Being ThankFULL
First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Thanksgiving Day – November 22, 2007
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Text: Deuteronomy 26: 1-11]

In the spirit of our Pilgrim/Puritan ancestors I will take one verse as a text this morning. Following the “plain style” I will declare or expose the central teaching found in the text. Then I will give the reason or explanation of it. Finally, I will show its use or application to our lives. I will not, as they would have, preach for about an hour. First, though, let us pray: O God, Giver of all that is good; Author of our life and of our salvation, if you do not extend your hand of blessing we have nothing and we are nothing. Indeed, even the desire deep within us to thank you comes from you alone and is your gift. We pray that you will bring that desire to fullness within us this day. May my words and the meditations of our hearts together be a pleasing offering to you, O God, and may it render you the praise that belongs to you alone. In Christ’s Name we pray. Amen.

“And thou shalt answer and say before the Lord thy God, A Syrian was my father, who being ready to perish for hunger, went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a small company and grew there unto a nation great, mighty and full of people.” Deuteronomy 26:5 [Geneva Bible – 1599]

What the text teaches us is that God is the source of all that we are – even that we are – and all that we have. The proper response we should make to God’s fullness of blessing toward us it to be equally full of thanks, which we express in worship. A child of God should be easily identified, then, as being thankFULL.

This passage was recited at the celebration of the harvest, the “first-fruits.” The Old Testament scholar Gerhard Von Rad points to verses five to nine as a sort of credo or statement of belief. Those fives verses contain a compact history of God’s interaction with the people God called into relationship, forming them into God’s own people, Israel, through the development of the covenant. Verse nine reminds the people of the giving of the land: “And he hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey.” As Von Rad says, “. . . this confession . . . implies that the avowal of the granting of the land had from the earliest times its place in the cult [i.e. the worship practice], where thanksgiving for it remained alive in never-ending praise down to its latest times.” [Old Testament Theology vol. 1, p. 297 – note mine.]

Israel recalled its history several times during the year’s cycle of celebration, including at the harvest. The recalling of the “Syrian” or Aramean ancestor, Jacob, brought home their nomadic origins. That early period was held to be the time when Israel lived toward God in purity. In fact, when the prophets, called to be Israel’s conscience, exhorted the people to return to their faith, it was in terms of the desert, the nomadic experience. For Israel this wilderness experience was the time of ancient, simple and loyal faith practice.

The constant reminder of God’s goodness and gracious activity makes great sense. The enemy of thankfulness is forgetfulness. When we are forgetful, as the dictionary reminds us, we are “likely to forget, characterized by negligent failure to remember.” Notice that to be forgetful is not the same as to forget, nor is it like amnesia, when we are incapable of remembering. To be forgetful is to intentionally lose our memory; to intentionally separate ourselves from that which grounds and orients us. The old Latin proverb seems to fit, repetitio mater studiorum – repetition is the mother of learning. We must constantly remind ourselves, repeat to ourselves, Whose we are and who we are, lest we forget.

Every time Israel was forgetful it ended up in bondage. Every time Israel was forgetful it lost the keeping of the covenant and acted in a way that did not honor God or build it up as a nation. These verses were meant to remind them of who they were and how they got there. As the Puritan Bible scholar Matthew Henry wrote, “A poor, despised, oppressed people they were in Egypt, and therefore, though now rich and great, had no reason to be proud, or secure, or forgetful of God.” [Commentary vol. 1, p. 830] Being thankful keeps us connected and mindful that God is the source of all our blessings and even of life itself.

When our Congregational forebears read the story of Israel they saw themselves. These were people who had heard the Lord’s call, entered into covenant relationship to be God’s gathered people and now embarked on a journey just as Israel had. Those we now call “Pilgrims” saw themselves almost like Israel in captivity, looking to the Lord for relief and a better place. This is what we read in Governor William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation: “So being ready to depart, they had a day of solemn humiliation, their pastor taking his text from Ezra viii.21: ‘And there at the river, by Ahava, I proclaimed a fast, that we might humble ourselves before our God, and seek of him a right way for us, and for our children, and for all our substance.’ Upon which he spent a good part of the day very profitably and suitable to their present occasion: the rest of the time was spent in pouring out prayers to the Lord with great fervency, mixed with abundance of tears. And the time being come that they must depart, they were accompanied with most of their brethren out of the city, unto a town sundry miles off called Delftshaven, where the ship lay ready to receive them. So they left that goodly and pleasant city which had been their resting place near twelve years; but they knew that they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.” [p. 49-50]

A decade later, another, larger group would undertake “an errand into the wilderness” to demonstrate to the Church of England, their “dear mother,” what exactly a pure church and “an holy commonwealth” should look like. These planters of the Massachusetts Bay Colony also saw and described themselves in terms of Israel’s experience. In 1702 when Cotton Mather, now the third generation in New England, wrote his Magnalia Christi Americana (The Great Work of Christ in America), the history of New England’s churches, he again and again used language reminiscent of Deuteronomy.

Mather also describes a first love gone cold – just as Israel’s prophets did. Writing the history of Boston, Mather notes its growth and size and prosperity. But he also reminds his reader: “What changes have we seen in point of religion! It was noted by Luther, he ‘could never see good order in the church last more than fifteen years together in the purity of it.’ Blessed be God, religion hath here flourished in the purity of it for more than fifteen years together. But certainly the power of Godliness is now grievously decayed among us. As the prophet of old exclaimed, in Joel 1.2, ‘Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, ye inhabitants! Has this been in your days?’ Thus may I say, ‘Hear this, ye old men, that are the inhabitants of the town: can’t you remember that in your days, a prayerful, a watchful, a fruitful Christian, and a well-governed family, was a more common sight, than it is now in our days? Can’t you remember that in your days those abominable things did not show their heads, that are now bare faced among us? Here then is a petition to be made unto our God: ‘Lord, help us to remember whence we are fallen, and to repent, and to do the first works!’” [Hartford: Silas Andrus & Sons, 1855 of the 1702 edition, p. 108 – reprinted by Kessinger Publishing] The echo of Deuteronomy is clear – don’t forget the Source. Don’t fail to be thankful, lest we end up “rich in things and poor in soul.”

