Thanksgiving: The Smug and the Saintly
Editor’s Introduction
What does a preacher say on Thanksgiving Sunday that hasn’t already been said a hundred times before? Perhaps we shouldn’t worry too much about repeating ourselves. We’ll do well if we can just get the overall message straight and then stop before the pews start nodding. Still, it helps if we can come up with a new angle on the beloved old theme.
That’s what David Read does in this sermon. With the help of a concordance, he conducted a little private poll amongst the characters reported in the Gospels as having given thanks. Surprisingly, he found, apart from Jesus himself, only two recorded instances of actual thanksgiving. The first is the classic story of Jesus’ healing of the ten lepers with only one returning and falling down at Jesus’ feet, “giving him thanks.” The second expression of thanksgiving occurs when a Pharisee gives thanks to God that he is not like other men; “greedy, dishonest, adulterous, or, for that matter, like that tax collector.” Read goes on to contrast the smug and the saintly. Both men are thankful but for wildly different reasons. The kind of thankfulness that the Lord prefers is obvious. Read’s sermon, however, brings this old message alive in a fresh and captivating way.
Thanksgiving: The Smug And The Saintly
A Sermon preached by David H. C. Read at St. James’ Episcopal Church on Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 1984
Text: “In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.” Luke 10:21
Jesus speaking—a sudden exclamation of thanks to God. Seventy of his disciples had just returned from what could have been the first Christian mission. They had radiated the message of the Master and shared in his healing power. Now they were back to report and were ecstatic about the response of simple people and the signs of victory over the powers of darkness and disease. Jesus welcomes them joyfully. Then comes this flash of thanksgiving: “In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.”
This one glimpse into the soul of Jesus suggests that this was how he lived day by day. The bias of his mind, the instinctive movement of his heart, the inner melody of his life was thankfulness. From childhood he had absorbed the grateful spirit that rings through the Law and the Prophets of his people, and over his cradle hovered the song of praise: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in my Savior.” As he moved through the sunlight and the darkness, the joys and the agonies of his few years among us, his was a life of unswerving gratitude to his Father in heaven. We have many names of Jesus—the Lord, the Savior, the Man of Sorrows, the Liberator, the Man for Others. Do we forget that, beyond all others, he revealed this supreme quality of the saint—gratitude whatever happened. He was simply, purely, and, passing all understanding, the Grateful Man. So it is good to seek his presence as we reach another Thanksgiving Day as a people who try to be his disciples.
In preparation for this service I conducted a little private poll among the characters we find in the Gospels. With the aid of a concordance I sought to discover who among them were said to have given thanks. The result of my investigation was surprising. Apart from our Lord himself, I could only find two people of whom it was reported in so many words that “they gave thanks.”
One of them is a favorite with all preachers on Thanksgiving Day and will, I’m sure, be occupying pulpits all over the country today. Luke tells us the story of the healing of ten lepers, and he notes that “one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks” and, Luke can’t help adding, “he was a Samaritan”—one of those whom many despised as illiterate and irreligious.
Somehow I had imagined that dozens of characters in the Gospel would be shown giving thanks to God. I’m sure many did, but their gratitude is not recorded. Yet here is this one cured leper who had what we might call the ordinary decency to turn back and thank the Healer. The sad disappointment of Jesus rings through the words: “Were there not ten cleansed, but where are the nine?” The other nine were surely rushing off to find their friends and spread the news of their cure. They were planning what to do with their new freedom and health. They were grabbing the gift they had been given with both hands—just as we do when good news comes our way, health, an unexpected gift, an experience of love, of beauty, or of sheer human kindness. That’s where they are, the nine, living it up—and we disapprove.
But Jesus never lets us stay on the side lines disapproving. The last thing he wants is for a group of his disciples to gather in Church on Thanksgiving morning saying to ourselves: “Isn’t it great to be one of those who returned to give thanks, and not to be out there with the nine who are thinking of nothing but having a good time with the turkeys and the booze?” “Where are the nine?” We have already confessed that, far too often, we are out there with the nine. Every one of us can call to mind right now good things that have happened to us for which we rarely pause to give thanks. We take for granted what our parents did for us, what wives and husbands do for us, the friends who nourish us in all kinds of ways, the huge network of people by whose skills and devotion food reaches our tables every day. We’re not always ready for a “thank you” for the everyday courtesies we receive—the driver who holds back to let us join the traffic-stream, the bus-driver who stops to open the door again and let us in, the tired salesgirl who patiently answers our silly questions.
The saintly thankfulness of Jesus is reflected in this anonymous, one-out-of-nine, leper—about whom we know nothing except that he was “one of those,” a Samaritan. For Jesus this simple grace of gratitude outweighed any judgment as to the religious or social status of this foreigner from beyond the pale.
The simple is the saintly. That’s why I believe God welcomes today the genuine Thank yous that rise from grateful hearts whether in a service of worship, around the dinner table, or in the quiet of our room. Every pastor can tell you of the immense contribution made to any church by those who radiate a spirit of thanksgiving in all they say and do. We celebrate the various gifts of the Spirit that make a congregation into a lively and effective company of Christ. Among such gifts is this quiet and unnoticed one of constant thankfulness. Not only on Thanksgiving Day but often throughout the year, I find myself giving thanks for the thankful.
The second character who is recorded as giving thanks came as a shock to me. I found him in Luke’s Gospel near the end of the story. There were the simple words: “God, I thank thee. . . . ” And then what followed? “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector.” How about that for a prayer of thanksgiving? And is it at all that unusual? Jesus told the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, we are told, for the benefit of those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.” (I am tempted to say that the prayer of the Pharisee sounds almost like a manifesto of the Moral Majority—but perhaps that would put me in the position of thanking God that I’m not like them.”)
It’s quite a trick of the devil to worm his way into our moments of thanksgiving to switch us from the saintly to the smug. If our gratitude is chiefly for material benefits, good health, and happy homes the temptation comes to listen to the voice that says: “You deserved it.” There are traces in some of the psalms and in the book of Proverbs of that mood of self-congratulation, and we hear echoes of it today in what G. K. Chesterson described as the “easy speeches that comfort cruel men”—“I worked for it: I never fooled around: Thank God I’m where I am today.” I’m not one who despises what is called the Puritan work ethic. I prefer it to the popular slacker-ethic or the chiseller-ethic. But Shakespeare’s Malvolio is always hovering in the wings, so immensely grateful that he is not as other men are, like Toby Belch, for instance, with whose retort to Malvolio we feel some sympathy this Thanksgiving Day: “Dost thou think that, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more