I don't want to sound as if I am laying another burden on you. on top of everything else, now I'm supposed to be grateful? Like so many virtues, we have gratitude already in us, but we ignore it so much that we hide its light under a bushel. In its way, Thanksgiving is the secular world giving the gospel to the church. I continue to be so impressed that the sessions of the churches continue to offer a thanksgiving service year after year.

Patrick Miller speaks of worship as creating a circle of thanksgiving. This weekend many people will say grace around a table and may even mention something or someone for whom they are grateful. That too is a circle of thanksgiving, a circle of worship.

 

Robert MacAfee Brown was asked to give sermons in strange places during his long career. He said that in preparing liturgies he though that Now Thank We was the best all purpose hymn every written, that is was good for almost every occasion. The Christian faith does emphasize this virtue. indeed, religious people do score higher on measures of gratitude than others.

 

Dt. pushes us to ask if we really should get what we deserve. Just because we worked hard, does that mean that we automatically deserve a masterpiece? When we speak of what we deserve we often mean in comparison to others whom we regard as inferior. Think of Salieri in Amadeus who feels that his virtue deserves musical genius. Hard work alone does not mean we deserve something does it? Do we really only deserve praise and good raining down on us? This passage reminds us that we are born into  all sorts of things we need, as a present from birth. We inherit the legacy of so many people laboring so many years. For thousands of years, the gift of Scripture enables us to live into that passage, with those people as our people.

 

In John, Jesus did indeed feed hungry people, but that points to the larger spiritual issue of his life itself as manna from heaven. Jesus speaks of the gift himself to us as a new bread from heaven. We inherit the spiritual legacy of Christ through the church. Jesus feeds our deepest hungers. It is good to take a step back and notice that offered spiritual abundance.

 

Gratitude is a virtue honored by many faith traditions. For all of his bitter crabbed tendencies, Calvin had a generous view of God, or may be better put an attitude of gratitude toward god. His great American follower Jonathan Edwards, known for the fear of the revival sermon, Sinners  in the Hands of an Angry God,  noted grateful affections as a sing of religious deepening.In some ways the opposite of these Reformed Christians, Wesley saw gratitude for the benevolence of god as critical to the Christina life. A rabbi said that we were made to enjoy life, but we should always pray a blessing for each enjoyment of it. E.A. Robinson wrote of two types of gratitude:for what we take, and a deeper, higher gratitude for what we are able to give. 

 

On Saturday, I went to a good program on grief during the holidays at CTS. We talked of oft-repeated stories heard during the holidays. Even if they are annoying year after year, we find we miss them when their teller is no longer with us. We continue to make the corn pudding that only grandpa liked as a gift of memory. I am grateful for the gift of memory. Religious people tend to prize gatherings more highly than those with a created belief system or none at all, I suppose. I hope and pray that we can not only appreciate this holiday but to make some good memories again this year.