefit comes from strengthening our relationship with God. It is acknowledging those moments of undeserved grace when it does come… it is being able to step back, to look around and say “thank you!”
It is in giving thanks that we discover what it is to be whole people… to be made well. The reason that we say thank you to God on Thanksgiving is not for the individual material things that we have. It is about strengthening our relationship with God… saying thank you for the very gift of life, for the opportunity to be a part of this vast and mysterious universe, and to share that sense of wonder and playful awe of simply being a part of life. This is something we ought to be doing all the time, but like children who need to be reminded to say “please” and “thank you,” celebrations like Thanksgiving help remind us to give thanks its due.
Amen.
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