Intro:
The smell of the turkey roasting away has been tantalizing for quite some time, but now the breast meat has reached 165 degrees, the thigh meat is at 180, the skin is a beautiful brown, and the bird is resting tented loosely under foil.
The pies (plural!) have been cooling on the counter, the potatoes are mashed, the marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes are nicely browned, the salad is on the table, the side dishes are holding warm in the oven, and the gravy is being furiously whisked away on the stove top to make sure there are no lumps. The feasters are hungry and ready, and the call comes: “time to eat!”. Everyone gathers at the table, the platters are laid out, glasses full, and then comes the question: what are you thankful for? I’m fairly confident that most of the responses will be along the following lines: Family. Friends. Health. Our world. God and what He has done.
And most often, I think, those responses will be a word, or a sentence, maybe a quick story – possibly brief because the food is on the table and getting cold – and we know/hope/trust/believe that behind that simple word or sentence is something powerful and important to us, which provokes an emotion and articulates a thought and gives words to something in our lives that provides meaning, significance, hope, purpose – some of the things that when we stop and reflect are things that really are significant to us.
This morning I want to spend our time unpacking what is behind those simple words or sentences, diving in a little deeper, finding words that give expression beyond just the “category title”, and concluding each with a prayer that we will pray together.
Family:
Around my fictitious table, one of the first responses to “What are you thankful for?” is this word: “Family”. What does it mean?
In our earliest years, we found ourselves completely dependent on others for our every need. As an infant, someone needed to put special food on a tiny spoon, make airplane noises to get us to open our mouths, and then wipe our faces when we dribbled half of it down our chin and onto our shirt. We needed someone to make the wash water the perfect temperature, lay us gingerly in a plastic tub with our head carefully lifted out of the water, take a gentle cloth and wash us clean, then wrap us in a warm towel and hug us close. We needed someone to change our diaper, to reach our favorite toy, to mimic our smiles and giggles and laughs, to dry our tears and read us books and take us to the park and push us in the swing. And we are thankful.
Then we grew a little, and we needed someone to set limits so we could explore the world safely, someone to put training wheels on the bike and a helmet on our head, someone to sit on the bench at the park while we climbed and ran and jumped, someone to wipe the dirt off our knees when we skinned them. We needed someone to still read us books and get the bath ready, to still tuck us in at night, to play games and do chores. And we are thankful.
We grew a little more and went to school, and we needed someone to pack a lunch, help us figure out our homework and figure out our friendships, someone to help us figure out what we enjoyed in our “free time” and then drive us to the soccer practice or the music lesson. Those were years of steady molding of character, of truly “growing” – physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally. And we are thankful.
Then we hit adolescence, and we needed to re-write the boundaries. As we sought to understand and embrace who God made us, as we began to take more responsibility for our decisions and character and priorities, we still needed family. Sometimes these were challenging times of transition, but those challenges were possible because the nature of family is that of relationships that are more foundational then temporal. They are not chosen, and that makes them more permanent. And we are thankful.
Then we struck out on our own, and began a period of exploring relationships that would come to form our new family, and for some of us that led us to stand before God, friends, and family and enter a lifelong, covenantal promise of marriage. Some of us have seen those promises kept, others have not. Some of those relationships produced children, and the cycle of family continues. We find joy in meeting needs, just as ours were met though infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, and adolescence. We embrace the challenges that come – physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual. We find the depths of joy in self-sacrifice, the greater joy of giving, and the Godly pride in seeing our children find purpose and significance. And we are thankful.
For other people whose paths did not include marriage or children, family came to describe a circle of relationships that while neither biological nor covenantal, nevertheless became deep, reliable, self-less, and interdependent. These are friends that are closer than biological family, but I include them here because they embody and function as family should: they are who we want to celebrate with. They are who we want to relax with. They are who we call when we are so sick we can’t get out of bed and need a bit of help. They are who we call when the item is too heavy to lift by ourselves, the news too good to keep to ourselves, or the meal too large to eat by ourselves. And we are thankful.
Then we age, and family are once again those who are around us through transition. And in these years, the thankfulness for family is often deeper, more realized, as a result of greater life experience. This is often a time of re-discovery of what really matters, which corresponds to re-investment in family relationships. And we are thankful.
So, around the thanksgiving table, when someone says “I am thankful for my family”, that one word includes all of that and so much more, made specific in each of our lives. And undergirding it all, regardless of what our experiences of joy and loss, brokenness and wholeness, present state of peace and comfort or of volatility, when we say “I am thankful for my family” we are really saying this: we are deeply grateful for those around us that put love in action towards us, that are there through struggle and joy, who meet our needs and whose needs we are privileged to help need. And we are grateful to God, who the Scriptures tell us is:
Ps 68
5 Father to the fatherless, defender of widows—
this is God, whose dwelling is holy.
6 God places the lonely in families;
he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy.
Prayer of Thanksgiving for Family:
Lord, we thank you for family – for those people you have placed in our lives throughout many years, who have shared our joys and struggles, with whom we have laughed and fought and forgiven and laughed again, who have met our needs and whose needs we have been privileged to meet. We see in them a reflection of Your love, however imperfectly, amen.
Friends:
Around my fictitious table, another of the responses to “What are you thankful for?” is this word: “Friends”. What does it mean?
