Thanksgiving Eve
The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, The Love of God, and The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you All. Amen.
1 Timothy 2:1 First of all, then, I urge that requests, prayers, intercessions, and thanks be offered on behalf of all people, 2 even for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. 3 Such prayer for all is good and welcomed before God our Savior, 4 since he wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God and one intermediary between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, himself human, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, revealing God’s purpose at his appointed time. 7 For this I was appointed a preacher and apostle—I am telling the truth; I am not lying—and a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. 8 So I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or dispute.
Tomorrow the citizens of the United States celebrate, at least loosely speaking, Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving Day is a secular holiday, not a churchly/Christian one. It is not surprising that the tradition of thanking God for the blessings He bestows on the people of America ended up a national and federal holiday in 1863 ad. America, from its founding until the mid 20th century had a Christian culture. The population was largely churched. People lived, by and large within the parameters of the Ten Commandments. Most learned to read using the King James Bible.
But today, Christians have lost the cultural war. The un-Christiand and anit-Christian world has taken over the culture and has even infected the most fundamental act of faith, the worship service of the visible church.
Today, though it is rather inconsistent for a culture that holds traditional values and biblical Christianity in such disdain, to still celebrate a day of Thanksgiving to God. There are at least two reasons that continue to fuel this national and annual tradition.
First, good old self-righteousness. People want to think of themselves as good people, as a people who are grateful for what they have managed to accumulate for themselves. Thanksgiving is a day set aside for folks to at least take a moment to perform some outward religious act might demonstrate to others that they are completely void of religious virtue. The second reason that Thanksgiving still lives is that I can’t imagine Americans would for the sake of honesty about their lack of interest in all things God, give up a paid holiday or holiday pay.
For the Christian thanksgiving is everyday and especially Sunday. There’s a reason one of the names for Holy Communion is the “Eucharist,” which translates, “thanksgiving.” Participating in faithful and God-pleasing worship services is the highest expression of thankfulness. It is the place where God gives and we receive in humility and thankfulness. See the contrast? And what a sharp contrast it is. If the sign of true thanksgiving is attending faithful churches wherein God’s Word of Law and Gospel are preached and wherein the sacraments are administered according to Christ’s instruction, then the one day a year holiday whereby some people says, “thank God for giving me stuff,” doesn’t look quite so pious now does it? On the other hand, true thanksgiving is a way of life for the church going Christian.
This also means that there are big differences between the thanksgiving of a Christian and the run of the mill, thanksgiving observed by others. The prayers, petitions, intercessions, and thankfulness of the Christian are unique and the Epistle lesson assigned for this Thanksgiving Eve Festival shows this to be true.
The Epistle less began. “First of all, then, I urge that requests, prayers, intercessions, and thanks be offered on behalf of all people, ” The life of a Christian is to be a life of requests, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 states the same thing only more concisely. “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”
1 Timothy teaches that we are to offer prayers of various kinds “on behalf of all people.” 1 Thessalonians teaches that we are to give thanks in all circumstances. In regard to the 1 Timothy text, Christians, you folks, and this little church serve as advocates and surrogates for other people–all people, many of whom do not know how to pray. In the same kind of way that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us.
Romans 8:26 “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how we should pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes on behalf of the saints according to God’s will. 28 And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” As Christians we serve our church, our families, and our neighbors by virtue of our vocations and in charitable works. But we also to serve our neighbors in our prayers.
In 1 Timothy Paul instructs Christians to make special intercession 2 “even for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” The last part of this sentence ought to sound familiar to you because we pray it in the General Prayer, thus providing yet another example that shows that the words we speak and sing in the historic and biblical liturgy comes from the Bible itself.
Christians offer prayers not just for the sake of praying, but with the goal of praying for that which God Himself is pleased to give. We pray out of humility and gratitude for all that God gives and does for us and for our salvation.
