Thanksgiving Eve
Deuteronomy 8:1-10; Philippians 4:6-20; Luke 17:11-19
In the name of the Father and of the ☩ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
This holiday is optional. We have a service tonight, but we don’t have to recognize Thanksgiving Day. It’s not a service based on any event in Scripture. Thanksgiving is optional in the Church Year. But that doesn’t mean giving thanks is unnecessary. Nor is it arbitrary. Quite the opposite, actually. Jesus wants you to give thanks.
That’s what we see in the Gospel lesson. Our Lord cares about the lepers giving thanks to Him. In fact, when only the one returned, Jesus seems to be utterly shocked. “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” (Luke 17:17-18). They should have all come back. All the lepers. They should have all done what this Samaritan did. They should have returned. That’s what it says, “one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned” (Luke 17:15).
This may sound overly simple, but in order to be thankful, it is necessary to return. You can’t be thankful if you’re always looking ahead, always looking forward to what’s next, to tomorrow, worrying about what you have to do or whatever you think is going to happen. We think about tomorrow far too much! If you’re always worrying about tomorrow, you’ll never be thankful. Never. You can’t be. There’s nothing to be thankful for in the stuff of tomorrow. It hasn’t happened yet. Tomorrow’s not here. So if we’re only looking ahead, then we’ll always be anxious. We’ll be consumed with anxiety, not thanksgiving.
Notice the way St. Paul speaks about anxiety in the Epistle. First, we hear this, “Do not be anxious about anything” (Phil. 4:6). How do we not laugh when we hear that? Don’t be anxious about anything? Really, Paul? How do we do that? Well, he tells us how. “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6). The Lord would have us pray in thanksgiving as the way to fight off our anxiety. Set aside your anxieties about tomorrow for a moment, and first give thanks to God in prayer.
That’s what the Samaritan was doing. He didn’t first come to Jesus with a petition about his worries. Surely he was worried about all sorts of stuff. But when the Samaritan returned to Jesus, it says he was simply “praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks” (Luke 17:15-16). That is, he wasn’t looking to himself, but to Jesus.
Far too often, thankfulness is centered on self. You’ll hear it a lot this time of year. You’ll hear people saying, “I’m thankful for this or that.” That is, we hear what people are thankful for, and very little about to whom they are thankful.
The other nine lepers were certainly thankful. If they were to attend a Thanksgiving Day meal—I know they didn’t have Thanksgiving Day back then, but if they did—every one of them would have sat around the dinner table talking about how incredibly grateful they are for being cleansed. They can be with their families now, they’re not isolated anymore, they can work and attend worship, they don’t have dying flesh hanging off their bodies. They would feel thankful. And yet, they did not give thanks. They never actually returned to their Lord.
This is why Christian Thanksgiving is entirely different from the rest of the world. The world can only feel thankful when life is going well, when they have the stuff they want at any given moment. That sort of thanksgiving changes from day to day. But the Christian gives thanks to God. The Christian returns to the Giver, to the One who does not change from day to day, who provides all that is needed to support this body and life. And even when everything falls apart, and we suffer this or that devastating thing, when we don’t have what we want, even then the Christian still gives thanks to the One who has suffered those trials of yours ahead of time at the cross, defeating death and the grave.
That’s why St. Paul can say, “In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need” (Phil. 4:12). He’s not focusing on himself, but on the God who opens His hand and satisfies the desires of every living thing.
So I would caution you all against spiritualizing Jesus’ death and resurrection. That tends to happen in the Church. We think, “Our sins are forgiven, that’s great, I get to go to heaven someday. But that really doesn’t have anything to do with the stuff we have going on right now, the day-to-day reality. That’s unrelated.” Wrong.
The death of our Lord should not be put into the category of “Spiritual Comfort” as if that’s all it has to say. Rather, here’s what that means. Because of your sin and guilt, you deserve to have everything taken away from you. You deserve, not just eternal condemnation, but temporal punishment now. Yet that’s not what you have.
Sure, you have worries about tomorrow. You have anxieties about tomorrow. You don’t have everything you want. But if you wake up tomorrow and you find you have a place to sleep, a roof over your head, if you have clothes, and running water, if you have a breath of air, anything at all, then you have those things by God’s grace.
Something as simple as you pouring your coffee is a reminder that the Lord is not holding your sins against you as you deserve. Christ has died in your place. Your sins are forgiven. You have the hope of everlasting life. But you also get coffee, and salt, and butter, and all sorts of daily stuff. When you give thanks for these, you are thanking God for the blessed death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. That is the foundation of all you have.
Luther says this in the Catechism. After listing all the things God provides, he says, “All this we have only out of Fatherly divine goodness and mercy.” That is, by grace.
So give thanks to God, because by doing so, you rely on His grace. This is what we do as Christians. We return here to give thanks like the Samaritan leper. God attaches His assurance of salvation to the bread and wine of the Eucharist, which means “Thanksgiving,” and He says, “It’s for you, for the forgiveness of your sins.” This right here is how we drive back the anxiety, by looking, not to tomorrow, but to Jesus, and praying: “The eyes of all look to you, O Lord, and you give them their food in due season” (Ps. 145:15).
In ☩ Jesus’ name. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
"If God is for us, who is against us?" 