Sermon: Thanksgiving Eve - 2018

21 November 2018

Text: Luke 17:11-19

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Thanksgiving Day has been through a few changes since the days of Jamestown, Plymouth, and the declarations by both American presidents of the national holiday during the War Between the States.  For what was once a day of prayer of gratitude for God’s providence – largely through the blessings of the harvest – has now been replaced by a day of gluttony, sitting on the sofa and watching football, and getting into political arguments with rarely-seen family members.

But there is indeed a “more excellent way.”  

Thanksgiving is just that: the giving of thanks.  And we give thanks in return for something done for us: which is what “grace” is.  The word “gratitude” is based on the Latin word “gratia,” and in Latin, that’s even how you say “thank you.”  For the harvest is not of our own doing.  It is the ultimate in human hubris to take credit for the Lord’s bounty.  For in spite of all of our work in planting, tending, weeding, and harvesting – all it takes is one storm, one freeze, one bout of fungus or insect infestation, and we are looking at famine.  It is only by God’s grace that we have food and drink, house and home, land animals, and everything that “has to do with the support and needs of the body.”  Only by God’s grace, dear friends.  And as St. Paul says to the Church at Ephesus: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” 

The tenth leper in our Gospel understood that.  He was a beggar, suffering a painful sentence of death known today as Hansen’s Disease: a disfiguring and highly contagious rotting away of the flesh.  Like all sickness, leprosy exists because of sin: all sin, our own sins that we commit continuously, and the sin that we bear in our flesh that was inherited from our ancestors, even Adam and Eve, in their own flesh.  And so the ten lepers plead with Jesus to save them from the death that awaits the destruction of their own flesh.  

And the Lord heard their prayer.  It was by grace that they were saved, through faith.  But only the tenth leper came back to give thanks.  

He understood that his salvation was by grace, not through his own works, lest he have grounds to boast.  And so, he is humble, falling at the feet of Jesus to worship Him, praise Him, thank Him, and serve Him, and obey Him.  And that, dear friends, is the Christian life.  It is to be a grateful recipient of God’s grace.  It is to be in the presence of Jesus, where He promises to be, to receive His gifts and to give thanks.  The Christian life is an eternal Thanksgiving Day.  It is an eternal Thanksgiving feast, a feast that has no end!

The ultimate thanksgiving meal is not one of turkey and dressing, but rather of the bread and wine that is the very body and blood of the Lord who graces us with His presence.  The Greek word for thanksgiving is εὐχαριστία.  This is why the Lord’s Supper is called “the Eucharist.”  It is both our reception of His gifts and our thanksgiving for that gift of grace by means of the Eucharistic miracle.  We kneel as we receive Him.  We eat and drink as we thank Him.  For that is what He bids us do in His own testament, dear brothers and sisters.

And our entire liturgy is a response to the Lord’s grace, His mercy, a celebration of the eternal feast, a giving of thanks for the Lord’s incarnation, passion, death, resurrection, and coming again.  It is the expression of our joyful gratitude for salvation, a salvation won for us by our blessed Lord at the cross.  In the Eucharist, we partake of that same body and blood that was given and shed for us.  And there is nothing, dear friends, nothing that should bring us to gratitude more than this.

Yes, indeed, we should give thanks for all things that we receive from the hand of our merciful God: the harvest, our freedoms, good health, technology, family and friends, material possessions, a bountiful land, and anything else that comes to mind.  But the one thing that lasts forever, the one thing needful, is our redemption, our forgiveness, our atonement, won for us by the blood of the Lamb, the blood that causes death to pass over us.

For that first Eucharistic meal established by our blessed Lord with the apostles was not just the Last Supper, it was the Last Passover.  It connects our life of thanksgiving for being freed from sin, death, and the devil with the thanksgiving of the Old Testament people of God for their liberation from suffering, bondage, and Pharaoh in their meal of bread and wine, in the sacrificial lamb whose blood set them free.

This thanksgiving Eucharist, dear friends, is the fulfillment of the Passover, for the angel of death passes over us by the forgiveness of our sins.

Indeed, it is a more excellent way than the way of the world: of gluttony, of selfishness, of political argument.  It is the Thanksgiving of the Lord, the Eucharistic feast, the celebration of our salvation, of coming back to Jesus to fall at His feet.  For this thanksgiving is to receive in full measure, selflessly, and in honor of our King, whose kingdom is not of this world.

All praise and thanks to God,

The Father now be given,

The Son, and Him who reigns

With them in highest heaven,

The one eternal God,

Whom earth and heav’n adore;

For thus it was, is now,

And shall be evermore.

Amen.

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