2026-10-11 Thanksgiving

Scripture Readings

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen!

The pastor went out to do a parish visit. When he got to the door he was greeted warmly by the Lady of the house. Wanting to make a very spiritual impression on the pastor, she told her little daughter to “Quickly run and get that good book that we all love so much and bring it here.” The little girl toddled off and then returned, proudly, with a look of triumph on her face, holding none other than the Sears Wishbook in her hands! A very good book indeed!

And this is truly the case in our day and age. Even though Sears is no more, all the stores are just itching to roll out the Christmas stuff! We haven’t even had our Thanksgiving punkin’ pie yet, let alone gone trick or treating, and yet our culture can’t wait for Kris Kringle. Where’s that red garland?! Gotta get the shopping underway.

The consumeristic push is really a dagger through the heart of Thanksgiving. We should be giving thanks to God for all of His benefits to us but instead, our hearts are consumed with consumerism. More, more, more, gotta get that stuff! It’s actually rather revolting when you stand back and take a look at it. It dissolves the spirit of thankfulness and contentment that we should have as God’s people.

And thankfulness is something that we all tend to lack in various degrees. It’s actually quite typical among people like us who have been blessed out the wazoo. It’s easy to look around at all of our stuff and notice that our clothes are perhaps a bit faded, the small scratch in the corner of the TV is noticeable (in the right light), the car has over a 100,000km on it, the kids’ shoes are worn out again, and the list goes on and on. What we start doing is nitpicking our blessings. Instead of hearts that are overflowing with humble thanksgiving to God, we find that we become ungrateful. Did you know that only roughly 35% of the world’s households own a car? Quite something.

One Sunday a Sunday School teacher asked her class what they were thankful for. One little 8 year old boy blurted out, “Teacher, I’m thankful I wear glasses.” This struck the teacher as odd because most boys didn’t care for wearing glasses. She couldn’t help each other so she asked, “Well, why is that?” The boy answered, “Because it keeps the older boys from punching me and it keeps the girls from kissing me!”

How’s that for an attitude of gratitude?! When we count all of our blessings, and name them one by one, we all should be a lot more thankful than we are. But underneath it all we’re still sinners. We still tend to have that Cain and Abel syndrome. You remember them, right? We just talked about them in our Wednesday morning Bible Study. The brothers come with offerings to God. Abel was the brother who brought his offering the Lord with a thankful heart, offering the very best that his flock produced. Cain, in contrast, perhaps offered reluctantly or maybe just the leftovers. It wasn’t so much that Abel brought God Rib Eye Steaks while Cain brought a bowl of cold Gazpacho soup. Rather, it was the state of their thankfulness. It was their heart and motive toward the Lord.

Abel realized that God had richly blessed him and wanted to say thanks. So he brought the best offering he could. Cain had an unthankful and disingenuous attitude and gave accordingly. We’re reminded of this again today in our Gospel reading. “Jesus and the infamous thanksgiving turkeys!” Our Lord goes into a village and is met by 10 sickies. Lepers. They called out to the Lord saying “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us”” (LK 19:13). Off to the priests they went at Jesus’ bidding. And miraculously, this terrible disease with all of it’s bodily pain and social suffering was completely healed! Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles! What a gift to be given from God.

It would have been like having your life back. No more being ostracized away from your family and friends. No more begging for scraps of food and money. No more being wrapped up in bandages like a Halloween mummy! But of these ten who were cured, only 1 came back. 10%. It’s fairly pathetic. But it’s obviously realistic.

“Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” (17-18) Jesus questions. Now you know why they are called the Thanksgiving turkeys! Only one came back falling on his face at Jesus’ feet giving thanks. And, he was a no good, lousy half-breed Samaritan at that! So typical of our fallen human nature. God richly blesses us, provides for us, heals us and our response is? Survey says: 1 in 10 turkeys comes back in gratitude and thanksgiving!

Now, we hear this story and we instinctively think that we are that humble turkey who strutted and gobbled back to Jesus’ feet. But I’m willing to wager that we are most like the other 9 - if we are honest. We’re happy, but ungrateful. Healed, but thankless. Blessed, but unappreciative. But even though we may be like the 9, God is still gracious to us beyond belief. He shows us His mercy in the face of our thanklessness. He gives us grace to warm our hearts with His forgiveness. He died on the cross to transform our unthankful hearts into an abundance of thanksgiving.

And by that same grace, we are able, like Abel, to give generously to God from the first fruits He graciously gives to us. This is how we kick the old Cain out of our hearts. We realize that God is so awesome and amazing to us, lavishly giving us blessing after blessing after blessing after blessing after … you get the point – and we, with hearts overflowing with thanksgiving are now blessed to be a blessing. We get to be thankful. We get to give God’s blessings – the same ones He gives to us – away to everyone else.

Through eyes opened wide by God’s gracious heart towards us, we realize that the blessings we receive don’t make us truly happy. Rather it is in knowing and believing that our Lord, who loves us like crazy, is the one who gives us all these gifts. And when God is the giver, we know that everything is going to be alright. Our gratitude doesn’t depend on our life’s circumstances.

A beautiful hymn by Pastor Martin Rinkart written in the 30 year war in Saxony helps us look beyond our circumstances and see God’s hand in our lives. For a time, he was the only pastor in town. He presided at over 4500 burials in 1637 alone. In this context of sadness, Rinkart penned the words

It’s a hymn of unwavering, unconditional gratitude to God. It’s a reminder that thankful people don’t have to have everything going their way to rejoice. Thankful people remember how God has richly provided and they see His comforting hand even in the day of trouble.

O Give thanks unto the Lord for He is good, His mercy endures forever! Amen!