Deuteronomy 8:1-10/1 Timothy 2:1-4/St Luke 17:11-19
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen,
Not a single liturgical calendar in North America will have the fourth Thursday of November marked as a holy day. Go outside of the United States and not just the Church, but the state isn’t even celebrating Thanksgiving. Its an uniquely American, federally instituted holiday.
Which is not to say, however, that being gathered together tonight by the Holy Spirit around the Word and Sacraments is a useless observance. For God, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, delights whenever and wherever His Word is preached in its truth and purity and His Sacraments are administered according to Christ’s institution; for by and through these means the Holy Spirit works to create and sustain saving faith in those who hear, where and when it pleases Him.
But because it isn’t a liturgical holy day and like all “recently” minted church celebrations, there aren’t assigned propers for the day. There are readings, but one must decide which to use. The readings for the Harvest Festival might be more fitting: the celebration of Pentecost in the Old Testament and the confession that goes along with the first fruits offering; and the Gospel reading is the parable of the rich fool who trusted in his possessions and wasn’t rich toward God. Or if we follow Abraham Lincoln’s Presidential Address for 1863, it wasn’t just a Day of Thanksgiving, but a day of repentance; something more akin to Ash Wednesday or the Ember Days of Lent.
Perhaps this would actually be fitting, both for the nation and for the Church. In truth, all thanksgiving begins with repentance, with a cry for mercy; as you heard in the Gospel reading for this evening, for a Day of Thanksgiving. Now to assume that this text was chosen simply because of the one leper who returns to give thanks to God would miss its richer meaning.
For thanksgiving is fundamental to and distinctive of the Christian faith and life. It is of first priority, in so far as your words and actions are concerned, as a child of God in Christ. For it is with thanksgiving to God that you confess the faith, pray, and live in love for your neighbor. Such thanksgiving only corresponds to the gracious providence and good gifts of God, which He has already done and given to you.
For the leprosy of your sin has cut you off and keeps out of the good land which the Lord has pledged and provided. It reduces you to impotence and death. It separates you from God and man, from Church and state, from house and home, from family, friends, and neighbors. This leprosy of sin not only lacks, but opposes faith and love and thanksgiving. It brings doubt and despair on the one hand and promotes prideful arrogance on the other.
This leprosy drives and is driven by selfishness, self-reliance, and self-righteousness. All of which are futile because it achieves nothing but anxiety, anger, and further alienation - not only from those whom you are called to love and serve, but also from those who would love and care for you. This is what the leprosy of sin accomplishes. It does not rise up in prayer and praise and thanksgiving, but erupts in outbursts of rage and vents itself in tantrums, in cursing, swearing, lying and deceiving.
There is no happiness, no peace or rest in this leprous condition, but only desperate want, deep sorrow, bitter lowliness and relentless death.
That is, until the Lord Jesus enters in to save you, to rescue and redeem you, to cleanse and sanctify you. He comes to you and makes His way to you. He addresses Himself to your deep and desperate need. He confronts you with His presence, that is, with His Word, and you are met with His holiness against your uncleanness. And to be sure, He disciplines you, as you heard from Moses, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. But not to shame or disgrace you or punish you, but to lead you to repentance, to bring you from death to life, from the desert wasteland into Paradise, to take you from the outside, far off and distanced, into His House, into fellowship with Him and with one another.
For He who was met by lepers while on His way to Jerusalem, journeyed there both for them and for you. For the whole world. He went outside the wall and the gate in order to find you, the outcast, and to gather you back uno the holy city, to the place where His Name and Glory dwell. He is your merciful and great High Priest. It is not that He ignores your leprosy, nor does He merely remedy its outward symptoms, but He actually takes your leprosy of heart and mind, body and soul, upon Himself, into His own skin, into His flesh and blood, and by doing so does He cleanse you of all unrighteousness.
He sacrifices Himself to atone for all your sins. He reconciles you to His God and Father in Himself. He establishes the way of real life and true righteousness in Himself, in His own body and life as true Man. Thus does the healed Samaritan turn back, praise God with a loud voice; and prostrate himself in worship at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks.
