Living a Life of Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving Eve I had an opportunity to preach at an ecumenical worship service held at the local catholic church. I wanted to share that sermon with you all.

The First Thanksgiving: A metaphor for God's grace
Psalm 103
Rev. Kevin Rutledge

Let us pray, Gracious God, you have loved your people and brought us to this place together to worship you. We offer up to you this day all that we can, we offer our humble praises of thanksgiving for all that you have done for us. Bless us as we listen for your word, bless us with a heart of praise and thanksgiving so that we may see you in all things and be thankful. Amen.

If you are like most Americans, when you think of thanksgiving, you think of the pilgrims who held a fall festival to celebrate a successful harvest. But what you may not think of is the conditions that lead up to this feast and how it, at least for me, provides an example of God’s unmerited grace towards us and our proper response toward that grace. For that we will revisit the year leading up to the first thanksgiving.

You see, following their first landing at Plymouth, these pilgrims had a difficult time surviving. They began their voyage in early September and there were 120 passengers and about 30 crewmembers. They reached their final destination at Plymouth on December 11, 1620, journals and diaries from the time described a land that was already covered in snow. That winter they remained on ship so they would be protected from the elements. It may have helped, but it did not go well by anyone’s standards. Their numbers dwindled from 150 to about 80. Nearly half of the passengers and half of the crew died from contagious diseases. The fact that any of them were alive at this point was a blessing, but they did not make it on their own. Instead they received help from the local native population. The natives shared their food stores through the winter and in the spring began to teach the pilgrims how to survive in this new land. Squanto a native American who was enslaved and taken to England and had returned to North American taught the pilgrims how to fish for herring, and to use it as a fertilizer when planting corn, pumpkins and beans. A Native American tribe name Wampanoag provided help. They gave seeds because the ones they brought from England did not do well in the new soil. A member named Squanto showed them how to find clams and eels in the rivers and how to hunt for deer, bears and turkeys on land. Even the children were taught how to find nuts and berries. The pilgrims at Plymouth did not have much to offer and there is little doubt that the Native American would have survived without helping the pilgrims, but the pilgrims would have surely died without the help of the regional tribe.

The pilgrims were plagued by disease and hunger, they were on the brink of death, and there was nothing they could do to save themselves. They would not have made it on their own. The native Americans, some of whom had been enslaved, spurned, hated, and killed by others, took from their own food stores and gave to those would have died. This native tribe near Plymouth looked kindly upon the pilgrims, and offered them this gift of life and survival even though experience told them it would eventually backfire. And yet they gave anyway. This mercy is not unlike God’s mercy towards us.

But, what does God’s mercy look like? What are the gifts of God that have been offered to us and for which we should offer our praise? I turn now to Psalm 103, which I read earlier. Starting in verse 2, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits—Who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” When we think of the magnitude of one of these things it can instill a desire to offer thanksgiving, let alone all of them together.

Last year, I experienced this desire to offer thanks first hand. Last year I served as a part time hospital chaplain in Nashville. There was a patient who came in very ill and no one could figure out what was wrong with him. Over a few weeks I had spent a good deal of time with his family, especially his eldest daughter. She just didn’t know what she would do if she lost her dad. His health was deteriorating and I watched him as he was moved from the cardiac floor to the special care floor, and finally to the intensive care unit. Then, one day after I had not been to the hospital in about a week, I went to see this patient and he had been moved back to the normal care area of the hospital. He was off the ventilators, and he was joking and eating again. I asked his daughter what had happened and she told me of this new doctor to the team who thought of something that might be going on. “He ran some tests and they were able to treat it.” The patient’s daughter could not contain her gratitude. She wanted to send the doctor flowers or a gift card; she wanted to find a way to express the gratitude that she felt for saving her dad’s life. Every once in a while, this desire to express gratitude to another person grips us, but how much more is God deserving of our gratitude for all the things that God has done for us.

For we who are Christians, we believe that God’s mercy was proven no grater than through Christ’s actions on the cross. And this is where our connection to the first thanksgiving comes to full light. If you are a Christian, then at some point the Holy Spirit grabbed hold of you and showed you that you were like the pilgrims when they first arrived at Plymouth. Not because you were seeking freedom from persecution but because we were close to the point of death and in need of help that only God can provide. Thankfully, at some point God took hold of you and said, you are on a path to destruction and I am here to help. For as the psalmist wrote, our God, Forgives all our sins, redeems us from death, crowns us with love and mercies and fills our lives with good things.” If you are not at that point yet, my prayer is that God will continue to grasp you to make you His.

