Thanksgiving Eve - Giving Thanks in All Circumstances

As St. Paul ends his first letter to the Christian community in Corinth, he advises the folks who will hear this letter to hold certain attitudes and to act in certain ways.  Paul was concerned not only with how individuals should demonstrate that they follow Christ, but, more especially, how the Christian community can be kept strong.  My personal favorite comes in chapter 5, verses 12 & 13:  "Brothers and sisters, we ask you to respect those who are working with you, leading you, and instructing you. Think of them highly with love because of their work."  How does that work for you?

But for the purposes of this Thanksgiving Eve worship the essential verse is verse 18: "Give thanks in every situation because this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."  Do we agree with Paul that it is God's will for us to give thanks in every situation where we might find ourselves?   The key word here is "in," found both in the Greek original and in English.

This year on Facebook a number of my "friends" are posting something they are thankful about each day for the month of November--noting, of course, the presence of Thanksgiving Day at the end of the month.  Most of the posts have been unfailingly positive statements: for friends, pets, blessings, a loving family, and so on.  I have not seen one that says something like this: my friend has just discovered she is fatally ill, and I give thanks I am able to accompany her through her last days, so she won't be alone.

Now such a statement might not be posted out of privacy concerns.  But if such concerns didn't exist, would such a statement as this come to mind as way to pray our thanksgiving to God IN a time where we are experiencing loss or lack of what we need?

Let's approach our question by considering the scriptures read tonight.  The 26^th chapter of Deuteronomy contains a description of worship when the first fruits of the harvest are brought to the priest to be set down before God's altar.  The person bringing the gift of first fruits must then recite an brief salvation history.  

Within this history, the worshipper recalls the time when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, suffering oppression through hard labor without compensation.  Now having been faithful to God, despite a few lapses, through their escape from Egypt and 40 years in the desert, the Israelites are poised to receive the land they understood as promised by God in God's covenant with their ancestors. 

Yet in this time of joyful anticipation, they are instructed to remember the bad times, for God was with them in those times as well.  Could "crying to the Lord" be considered a way of giving thanks--not FOR the circumstance of enslavement, but withIN those circumstances!  Could this be the sentiment? We thank you for being our God, and now consider our plight.  Help us! Help us!

That same kind of thanks can be seen in between the lines of the passage from the 6th chapter of John.  The crowd had followed him after Jesus had fed a crowd of 5,000 with only five barley loaves and two fish.  The people who chased Jesus to "the other side of the sea" appeared to have been impressed and grateful for the sign they witnessed.  But they wanted this miraculous moment to continue and to include them.  They begged Jesus, "What must we do to perform the works of God?”  Like when God provided manna in the wilderness? Their gratitude and their demand came in the context, I think, of experiencing emptiness, not only for food, but also for a connection to God.

Perhaps our expressions of gratitude often come with a plea for help or for something more.  Tradition tells us that the harvest meal shared by the Pilgrims and the Native Americans in 1621 came after a very difficult winter where many of the settlers died.  Fifty-three Pilgrims attended this traditional English harvest feast—out of 101 who sailed to the New World.  Ninety Native Americans joined them.  The Pilgrims who survived had endured through a winter with inadequate food.  More would have died without the assistance of the Wampanoag tribe members who shared food with them.  In addition, Squanto, a Patuxent Native American who had learned English from the settlers further south, translated for them and taught them to fish for eel and grow corn.  Could the prayers of those colonists during the winter with so much death been prayers of thanksgiving IN the midst of that great tragedy?  What might they have been thankful for?  For the Wampanoag food?  For Squanto?  For the folks who had shared this difficult journey with them, but had passed on?  For their own continued survival?

Prayers that give thanks IN the midst of loss or lack of what we need may be among the toughest prayers of all.  Perhaps they can only be prayed when we are actively hoping for relief, for better times.  Certainly they can only be prayed when we trust that God hears us in grief and pain, in loss and lack.  Ah, yes, in hope and in trust--these two facets of our lives in Christ make it possible to say prayers in difficult times.  Indeed, with hope and trust in our hearts, we can "give thanks in every situation because this is God's will for [us] in Christ Jesus."