Thanksgiving

Luke 17:11-19 - Thanksgiving - November 22, 2012 

Knowing Whom to Thank

                         

Today is Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is not a church holiday.  It’s a national holiday.  It’s a nice thing for our country to have devoted a day to consider what we are thankful for.  We’ll take advantage of it.  But we celebrate this holiday in church, not because we need the state to remind us to be thankful, but because it is here that we learn how to be thankful, and to whom to be thankful, because it is here that we learn about Jesus.  Consider what we pray before we celebrate the Lord's Supper: “It is truly mete, right, and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto you, holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God, through Jesus Christ our Lord…”  We thank God first by identifying who He is.  He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He is our God who shed His blood to redeem us.  He is the One who comforts us and brings us peace through the words of Jesus.  He is the triune God who tends to our needs, who saves us, and who takes care of us in body and soul by grace alone.  And so, in this way, He teaches us how to thank. 

The word “thank” is kind of a neat word.  It derives simply from the word “think.”  To be thankful is to think about what it is that another has given you – and to think about why he gave it.  Consider that other word that we have and use: “grateful.”  This word derives from where we get our word “grace.”  And this is a wonderful connection, and I’ll use it to make the point that we all need to know about thanksgiving.  To thank God is to think about His grace.  This means that whatever it is that you have – that God has given you – that you don’t deserve – that you kind of think you kind of do deserve – whatever it is that makes you wealthy and fortunate and happy and safe and fed today – all this you have solely because of God’s grace and favor – grace and favor (and here’s the point) that is found in Christ alone.  There is no such thing as thanking/being grateful to God apart from knowing Jesus. 

This is why when we gather to worship God and give him thanks, we do so not by throwing out generic compliments, but by recounting the specific things that he has done for us.  To worship God – to thank God – is to think on God’s grace in Christ.  In other words, it is to believe Him.  The same faith that finds God’s grace and favor in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for sinners is the faith that attributes to God and expects from God every good thing besides. 

That portion of Scripture that we just heard from St. Luke’s Gospel teaches us this very lesson.  Jesus was traveling between the lands of Samaria, where the Samaritans lived, and Galilee where the Jews lived.   

The Jews and the Samaritans had nothing to do with each other.  The Jews regarded the Samaritans as unclean.  And they were right.  The Samaritans held to false doctrine on worship.  They refused to offer sacrifices to God at the Temple in Jerusalem as God had commanded.   Instead they mixed true worship of the Jews with the false worship of the Gentiles and then presumed to pray to God and give sacrifices and thank God where and how God had not commanded.  The Samaritans were worse that your typical Gentile.  They were syncretists.  This was the greatest difference between the Jews and the Samaritans. 

But one thing brought them together on this occasion: leprosy – their common disease. Nine Jews and one Samaritan lived together in a single community.  Their disease had leveled the religious playing field, because according to the law, they were all equally unclean.  And because of their uncleanness, the law required that they separate themselves from the greater community – from their villages, from their families, and even especially from worshipping in the Temple.  These nine Jews were forced by the law to be brought down to the same level as the Samaritan.  Now none of them could worship God as God had required.  They were all equally in need of mercy. 

When they saw Jesus walking by, that’s exactly what they cried out for.  Mercy.  But then Jesus’ only response to them was, “Go. Show yourselves to the priests.”  The priests were in charge of determining whether someone was clean or unclean.  They could not make anyone clean themselves.  They had no power to heal.  They could only evaluate whether one was clean or unclean according to the law.  So by telling them to go to the priests, Jesus not only promised that they would be healed, but he also directed them to where they needed to go in order to be readmitted into the religious assembly. 

Imagine the excitement.  They were about to be welcomed back into their village, back to their community of family and friends.  They were about to be brought back into the community where they could freely worship God with everyone else.  All ten lepers were healed on the way to be examined by the priest.  I think it is safe to assume that all ten were very grateful.  There is no reason to doubt that all ten thanked God for what had happened.  But only one cared who had done it.  He had no choice.  He couldn’t go to the Temple.  He was a Samaritan.  And so he went back to Jesus to thank God.  

“When he saw that he was healed, [he] returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at [Jesus’] feet, giving him thanks.”  He was the only one who equated glorifying God with thanking Jesus.  He was a Samaritan, who had never known before how to truly worship God.  But now he did.  Jesus had taught him how to rightly glorify God by having mercy on him.  And surely this Man Jesus who could heal the uncleanness of his body, could heal also the uncleanness of his soul.  Surely this Man Jesus could forgive sins.  Surely this Man who has mercy is the one I need to present me clean before God.  Surely this is the right place to worship the Father.  The Samaritan went to Jesus. 

