Todd A. Peperkorn, STM

Messiah Lutheran Church

Kenosha, Wisconsin

Thanksgiving Eve (November 24, 2004)

Luke 17: 11-19

 

TITLE: “Rich Towards God”

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.  Our text for this Thanksgiving is from Luke 17, as well as the words from the Psalm: O Give thanks unto the Lord for He is good; his mercy endures forever.  We will hear and meditate this evening on the three kinds of Thankfulness: receiving, rejoicing, and confessing.

This is the season of giving and receiving.  Beginning at Thanksgiving and going all the way through Christmas, more or less, this is the time of year when more dollars are spent, more minds are bent, and more helping hands are lent than any other time of year.  Giving, receiving, helping and being helped.  These are the watchwords of the day.  Nobody likes a miser or a scrooge, especially when it’s a big company like Target or Wal-mart.  Of course, it’s easy to be judgmental of others when it comes to generosity, but very hard to be self-critical, and judge whether or generosity is toward the right people, for the right reasons.  It is, after all, easy to be generous toward people who are going to give back to you, but not so easy when you never expect to be repaid.

But maybe our problem with giving and receiving lies elsewhere.  Maybe our difficulty lies in the fact that we don’t know what it means to be thankful?  We think of being thankful in very narrow terms.  Someone gives you a gift, you say thank you.  That’s about it.  But I would like to suggest to you that there are three distinct parts to biblical thankfulness, and that it all flows out of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins.  Here they are:

Thankfulness as Reception

The first thing that happens when someone gives you a gift is that you receive it.  Obviously.  But what does receiving a gift mean?  Does receiving a gift mean stuffing it on a shelf somewhere, to be brought out and displayed on the wall or on the mantle whenever the gift-giver comes to visit?  We’ve all been there.  Someone gives you a gift, you accept the gift, and then neither they nor you ever see it again.  It is gone in the land of lost gifts, stuck in the attic, the corner of the garage, or the worst fate of all: the gift that keeps on giving.  Passed on to someone else, like a bad penny.

That is no way to receive a gift.  Receiving a gift means recognizing the gift for what it is, and actually using the gift as the giver intended it to be used.  If you give someone a present, you expect them to use it!  That’s what you gave it to them for, after all! 

Let’s take faith as an example.  St. Paul tells us that for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast (Eph. 2:8-9).  Faith is a gift from God, and receiving the gift of faith means God actually forgives your sins.  You can’t have faith without God forgiving your sins by grace.  That’s the only way to have faith.  In fact, it is for that reason that some have described faith as pure reception.  Receiving the gift of faith means God is forgiving your sins for Christ’s sake.

But thankfulness doesn’t end there.  Thankfulness goes on.

Thankfulness as Rejoicing

Mothers have as a part of their vocation the art of saying, or writing thank you notes.  Perhaps you remember the lesson when you were young, or perhaps you have given the lesson so many times that you know what the lines are.  Write the thank-you note.  Make it personal.  Tell the gift giver why you like the gift, and how you are going to use it.  This is especially appropriate if the gift is money.

Now this is only work, really, if you’re either a clod or you don’t like the gift.  If you don’t like the gift, you are forced to make up why you like something you don’t really like.  If you are a callous clod, like many of us, you just don’t think about the giver of the gift so much.  Even if you like the gift, you may be so focused on the gift that you forget who gives it.

While that may be true for many of us, and while that may be tempting, it once again misses the point.  Gifts are given in order to show love and affection toward another person.  The point of a gift, in a way, is so that every time you receive and use the gift, you will remember who gave the gift.  You are, in a way, rejoicing in the gift AND the giver of the gift.  For the two go together. 

Let’s take another example from Sacred Scriptures.  St. Paul writes, Let him who is taught the word share in all good things with him who teaches (Galatians 6:6).  When you receive God’s Word, whether from the preacher, your parents, a Sunday School teacher, or someone else, the way that this teacher of the Word knows that you have received the gift of God’s Word in thanksgiving is by your telling them.  Really this is true of all teaching, but it is perhaps especially true of the word of God.  The Word of God is meant to be given and received and given back.  God’s Word never returns void, and sharing the Word with your teacher is one of the ways that God’s Word goes back from whence it came.

So you receive gifts, you rejoice in the gifts, and finally you confess the gifts.

Thanksgiving as Confession

Now some gifts are better than others.  Let’s be honest.  There are some gifts, that when you get them, you can hardly contain yourself.  You have to tell somebody.  It’s so, well, it’s just so amazing.  Some gifts, the ones that are just right, they do this to you.  You can’t keep it to yourself.  You have to tell people about this gift you have receiving.  You love it.  And you love the person who gave it to you.

To Confess means to tell the truth or to say the same thing.  You confess to another person about the gift.  You confess the gift!  You recognize the gift for what it is, and you are telling anyone you can about the gift, because, well, because you just can’t help yourself.

This is perhaps the perfect picture of the Sacrament of the Altar, and of faith in Christ.  In the Sacrament, you receive Christ Himself, for the Sacrament is Jesus Christ.  By receiving Him, you rejoice in what God Himself gives you in the gift of His Son.  For with Jesus comes the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, as the words and promises of God declare.  And by receiving the gift, you also confess the gift to the world.  As St. Paul says, as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord’s death until he comes.  In other words, when God gives you this gift of Himself, we receive it, we rejoice in it, and we confess it to everyone we meet, just by receiving the gift of Jesus.  And in the middle of all of this is thankfulness for everything God has done for us.

This Thanksgiving all of us have things to be thankful for, both big and small.  We remember the blessings of the earth, the blessings of family and home, of work and play, food and drink, and everything else that goes into this daily life.  But the One who gave us all of these things has given us a gift far greater.  He has given us Himself, the ultimate gift.

So rejoice this Thanksgiving!  Receive the gifts of God, and confess Him to one and all.  O give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His mercy endures forever.  IN the name of Jesus.  Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith, unto life everlasting.  Amen.