Thankful for All We Do Not Have
Thanksgiving 2019
Deuteronomy 8:1-10; Psalm 118:29
“He is good.” That confession of faith from the Psalms made its way into the Liturgy of Christ’s Supper: “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.” What if we isolate the words from the time of our prosperity? Can we still confess them? Is He good? Even when He takes away our good things?
Is He good when family is missing at Thanksgiving? Is He still good when your dreams become terrors in the night? Is He still good when your child is in pain?
Or have we made our judgment on God’s goodness dependent on the good we experience?
The holy prophet Job knew goodness. Swiftly all was ruined: his lands destroyed, his children slain, his body filled with pain, his wife a bitter shrew. His response was memorialized for millennia: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). In the moment of loss, Job blesses God. In the hour of ruin, Job gives thanks.
As the chronicles of Job continue, Job struggles. He struggles with pain, he wants to know why, why God is doing this. While on this side of the grave he never learns. Yet He confesses that there is One on the other side of the grave. “I know that my Redeemer lives.” Even after his skin is destroyed, he confesses that he will see God.
When we say of God, “He is good,” we confess that He made the world, and it was good. And when we say, “He is good,” we confess that He will remake the world, that there is One who has gone to the other side of the grave. This One, Jesus, has shattered the gravestone and broken death’s teeth.
At Thanksgiving, it is meet, right, and salutary to give thanks to God for the meat on our table, a country ruled by a constitution, the free exercise of religion – and our lavish, ridiculous wealth.
Take it all away, and will you still give thanks? Will you still confess, “He is good”?
To our spiritual fathers in tonight’s first reading, Moses said God “humbled you and let you hunger.” Why? Why would God let His children hunger? To teach them that their life is not in bread alone, but in every word that proceeds from His mouth.
“To this good God we give thanks for all we have lost. To this good God we give thanks for all we do not have.”
“As a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you.” Under discipline, we learn what is truly important. Afflicted and deprived, God teaches us to look beyond what we have lost to the One who first gave it. God is teaching us to look to Him who is the giver of all good things.
Having God, we have everything we need. God is preparing for us things we can’t even desire yet, let alone deserve. To this good God we give thanks for all we have lost. To this good God we give thanks for all we do not have.
The confession, “He is good,” releases us from the anxiety we so naturally feel. “Do not be anxious,” Paul says to us. Is this a demand? “You better not be anxious, or else!” A commandment to not be anxious makes me more anxious.
But it’s not a commandment. It is a gift. Like a mother comforting her sobbing child, the Lord says to us anxiety-ridden troubled souls, “I am your Father; you are My beloved son, My beloved daughter. You make me very glad!”
That all happens through our adoption in the baptism of Jesus. The words said to Jesus now apply to you.
So thanksgiving is not gratitude for our stuff, although you should be grateful for your stuff. Thanksgiving looks to the God who gives, and does not give, and sometimes takes away, and says, “He is good, not because He gives me always what I want. No, He is good; I see this because He made me. He is good; I see this because He took on my flesh and bone and died for me. He is good; I see this because He has sanctified me in my baptism. He is good, and I know He will give me exactly what I need when I need it.”
Give thanks to the Lord in the midst of prosperity. Give thanks to the Lord for all you have lost. Give thanks to the Lord for all you do not have. For you have Him. And “He is good.”