How, then, shall we live?

What we read in this text, and in the whole of Scripture, is a call to cultivate thankfulness. Matthew Fox, the contemporary spiritual writer, puts it this way in his book Original Blessing: “What is the appropriate response from deep within the human person to this banquet of blessings that the divine Dabhar [Word] spreads out and continues to spread out so lavishly? The response is the deepest prayer there is: thank you. Thankfulness, gratefulness. As Brother David Steindl-Rast points out, in our English language there is no such thing as being half full of thanks or gratitude: we are either thankful or grateful or we have not yet experienced the Via Positiva [the Positive Way]. True holiness, full hospitality, leads to gratitude. Appreciation becomes the awesome, reverent mystery that it is. Not control; not project-planning; but being still with the gift. Savoring. Thanking.” [p. 115, notes mine.] Our lives, our actions are never meant to be just half-way in expressing thanks. Our response to God’s love, God’s blessing must always be FULL – never half.

Philip Chard, local psychotherapist and newspaper columnist, also took up this theme in Tuesday’s Journal-Sentinel. He talked about how thanks has become merely reflexive, mechanical, insincere, used as a courtesy, and a nicety of speech. Which also reminded me of the new replacement for “you’re welcome” – “no problem,” but that’s grist for another mill! Chard’s point is well-put, thanks should be sincere and people are able to tell whether they are . . . and so is God. As he said, “And if you aren’t actually grateful, I suggest you forgo the pretense. Because saying ‘thanks’ to God, the cosmos, or family and friends when you don’t truly mean it is just more empty and insulting fluff. And we’ve already got more of that blowing around than we need.” [Tuesday, November 20, 2007, p. 4E]

As no other people, we should be thankFULL and not just on this day. Christians have a reason to be thankFULL to God for God’s grace. And, we ought to be mindFULL that the way we express our thanks is through our worship. What the creed in Deuteronomy did was remind the people that God alone, Source of all we have and all that we are, was to be worshiped. If we remember the root meaning of ‘worship’ – to ascribe worth – then we understand. To come here, to offer praise and thanksgiving says to God that we are sincere in our desire for relationship with God and with God’s people and we are truly thankful. This is what our Christian faith and Holy Scripture calls us to do, “And let us consider one another, to provoke unto love and to good works, Nor forsaking the fellowship that we have among ourselves, as the manner of some is; but let us exhort one another, and that so much the more, because ye see that the day draweth near.” [Hebrews 10: 24-5] We must not forget that our Lord Jesus Christ, himself, went to the Temple and to the synagogue regularly and devotedly. How can we ignore or so lightly dismiss such an example?

Let me add just one more thought on the importance of attending to worship, this one from Theodore Roosevelt. I’ve always been a fan of Teddy’s because he was a man who was straightforward and who lived his convictions. He said this about attending church: “On Sunday, go to Church. Yes, I know all the excuses. I know that one can worship the Creator and dedicate oneself to good living in a grove of trees, or by a running brook, or in one's own house, just as well as in Church. But I also know as a matter of cold fact that the average man does not thus worship . . . If he stays away from Church, he does not spend his time in good works or lofty meditation. He looks over the colored supplement of the newspaper, he yawns, and he finally seeks relief from the mental vacuity of isolation by going where the combined mental vacuity of many partially relieves the mental vacuity of each particular individual.” [The Ladies Home Journal October 1913 – www.eadshome.com/TheodoreRoosevelt.htm] God rest him, that man spoke the truth – and carried a big stick.

In every statement of doctrine – Roman Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant – we’ll read that the “chief end,” the real purpose for being, of humanity is to adore God for what God is in God’s self, and without thought for what profit we might gain from the act of worship. I’m not sure when our Christian faith turned into a self-help group, but what I read here in this Scripture today tells me that what is important is God – not me. Worship, being thankFULL, is not about me: it’s about God. So, we come to worship to show God our gratitude, our thankfulness in response to God’s being and God’s many gifts to us. Being thankFULL is about entering fully, completely, into that relationship with God and then allowing it to spill over into our daily lives. Being thankFULL means that we will do acts of kindness, speak the truth and work for the common good simply because one who is full of thanks has no room for selfishness or small-mindedness.

When we do a careful examination of our lives – including our history – we’ll soon discover that there is something greater than us at work. This “Greater One” has shown kindness to us, and as Steindl-Rast says elsewhere, in kindness there is kinship. We are drawn into a relationship, a covenant, which has thankfulness at its core and it binds us together as God’s people, as a loving family of faith. God has given us everything and asks only this of us in return: that we remember from where we came and offer appropriate thanks. We are given the gifts of life, health, family, indeed all of creation, and God simply asks that we respond with a thankFULL heart and life, one in which God is worshiped. Yet, that is all God asks of us and I am thankful to God and to you all that you are here this morning.

As Americans, as Congregationalists, we have a goodly heritage; one that calls us to accountability and positive activity. It is my prayer that we, and all of God’s people, will be more and more thankFULL and faithFULL in living as God has called us to live. Begin this day, remember whence you came, remember who you are and all that you have and be thankFULL, for: “. . .A Syrian was my father, who being ready to perish for hunger, went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a small company and grew there unto a nation great, mighty and full of people. . . And he hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey.” Remember, bless the Lord, and be thankFULL. Amen and amen.