In addition to being close to death like the first pilgrims, we also don’t deserve to receive mercy like them. And yet, like the Native Americans who helped the pilgrims in spite of the damages done to them in the past, God offers his gifts of mercy and grace in spite of the ways that we spurn those gifts or harm God’s people. The Apostle Paul wondered at this same fact in the epistle to the Romans Chapter 5 Verses 6 through 8, he wrote, (and here I read from the new living translation) “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation.” In spite of our weakness god still offers the gift of His son and with it the possibility to love God and be with God. For that I can think of no higher form of worship than to praise God with our whole heart at all times. And yet we often fail to do so. This is where Thanksgiving Day can help us.

In remembering that first thanksgiving, we find an allegory of God’s mercy in the actions of the Native Americans. But the feast in 1621 teaches us how our thankfulness should look. In response to gift offered by the Wampanoag, the 50 pilgrims that remained and the 90 Native Americans gathered for a three-day feast to celebrate the successful harvest. There was enough food to feed 53 pilgrims and 90 Native Americans. They ate fish, shellfish, wild birds, venison, berries, fruits and vegetables, harvest grains, and beans squash and corn. It was a magnificent feast by any standard. The pilgrims took what they learned from the Native Americans and used it they planted and harvested, the fished the waters and hunted the lands, and they were blessed with a great bounty. They were saved from the brink of death by no merit of their own and they began to prosper. When they saw their bounty they decided to have a feast. They gathered with their newfound friends and they feasted for three days. Can you imagine the joy they experienced on those days, especially when the remember how bad things were? Can you imagine the thankfulness that they had toward their new friends and saviors as they feasted on the plentiful harvest they had? I offer up to you today this example of a thankful and worshipful attitude that we can learn from this first thanksgiving. Their response to the aid they received can teach us how to respond to God’s overwhelming mercy. It reminds us that our thanksgiving and praise should be abundant and extravagant.

Just as the pilgrim’s thanked their friends who saved them from the brink of death by feasting with them, we offer our thanks and praise to God through worship. We worship God, not because it is our duty to do so, but because we recognize everything that God has done for us and our only response to abundance of God’s gifts is to raise our voice in praise and bow at Christ’s feet. Through our worship we give honor and praise to God. We remember what God has done for us and we praise God for it. In Psalm 100, the psalmist entreats us to an extravagant praise for what God has done. We are to enter His gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and bless His name.” Gratitude and praise is the only response that we can offer God for all of God’s blessings. This gratitude is not expressed only on one day or even once a week. It is a constant expression of our live toward God for what God has done. What if this caused us to look at Thanksgiving Day differently?

What if in addition to being a special time to offer thanks to God, what if we looked at thanksgiving as a time of preparation. It is a time preparation, where we turn ourselves around in order to live a thankful life every day. Each year as the Christmas season advances further and further into the calendar and thanksgiving is lost in the shuffle. Lets face it, the world has already moved into Christmas mode, radio stations are playing nonstop Christmas music and Christmas lists are going out. Soon we will be in the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, trying to figure out what to buy other people, trying to manage all of the Christmas parties we need to go to, and trying to manage all the family gatherings that will happen over a relatively short amount of time. Now that thanksgiving no longer serves as the beginning of the Christmas season in our culture like it has in the past, perhaps thanksgiving is that one oasis in the midst of the Christmas season. Where we remind ourselves that our life is to be a life of gratitude for all that God as done for us, our families, and our nation. Because thanksgiving no longer marks the beginning of Christmas for our culture, it is instead a time in the midst of all this Christmas preparation to slow down turn to our families, neighbors, and God, and thank them for all that we are and all that we will be.

The other day I read a short story, and I would like to share it with you today in order to leave you with a sense of the importance of this thankful attitude.

Once upon a time, there was a far-away land that was ruled by a vicious king. His iron hand reached into every corner of his subjects' lives; every corner that is except one. Try as he might, he couldn't destroy their belief in God. In his frustration, he finally summoned his advisors and asked them: "Where can I hide God so the people will end up forgetting about him?" One suggested hiding God on the dark side of the moon. This idea was debated, but was voted down because the advisors feared that their scientists would one day discover a way to travel into space travel and God would be discovered again. Another suggested burying God in the deepest part of the ocean. But there was the same problem with this idea, so it was voted down. One idea after another was suggested and debated and rejected. Finally the oldest and wisest advisor had a flash of insight. "I know," he said, "why don't we hide God where no one will ever even think to look?" And he explained, "If we hide God in the ordinary events of people's everyday lives, they'll never find him!" And so it was done. And they say people in that land are still looking for God - even today.

Thanksgiving Day is a time to remember where God is in the day-to-day blessings that we receive, whether it is the freedom from sin, healing of an illness, the love of a spouse or child, or the fellowship of a neighbor. I challenge you this day to take time tomorrow and look for God in all things and give God extravagant praise for all that God is doing, and I challenge you to think of thanksgiving as a time to prepare yourself to live a life of eternal praise and thanksgiving.

Amen.