In our weekly celebration of the Eucharist, we affirm that it is right, our duty and our joy to give thanks and praise to God. The Samaritan man who is healed of his skin disease might have said the same thing if he had been asked why we went back to say thank you to Jesus.
Vicar Lauren Mildahl
Thanksgiving Day
Text: Luke 17:11-19
God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give God thanks and praise!
It is indeed right.
Our duty.
And our joy.
That we should, at all times and in all places give thanks and praise to you,
Almighty and merciful God, through our Savior Jesus Christ.
If you have worshiped here or in another ELCA church, those words should sound pretty familiar.
They are some of the first words of the celebration of the Eucharist, which if you’re rusty on your Ancient Greek, means “Thanksgiving.” So, it seemed like the best place to start, as we are gathered together today, on our national holiday of Thanksgiving, because it is a good reminder of how, for us, every time we celebrate the Eucharist, every Sunday is Thanksgiving. And how every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we proclaim that it is indeed right for us to give thanks to God. Not only right, it is our duty and it is our joy. Not just on Sundays, but at all times and in all places. It is right.
And it struck me that the Samaritan man who was healed of his skin disease in our gospel reading, if he had been asked, “why did you go back to give thanks?” he might have answered with these same words.
“It was right!” he might have said. Right to give thanks! After all, this is the story of Jesus miraculously making things right. The ten men in this story had been suffering from a torturous skin disease. We aren’t sure exactly what it was, but it is clear that it was a malady that was a painful and slow killer, which had separated them from their families, from their communities, maybe for years or even decades. So they had pleaded with Jesus, begging him from a distance, “Master, have mercy on us!” Make things right!
And Jesus did. Healing their bodies, yes, but also sending them to the priests to complete the necessary rituals of restoration, so that not only their health was restored, but so were their families, and so were their communities that had missed them. So that everything was made right.
And so, “of course” the Samaritan might say, “of course I gave thanks!” Not just for the healing, but for the rightness, because he saw, for a moment, the world restored to wholeness, wholeness he never expected, wholeness that felt like God’s perfect and complete and abundant life. So perfectly right. And his part? To see it, to witness and recognize it, and rightfully, to give thanks for it.
“It was indeed right,” the Samaritan might say, “and it was my duty!”
He felt it was not simply his responsibility, but the only thing he could do. And it wasn’t even what Jesus had told him to do. Jesus had told him to go to the priests, but the moment he saw his disease had been cured, he realized that he didn’t need the priests to be his bridge to God’s goodness. God was right there in front of him. What else could he do but his duty, and fall at the feet of the Great High Priest?
“And it was my joy!” the Samaritan might say.
A joy so overwhelming, so abundant, so profound, it couldn’t be kept in. He shouted! He ran! He hurled himself toward Jesus. Maybe he couldn’t decide if he should hug him or dance with him or just tackle him, but in the end all he could do was throw himself to the ground. Bowing prostrate at the feet of Jesus, with what I imagine was the biggest smile he had ever smiled – just radiating joy.
What an experience! It’s so enticing to imagine.
But it’s something that most of the time we have to imagine.
We don’t really get to experience anything like this on an everyday basis. Or, at least I don’t. I can’t think of many moments when it was so obvious that God had acted, putting the world to right. I think the moments probably happen all the time, but I just don’t notice, and maybe you don’t either.
And I really hope you do have a moment, soon, when you see, you witness, you recognize God putting something to right, something you had given up hope on. And that when you do see it, I hope that you can’t help but fall on your knees, grinning from ear to ear, shouting or maybe just whispering, a fervent thank you that bubbles up out of the sheer joy of it.
But even though we say that it is indeed right to give thanks at all times and in all places, we know that we can’t always maintain such intense, continual joyfulness that erupts in spontaneous thanksgiving. Especially when instead we are overcome with all the ways the world isn’t right, all the ways it is broken and dying – how do we feel gratitude? When we are separated from our loved ones, when we are crying out to Jesus to have mercy – how can we give thanks?
And here’s the secret – we do it anyway.
And it’s why we return, Sunday after Sunday, to our own great thanksgiving. That’s why we say the words every week. That’s why in 1863, in the middle of the bloodiest war our country had ever experienced, when it seemed that nothing was right and no joy was to be found, President Lincoln declared a new national holiday – a Day of Thanksgiving.
Because when we give thanks anyway, a funny thing happens. It’s Joy!
It can be so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we have to feel the joy before we can really give thanks, that the only authentic kind of thanksgiving is the Samaritan’s spontaneous outburst – but the secret is that it also works the other way around. Joy produces thanksgiving – and thanksgiving produces joy. Our rituals of gratitude, when we take the time to notice and acknowledge the ways that God is working in the world – that produces joy.
There is joy when we gather in the spirit of thanksgiving, whether we gather in our homes around tables packed with family or friends, or whether we come to God’s table, where everyone is invited. Where Jesus seeks out every single person, always and forever asking, where are the others? Wanting them at the table too. There is joy.
Thanksgiving produces joy!
Whether we pass around the plates of food that remind us to give thanks, our turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and pie or whatever foods you will eat today, or whether we feast on the indescribable gift of God’s own body and blood, the bread and the wine that are our tangible signs of God’s surpassing grace.
Thanksgiving produces joy, whether we are feeling happy or whether we are mourning all those that should be at our tables but won’t be, whether everything happens exactly as planned or whether everything is on fire, whether everything feels right or whether it feels broken beyond repair.
Because God does have mercy on us. God sees what is broken, God acts to make it right, and God is doing it in all times and in all places – and when we take the time to notice, when we take the time to cultivate gratitude in our hearts, when we take the time to “Eucharist,” we enter in to God’s abundant love for us where there is peace and, you guessed it, joy.
Cheesy and corny as it may be, I’m thankful for Thanksgiving. For our holiday today and for every time we gather at God’s table of grace. I’m thankful for these rituals that open our eyes to the ways that God is putting the world right. And it is right that we respond with thanks and praise. It is indeed right, our duty, yes, and our joy.
In the name of the Father, of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