Verse 3 “Such prayer for all is good and welcomed before God our Savior. He wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” Here St. Paul teaches us that prayers for all people and especially for those in authority are pleasing to God. He welcomes our prayers on behalf of all people and our prayers for good government, quietness, godliness, and honesty for the sake of the Gospel.
It is a odd thing. While people everywhere pray for their own self interest, selfish desires, and motivated by egoism, Christians understand that our prayers are to be Christ-centered, Christocentric, and offered on behalf of our neighbors and for the sake of the Gospel.
It is strongly implied in this text and taught in others that the world continues to exists for the sake of the Church. Martin Luther: “The world continues to exist because the Church is in the world. Otherwise heaven and earth would burst into a inferno in a moment; for the world, being full of blasphemy and godlessness, is not worth one grain of wheat. But because the Church is in the midst of the godless, God, for her sake permits them also to enjoy the common blessings of this life; and whatever the world has, it has for the sake of the Church.”
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, yet very few will actually bow their heads and offer a prayer of true thanksgiving. Most will offer a prayer to a generic and largely unknown God. Few will offer a prayer to the Triune God. Fewer will pray for the sake of their neighbors. Those who will offer a prayer of thanksgiving to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, will offer thanks chiefly for temporal blessings. That is a good thing, but our prayers and thanksgiving are suppose to encompasses much more.
1 Timothy 2:3 “Such prayer [prayer on behalf of all people and for those in authority] is good and welcomed before God our Savior, 4 since he wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God and one intermediary between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, himself human, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, revealing God’s purpose at his appointed time.”
Christians know that all that happens in a person’s life and in the life of the church happens is redeemed in the Gospel. We can and ought to give thanks even in sorrow, hardship, and pain. Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”
In regard to prayer and thanksgiving, Paul expresses his greatest hope for the Christian church in verse 8. “So I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or dispute.”
We Lutherans we are little uncomfortable with that image, people standing and raising hands in the air as an act of worship. For us it conjures up images of the Pentecostal and American Evangelical who shows up to a building that doesn’t look like a church and rocks out to Jesus.
But the original Old Testament posture of prayer was the lifting up of hands. Their posture reflected their thinking about God’s burning glory shining down on them, upon which they were not worthy to look, just as lift up our hands to block out the sun so that we are not injured by it’s “holiness.” Think of the military salute, which was begun as a way to hide and shield ones eyes from the passing of royalty.
The lifting up of hands was the Old Testament and Early New Testament Churches’ way of showing humility before God. At another time in history, men prostrated themselves before the altar, lying flat on the floor because they knew that they did not deserve to stand in the presence of the Triune God.
Modern Americans, of course, bow to no one. We certainly don’t prostrate ourselves before anyone either. Some Christians raise their hands, but that has more to do with emotionalism and disrespect, than it does with reverence.
Perhaps the closest thing the contemporary liturgical church has that embodies what St. Paul means when he instructs Christians “to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or dispute,” is the use of kneelers. Unfortunately, too many Lutherans forsook the practice because those Roman Catholics did it.
The physical manifestation of “lifting up holy hands” or of kneeling in church was meant to point to our spiritual condition in Jesus Christ. Once we possess the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, we have holy hands. Once we have been made holy, then we have every reason to give thanks. Once we have been given “holy hands,” the new nature, then our prayers are made acceptable to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
St. John Chrysostom wrote of Christian thanksgiving: “Let us exhort one another toward gratitude. To ministers especially this good work belongs, since it is an exceeding privilege. Drawing near to God, we give thanks for the whole world and the good things we commonly share. The blessings of God are shared in common, and in this common preservation you yourselves are included. Consequently, you both owe common thanksgivings for your own peculiar blessings and for those shared in common with others, for which you rightly should your own special form of praise. . . So then let us give thanks also for the faith that others have toward God. This custom is an ancient one, planted in the church from the beginning.”
Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, to all people.
AMEN
May the peace that passes all understand keep your heart and minds in Christ Jesus.