Thanksgiving
2014 – St Stephen Lutheran Church
Deuteronomy 8:7-18;
Luke 17:11-19
The
Rev. Maurice C. Frontz III, STS
‘I
believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.’
What
is this?
I believe that God
has created me together with all creatures. God has given me and still
preserves my body and soul: eyes, ears, and all limbs and senses; reason and
all mental faculties. In addition, God daily and abundantly provides shoes and
clothing; food and drink, house and home; fields, livestock, and all property,
along with all the necessities and nourishment for this body and life. God
protects me against all danger and shields and preserves me from all evil. God
does all this out of pure, fatherly, and divine goodness and mercy, without any
merit or worthiness of mine at all! For all of this I owe it to God to thank
and praise, serve and obey him. This is most certainly true.[i]
That’s
a lot, isn’t it?
It’s
a lot to be thankful for.
If
we are especially pious,
we
usually thank God for the food and drink placed before us on the table.
But
perhaps we should also say grace when we tie our shoes and put on articles of
clothing;
when
we greet our spouse and children;
when
we see a farmer’s field when we’re on a drive in the country,
when
we arrive safely home after another day
and
walk through the door of our house and turn on the lights.
There
are a couple of times I have tried to give thanks
for
everything I think of.
Each
breath, each event, good or bad,
each
person.
It
usually doesn’t last more than a few minutes at a time,
but
it’s a good exercise, I think.
It
reminds me of how dependent I am
upon
God and the rest of his creation.
This
feeling of dependence is not one that we like to have.
It
is so un-American.
We
are taught that we have freedom,
and
that we are to be self-sufficient.
As
if there was any such thing as self-sufficiency!
As
if we were not creatures in the
creation,
dependent
in a fragile universe?
A
very few variations in the makeup of our cosmic environment,
and
earth would be incapable of supporting life.
Without
our neighbors fulfilling their vocations well in life,
our
society falls apart.
We
see that played out all the time,
and
especially in these last few days.
Once
we lose our sense of dependence on God and others,
things
fall apart very rapidly.
Moses
warns the people that once they come into the good land,
the
land of Canaan,
they
will be tempted to cease to be dependent on God.
Not
that you can ever stop being dependent upon God,
but
it is the understanding that makes
the difference in our lives.
When
we lose this understanding that we are dependent upon God and others,
we
also lose the understanding that others depend on us.
When
we lose this understanding, God can no longer depend on us.
After
Luther enumerates all the blessings of God,
his
creating and preserving activity in the world,
he
says,
‘For
all this I owe it to God to thank and praise,
serve
and obey him.
This
is most certainly true.’
Those
who are dependent,
and
who believe they are dependent,
in
turn become dependable.
They
become the agents of the creating and preserving God,
the
hands of God in the world.
Luther
writes in the Large Catechism,
‘Although
much that is good comes to us from human beings,
nevertheless,
anything received according to his command and ordinance
in
fact comes from God.
Our
parents and all authorities –
as
well as everyone who is a neighbor –
have
received the command to do us all kinds of good.
So
we receive our blessings not from them,
but
from God through them.
Creatures
are only the hands, channels, and means
through
which God bestows all blessings.
For
example,
he
gives to the mother breasts and milk for her infant
or
gives grain and all sorts of fruits from the earth for sustenance –
things
that no creature could produce by itself.’[ii]
In
our family life,
in
our relations with all others,
we
have the command to do others all kinds of good,
just
as our neighbors have also received that command from God.
We
do this in thanksgiving for what God does for us,
in
his creating and preserving work.
But
if we forget our dependence,
we
also forget that God and our neighbors depend upon us.
In
our Gospel reading from Luke,
ten
were made clean from leprosy.
The
nine viewed their healing as the restoration of freedom.
They
were now ‘independent,’ set free from their ailment,
free
again to live their own lives.
But
it was only the Samaritan
who
understood that to be given his life back
meant
that his life was now set at the service of him
who
gave him his life.
And
so he returns to Jesus,
not
simply to do what we do when we say ‘Thank you,’ to the cashier,
not
to do what we do when we write a nice thank-you note
to
those who have given us some gift,
but
he fell on hs face before him,
in
the posture of unconditional surrender;
in
the position of obedience and service and worship.
And
he gives thanks –
the
word in Greek is euchariston.
Jesus
says ‘Your faith has made you well.’
On
the face of it,
this
makes no sense.
How
then were the other nine healed?
But
‘wellness’ is more than physical healing,
and
truthfully, even in the absence of such healing,
we
can be well.
To
be well is to recognize, in all circumstances,
the
One on whom we must depend
and
to thank and praise, serve and obey him.
And
conversely, to fail to be thankful in this way,
to
assert one’s independence,
to
not recognize that God gives all things,
is
to be gravely ill.
Alexander
Schmemann writes:
‘…the
‘original’ sin is not primarily
that
man has ‘disobeyed’ God;
the
sin is that he ceased to be hungry for him
and
for him alone,
ceased
to see his whole life
depending
on the whole world
as
a sacrament of communion with God…
The
only real fall of man
is
his noneucharistic life
in
a noneucharistic world.’[iii]
But
he goes on to say
that
when the congregation says
in
the preface to the Eucharist,
‘It
is right to give God thanks and praise,’
that
…’[it expresses] in these words
that
‘unconditional surrender
with
which true religion begins.
For
faith is not the fruit of intellectual search,
or
of Pascal’s [wager.]
It
is not a reasonable solution
to
the frustrations and anxieties of life.
It
does not arise out of a ‘lack’ of something,
but
ultimately it comes out of fullness, love, and joy.
‘It
is meet and right’ expresses all this.
It
is the only possible response
to
the divine invitation to live
and
to receive abundant life.’[iv]
With
these words,
‘It
is right to give God thanks and praise,’
let
us go to the Eucharistic meal,
in
which we join Jesus
in
his oblation of thanksgiving to the Father.
Let
us prepare by again repeating
the
teaching of Dr. Luther,
so
that thanksgiving to God may sink into our ears
and
reach our hearts.
I believe that God
has created me together with all creatures. God has given me and still
preserves my body and soul: eyes, ears, and all limbs and senses; reason and
all mental faculties. In addition, God daily and abundantly provides shoes and
clothing; food and drink, house and home; fields, livestock, and all property,
along with all the necessities and nourishment for this body and life. God
protects me against all danger and shields and preserves me from all evil. God
does all this out of pure, fatherly, and divine goodness and mercy, without any
merit or worthiness of mine at all! For all of this I owe it to God to thank
and praise, serve and obey him. This is most certainly true.
[i] Luther’s Small Catechism, translated by
Timothy Wengert, Augsburg Fortress © 1994.
[ii]
Luther, Large Catechism para. 26, in The
Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, translated
by Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert, Fortress 2000.
[iii] Alexander
Schmemann, For the Life of the World, SVS
Press 1982, p. 18.
[iv] Ibid.,
p. 38.