The Jews, on the other hand, went to the Temple.  They believed that their worship made them special and acceptable before God.  Now, in a certain way they were right.  God commanded specific worship of his chosen nation in order to set them apart as his chosen nation to whom the Christ would come and be Savior of the whole world.  But God did not teach them how to worship in order to secure their compliments.  God taught them how to worship in order to save them.  He taught them how to worship by teaching them by the things of the Temple how He would have mercy on them through the perfect life and vicarious death of Christ.  All the priestly sacrifices pointed to the one effective sacrifice of Christ our true High Priest.  All the priestly declarations that the people are clean pointed to that declaration that Jesus would make on those who believe in Him.  By teaching them how to worship in the Old Testament, God taught them the Gospel.  And in turn, by worshipping, the Old Testament Christians learned and confessed what they believed. 

But these nine Jewish lepers whom Jesus healed found it more important to be a member of their religious community than to thank Jesus who had healed them.  To them it did not matter who had done what.  They were healed.  That’s what was important.  This was reflected in their Jesus-less worship —— they returned to the Temple, oblivious of who it was all pointing to.  To the Samaritan, on the other hand, it made all the difference in the world who healed him.  This was reflected in his worship too.  And so it is for us: Giving glory to God in general and thanking Jesus for what he has done specifically is the exact same thing.   We glorify God by thinking of His grace – by being mindful of what He has done in Christ. 

People all over the world are very religious.  They like to gather together with other likeminded people and talk about their religious ideas and feelings.  That’s why all kinds of people gather together in churches, synagogues, and mosques.  It’s natural.  It is not uniquely Christian to gather like this and to praise and glorify some sort of god, forming some sort of religious community.  What is uniquely Christian is that we know who to glorify.  We know how we ought to think.  We know who to praise and worship.  We know who to thank for eternal salvation.  We know Jesus.  And knowing Jesus, we know the Father. 

Jesus did not heal the ten lepers so that they would be free to worship the way that they wanted, the way they had in the past.  No.  He healed them in order to teach them how to worship.  Jesus does the same for us.  Jesus serves us with mercy in order to teach us both who to thank, and also for what.  The Jews were identified by how they worshiped.  So are we.  We are identified by Him who took on our human flesh and blood and lived a pure and holy life in our place.  We are identified by Him who gave His spotless life into death to reconcile ungrateful sinners to God.  We are identified by the one whom we thank – by the one through whom we know and have the grace of God.  The way we worship, the way we thank and praise speaks all that needs to be spoken about what we believe. 

“Your faith has saved you.”  That’s what Jesus said to the Samaritan leper.  That’s what he says to us.  “Not just any faith, but your faith – the faith you have in Me.”  It isn’t a generic faith that produces aimless thanks to an obscure god.  It is a specific faith.  It is faith that looks to Jesus and knows that for his sake God will always be merciful.  Jesus doesn’t tell us to show ourselves to some priest to be reincorporated into some community.  He is himself our High Priest who has made full satisfaction for our sins on the cross where He bore God’s wrath against all sin in our place.  And this Jesus stands continually before God our Father where he pleads for us.  And he invites us to show ourselves to Himself with confidence that we are clean for His sake.  This is worship. 

We show him our sin.  And He takes it upon himself.  This is worship.  We show him our sickness and leprosy of unholy thoughts and desires, and he washes us clean.  This is worship.  We look at all the earthly blessings that we have, and we thank God for Jesus’ sake.  This is worship.  We see also how thanklessly we live.  We see our doubts and worries in life and wonder if we worship and thank God enough.  We look at our own behavior and see that we do not live lives that praise our God.  But Jesus does not teach us to worship harder or thank more sincerely.  That’s not where worship begins.  Rather he comes to us in his word of forgiveness and in his sacraments where he delivers to us everything that he earned on the cross, and he tells us to hold fast to him, making again and again that very promise for which we continue to praise and thank our God.  And so it is to Jesus that we run when we see all our sin and unworthiness to come before God.  We cry out for mercy just as the lepers did.  And we know that his mercy flows forever to us in the blood that he shed for us on the cross.  This is worship. 

It is indeed mete right and salutary that we should in all places and at all times thank our God. But for what?   Thank God that he gives us a reason!!  Thank God that when we gather together here at church, our Savior sends us home forgiven, pure, and clean with the very righteousness that he won for us.  Thank God that we know who to thank for all good things.  For Christ’s sake we thank God for everything we have.  For Christ’s sake, God deigns to accept our thanksgiving.  And for Christ’s sake, we can think of God’s grace today and every day, because we know it so well.  Thanks be to God. 

In Jesus’ name.  Amen