Thanksgiving, Our Reason for Being

A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center on November 23, 2008, based on Matthew 25:31-46

Coming up this week on Thursday is Thanksgiving Day – just in case you might not have heard… We’re very happy and excited to have our daughter Leah and her husband Scott, along with Lewis and Benjamin and Abigail with us for the whole week. We get to be face-to-face grandparents for 7 days and then we send ‘em right back to Texas. It’s just great! …well that didn’t come out just right…but you know what I mean. It’s wonderful to be able to gather as a family to celebrate the Holiday.

Today, I would like to talk about Thanksgiving as our Reason for Being, and then tie this in with our Scripture readings for the day.

So, I’d like to start off by saying that I think Thanksgiving is the single most instructive national Holiday when it comes to understanding ourselves as Christians. Thanksgiving is not just a day, but our Life. It represents what we as Christians should be doing day by day, that is: giving thanks, or as the Greeks would say, making ‘Eucharist’.

On Thanksgiving, we gather as family to Thank God for the Harvest. Psalm 67 says it quite well: “The earth has yielded its fruit, for God, our God, blesses us….” We receive the Good gifts of Creation and offer Him Thanks for the increase of our labor. This theme is reflected during our worship service in our Offertory. Together we say, “All things come of Thee O Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” The hymn says it this way: We give Thee but Thine own, whatever the gift may be…” But we bring our Labor to God as well, and this is seen visually as we bring the bread and the wine forward along with our gifts of money.

God gives us the gift of wheat and grapes, and we add our labor and they become bread and wine. When these gifts are brought forward we see the visible representation of our vocation as a nation of priests. That is to say, a priest takes the gifts and offers them to God with thanksgiving, just like Jesus did when he took bread and gave thanks…

This priestly action is seen as we offer our gifts to God in Thanks. As the Priest prays the Eucharistic prayer, the great AMEN at the end of the prayer signals that All the people are in one accord and that we are all praying together. The Priest says the words but we all work together in Giving Thanks.

Now this is a picture of Life. This is what Life is all about. When we come together to Worship God and give Thanks, we are doing what we were created to do. Worship (especially the Eucharist) is not something we just do on Sunday, it IS our life. We were created for Communion with God. And so as we bring our gifts to God, our thought should be that we bring Him all we have and all we are. This sacrifice of ourselves – the offering of all that we are – is symbolized by the offering of a tenth of our income to God. The offering is meant to be a TOTAL offering, and we show our devotion to God as we bring the Tithe – which Scripture insists belongs to the Lord.

So when you sit down to write your check for the offering , you must always keep in mind that the first 10 percent does not belong to you. It belongs to God. You may say, “Well, my finances are tight right now, the economy is in the tank, and God knows I can’t afford to Tithe…” But keep in mind that Everything you have comes from God and belongs to Him, especially the tithe. We give him but His own…

And as it pertains to Worship itself, the Lord’s Day belongs to the Lord. He bought it by virtue of the Resurrection. Our “bounden duty” is to Worship Him on His day. If we say that we are too tired or have too many other things going on, we are really saying to God that we don’t really belong to Him, we own ourselves and worship is an optional weekend activity that we fit in if we’re not too busy.

But God gave the best He had, His own Son Jesus, in order to redeem us as his people. Christ emptied himself of His divine prerogatives to buy a People for God the Father. Indeed, we can say that Christ was slain before the foundation of the world in order for God to have a people for Himself.

God had us in mind from the beginning, and then He created the universe so that he could actualize the Church. The created world and everything in it are meant to be a vehicle for us to have communion with Him. When we Commune with God on Sunday, we are doing what we were made to do!

The act of leaving our homes and coming to this chapel is a Proclamation to the World System - a political act of defiance. It says, “This world system is not all there is. Our primary allegiance is to God and all of our Lives and all our Labor is meant to support us in our relationship with God. When we Give Thanks, we are saying to the world system, “You don’t own me, God does.” I am a pilgrim on my way to my resurrection home in Christ. I am fulfilling my purpose as a Human being when I come to Worship God and offer Him back my Life and Labor as a Thank Offering.

Now when we sit down as family at our Thanksgiving meal, we renew our family bonds and we ‘become what we are already’ – Family. Sometimes we also invite others to join us at the table – especially the lonely person and the stranger in our midst. We extend an invitation to that person to come and be a part of our family – at least for a day. The invitation is to come and join us at the table, to feed on food that will sustain and encourage them, to forge ties of friendship and family and then to be sent out with full hearts – and tummies.

This is the pattern of our worship as well. We as the Church come to the Communion Table every Sunday. It’s a Thanksgiving meal - a family reunion in which we are fed with the Body and Blood of our dear Savior. In eating this meal we become what we are – the Church, the Body of Christ, held together by the power of the Holy Spirit. We fulfill our destiny by becoming the total Christ – the Head joined together with His body by the Spirit, to fulfill our destiny – Communion with god.

At the Thanksgiving Table, God feeds us, nourishing and strengthening us for our task in the world – to bless the World through our Giving, by being the body of Christ to the world – the Presence of Christ in the world.

The task of embodying Christ means that we also seek to minister to Christ in every person we meet. Our task is not to be a Social Service agency, but to minister to Christ in the poor person, the sick person, the widow, the orphan and the prisoner. It is required of us to do this - to take the Blessing we are given at the Table into our World and minister to Christ.

So Thanksgiving should be a pattern for our whole life, not just something we do one day a year. Thanksgiving is what we do on Sunday, but is that which sustains our very lives.

People can ignore God, they can worship their Stuff and keep all they have for their own pleasure, but they will miss the very reason they exist! Folks, don’t let this happen to you! Be truly alive. Be what you were meant to be. Receive all that you have with gratefulness. Offer it back to God with Thanksgiving. Be strengthened for the journey and be sent out in power to be the Presence of Christ in the world. Don’t just celebrate Thanksgiving Day, Live Thanksgiving! AMEN.