Saint Luke 17: 11-19
Eve of a Day of General Thanksgiving: 27 November Anno Domini 2019
Father Jay Watson SSP
The Lord’s blessings to you on an eve of a day of general thanksgiving. Only an ungrateful demon or inert rock would fail to be thankful. Or, perhaps, a fallible, sinful, struggling human, say a Christian who is constantly beset with trials and tribulations, might succumb to a daily trespass of not being thankful? Yes.
So, in the words of our Introit, Psalm 150, “let everything that hath breath praise The Lord.” Do you praise God because you were a leper who has been cleansed? No. What then? What is this “Thanksgiving?” Are you giving thanks because a President, a Congress, or a legislature told you to, or because most businesses close and give everyone a day off from work? No. Are you thankful that the English who landed at Plymouth had a huge communal meal in 1621 and did not all die? Yes, I suppose. But Luther and all the Christians of the West never celebrated an American Thanksgiving. Neither do the Mexicans, Canadians, or any other Christians around the world. Although G. K. Chesterton did propose a Thanksgiving Day for England. He said it would be a day to “celebrate the departure of those dour Puritans, the Pilgrim fathers, who when they gave thanks and feasted did so without beer or burgundy.”
But we do love and honor our forebears, our ancestors, from whatever part of the world they came from. We are thankful that the Pilgrims, Scots, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Spaniards, Irish, Chinese, and all the other immigrant peoples, found safe haven on this large continent. We are thankful that a republic was founded that preserved greater degrees of freedoms and liberties, based on natural law, God’s Law, than any other place in the world. And so, yes, tonight and tomorrow you should be thankful for freedom of religion, assembly, press, self-protection, and all the other natural freedoms that God gives to His people.
But, don’t thank Lincoln, or the Wampanoag Indians and Massaoit. It is good things worked out the way they did. It’s good you can run down to the local Hy-Vee, Dillon’s, or Price Chopper 24 hours a day for a turkey or a six-pack of Beer (German).
And as good Lutherans you know how to turn to Luther’s explanation of the 1st Article of the Creed in your Catechisms. You do thank God for your body and soul; for your eyes, ears, reason, senses, clothing, shoes, meat, drink, house, home, wife, children, fields, cattle, and all your goods! But like all mammon, indeed, like health itself, they will all, and do all, fade away. Even hideous leprosy once cured did not mean those healed 10 men did not age, get sick from other diseases, or simply the ravages of old-age, and die nonetheless.
The gift, or gifts, are good, very good, but the GIVER is infinitely greater!
You have been rained on, deluged, not with a scouring world wide flood, not with the destructive Red Sea waves of death, but with a crimson flood. Yes, the Law does condemn you as it did Moses and the Israelites, as it did the 10 Lepers, but it no longer wraps you in the unescapable shroud of damnable death. You are ripped from your cocoon of bondage by the Easter metamorphosis, of not the king butterfly, but by The God/Man Who is the Second Perfect Adam—the Victor over leprosy, cancer, strokes, ALS, multiple sclerosis, anger, depression, and fear.
So, thank The Lord for curing Adam and Eve from the “leprosy” of despair over their sin and the devastation they had unleashed—cured, SAVED, by the promise of the coming Messiah. Thank the Lord for His healing the various “leprosies” which so grievously afflicted Job, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Jehoshaphat, Jeremiah, Daniel, John the Baptist and all you rest. Thank the Lord for His healing of the 10 men cursed by sin, the world, and Satan, with actual biological leprosy. Thank the Lord for you family, friends, jobs, provisions, and everything else—even an extra day to relax while eating turkey, potatoes, cranberries, and the rest.
Hear the Gospel! The good news is that tonight, tomorrow, and every day, which IS a day of Thanksgiving, is not about you giving thanksgiving; is not about you showing gratitude. Jesus’ greatest joy, a joy for which He thanks His heavenly Father, and yours, is in laying down His life for the sheep—you—suffering and dying on the Cross to win you back for Himself. Jesus, “Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” [He. 12.2] God’s love for the “world,” i.e. His creatures—men and women—is a love of sacrificial giving. This giving of self is the ultimate thanksgiving. The Father thanks His only-begotten Son for giving His life for all the Father’s children. The Son thanks His Almighty Father for the privilege and joy of giving His life. Jesus’ work of obedience, both in Law Keeping and in His atoning work on Calvary, is His thanksgiving for you and to you.
It’s not by chance that The most Holy and Blessed Sacrament of The Altar is called the Holy Eucharist. Eu-charist—the Good Gift which is a thanks giving—a giving of the best thing that is: God’s true and real Body and Blood.
Jesus is thankful that He has His Holy Spirit bring you out tonight to gather at His High Altar. He thanks His Father that He can again feed you Himself for forgiveness, which strengthens and preserves you to life-everlasting.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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