A few weeks ago, news broke that some major retailers would be opening their doors early for Black Friday. Now, we’ve all watched over the years as Black Friday “door busters” have slipped up and up into the ever-earlier hours of that first post-Thanksgiving Day. It is no longer unusual for stores to open at midnight for Black Friday shoppers. So I suppose it should be no surprise to us that this year, there were four or five retailers that decided to open their stores at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. As one reporter said, “These stores opened before the Thanksgiving leftovers even had time to cool down!”
This past Monday morning, as I was getting ready for the day, I saw a news story about people camping out outside of stores in California so they could be first in line for Black Friday deals. Some of them had started camping out the Monday before—that’s Monday, November 12, for those of you who are trying to figure out just out long ago that was. They were camped out for almost two weeks by the time Friday, November 23, rolled around a couple of days ago! What’s most fascinating to me, though, is the fact that Black Friday is intended as a kick-off to the Christmas season and holiday shopping, and yet statistics report that over 85% of Black Friday shoppers are shopping for themselves, not for Christmas gifts for others. And somehow, in the midst of all this Black Friday hoopla, Thanksgiving seems to be forgotten. It’s like we go from Halloween to Christmas, with a great shopping frenzy in between!
When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was my most favorite holiday because it was the one time every year that my whole family got together; all of us. We would gather at my grandparents’ house in North Carolina, or my aunt’s house in Virginia, or my own home in Oak Ridge. We would play and have fun. We enjoyed watching the parades, and my cousins could be found yelling at the TV screen in the afternoon as they watched football. Of course, there was always the adult table and the kid table. Funny how when you’re a kid you always want to be at the adult table, and when you’re an adult you want to be back at the kids’ table. With a banquet filling the kitchens of our homes, we would eat more than our fill and enjoy one another’s company for a few magical days each year.
I remember one year in particular. It was probably the last time any significant number of us were together, as our ranks started to dwindle as we began going our separate ways, fanning out across the country and establishing new traditions with new families and friends. So on this particular year, we were all seated around one table preparing to eat our meal, and my grandfather asked that we go around the table and each share something for which we were thankful. I don’t remember specifically what any of us said anymore, or even what I said, but I know now what underlies all our many blessings. And I know what I would say today if asked that same question.
Merriam-Webster online defines thanksgiving as, “a public acknowledgment of Divine Goodness;” a public acknowledgment of Divine Goodness. And yet, we seem to have lost that sense of Thanksgiving. In the midst of our orgies of over-indulgence, as we stuff our stomachs with way too much food, and then go out to stuff our carts with way too much stuff, we seem to have forgotten the Source of our many blessings. We gather around a Thanksgiving table each year and quickly offer our thanks for family and friends, for safety and security, for health and happiness, so that we can dive in to the delicious plate of food sitting tauntingly in front of us. But how often do we actually “do” Thanksgiving the way it should be done? How often in the midst of the holiday rush do we make a public acknowledgment of the Divine Goodness in our lives; the fount of our blessings; our Source and Provider? Sure, Thanksgiving started as a national public holiday, but as Christians, our Thanksgiving should be so much more! “How can we thank God enough?” asks Paul of the early church at Thessalonica. When we really pause to think about all that God has done for us, how can we thank God enough?
Alex Haley, an East Tennessee native and the author of Roots, had an unusual picture hanging on his office wall. It was a picture of a turtle on top of a fence post. When asked, “Why is that there?” Alex Haley answered, “Every time I write something significant, every time I read my words and think that they are wonderful, and I begin to feel proud of myself, I look over at that turtle on top of the fence post and I remember that he didn’t get there on his own. He had help.”
We are here because God has brought us here. We are blessed because through Jesus Christ, God’s abundant grace has poured over us. It is so easy for us to forget all the blessings in our lives. It is so easy for us to say, “Woe is me!” One of the great mistakes of life is to turn to God only in the overpowering emergencies or the shattering crises. It is so easy for many of us to curse God; to blame God when catastrophe strikes. But we have things upside down! We live in a fallen world! We all sin! And yet, by the grace of God we still have the good times and the good things that we do have! It’s not as if we deserve them! Where would be without the help of the Lord, without the goodness of the Lord, without the love and faithfulness of our Savior? We can try to live without the help of God, but it really is an impossible assignment. Thanksgiving is about more than family gatherings and cranberry sauce; it’s about recognizing and proclaiming what our Savior has done for us! And how can we thank God enough for that?
One of the great and wonderful things about this time of year is that Thanksgiving really affords us a special opportunity to really reflect on how we offer gratitude to God. There is no better time than this to remember and celebrate God's drawing near to us in Jesus Christ in the past, in the present, and in the age to come. We can certainly celebrate God’s nearness to us in Jesus Christ through worship and prayers lifting praise to God; but an even greater thanksgiving and celebration of God’s coming in Jesus Christ is our constant efforts to draw nearer to God in Christ Jesus ourselves.
As Christmas approaches, and that time when we celebrate again the birth of our Savior, we are reminded that we have to prepare ourselves to meet God, and preparing to meet God means living daily with him. This is the underlying message of the passage we heard a few moments ago from Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians; that through love of God and one another we might increase in holiness and be found “blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus.” We have to look to God and rely on God in all things just as the sailors in days gone by relied on the stars to chart their course. And just as a skilled sailor can hone such a navigational skill to near perfection, we too can grow in our likeness to Christ and our nearness to God as we seek more fervently God’s direction for our lives; striving always to grow closer to God.
Here’s the link: as we work at drawing nearer to God ourselves, a key to our growth is showing our thanksgiving to God by proclaiming God’s goodness and seeking to bring others into God’s presence. Any of you who are familiar with the book of James know that James ends his letter in essence by saying that the greatest good we can do is to bring another person into God’s presence. A great part of thanking God enough is sharing the Good News of God’s grace and love with all the people around us. You know how it is; when something great happens in our lives, we want to share the wonderful news with everyone we know, and perhaps even everyone we don’t know! This should be no less true of God’s blessings in our own lives. Actually, it should be even more true!
There was a man who served as a medical missionary for many years in India. He served in an area where there was progressive blindness. People were born with healthy vision, but there was something in that area that caused people to lose their sight as they matured. Well, this medical missionary developed a process that would stop progressive blindness. So people came to him and he performed his operation, and they would leave realizing that they would have become blind, but now they were going to be able to see for the rest of their lives. The people never said: “Thank you,” to this missionary because that phrase was not in their dialect.
Instead, they spoke a word that meant: “I will tell your name.” So, wherever they went, they would tell the name of the missionary who had cured their blindness. They had received something so wonderful that they eagerly proclaimed it! Have we not received something so wonderful that we eagerly proclaim it? God has been so good to us, and God loves us so much, and if we really want to thank God, we just can’t keep the wonderful news inside us! We have to go and tell the name of Christ in the world, especially during this holiday season, especially in this time of year when it’s so easy to focus on ourselves, especially as CHRISTmas approaches!
How can we thank God enough? We thank God by living as God would have us to live; by worshiping and praising, by studying God’s Word and communicating with God through prayer. We thank God by preparing our hearts and seeking to draw nearer to God, even as God in Christ Jesus draws nearer to us; not just during this holiday season, but all throughout the year. We thank God by sharing the message of God’s great love, which has transformed and blessed us. We thank God by serving others in the name of Christ, and by bringing others nearer to God through our witness. We thank God by anticipating with great joy that day when we will all gather around the great Thanksgiving Table, with Christ the host in our midst, and young and old alike lifting voices together in praise of God’s Divine Goodness!
