Hey everybody this is Steve and we Christians should give thanks all year long.
Has anyone ever told you that you’re being ungrateful?
Because it’s happened to me a lot over the years.
Whenever I went shopping with my parents as a kid, I would angrily demand that they buy
me a new toy.
And in response, my parents would gently remind me that I was being ungrateful.
That I should appreciate all the toys I already had rather than be jealous of the ones I didn’t.
Honestly, this hasn’t changed much.
I still need people to remind me that I’m being ungrateful almost every day.
Like, when something bad happens to me, I can get so angry and upset.
I completely lose sight of all the good things that have happened to me and focus only on
that bad thing.
I lose all sense of gratitude.
Wanting new things or being upset when our plans are frustrated isn’t necessarily bad.
It’s just that sometimes we are so attached to getting our own way that it blurs our vision
and prevents us from seeing that life isn’t just about wanting what we don’t have; it’s
also (and even primarily) about giving thanks for what God has already given us.
Luckily, Thanksgiving is a time when we’re able to take a step away from that ungrateful
perspective on life and turn our attention back toward God and giving Him thanks for
all His good gifts.
In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, we’re surrounded by reminders to be thankful for
what we have.
TV commercials and politicians encourage us to take an extra moment to say thank you to
the people who serve us and make day-to-day life possible: from paramedics to supermarket
cashiers.
Many families will actually go around the table so everyone can share what they’re
thankful for as they celebrate Thanksgiving.
But, as you know, this attitude of gratitude only lasts in our culture for so long.
In fact, the day after Thanksgiving, or even starting Thanksgiving night, our world stops
telling us to be grateful for what we have, and instead tells us that we need to have
more!
I’m looking at you Black Friday...
But, as Christians, we know that we’re not just supposed to be thankful once a year.
We’re supposed to be thankful all the time.
In his 1st Epistle to the Thessalonians, Saint Paul says, "Rejoice always, pray continually,
give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."
(1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)
Unfortunately, knowing that we’re supposed to be grateful throughout the year (and not
just during Thanksgiving) doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Bad things happen to us all the time, and they can easily dominate our attention.
Just like it’s not that difficult to forget what we have and yearn greedily for what we
don’t.
So, how do we overcome those negatives tendencies and learn to give thanks in all circumstances,
in everything we do?
Well, as always, the Church has an answer.
And it’s one that might be a little hard to understand at first.
Because we can learn to give thanks in all circumstances as we learn to not be afraid
of our mortality.
Our lives will, eventually, come to an end.
It’s just a fact of life.
And while this can be scary for most people, it’s actually not scary for us Christians.
It’s just something that we know is going to happen.
And because we know it’s going to happen, we can start preparing for it today.
In every Divine Liturgy and in many of our other divine services, we pray for those who
have already completed their earthly lives.
And, we pray for the wisdom and strength to face our own mortality in the right way.
During the Litany of Completion the priest prays, “And let us ask for a Christian end
to our life, peaceful without shame or suffering...”
So why are Christians so unafraid of death?
Well, in part, it’s because we’ve already died.
As we covered back in episode 129, when we enter the waters of baptism, our old and sinful
way of life is put to death.
And when the priest pulls us out of the water, we rise again into new life united with Christ.
And this isn’t a cause for worry or sadness.
We’re not afraid of death because the Lord has already defeated it.
As we sing in the hymn of Pascha, which is probably the most well-known hymn in the Orthodox
Church, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death…”
Even when we’re celebrating Christ’s resurrection, we can’t help but sing about His glorious
triumph over death by His own death.
Because that’s the way it happens.
And just as remembering the Lord’s death doesn’t make Pascha any less joyous, remembering
our own mortality isn’t morbid.
It doesn’t lead us to be sad or upset.
Remembering that our earthly lives will end helps us remember the Source of Real Life.
Eternal life.
And it helps shape what we do in this life: to live, not out of jealousy or selfishness
or greed, but rather gratitude and generosity.
Our ascetic life in the Church is all about putting our sins and temptations and old way
of life to death.
Constantly.
Learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable, learning to put the needs of others before
our own, learning to love others (even our enemies) unconditionally.
In fact, remembering that our earthly lives will end is such an important part of all
this that St. John Climacus lists it as the sixth rung on his Ladder of Divine Ascent.
It helps keep us humble and helps us remember that life, along with every other blessing,
is a gift from God; not something we have in ourselves.
When we lose sight of this fact, it’s easy to lose a sense of gratitude, and instead
gain a sense of entitlement, that somehow we deserve only good things and shouldn’t
tolerate any of the “bad.”
And that’s exactly what happens in the Parable of the Rich Landowner in Luke chapter 12 (which
we actually heard during Liturgy yesterday).
In this parable, a rich man’s land brought forth even more crops than usual.
So he decided to tear down his barns and build even larger ones to store his grain.
But Christ responded saying, “Fool!
This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you
have provided?”
(Luke 12:20)
You see, the rich man made a huge mistake: he forgot that he could die at any time, even
that very night.
And so, he became anchored to this world, losing sight of the fact that all things are
a gift from God.
He wasn’t grateful for the plentiful harvest he received from the land, thinking that it
was *his* rather than a gift from God.
And that changed how the man responded to his blessings.
Because, instead of sharing the gift of this abundant harvest with people who were hungry,
he wanted to build bigger barns to make sure he could store it all for himself.
That’s why, when God speaks to this rich fool, He tells the man that he’s missed
the point.
He’s so preoccupied with building up bigger barns in this life that’s he’s neglected
to store up wealth in eternity.
