Thanksgiving

Luke 17:11-19 - Thanksgiving - November 27, 2014
Thanking God by Returning to Christ

On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”

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

Let us pray:

Christ, the Life of all the living,
Christ, the Death of death, our foe,
Who, Thyself for me once giving
To the darkest depths of woe:
Through thy sufferings, death, and merit
I eternal life inherit. 
Thousand, thousand thanks shall be,
Dearest Jesus, unto Thee.

Thou hast borne the smiting only
That my wounds might all be whole;
Thou hast suffered, sad and lonely,
Rest to give my weary soul;
Yea, the curse of God enduring,
Blessing unto me securing.
Thousand, thousand thanks shall be,
Dearest Jesus, unto Thee.  Amen. 

Today is Thanksgiving Day.  It is a national holiday.  It’s good and wise that a nation set aside a day for such a worthy celebration. 

George Washington was the first to call for a national day of thanksgiving 225 years ago, and Abraham Lincoln made it official by executive order 74 years later.  But as we can see from what we just prayed, we do not need a president to tell us to thank God in order for us to thank God.  We know how to thank God without the government or American culture urging us to do so.  In fact, we do so often, because God tells us to.  And Jesus has taught us how.  Jesus himself thanked God.  For instance: “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes”
(Matthew 11:25). 

Any fool knows that we are indebted to our Creator for his continual providence and blessing.  Natural wisdom can tell us this – hence our national holiday.  But from the naturally wise something much greater is hidden.  And Jesus thanks God for hiding it from them.  So should we —— because this is what it means for God to hide it from the wise — it means that the most important thing that God gives us and wants us to have and enjoy is not something that we need to figure out.  It isn’t something that we earn by being clever or that we come to deserve by counting our blessings.  This is what the civic religion of America will teach us.  But no, God hides it from the wise, because man’s wisdom is only able to know the law to some degree, but never the gospel.  The wisdom of man is only able to faintly figure out what we should offer back to God for his generosity.  But human wisdom will never figure out what God first offers to us – what the Son offered the Father when he shed his blood on the cross.  No, this is hidden from man’s wisdom. 

Thank God!  Because it is to us who become as little children, as helpless babes, who depend on God not only for physical nourishment and protection, but even for every spiritual gift as well – it is to us that God reveals what we should be most thankful for — it is to us who struggle with the foolishness of sin and our false sense of wisdom — to us who do not trust in our thankfulness, but repent of our thanklessness — it is to us that our Father in heaven reveals what no eye has seen and no ear has heard.  He reveals a banquet for the truly wise – namely, those who hear his word and believe it.  He bids us to recline at a feast that the feasts we have waiting for us at home can’t compare with.  He reveals the forgiveness of sins and the eternal favor of God who clothes us forever in the perfect robes of Christ’s righteousness.  He invites us to find rest in his presence and to live with him forever – always near to him who died and rose to save us.  This is what God hides from the wise and reveals to babes.  Jesus teaches us to thank God for this. 

And so we do.  We give thanks as the five wise virgins who waited in the darkness of material distractions for the greater blessing of joys to come.  But while we wait, our Lord gives to us a foretaste of this joyful wedding banquet.  God knows we need it, since as sinners we have so often been taken in by the false pleasures of this fleeting life –they taste sweet at first but then leave the bitter taste of poison in our mouths once the pleasure is spent.  We need a foretaste of the joy we have not earned, a foretaste of the pleasures that we have foolishly spurned!  This foretaste of heavenly joy and pleasure is found in the mercy of God for Jesus’ sake.  He forgives us. 

And nowhere is this foretaste more apparent than in the Lord’s Supper.  In this simple meal that surpasses all feasts, our Lord God, by whom the heavens and the earth were made and for whose sake his Father still sends down his blessings of bread for the sower and wine to make glad the hearts of men — this same Lord God comes to us with the very body and blood that he made his own in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  He comes to us with the same body and blood that God accepted as a sacrifice for our sins.  He gives us to eat of the Bread of Life so that we might be bound forever to him who rose from the dead.  He gives us to drink of the Wine that gladdens our hearts forever because this Wine is the very blood in which our robes are washed and made white like pure virgins prepared to honor their Lord.  And with this gift of his body and blood, Jesus fills our hearts with oil that keeps our desire for him burning, because it fills our desire for forgiveness while we wait. 