These are those who choose to be in relationship with us, who often fulfill many of the same function as those to whom we are related but from a different starting point. We are thankful for the people whom we came to know as equals, as peers, and who saw in us and we in them something mutually attractive and enjoyable, that made us interested in spending time and sharing life together. These are the people with whom we share a meal, a concert, a movie or sporting event with. These are the people who call or email to see how we are, who share a funny incident, who pick up a child afterschool when we cannot. They offer advice or expertise or even just another set of hands, gladly and freely, and they genuinely like to be around us. And we are thankful.
Our friends cure our loneliness. They walk through life with us. They drink coffee and eat dessert with us, they play cards around the table with us, they check up on us when life is stressful. They help us raise our kids and overcome our diseases. Sometimes they even go on vacation with us. And even better, we get to do the same for them. And we are thankful.
We come to Thanksgiving, and someone asks us what we are thankful for and we say “friends”, this is a small part of what we mean. And we are grateful to God, who tells us:
Prov 27:
9 The heartfelt counsel of a friend
is as sweet as perfume and incense.
10 Never abandon a friend—
either yours or your father’s.
When disaster strikes, you won’t have to ask your brother for assistance.
It’s better to go to a neighbor than to a brother who lives far away.
17 As iron sharpens iron,
so a friend sharpens a friend.
Prayer of Thanksgiving for Friends:
Lord, we thank you for friends – for those who choose to be in relationship with us, and with whom we share the joys and challenges of life. We thank you for how they enrich our lives and we theirs, and thank you that you have created places of community for us. Amen.
Health:
Another common response around the thanksgiving table is “health”. We all have it, in varying degrees. We all still have breath. We all still have hearts that are pumping blood right now, picking up oxygen from lungs that have inhaled it, delivering it to muscles and organs from the top of our head to the very end of our longest toe. We have immune systems ready to fight off disease, livers to take toxins out of our body, skin to prevent us from falling apart and to keep out unwanted viruses and bacteria. And we are thankful.
We have senses that enable us to experience the world – to feel the touch of a loved one, to see beauty, to smell and taste the thanksgiving feast, to hear the words of friends and family saying “I love you”. And we have an incredible brain that makes sense of it all, that regulates it all and integrates it all and coordinates it all. And we are thankful.
Now those things don’t always work perfectly, but we remain thankful to God who
Ps 139
13 …made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
Prayer of Thanksgiving for Health:
Lord, thank you for creating us, for carefully and deliberately putting us together in such amazing complexity. Most of us cannot even begin to understand the miracle of our physical being, how it works together and heals itself and enables us to experience our world, but we remain thankful for this incredible gift of life. Amen.
Our World:
I’m aware that I am running out of time, and feel like I’ve only begun to put some words to the realities of the incredible gifts of God. But among the things for which we are thankful today we will include our world: creation in its beauty and its provision for us in food and water; our country and freedoms; the privilege of work; and the many things we have like shelter, clothing, and many many things purely for our enjoyment. I could write whole sermons on each of those gifts: certainly we could spend hours thanking God for the beauty of this world, it’s seasons, it’s incredible diversity and interdependence, and it’s small place in our vast universe. Same also for food and drink. Same again for our country and freedoms, and for the history of people who have worked and sacrificed to make it so. Same again for the privilege it is for us to have meaningful work in our world that enables us to contribute, meet our needs, and be a partner with God in His activity in creation. But for time’s sake, I’ll borrow the words of the Psalmist:
Ps 104
5 You placed the world on its foundation
so it would never be moved.
10 You make springs pour water into the ravines,
so streams gush down from the mountains.
11 They provide water for all the animals,
and the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
12 The birds nest beside the streams
and sing among the branches of the trees.
13 You send rain on the mountains from your heavenly home,
and you fill the earth with the fruit of your labor.
14 You cause grass to grow for the livestock
and plants for people to use.
You allow them to produce food from the earth—
15 wine to make them glad,
olive oil to soothe their skin,
and bread to give them strength.
19 You made the moon to mark the seasons,
and the sun knows when to set.
20 You send the darkness, and it becomes night,
when all the forest animals prowl about.
21 Then the young lions roar for their prey,
stalking the food provided by God.
22 At dawn they slink back
into their dens to rest.
23 Then people go off to their work,
where they labor until evening.
24 O Lord, what a variety of things you have made!
In wisdom you have made them all.
The earth is full of your creatures.
31 May the glory of the Lord continue forever!
The Lord takes pleasure in all he has made!
Prayer of Thanks for our World:
Lord of all creation, we give you thanks for this world and all You have placed in it, for creation, for meeting our needs, for our country and freedom, for work, and for all the many things you provide for both our need and our pleasure. Amen.
Communion:
Finally, I trust that around our Thanksgiving tables we will be thankful directly for God and all He has done. Indeed, that undergirds all we have mentioned thus far, for all of those are gifts of God. But I hope we will indeed be vocally thankful for all that God has done for us in Christ, which leads us very easily into communion.
I welcome you to another thanksgiving table, another feast, though this one is a feast for the Spirit rather than the belly. This is the feast of celebration, of thankfulness, of remembrance of all the incredible forgiveness and acceptance and freedom that is made available to us through Jesus. As our servers come, please bow your head and reflect with joy and gratitude on Jesus. On His love for you. On His death and His resurrection, and what that means in your life today.
