THANKSGIVING SUNDAY “ONE NATION UNDER MERCY” PSALM 100
Days of gratitude have long been a tradition here in America.
Thanksgiving Day captures the spirit of the Pilgrims who thanked God
for their survival. William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony proclaimed
a special day of gratitude to Almighty God when the settlers gathered in
a bountiful harvest. During the Revolutionary War the Battle of
Saratoga was commemorated at the orders of the continental congress
with a day of thanksgiving.
George Washington at the end of the revolution and Abraham
Lincoln in the midst of Civil War proclaimed a nationwide observance of
thanksgiving. In the rest of the world business continues as usual this
coming Thursday. But here in America we observe a day of
thanksgiving.
The celebration has origins which can be traced back to the
ancient Hebrew festival of ingathering as described in the 16th chapter
of Deuteronomy. When the grain had been threshed and the grapes
pressed, people were urged to honor God and celebrate this festival
with their children, servants, levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows
who lived in their midst.
Thanksgiving is an American national holiday, but we within the
church give thanks for religious reasons. We express our gratitude to
God in Christ with every hymn and prayer. We give thanks for the
mighty acts of God, from God’s promise to Abraham to the gift of Jesus
Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit that creates in us a passion to
make new disciples. We give thanks for the bounty of God’s blessings
and God’s love for persons everywhere.
We express our gratitude for this good earth, for the richness of
agriculture in our great land and the advances of science and
technology guided by research teams in university and corporate
laboratories. We give thanks for family, friends, life, and health.
Thanksgiving is an inner attitude in which we view all of life as a gift.
Life has a dark side and a bright side and we must choose which side we
are going to emphasize.
Two people gather grapes. One is happy because they have found
the grapes and the other is unhappy because they have seeds in them.
Two people examine a bush. One notices the roses and is overjoyed
with their fragrance. The other is unhappy because the bush has
thorns. Two people see a glass containing water. One says it is half
filled. The other says it is half empty. We tend to see what we train
ourselves to see in this life, and we express our thankfulness if we have
cultivated an attitude of thanksgiving. This thankful attitude does not
come easily in a culture of entitlement or merit, not grace or mercy.
We trick ourselves into believing that God owes us our blessings or we
have achieved our success without any help from anyone else.
The word for a true thanksgiving celebration is the word of mercy.
We have no claim on God or Jesus Christ. Gratitude and service and
giving do not depend upon circumstances but upon our being made
whole in and by Jesus Christ. Let me tell you a story.
Imagine a man who would conduct forty to fifty funerals a day.
He would bury nearly 450 persons in a short span of time. Among
those dying would be his wife. And the deaths would become so
frequent that bodies would be just placed in trenches without benefit
of burial rites. Imagine also that this person would be so thankful for
the gift of life that he would write a hymn that would be sung hundreds
of years later on another continent.
That man’s name was Martin Rinkart. He was a Lutheran pastor
in Germany during the Thirty Years War in the 1600’s which marked the
close of the Reformation Era. Catholics and Protestants had devastated
the land and each other. The population fell from sixteen million to less
than six million because of religious war and ensuing disease.
During those years the fields were barren and commerce was
destroyed. Pastor Rinkart lived in a walled city where thousands of
refugees were in hiding. The overcrowding brought on epidemic and
famine. Most all the city officials and pastors fled, leaving Pastor
Rinkart to care for the dying. And in this time of great calamity he
wrote the words “Now Thank We All Our God>” the hymn which will
conclude our service this morning.
Thanksgiving within our lives does not come from a sense of duty,
should, or oughts. The stewardship commitment cards we bring to the
altar today come from our appreciation of God’s love for us. Lovers
never ask, “What is the least I can do for my lover?” Consider a parent
who gets up in the middle of the night to answer the cry of a sick child
or an adult who gets up in the middle of the night to care for the needs
of an aging parent. Ask a man whose income is limited after he pays
his rent and buys his groceries but who nevertheless scrimps and saves
to purchase a birthday gift for his sweetheart. That is the sense in
which true thanksgiving is rendered.
So get on with your thanksgiving celebration this coming week.
Remember that we enjoy our bounty not by merit but by mercy. We
share and experience the love of family and friends and we enjoy the
freedoms we have in this country because they have been purchased at
great sacrifice by those who have gone before us. We enjoy the
athletic prowess of football heroes Thanksgiving afternoon on
television. Some of my former parishioners would spend the afternoon
with friends hunting for game. But always remember that we
celebrate our thanksgiving not so much for THINGS that can be stripped
away from us by fire, storm, earthquake, or other peril. We express our
thanksgiving for the mercy of God. For we are one nation under God in
mercy and gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving!