This past Sunday, one week after my
mother died, I stood at the altar up in the main church and prayed words which
I have prayed thousands of times over the past three decades. In a few minutes,
Mo. Kathleen will pray them again: “It is right, and a good and joyful thing,
always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven
and earth.” It is right, always and everywhere, to give thanks. Mom raised me
well and taught me that I should always say thank you when someone does something
nice for me. Every year after Christmas, we wrote thank you notes: “Dear Aunt
Margaret, thank you for the socks” – it was always socks with Aunt Margaret.
It’s a wholesome thing to do. And, in that spirit, I’m thinking that all of us
here enjoy an abundance of good things: people to love, homes to live in, food
to eat, games to play. There is much we can and should give thanks for. But
somehow, there’s got to be more to thanksgiving than that. “Always and
everywhere” implies we give thanks even when we don’t have an abundance of good
things, even when disease and disaster strike us, even when we come face to
face with death.
That Eucharistic prayer pushes us, or at
least it pushes me, to a deeper understanding of thanksgiving. And it’s not
just the Prayer Book that does that, of course. Those words in our liturgy just
hearken back to the New Testament, which talks a lot about thanksgiving; we
heard an example of that in our reading from Philippians. In fact, Paul’s first
letter to the Thessalonians, which is by scholarly consensus the earliest of
his letters we have and therefore the oldest piece of Christian literature in
existence, says at the end: Give thanks
in all circumstances. All circumstances. This from a man who suffered
extreme deprivation, vicious attacks, beatings, multiple imprisonments, and a
shipwreck. Clearly for Paul, thanksgiving is not just transactional – you did
something nice to me, so I’ll say thanks – nor is it just situational – things
are really good for me now, so I’ll say thanks. For Paul, giving thanks is
existential, it is at the core of what it means to be a human being in
relationship with God.
We can give thanks in all circumstances
because in all circumstances – please do not tune me out here – we are God’s
beloved. God is love and God’s love is the greatest power at work in our lives
and in our world. And I say that without any trace of sentimentality. It was
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the great scientist and mystic, who pointed out
that when we say love is the greatest force in the universe, that is not a
metaphorical statement: it is literal truth. Teilhard de Chardin was a
geologist, and for him love is rock solid: it is what physically draws all
things together. One of the greatest mysteries of the universe, indeed the primal
mystery, is that after the Big Bang, countless trillions of trillions of
particles did not fly off into an infinite and eternal solitude. They clumped
together. Matter is drawn to matter. Quarks are drawn to quarks, atoms are
drawn to atoms, molecules are drawn to molecules. Love is the binding force
that holds everything together, the very energy at the heart of reality. That
is true from the subatomic world all the way up to highest levels of agape and
self-giving adoration. It is no wonder that we are drawn into friendship,
marriage, and community. It is no wonder that our dog head butts us in the
middle of the night or that we are gathered together right now. God’s love is
the ultimate reality. God’s love is. It is at work in bedrooms and in hospital
rooms; it is there when a child is born and it is there when a mother dies. As
Paul says so eloquently in Romans, nothing, nothing, nothing in all of
creation, not even the worst evil, not even death, can separate us from that
love. And the only response is to give thanks.
nd I say “give thanks” deliberately: at
any given moment, we may or may not feel thankful. Our feelings are notoriously
fickle: they come and go. If we waited to feel thankful in 0rder to give
thanks, then thanksgiving would be a sporadic, even rare event. But this is
what I have found to be true, and I don’t think I’m alone in this: the very act
of giving thanks touches something in me that goes deeper than feelings. Giving
thanks puts us in touch with our Christ self, that place where our spirits are
one with the Holy Spirit, that place where we know that we are God’s beloved.
Touching that truth can unlock tremendous feelings of joy and often does, but
doing so always leads me to a deep sense of peace and wholeness. In God’s love
we are rock solid. And when I know that, when I acknowledge that through
thanksgiving, it is so much easier, indeed it’s just natural, to keep on giving
thanks, always and everywhere.
On the night before he was crucified,
Jesus took bread and gave thanks. He took the cup of wine and gave thanks. Even
his death would be an expression of gratitude for God’s love. Whatever our
circumstances may be tonight, however we may be feeling, we join with Christ
and give thanks. Yes, we give thanks for this night, for the beauty of the
stars, for the loveliness of this place, for the abundance of food we will
enjoy, for all who are gathered here right now, for all whom we love and all
whom we have ever loved. But first and foremost, we give thanks for the
unquenchable love of God, the very center of creation, the power which holds
all of us and all that is together and always will.
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