Because he’s so overcome with pride that he thinks he’s untouchable, immortal.
For Christians, being mindful of our own limits, our own mortality doesn’t mean being scared
of getting into an accident or something.
It’s simply a way to remember that nothing in this life is eternal.
Whatever our circumstances, whatever our emotions, whatever our suffering--it just can’t and
won’t last forever.
And the same is true for all of our stuff, the things that we frequently call blessings.
But the stuff in the rich man’s barns actually became more of a curse than a blessing.
Because the things in our lives are only truly a blessing if they help us share the love
of God - otherwise, they become a burden that keeps us weighed down and attached to this
temporary life.
To our own, individual, and mortal kingdoms rather than God’s everlasting Kingdom.
In his homily on the Parable of the Rich Landowner, St Basil the Great tells us, “If you want
storehouses, you have them in the stomachs of the poor.
Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven...The hungry are perishing, the naked are freezing
to death, the debtors are unable to breathe, and will you put off showing mercy until tomorrow?”
(St Basil the Great)
The best way that we can give thanks to God for the gifts He has given us is not simply
by feeling grateful but by actually “paying it forward.”
Not hoarding for ourselves but giving to those who are in need.
Being mindful of our mortality reminds us that we can’t keep those things forever
anyway, so we might as well start loosening our grip on them today; a day which, to be
honest, might be our last.
Because forget wealth and the stuff we have in this life.
Life itself is a gift from God.
So our goal, as Christians, is to give thanks by dedicating this life to the love of God
and love of neighbor.
That’s why giving thanks in all circumstances is about more than simply feeling grateful:
it’s literally about giving.
The martyrs of the Church understood this perhaps better than anyone.
They gave thanks not simply by being willing to offer their stuff to people in need.
They were willing to offer their very lives: everything for love of God and neighbor.
I’ll be honest: I seriously doubt that my love for God and neighbor is deep enough for
me to give everything.
Faced with the threats and challenges the martyrs faced, I would have been too afraid
to keep pursuing the Lord.
But even if I can’t rise to the example of the martyrs, their willingness to die for
the Lord is a powerful witness that our life in Christ is eternally important.
More important than our earthly life, which is just a blip by comparison.
More important than our stuff and our attachments and our comforts.
Our relationship with Christ is the only thing that matters forever, and so, for the sake
of the Kingdom of God, the martyrs were willing to part with everything associated with this
temporary world...even their very lives.
And the martyrs were simply following what they first saw in our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ.
Because our God is not one who takes for Himself, but rather one who gives of Himself out of
His infinite love for us.
Christ’s death is the greatest sacrifice that has ever been made in the history of
the world.
The Lord gave up everything (His seat at the right hand of the Father, His power, His comfort,
His control) to become one of us.
Vulnerable like us.
So that we could be freed from the slavery of sin and the power of death.
As St Paul writes in his letter to the Hebrews, “He too shared in their humanity so that
by His death He might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the
devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
Hebrews 2:14-15
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ died so that we would never have to worry about death again.
And we remember this in the most important thing we do as Christians: when we come together
to celebrate the Divine Liturgy.
“And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is
My Body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’”
(Luke 22:19)
Another word for the Divine Liturgy is “Eucharist,” which comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving.
There’s a kind of rhythm of giving that we see in the Eucharist.
First, God gives us wheat and grapes, abundance from the land.
We then transform those gifts and offer them back to God as bread and wine.
And, in return, the Lord transforms those gifts and gives us His very Body and Blood.
And it doesn’t end there because as Christians, nourished by the Body and Blood of the Lord,
we dedicate ourselves, each other, and our whole lives to Christ our God.
The Eucharist is the ultimate act of thanksgiving.
We express our gratitude by offering back to the Lord the very gifts He gives us.
Which, if you think about it, is exactly the way we express gratitude in every aspect of
our lives.
When a friend comes over for our birthday and brings us a new video game or a bottle
of wine, if we truly appreciate that gift we immediately offer to share it with them
and with the people around us.
We offer to play the video game with our friend.
We offer to serve that bottle of wine with dinner.
But that’s not what the Rich Landowner did in the parable.
Because if he was truly grateful for all the crops he was able to harvest that year, he
wouldn’t have stored them up for himself.
He would have offered them to God with thanks and shared them with the people around him.
This is why the Church encourages us to be mindful of our mortality.
That this life isn’t the end, but rather just the beginning.
Because when we do, we remember to share God’s gifts with generosity and love.
When we remember that this life is temporary, that life itself is a gift we never earned,
we become thankful for all things.
And we express that thanks by sharing everything we have.
We follow in the footsteps of our Lord, who shared His very life with us.
And even if we’re not called to be martyrs and give our lives for the Lord, we can at
least dig deeper into our wallets to give to those who are hungry.
And make more time in our schedules to be with those who have no one else.
Because God Himself showed us this way of love and thanksgiving.
Of offering.
As we read in the Gospel according to John, “‘For God so loved the world that He gave
His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal
life.’”
(John 3:16)
Thanksgiving is an important and central part of the Christian life.
And, as weird as it might sound, remembering death (not in a morbid or scary way, but in
a Christian way) helps us remain thankful at all times, even when the world around us
has moved on to Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
So when the turkey is all gobbled up, and the football game is over, let’s not forget
to thank God for our lives and for all that He’s given us.
Not just by being emotionally grateful but by giving thanks in all circumstances.
By giving of what have, freely and with joy.
So let's Be the Bee, and give thanks by giving what we have.
Be the Bee, and Live Orthodoxy!
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I'll see you all next week!