Sermon Title: "Have We Lost Our Sense of Thanksgiving?"
Date: November 21, 2010
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  Psalm 100

You have to wonder how it is that the early Colonists’ premier religious holiday has evolved for so many people into a celebration of little more than feasting and football.  Through most of our history, Thanksgiving has been our one truly American sacred holiday, a day of worship that crossed denominational boundaries.  But today, apart from a quick recitation of grace before the turkey is carved, it seems fewer and fewer people are interested in spending any part of the day in prayerful expression of gratitude for the blessings of life.

Across the country, a diminishing number of religious pilgrims are making the trek to church to “make a joyful noise to the Lord,” and to enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise.”  (Psalm 100, 1, 4)  More and more, it seems that a sense of gratitude is fading from both our church and our culture.  It makes me wonder, have we have lost our sense of Thanksgiving?

The holiday seems just a minor blip on the calendar before the most celebrated holiday in America—Christmas.  Some of you might remember there used to be a Zody’s discount store on Spring Street at Woodruff.  I remember driving by one day in the mid-sixties and was dumbfounded to see a giant Santa Claus perched upon the roof—a week before Halloween!  In Big Lots on the first week of November they were consolidating all the fall and Thanksgiving decorations to half an aisle so they could have six aisles for Christmas decorations.  And the same at the Hallmark stores, as they squeeze the remaining Thanksgiving cards closer and closer as Christmas takes over.

Back in Puritan New England, Thanksgiving was the main holiday of the year, a day of churchgoing and prayer in a religious culture that considered Christmas and Easter to be inferior holidays—polluted with pagan customs.  And their Thanksgiving services were no celebrative ones with brass and timpani.  It was an hours-long service of solemn thanksgiving to Almighty God. 

As recently as 40 years ago, interdenominational Thanksgiving services still drew good crowds, and there was the sense that people of many backgrounds could be united by the wish to come together and express thanks to a God we all shared.  Sure, there are still community Thanksgiving gatherings going on across the country, and some are quite popular, but such services seem to be the exception rather than the rule.  Talking to several clergy colleagues this month, I know only Covenant Presbyterian has one on Thanksgiving Eve, and Los Altos United Methodist continues a long custom of a service on Thanksgiving morning.

Giving thanks has always been one of the pillars of a worship service.  Psalm 100 is perhaps the most familiar of the songs of praise.  One scholar observes:  “Were the statistics known, Psalm 100 would probably prove to the song most often chanted from within the history that runs from the Israelites’ temple on Mount Zion to the synagogues and churches spread across the earth.”  (James L. Mays)

Psalm 100 is the banner hymn of the Reformed tradition.  A metrical version of the psalm, found in our hymnal as “All People That on Earth Do Dwell,” was composed by a friend of John Knox.  The tune by the musical composer for John Calvin became known as Old Hundredth, and is now the tune that accompanies words that many Christian congregations call “The Doxology”—literally “the word of glory/praise.”

Yet it seems that people come to church today with a different set of expectations.  Instead of seeking out opportunities to express praise and thanks, many new Christians are looking for comfort, inspiration, stimulation and community.  Now these are not bad things in and of themselves, but they line up more with self-improvement than with thanksgiving.

On the whole, we have developed a blindness to our blessings.  We’ve come to see the good things of life as an entitlement, rather than a gift, and we’ve lost the sense of wonder and surprise that gives birth to true thankfulness.  John Sandel, a pastoral psychotherapist in Milford, Connecticut, with whom I went to seminary, observes:  “I think when we recognize that we are being given a gift, we feel joy, and gratitude is the experience that flows from this joy.”

Unfortunately, we’ve lost the sense that each day on this earth is a wonderful gift.  We ought to give God thanks each morning for being alive in this day, and each night our prayers ought to offer words of thankfulness for the blessings of that day.

Yet how often are our prayers ones of thanks?  Do you remember that most popular of gospel lessons for Thanksgiving—the healing of the ten lepers?  Only one returned to give thanks to Jesus.  One out of ten:  ten percent. 

And I must confess that many of my prayers are that way.  My personal prayers are mostly for people with specific needs, especially those who are sick, going through a crisis, having surgery or approaching death.  Even I, telling you that you ought to offer thanks to God more often, probably only offer prayers of thankfulness ten percent of the time.

There is one dramatic exception to that statement.  On numerous occasions I have gotten into my car in the church parking lot, put it in reverse, absent-mindedly backed up, and just as I brake to shift into drive, I look out the back window to see I’ve missed hitting the car parked behind me by one or two inches!  I always utter this prayer, “Thank you, Holy Spirit, for guiding me when I wasn’t looking.”

Given the prosperity of modern life, many of us have the sense that wealth and well-being are a right.  This starts with young children, who, as John Sandel points out, are often showered with presents by their parents, so that the gifts they receive at holidays and on birthdays “are not recognized as gifts but are viewed instead as their due.”

Of course, children aren’t the only ones caught in this trap.  Working teenagers and young adults increasingly use their earnings to load up on the latest phones, computers, clothing and cars in a race toward a level of prosperity that previous generations took years and years to achieve.  Living back at home for longer periods after college while looking for jobs, often free of any responsibility for room and board, they end up with an illusory sense of material well-being, a phenomenon social scientists call “premature affluence.”  Once out in the world on their own, they are more likely to feel disappointment than any sense of thanksgiving as they adjust to a lower standard of living.

We’ve come a long way since the Mayflower Pilgrims felt gratitude for simply surviving that first long, hard, cold winter of 1621 when half of their company died.  Thanksgiving for survival; forget prosperity.

On this Thanksgiving Sunday, let us give thanks for the presence of God in everyday life, in the moments that we discover healing and wholeness, like the tenth leper.  When this leper returned to Jesus to thank him for his healing, Jesus makes it clear that this thankful leper is the one with true faith, for he sends him away with the words, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:11-19)

“...Has made you well!”  There’s the point!  If we were able to restore our thinking about the blessings we have, and from whom they flow, we might restore a proper sense of thanksgiving within ourselves.  As I posted on the signboard out front for this week, “If you pause to think, you’ll have time to thank.”

Let’s all try to do more of it than just ten percent of the time, and more than one day of the year.