Thanksgiving

What if some big pharmaceutical company developed a medication that, taken daily, would enable you to sleep better and have more energy within three weeks?  What if that same drug would reduce your risk of depression, anxiety, and eating disorders?  What if it would help you to better manage stress, reduce your risk of substance abuse, boost your immune system and increase your overall health?  And what if it would also increase your level of happiness by 25% and increase your overall vitality and life-satisfaction?  Best of all, what if this little pill had absolutely no negative side effects and was available free of charge?

I think we’d call that a wonder drug wouldn’t we?  And I’ll bet that there would be a big line-up to get it.

Well I have good news for you. It’s available for you right now, right here in this church.  Only it’s not a pill, it’s something much better.  It is the practice of thanksgiving.  Don’t take my word for it. Major scientific studies conducted over the past decade at places like the Virginia Institute for Psychiatry and the University of California have verified each one of the claims that I have just made.  The conclusions are clear:  Giving thanks is one of the best things that you can do for your health and well-being.  If it were a pill, we would call it a miracle drug.

Now, those of us who are people of faith shouldn’t be so surprised, should we?  After all, medical scientists and psychology researchers are really only catching-up with what our Christian tradition has been teaching for thousands of years.  We gather here every week to give thanks to God. Our prayers always include a time for thanksgiving. And soon we will celebrate the Eucharist which is in fact the Greek word for giving thanks.

Giving thanks is good for us. Giving thanks is a profound practice which is absolutely central to our faith, something we need to incorporate into our lives not just once a year on Thanksgiving, but every single day of our lives.

A few years ago, during one of the pandemic lockdowns when we were all at home, I decided to take an online course offered by Yale University.  It’s called The Science of Well-Being.  They say it’s the most popular course ever given at the university, and it looks at what scientific research has to say about human well-being.  Not surprisingly, one of the course sessions focuses on gratitude.  The practice of gratitude, of giving thanks, is one of the best things you can do for your health and well-being.  The list of health benefits established by the research is amazing, all the things I’ve already mentioned and more.

That was the lecture part of the course.  But the course also invites us to do some practical exercises after each session.  And the gratitude exercise was this:  think about someone in your life who has had a positive impact on you, and write them a letter expressing your thanks.  Then find out where that person is now, and go to them and read the letter to them.  As she was giving us this assignment, the professor explained that many of the students who had done this in past years had reported that this was one of the most valuable parts of the course, that sharing their letter of gratitude with the people who had helped make them who they are today had actually been one of the best experiences of their lives.

As she spoke, I knew exactly who it was that I should thank, a mentor of mine who has been and continues to be a great influence in my life. But you know what?  I didn’t do it.  Oh, I thought about it.  But I was busy, it seemed like a lot of emotional effort, and I felt vaguely uneasy, maybe vulnerable about it, and wasn’t sure how it would be received if I did do it, maybe it would embarrass my mentor.  You know, the usual excuses.

When is the last time that you went out of your way to thank someone, in a vulnerable, demonstrative, all-in sort of way?

If giving thanks is so good for us, if it is so good for those around us, if it is something that our scriptures and our Christian tradition and even psychologists now urge us to do, then why don’t we do it more often?  In other words, what are the obstacles that keep us from practicing more gratitude in our lives today?

Let’s look at a few of these obstacles.

The first challenge to thanksgiving is that too often we are concerned with our own interests. This may be driven by insecurity, or envy, or by the sense that something is lacking in our lives.  But whatever the cause, self-interest is an obstacle to thanksgiving, in part because, as our scriptures tell us, a true attitude of gratitude manifests itself in generosity and in sharing what we have with others.  And if we’re more concerned with our own interests than we are about sharing with others, then this will get in the way of our practice of thanksgiving. 

Moving beyond self-interest is a matter of faith.  It’s the recognition that we were created to be in relationship with others, and that nurturing these relationships with generosity will enrich us all with riches that are much greater than any of our possessions. In our gospel reading, Jesus reminds his followers that instead of focusing on things that perish, they should focus on the things that endure forever, the gifts we receive from God, the God who made us for relationship and who gives life to the world.

