The Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson, Easter Sunday 2012
A pro football team had just finished their daily practice session when a large turkey came strutting onto the field. While the players gazed in amazement, the turkey walked up to the head coach and demanded a tryout. Everyone stared in silence as the turkey caught pass after pass and ran right through the defensive line. When the turkey returned to the sidelines, the coach shouted, “You’re terrific! Sign up for the season, and I’ll see to it that you get a huge bonus.” “Forget the bonus,” the turkey said, “All I want to know is, does the season go past Thanksgiving?”
I was having a conversation the other day with a friend and he mentioned that some other friends of his said they don’t understand why people try to make Thanksgiving a religious holiday. It’s a secular holiday, they said, and we shouldn’t confuse it by trying to insert religion into it. In other words, what these persons were saying is that Thanksgiving is about having the day off and families and friends getting together to eat turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy, watching the parades on television in the morning and football in the afternoon and evening. It’s not about praying and it’s not about going to church, or anything like that.
Talk about getting the cart before the horse! How far today’s observance of Thanksgiving has come from its origins if people actually think Thanksgiving has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with religion. Of course, I’m preaching to the choir, for you people know that or you wouldn’t be here.
Our current national observance of Thanksgiving in America was established by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, with only a small change today from the last Thursday in November to the fourth Thursday. This is what President Lincoln said as he proclaimed this holiday: “It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scripture and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.” He goes on, and then he says, “It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father Who dwelleth in the heavens.”
I don’t know what you think, but that sounds fairly religious to me! Of course, that wasn’t the first Thanskgiving in America. It just established as a national practice something that had been happening all over the country for a couple of hundred years at various times in the fall. We normally think of the first Thanksgiving as the one at Jamestown in 1621, but historian James Baker says that “setting aside time to give thanks for one’s blessings is a practice that long predates the European settlement of North America. Debates over where any ‘first Thanksgiving’ took place on modern American territory are a ‘tempest in a beanpot.’”
Giving thanks to God for one’s blessings at a harvest festival has ancient roots. Yet for Christians, far more ancient is the understanding that we are to be a thankful people at all times and in all places, no matter what the circumstances are around us. “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, holy Father, almighty, everlasting God.” So goes the eucharistic prayer, in these or similar words, every time we gather for the Holy Eucharist.
In what was the most difficult night of his earthly life, the night in which Jesus actually sweated blood, our Lord Jesus took bread and gave thanks. Jesus is the perfect example of giving thanks, especially when circumstances might suggest another kind of response.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in The Prison Chronicle, says, “Don’t be afraid of misfortune and do not yearn after happiness. It is, after all, all the same. The bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold and if hunger and thirst don’t claw at your sides.
“If your back isn’t broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms work, if both eyes can see, and if both ears can hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart and prize above all else in the world those who love you and those you wish well…”
At some times in our lives there may not be a whole lot that we can be thankful for, but we can always be thankful for God’s grace and presence in our lives. Not only can we be thankful; it is our bounden duty to be thankful, at all times and in all places. Shakespeare said, “God’s goodness hath been great to thee.—Let never day nor night unhallowed pass but still remember what the Lord hath done.”
What Christians have found as they practice this giving of thanks in all circumstances is that the giving of thanks brings with it something of God’s healing power, especially when thanking God is in the midst of difficult circumstances. Izaac Walton said, “God has two dwellings: one in heaven and the other in a meek and thankful heart.” Thus, when things are especially difficult in our lives we should practice thanksgiving, not only because it is our bounden duty, but also because there is a kind of grace that comes from the very act of thanksgiving itself.
And so, we gather on this national day of Thanksgiving remembering that one day a year of giving thanks is woefully short of the Christian’s response to God’s goodness in our lives. But on this day there are some very specific things for which we can and should give thanks. We should give thanks for this great country, for our leaders and all in authority, for our heritage as a free people, and for those who gave their lives defending that freedom. We give thanks for this good land, through whose resources we have more than enough to sustain our lives; for the spirit of the American people; for the freedom to worship God in the manner our consciences dictate. But on this day as on every day, we give thanks most of all for the love of God shown to us most fully in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why this day, as every day, is marked by celebrating the Holy Eucharist, through which we participate in his sacrifice and receive anew his presence.
Sermon preached by The Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota, Florida
Thanksgiving Day
26 November 2015