The text for this Thanksgiving sermon comes to us from the psalm of the day, Psalm 67:
May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, shall bless us. God shall bless us; let all the ends of the earth fear him!Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
I have noticed an interesting trend going on in social media like Facebook this November. People have been saying something for which they are thankful every day up in their posts. They are thankful for things like children and spouses, houses and jobs, fathers and mothers, material things and spiritual understandings. I say that this is interesting for this reason: these come out one side of their mouth, and out the other side is complaining and bitterness.
We find it very easy to think of things to be thankful for, at least most of us. We can think of the tangible things that we have and they come easily to mind. But, sometimes, it's a bit of a stretch. I'm thankful for... um... beautiful sunsets. I'm thankful for... oh... well... being able to drive wherever I need to be. Sure, some things are tangible. Some things are easy. But sometimes we run out of things to be thankful for or we forget them and so we complain.
It's an easy problem to understand. Look at everything that's gone on around us. We had a massive hurricane with great damage and high bills up in our northern states. Gas prices are fluctuating again. The election was exhausting. Is the country heading in the right direction? Wrong direction? I dunno. We feel our families are falling apart. We feel like our health is betraying us. What will my health care be like? We feel like everything is just going wrong. Technology was meant to give us more time and yet we have less time. And it stinks, it stinks, it stinks. There's nothing we can do about it but talk and complain and kvetch. And so we sin.
We Americans, especially, have so much. Yet there's so much we feel we lack. We want more and more and yet all we see is how much more another person has than we do. And so we complain. We live long lives, but someone lives longer. It's not fair. We meet our monthly budget, but someone has money to afford fun toys. It's not fair. We have a say in our democratic process, but we keep electing corrupt and immoral officials. It's not fair. Or maybe it's the other hand. We can't meet our monthly budget, yet someone else can. We see a life shortened well too soon, but the child molester sits in prison with three square meals and cable, living into his nineties. None of it's fair.
You see? It's easy to find things to complain about. Yet, there is something more glorious to be found. Even should we lack everything, or even if we lack for nothing, there is yet still more, and it is glorious. Listen to the psalmist today. "May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us." This echoes the Aaronic blessing we give at the end of each divine service. You've heard this countless times.
Perhaps it is lost on you at this point, but let's bring it back into focus. The Lord's face no one has seen, so how can He turn it to us? He can't, except in the face of Jesus Christ. This Jesus Christ is an historical person. He is the God who broke into history, lived a life of perfect obedience for you, was baptized in the Jordan for you, died on the cross of Calvary for you, was resurrected for you, and is now ascended into heaven for you, so that all may now see Him and live. He lives among us, not in bodily form now, but in that He has chosen to make us His temple. Don't you know that God can dwell only in His temple? He lives in you, you are His temple, and you bear Him forth into the world.
This blessing is a prayer that Jesus, the great I Am, would turn His face to us and show us who He is. For if God dwells in you, it is good that you know who He is. And so He has shown us who He is, and so He will continue to show us who He is, in the great celebration of the Lord's Supper. I have never seen Jesus face to face, and I know you have not yet either, but we await the day we shall see him with expectant hope and trust that He is the Lord and He will do as He has promised. That is why we celebrate His Supper, trusting His promises that He works the forgiveness of sins and the strengthening of faith through it so that He will bring us into everlasting life with Him forever.
In this Supper, we will see Jesus for who He is; we will eat His real flesh and drink His real blood and so proclaim the Lord's kingdom until He comes. His face is given to us in the waters of baptism, where we are called into God's saving kingdom by the very name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. His face is turned to us so that we receive His blessing, not His wrath, which indeed was poured out on Jesus on the cross instead of me. This is a glorious thing.
And why is this? Why does God do this thing for me? Why does He work His great salvation in me, in an infant, in all who believe His very words and trust in His promises? After all, aren't I unworthy? Aren't I a sinner? Yes, but I have been redeemed by God. I have been given Christ's righteousness that He earned for me. The psalmist says God does all this so that the Lord's way is known on the earth! The Lord brings us to Himself, He does the work, so that people would see Him in us. So that people would see that we are the saved ones of God! That we are the ones whom He has called to Himself. This is an act of praise, of Thanksgiving! If we lack all things, we have this greater thing!
From our salvation, from the very fact that the Lord Jesus Christ died on that accursed tree to redeem us from our sins, God shows us that we are His and we are there to proclaim His glory. It's not that we must go out and do this, it is already being done in us! After all, we look strange, don't we, getting excited over a little water on the head of a person. Yet, we know that this is the way that Jesus instituted to bring us to His own bosom. Thanks be to God!
We look strange, don't we, getting excited about eating a little wafer and a sip of wine, yet we know that this is the way Jesus promised to be present among us, really and truly, in His very own body and blood. Thanks be to God! We look strange to the world, don't we, when we are saddened that Satan is working strongly to kill so many through abortion and through a government that fights for it, and yet, at the same time, we continue to pray for our civil servants, the ones whom God Himself has ordained to rule over us, even for a short while. We look strange to the world, yet this is God's way. Thanks be to God! This is God's saving power among all the nations, this is the way He saves all people, no matter their background or history or nationality. God's ways are strange, but they are the ways He gave us, the works He gave us, and we believe His words in the way He gave them to us to understand and cling to.
Through all this strangeness, this is where we find our true thanksgiving. Not in the ways of the world. Not in the sunsets, or the families, or the material blessings, or the food we eat, or the football we watch, or the house we live in, or any of the many blessings we receive from the hand of the Lord. No, our true Thanksgiving is that in Jesus Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, drawing even us out of it, to celebrate the salvation won for us in Jesus Christ. So, thanksgiving really becomes our thanks-living, Christ in us and Christ for us, that we bear Him and His promises and His Word to the whole world. This looks like our work, but it’s not. It’s Christ’s work. And Christ lives in us to do this work.
The earth certainly yields its increase. We certainly gather the harvest from the seeds that were sown. Many will eat of this harvest, corn, potatoes, beans, turkey. But God gathers a greater harvest from different seeds, the seed of His Word that He brings to us in the Holy Scriptures by the Holy Spirit. God's harvest is gathered that we may be fed with Bread of Life, Jesus Christ. God's harvest is us. God gathers us together, and He sends us out to share Jesus with a hurting and dying world. We do this because we know that our God will bless us, certainly, with many good gifts, but none is greater than the gift of Jesus Christ. None deserves more thanks from us. None deserves our thanks in the way that Jesus does. We have nothing about which we can complain if we have Jesus.
For He has saved us, not just to be remembered this Thanksgiving, but every day, every moment, that we may feed on His flesh and blood, and be nourished so that the true increase the earth yields is us, bringing forth more and more believers for the Church, that all nations would find their salvation, not in the things of this world, but in Christ Jesus for all eternity, that all would fear God and love Him for the awesome and strange things that He does for us forever, that we are baptized in His name and He feeds us Himself. These are glorious gifts that keep on giving, and they shall keep us into life everlasting. In Jesus' name, amen.
Now may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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