And so we give thanks.  Jesus teaches us how.  He teaches us how by giving us what he wants us to be thankful for:

Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is given for you; this do in remembrance of Me.” In the same way He took the cup after supper, and when he had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it all of you. This cup is the new testament in My blood which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

It is because Jesus first gave thanks when instituting this Sacrament that it has been known for ages as the Eucharist.  Eucharist means thanksgiving in Greek.  But look.  It is Jesus who gives thanks.  We do not go to the Sacrament as a gesture of gratitude.  No. We go to the Sacrament in order to receive God’s gratuitous, gracious, gratifying forgiveness.   But it is this forgiveness that we thank God for.  Jesus gave thanks when he instituted the Sacrament of his body and blood for the same reason he gave thanks that God hides his treasures from the wise.  He gave thanks because it is in the Lord’s Supper that God reveals to babes what makes us wise unto salvation.  And it is this forgiveness that teaches us how to thank God for everything else we have. 

We don’t reduce all the things that we thank God for simply to the forgiveness of sins.  There are so many abundant blessings which God has showered upon us for which we have every right and duty to be thankful.  But it’s not a matter of reducing it all to the forgiveness of our sins.  Rather, we give thanks always in light of the forgiveness of our sins.  Without the forgiveness of our sins, our thanksgiving is vain and insincere.  Only through the forgiveness of our sins for Jesus’ sake do we know the God who loves us and grants us all we have. 

Everything we have comes from God.  Everyone knows this.  Today we celebrate a national holiday that celebrates this reality.  I am not sure if there is any country in the world – or in the world’s history – that has not set aside a day to give thanks to God for the countless blessings he bestows.  And every country and every people knows how God provides these blessings.  He works through means. 

Scoffers who will not recognize God as the giver of good gifts may point to their own hard work or favorable economic conditions or good weather or some other convenient thing in order to trace their material success to anything other than God.  But such ungrateful impudence is really the exception, not the rule.  The fool says in his heart, there is no God.  But many more fools know perfectly well that there is a God.  It is not an exclusively Christian notion that God works through various means to provide his creation with what we need.  God sends rain; God gives growth.  God supplies strength and endurance; God grants skill and tools for man to make use of the bounty of creation.  And for all this man has always had the mind to thank him for it. 

What separates the sheep and the goats, the foolish and wise is not that we give thanks while the world does not.  Thanksgiving is not a holiday that only Christians celebrate.  What sets us apart is that we know why God is so generous.  We know why God continues to tend to his creation.  It is because he has reconciled himself to the world through the atoning death of his Son.  And that is why what sets us apart this Thanksgiving Day is not simply that we know the bounty of what we have so well, but more – we know the value of what we have. 

The value of what we have is found in Christ.  Our money and all that it buys, our reputation and honor, our health and all that we are able to do because of it, our family and all the joy they bring us – all of this is nothing in comparison with the gift of salvation.  And yet, all of it becomes something great when received with Christian hearts.  We use our money to support the gospel – not just for ourselves but for others as well, because we actually believe that they need it more than they need anything else.  We lay our reputation down for the sake of the name of Christ – even when it is taboo in mixed company to confess Christ before men.  We use our strength and energy to serve one another and to promote the word we hear.  We teach our children to know Christ as the Son of him who gives us all that we have, and as the Savior of all who need to know this God as their gracious Father.  

The 9 lepers were thankful.  You betcha.  But they returned to give thanks to God without any concern for why God had been so good to them.  Folks are so concerned about the how and what, but the why and the who totally allude them – and disinterest them.  But one leper, a Samaritan who had no temple to return to, he returned to Jesus.  And so he returned to the true Temple of God. 

God was good to all of them.  And he was good for Jesus’ sake.  Jesus cleansed them of their awful disease.  They were healed.  So also God is good to all people. Our nation is incredibly blessed.  Grand meals and good company adorn the homes of millions today.  But like the 9 lepers, so many imagine that their gratitude is somehow the cause of the blessing. 

Ah, but no.  We know better.  God gives daily bread even without our prayer, even to the evil.  But we pray God that we might receive what he gives us with thanksgiving.  We pray that we might know why God is so good, and who it is that has made us worthy to receive it.  We pray for Jesus.  We return to him who has shown mercy for the continual mercy we need, and so he teaches us what true thanksgiving is.  He is the who and the why of all that we have.  And so like the leper whose faith saved him, we go now in peace with God, cleansed of all sin, fed with the word that gives us life, and clothed in the spotless robe of purity that God is so pleased with – we go to enjoy the bounty that God has bestowed, knowing that he accepts our praise and thanksgiving, and is happy to give us all that we ask for. 

In Jesus’ name.  Amen.