In a way it doesn’t matter which set of readings is used for today, for they all direct our attention to and call us to fix our eyes and our hearts upon the same thing: on Jesus Christ and Him crucified and risen for our salvation. In Him true worship occurs. From His goodness and mercy toward us real thanksgiving flows. All worship and prayer, praise and thanksgiving are focused and centered on Jesus Christ; not abstractly or randomly, but in the hearing of His Word to you and in the receiving of His Body given and His Blood poured out.
And where we are tonight is precisely where St Paul directs St Timothy. He is writing to the Pastor concerning the liturgy, the Divine Service, and he says that when God’s people come together there are to be supplications and prayers, intercession and the giving of thank, even for - or especially for - kings and all in high positions. Remember, St Paul is writing when Nero, the man who burned over half of Rome to the ground, blamed it on the Christians, and then proceeded to use the Christians and human street lamps, lighting them on fire. Pray for him! Pray for a peaceful and quiet life. Why? Because God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
The truth that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them. The truth that you are set free from the shackles of your leprosy. No longer shut out of the house, the city, or the good land of the lord your God, but you are at home with Him in His Church, within the Body of Christ, your savior. You belong to the household and family of God; you are citizens of His Kingdom, secure in the Mighty Fortress of His beloved Son.
But you also inhabit His earthly realm, you are citizens of the United States. So tomorrow as you sit down to your meal, giving thanks for all the good that your eyes have seen, your ears have heard, and your hearts have known, for the many blessings the Lord our God has bestowed upon you, giving thanks for those with whom you are gathered, remember that the focal point of your life is the greatest and most precious Gift of all: the gift of forgiveness, life, and salvation through the given Body and shed Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the Eucharist, the true Thanksgiving Meal, and center of worship, from which all thanksgiving flows and back to which you return in pray and praise.
Even now, beloved, He gives you this sacred Manna and spiritual Drink, which are His own true Body and precious Blood. By this Food, this Meal, this Feast, you lack nothing at all, but Christ feeds you with Himself that you might abide in Him, both here in time and hereafter in eternity.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen,
Not a single liturgical calendar in North America will have the fourth Thursday of November marked as a holy day. Go outside of the United States and not just the Church, but the state isn’t even celebrating Thanksgiving. Its an uniquely American, federally instituted holiday.
Which is not to say, however, that being gathered together tonight by the Holy Spirit around the Word and Sacraments is a useless observance. For God, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, delights whenever and wherever His Word is preached in its truth and purity and His Sacraments are administered according to Christ’s institution; for by and through these means the Holy Spirit works to create and sustain saving faith in those who hear, where and when it pleases Him.
But because it isn’t a liturgical holy day and like all “recently” minted church celebrations, there aren’t assigned propers for the day. There are readings, but one must decide which to use. The readings for the Harvest Festival might be more fitting: the celebration of Pentecost in the Old Testament and the confession that goes along with the first fruits offering; and the Gospel reading is the parable of the rich fool who trusted in his possessions and wasn’t rich toward God. Or if we follow Abraham Lincoln’s Presidential Address for 1863, it wasn’t just a Day of Thanksgiving, but a day of repentance; something more akin to Ash Wednesday or the Ember Days of Lent.
Perhaps this would actually be fitting, both for the nation and for the Church. In truth, all thanksgiving begins with repentance, with a cry for mercy; as you heard in the Gospel reading for this evening, for a Day of Thanksgiving. Now to assume that this text was chosen simply because of the one leper who returns to give thanks to God would miss its richer meaning.
For thanksgiving is fundamental to and distinctive of the Christian faith and life. It is of first priority, in so far as your words and actions are concerned, as a child of God in Christ. For it is with thanksgiving to God that you confess the faith, pray, and live in love for your neighbor. Such thanksgiving only corresponds to the gracious providence and good gifts of God, which He has already done and given to you.
For the leprosy of your sin has cut you off and keeps out of the good land which the Lord has pledged and provided. It reduces you to impotence and death. It separates you from God and man, from Church and state, from house and home, from family, friends, and neighbors. This leprosy of sin not only lacks, but opposes faith and love and thanksgiving. It brings doubt and despair on the one hand and promotes prideful arrogance on the other.
