We’re in the month of November. In just
two and a half weeks it will be Thanksgiving.
As I wrote in the newsletter, Thanksgiving is kind of the
forgotten holiday. I mean, if people get to take a four-day weekend,
they’re happy about that. And it’s
always nice to see family, of course. But we don’t make a big deal out of
it. I mean, it’s still almost a month
until Advent, and nearly two months to Christmas, and we’re already hearing
about that. The stores have their displays up. The Hallmark Channel has been running
wall-to-wall Christmas movies for a week and a half already.
And we can’t just blame the secular society, because we’re
not much better in the church. I mean, we have the kids Christmas
program, and we have special Christmas Eve services in all our churches.
We don’t have any Thanksgiving program.
The special Christmas services are really well attended, rivaled only by
Easter Sunday. The one Thanksgiving service we have in our parish is that
we take part in the Onida community Thanksgiving service, and hardly anyone
shows up.
And it’s not just here. Look in the hymnal. You go to pick Christmas songs and you’ve got
a huge number of familiar songs, more than you have time to use in December.
You go to pick Thanksgiving songs and--what? “Now Thank We All Our God”, “Come, Ye
Thankful People, Come”, and “We Gather Together”. A couple of others no one’s ever heard of and
a few others that are listed under Thanksgiving but really don’t have much to
do with it. That’s it.
We know we’re supposed to give thanks to God. As
we’ll say in our communion liturgy in a few minutes, we know that “it is right
to give our thanks and praise.” And of course it is right. God is more than worthy of our thanks and
praise. As we’ve said before, God is way
beyond anything we can ever hope to be. God is way beyond anything we can
even imagine. That God even takes any
notice of us is incredible. That God
loves us, that God cares about us, that God wants to help us through life, that
God offers us salvation and eternal life--well, just saying thank you seems
pretty inadequate compared to all God does for us. It is definitely right
for us to give our thanks and praise to God.
But is that it? Is that the only reason we should
give thanks to God--because God deserves it? Or is there more to it than
that?
Well, since I raised the question, I obviously think there’s
more to it than that. I mean, this would be a really short sermon if I
said, “Nope, that’s all there is.” So,
let’s look at it in the context of our Bible readings for today.
Our reading from First Thessalonians says that we should “Rejoice always, pray continually, [and] give
thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
And as I was looking at that, it struck me that when I’ve preached this
before, I’ve always focused on the phrase “give thanks in all circumstances”.
That’s important, of course, but look at what follows it: “this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
In other words, giving thanks in all circumstances is not
just a good idea. It’s not just some feel-good inspirational
statement. It is God’s will for us.
That means that any time we are not thankful in all circumstances, we are
not following God’s will.
Now, I’m not suggesting that if we have a time when we’re
not feeling thankful God’s going to send us to hell or something. I don’t
even think it’s a sin, really. But
still, it’s God’s will for us to be thankful in all circumstances. So we again ask the question: why? Why does God want us to be thankful in all
circumstances?
Well, let’s look at our reading from Philippians.
What does it say about thankfulness?
It says, “Do not be anxious about
anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,
present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
That’s why we’re supposed to give thanks
to God. That’s why it’s God’s will for us to be thankful in all
circumstances. Not just because God deserves our thanks, although God
certainly does. Not just because God
appreciates our thanks, although I suspect God does appreciate it. It is
God’s will for us to be thankful in all circumstances because we will be better
off if we are.
“Do not be anxious about anything.”
How many of us are anxious about something today? How many of us
are anxious about something almost every day? It may not be something
that’s at the front of our minds, although sometimes it may be. But even
when it’s not, it’s something that’s at the back of our minds, something that’s
never too far away. If you don’t have that, it’s wonderful. But I think most of us probably do. Money, health, work, loved ones, the future,
all these and much more are things that a lot of us anxious about, pretty much
all the time.
But we don’t have to be. That’s the
awesome thing about this--we don’t have to be anxious about these things.
We don’t have to be anxious about anything. All we need to do is, “in every situation”
and “with thanksgiving, present [our] requests to God.” Notice, it does
not just say to present our requests to God.
It says to do so “with thanksgiving”.
There’s a difference. And it’s
important. When we present our requests
to God “with thanksgiving”, we’re assuming we’re going to have something to be
thankful for, right? We’re assuming that when we present our requests to
God, God is going to do something about them.
It might not be what we have in mind.
It might not come when we want it to come. But when we present a
request to God “with thanksgiving”, that says we expect God to respond to that
request. And when I say “expect”, I
don’t mean that God owes it to us to respond or anything like that. I
mean that we expect God will respond because of who we know God is. We expect God to respond because we know God
is great and God is good. We expect God
to respond because we know God loves us and cares about us. In other
words, we expect God to respond because we trust God.
And because we trust God, we can have
peace. We can have the peace of God.
Because we know God is going to take care of things. Again, God
will take care of things in God’s way and at God’s time, but God will take care
of things. So we don’t need to feel anxious any more. We can be at peace.
Now, being at peace does not necessarily
mean sitting back and doing nothing and waiting for God to take care of
everything. Sometimes it might, but not always. A lot of times, it means that we’re supposed
to keep doing our best. We’re supposed
to keep plugging away, doing what we’re doing, doing the best we can. But
we don’t need to feel anxious any more.
If we have presented a request to God, and if we’ve done it “with
thanksgiving”, we know it’s in God’s hands.
We’re not responsible for the results any more. All we’re
responsible for is doing the best we can in the situation we’re in. And we can be confident that if we do that,
if we do the best we can to serve God and to show love to God, God will take it
from there. God will bless our efforts.
Again, the blessing may not come in the way we wanted or expected. But it will surely come. We can be confident of that. And we can be at peace with it.
Do I always do that? No. I wish I did, but I don’t. There are
still far too many times I feel that anxiety. Too many times when I think
I’m responsible for everything, rather than just doing my best and trusting God
with the results. Too many times when I present my requests to God with
anxiety, rather than with thanksgiving.
I am better than I used to be, though.
And we all can be. The only thing
stopping us is ourselves. God wants us to do this. Remember, it is God’s will for us to give
thanks in all circumstances. It is God’s will for us to stop feeling
anxious, to turn things over to God, and to trust God.
The only thing that’s stopping us is us.
God wants us to do this. It’s not
always easy. But with God, all things are possible. So let’s stop feeling anxious. Let’s present
our requests to God with thanksgiving, trusting in the power, the greatness and
the goodness of our almighty, all-loving God.
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