“The Way of Thanksgiving”
Psalm 136, as rendered by Nan C. Merrill
Romans 8: 35, 37-39
Maybe your Thanksgiving holiday was everything you hoped it would be; if so, you have yet another thing to be thankful for. But maybe your Thanksgiving was one long heartache for the dear who was not with you. Or maybe your Thanksgiving, like mine, was a mixture of simple pleasures, good food, joyful reunion, different politics, painful struggle, grief, and uncertainty about the future.
But no matter what kind of holiday you had, one thing is certain: Whether we are feeling thankful, conflicted, worried, lonely, or grief-stricken, a commercial and cultural season that all but commands us to be happy and positive is barreling toward us.
Well, this morning I want to push back against that a bit—and by “that” I mean not so much the marketing and monetization of everything from family togetherness to Advent calendars as the forced joviality and the sense that there is no place in the holidays for reflection, rest, or a vast array of other-than-happy feelings.
Not that there’s anything wrong with being happy, of course, and not because we couldn’t all use some holiday cheer to make the horrors of the Israel-Hamas war and all manner of more mundane life challenges more bearable.
But because God wants so much more for us than toxic positivity and the “hashtag: blessed” version of performative gratitude. God invites us to experience healing, transformation, and a deep joy that is based not on our circumstances but on the never-changing, always available love and goodness of God.
And so, even though the Thanksgiving holiday is officially over and we’re all rushing headlong into Christmas, I want to suggest that instead of moving on to the next big thing, we use this brief interlude between Thanksgiving and the beginning of Advent to begin or continue developing some spiritual practices that will make us more aware of God’s ever-present goodness and open our hearts to the presence and power of the Spirit.
Specifically I invite you to consider these three things: remembering, grounding, and trust.
If you’re anything like me, and if we’re anything like the first Christians or the ancient Hebrews, when life gets tough or uncertain and we’re not sure what’s going to happen, how we will make it through, or if we will make it through, we tend to develop a kind of amnesia. It’s as if we’ve never been through tough times before, as if we’ve never known God’s deliverance and grace, as if everything is up to us.
Perhaps this is why long chapters, psalms, letters, and almost entire books of the Bible are devoted to the practice of remembering. And when I say remembering, I’m talking specifics. I chose the version of Psalm 136 we heard a few moments ago for its universal examples—experiences like repentance and rebirth, liberation, peace and comfort, forgiveness, care for the poor, and light in the darkness.
But the template for Nan Merrill’s rendering, and an excellent template for the spiritual practice of remembering, is the more traditional translation of the psalm. It remembers some of he foundational blessings and graces of the ancient Hebrew people:
O give thanks to God, who brought Israel out from Egypt; who divided the Red Sea in two, and made Israel pass through the midst of it; who led God’s people through the wilderness; who delivered us from difficulty.
This is also an exercise in communal remembering and an invitation to personal remembering. Remembering how God has brought us through tough times in the past can calm our anxious hearts. Remembering what God has already done for us can center us in the blessing of this moment and give us hope for the future. Remembering can open our hearts to praise and wonder.
And so I encourage you to set aside some time—either by yourself, in conversation with someone else, or maybe as a family sitting around the dinner table—to remember just some of the amazing things that have happened to you, difficult challenges you’ve overcome, hard times you’ve come through.
Where was God in those experiences? How did you—or did you—sense God’s presence with you? Where was the grace? Where and how did you encounter love, growth, healing, community, or hope? Reflect on how you came through the wilderness or the storm and how the experience changed you.
Remember.
And after you’ve spent some time remembering and reflecting, notice how you feel.
Remembering and reflecting might make you more aware of the thread of God’s grace in your life, and that might give you the hope and strength you need to carry on. And it will probably leave you feeling more thankful, and we all know that gratitude brings physical, as well as spiritual and emotional, benefits.
Second, I invite you consider what practices, rituals, or habits ground you in the gift of the present moment. What helps you remember to breathe in God’s grace in the midst of a crazy-busy day?
It could be a regular prayer time or a few minutes of silent meditation. Reading the Bible or other spiritual texts may help you step out of chaos and uncertainty and ground yourself in God’s goodness. Or maybe you find grounding in Sunday worship, a mindfulness practice, Communion, deep breathing, playing or listening to heart-opening music, or being disciplined about taking sabbath time in which you stop working or turn off devices. Grounding may be as simple as stopping to feel gratitude and say “thanks.”
Finally, when we have practiced remembering God’s love and faithfulness, and when have grounded ourselves in God’s goodness and grace, I believe our hearts will be more able to trust.
Trust can be a choice we make, a way to approach life. Trust can also be like a muscle—something we need to exercise in order to develop and maintain—as well as a gift, something to receive with open hearts and minds.
There is also the question of what or whom we trust. Do we put greater trust in the everlasting love of God, for example, or financial security? Do we trust that a spark of God dwells within all beings, or do our actions and attitudes belie a trust the all-too-real evidence of human hatred and greed? Do we put our trust in the policies of one political leader or party over another, or in the constancy of God’s love and presence? Do we put our trust in military might or in the power of love and community?
This is not to deny the realities of loss, war, racism, division, the climate crisis, gun violence, or our own personal difficulties; nor is it to surrender to apathy or despair. When members of the first church in ancient Rome faced persecution, imprisonment, torture, and even death for following the ways of Jesus, the apostle Paul’s word to them was clear:
If God is for us, who is against us? Who will separate us from the love of Christ? I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Perhaps the spiritual practice of trusting will, by God’s grace, convince us of these things as well. Perhaps the spiritual practices of remembering and grounding will, by God’s grace, give us hearts and eyes to see and know that God’s love is everlasting, that God’s steadfast love sustains us and endures forever.
And then thanksgiving will become for us not only a holiday but, more importantly, a way of being and living. May it be so.