The second challenge to thanksgiving is the myth of our own self-sufficiency.  Throughout history, whenever and wherever people have done well, they’ve had a tendency to think that they got there by virtue of their own efforts, and that as a result they deserve everything they’ve got.  If anything, I think this historical tendency has gotten stronger in our own day.  We’re a society of self-made people who value independence and self-reliance.  We work hard and we pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. 

Now, working hard, and having a measure of self-reliance can be good things.  But if you go so far as to think that you’ve done it all on your own, you’re fooling yourself.  And that myth of self-sufficiency is the enemy of giving thanks.  Because thanksgiving is inherently relational.  What, after all is the most common expression of gratitude?  We say “thank you”.   There is a “you” involved in gratitude, it’s not just about me.  Thanksgiving is not when you say “I’m glad I have a nice house” or when you say “I’m lucky to be healthy”, or even when you feel thankful or “count your blessings”.  Giving thanks is not a feeling, it’s an action that happens when we say “Thank you”.  And it is this pesky “you” that gets in the way for people who indulge in the myth of their own self-sufficiency, because thanksgiving forces us to affirm our dependence on others and our dependence on God. 

Now, sooner or later, each one of us will move beyond the myth of self-sufficiency. It might happen when we lose our job, or when illness strikes, or when we face death.  But rather than wait for that moment of tragedy, it’s better to start today to give up the illusion of self-sufficiency, to acknowledge our dependence on others and on God, and to give thanks.

A third challenge to thanksgiving, and specifically to our offering of thanks to God, is that there has been a decline in our awareness of the presence of God in our lives.  For the people of the Old Testament this wasn’t a problem.  They believed that God sent the rains to bless them, and that if God withheld the rains it was to punish them for something.  And so offering thanks to God was a very natural thing for them to do.

For us, it’s gotten a bit trickier.  Our modern scientific understanding of how the world works doesn’t consider God to be the direct cause of winds and rain.  In fact, we can describe much of how nature works without making any direct reference to God.  But that doesn’t mean that we give up our faith in a God who is the Creator and Sustainer of our universe, the one who gives purpose and meaning to our lives and to all of creation.  There are many scientists who discover that as they delve deeper into the workings of the universe, they encounter a mystery, something which engenders feelings of awe and wonder, a life force or intelligence that somehow permeates creation and indeed brought it into being. 

That is to say, to borrow the language of Albert Einstein, we have a much subtler notion of God’s presence and action in the world than did the people in ancient times.  In theological terms, we can think of God as Spirit, present in creation, inspiring, guiding, encouraging, teaching and loving.  This is a more subtle understanding of how God works and of why we’re to offer our thanks to God.  We need to cultivate an awareness of the subtle presence and action of God in our lives, without, of course, losing sight of the great gifts of God to us, Creation, the earth which sustains us and the gift of life itself. 

Do you remember how last week I talked about paddling a canoe upstream or downstream? How we go so much faster and further in life when we go with the flow, when we align our lives with the Creator who made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, and gave us life itself?

Well, giving thanks, fully and frequently, is one of the ways that we align ourselves with our Creator, with the very power and purpose that shapes our universe. Because our Creator is the great Giver. God gives life to the world, the air we breathe, the food we eat, the love we receive and share with one another. The Creator gives, and we give thanks. Giving thanks is good and right, and what’s more, it is strongly correlated with joy. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” writes St. Paul to the Philippians, “and again I say rejoice!” Thanksgiving brings us joy, no wonder it’s so good for us. Our canoe is going with the current, we are aligning ourselves with our Creator in an ongoing dynamic of giving and giving thanks.

My mentor, the one I mentioned, called me the other day. He invited me to visit. Turns out he’s got cancer, and it’s terminal. I went to his home, he made coffee, we talked, and I thanked him for all he’d done and meant to me. Better late than never. It was good.

Thanksgiving is not something that we should celebrate once a year, but rather something that we should practice in our daily lives, the first thing you do when you wake in the morning and the last thing you do before you fall asleep. Giving thanks is a deeply transformative practice that is central to who we are, and to who we are in relation to God and each other.

Amen.

Homily:  Thanksgiving Sunday, Oct 12 2025, Trinity

Readings:  Deuteronomy 26.1-11; Ps 100, Philippians 4.4-9, John 6.25-35

Image by Karolina Grabowska