This leprosy drives and is driven by selfishness, self-reliance, and self-righteousness. All of which are futile because it achieves nothing but anxiety, anger, and further alienation - not only from those whom you are called to love and serve, but also from those who would love and care for you. This is what the leprosy of sin accomplishes. It does not rise up in prayer and praise and thanksgiving, but erupts in outbursts of rage and vents itself in tantrums, in cursing, swearing, lying and deceiving.
There is no happiness, no peace or rest in this leprous condition, but only desperate want, deep sorrow, bitter lowliness and relentless death.
That is, until the Lord Jesus enters in to save you, to rescue and redeem you, to cleanse and sanctify you. He comes to you and makes His way to you. He addresses Himself to your deep and desperate need. He confronts you with His presence, that is, with His Word, and you are met with His holiness against your uncleanness. And to be sure, He disciplines you, as you heard from Moses, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. But not to shame or disgrace you or punish you, but to lead you to repentance, to bring you from death to life, from the desert wasteland into Paradise, to take you from the outside, far off and distanced, into His House, into fellowship with Him and with one another.
For He who was met by lepers while on His way to Jerusalem, journeyed there both for them and for you. For the whole world. He went outside the wall and the gate in order to find you, the outcast, and to gather you back uno the holy city, to the place where His Name and Glory dwell. He is your merciful and great High Priest. It is not that He ignores your leprosy, nor does He merely remedy its outward symptoms, but He actually takes your leprosy of heart and mind, body and soul, upon Himself, into His own skin, into His flesh and blood, and by doing so does He cleanse you of all unrighteousness.
He sacrifices Himself to atone for all your sins. He reconciles you to His God and Father in Himself. He establishes the way of real life and true righteousness in Himself, in His own body and life as true Man. Thus does the healed Samaritan turn back, praise God with a loud voice; and prostrate himself in worship at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks.
In a way it doesn’t matter which set of readings is used for today, for they all direct our attention to and call us to fix our eyes and our hearts upon the same thing: on Jesus Christ and Him crucified and risen for our salvation. In Him true worship occurs. From His goodness and mercy toward us real thanksgiving flows. All worship and prayer, praise and thanksgiving are focused and centered on Jesus Christ; not abstractly or randomly, but in the hearing of His Word to you and in the receiving of His Body given and His Blood poured out.
And where we are tonight is precisely where St Paul directs St Timothy. He is writing to the Pastor concerning the liturgy, the Divine Service, and he says that when God’s people come together there are to be supplications and prayers, intercession and the giving of thank, even for - or especially for - kings and all in high positions. Remember, St Paul is writing when Nero, the man who burned over half of Rome to the ground, blamed it on the Christians, and then proceeded to use the Christians and human street lamps, lighting them on fire. Pray for him! Pray for a peaceful and quiet life. Why? Because God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
The truth that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them. The truth that you are set free from the shackles of your leprosy. No longer shut out of the house, the city, or the good land of the lord your God, but you are at home with Him in His Church, within the Body of Christ, your savior. You belong to the household and family of God; you are citizens of His Kingdom, secure in the Mighty Fortress of His beloved Son.
But you also inhabit His earthly realm, you are citizens of the United States. So tomorrow as you sit down to your meal, giving thanks for all the good that your eyes have seen, your ears have heard, and your hearts have known, for the many blessings the Lord our God has bestowed upon you, giving thanks for those with whom you are gathered, remember that the focal point of your life is the greatest and most precious Gift of all: the gift of forgiveness, life, and salvation through the given Body and shed Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the Eucharist, the true Thanksgiving Meal, and center of worship, from which all thanksgiving flows and back to which you return in pray and praise.
Even now, beloved, He gives you this sacred Manna and spiritual Drink, which are His own true Body and precious Blood. By this Food, this Meal, this Feast, you lack nothing at all, but Christ feeds you with Himself that you might abide in Him, both here in time and hereafter in eternity.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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