Thanksgiving Eve Meditation

Christopher H. Edmonston

Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church

Text: Colossians 4: 1 - 6

I.

Face it – if you’ve lived long enough it has happened to you. You’ve been driving down the road, at a cookout, in a movie with a friend – and suddenly you’ve realized, “I am supposed to be somewhere else.” You have completely forgotten a commitment, an appointment, a meeting. Instead of the standee – you have become the stand-upper having stood up a client, a date, or a whatever. Or, better yet, hurried from a long week of work, you’ve invited friends over for dinner, rushed to the grocery store and returned home to discover you’ve forgotten the most essential element to the four star meal that you’ve promised.

For my own part, I once in college had Saturday office duty at a job that I was paid to do – I went to Carrowinds (the large amusement park on the NC/SC border) instead. I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to be there, in the office, manning the phones, directing folk to the right places. Instead, I was riding roller coasters, and eating funnel cakes, and having a great time with my girlfriend. On the ride back, I remembered where I was supposed to have been all day. My heart almost stopped in my chest. Expecting to be fired, I checked every voice-mail I knew to check, I check all the E-mails I had gotten, and found nothing. Turns out it was a slow-slow-slow day, I got lucky – but I had forgotten and it made me sick. I was not as reliable as I promoted myself as being.

How silly, how unintelligent, how ashamed do we feel – we forget a birthday, an anniversary, a special day in the life of our company – we are people who are supposed to remember, right? And yet, each of us knows the shame of forgetfulness and the pain of being forgotten.

II.

For my part as we mark Thanksgiving 2005, I have not forgotten that I have been promising for the better part of the last weeks that tonight I was going to share why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of all the holidays that we mark.

Let me start by saying that Thanksgiving is not my favorite “Christian event.” To be sure, there is nothing specifically Christian about it – it’s not like Christmas which marks the birth of Christ or Easter his death. No, while it aligns itself with Christian themes quite well and quite appropriately, it is not uniquely Christian. In fact, for the Christian everyday should be thanksgiving – I’ll explain this later – but because everyday should be thanksgiving and this day is thanksgiving, that is why Thanksgiving – celebrated by pilgrims and first recognized by George Washington and then most famously Abe Lincoln – is just about my favorite day of the year (wow!).

The fact that Thanksgiving is remembered by so many in our nation gives me pause and warms my soul. While Jesus did not command a day of thanksgiving, he knew how to give thanks. The children who learn the importance of thanksgiving in homes tomorrow, lessons from parents and grandparents and older siblings stand by the goodness of our God as they say Thank You.

III.

“Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in prayer by thanksgiving” – that is what Paul, the apostle of Jesus, writes in Colossians chapter 4. I love that verse. I love the idea that families with gather around tables tomorrow and say grace and give thanks. There are families from the Atlantic to the Pacific that do not pray together, alone, for each other or anyone else. But on Thanksgiving, for some reason – tradition, memory, maybe even guilt – those families will pray. I can’t tell you how many people have told me over the years that they don’t pray at meals except for thanksgiving.

People who have forgotten that God is only a prayer away will remember the lesson for a moment and grace will touch them and God will be pleased.

IV.

A third reason I like Thanksgiving so much is that it revolves around the concept of gratitude. John Calvin, that Presbyterian par excellence once wrote something about the Christian life – and that it all revolved around grace and gratitude: the grace of God and our gratitude for what God has done and is doing.

I am on record in about 1,000 or so conversations as saying that “Thank You” is my favorite phrase to speak and to hear. Expressions of gratitude are so precious and we should never offer one, or take one for granted.

Did you hear in this text for tonight, that Paul is calling his readers to pray? How is calling them to pray? By keeping “alert in thanksgiving”, that is how. Amazingly Paul tells us that he is asking them to pray while he is imprisoned for the gospel. Think about that – his gratitude is so deep and so complete that is still thankful while in prison and still calling others to be thankful too.

“Thank You” means that someone has done something for you that you could not do for yourself or that you did not have to do for yourself. Like two weeks ago in Mississippi, the woman we worked for, whose name was Mary Grace – she went by Grace – said “I can give you nothing, except my deep thanks. Thank you, pastor. Thank you.”

Nothing she could have said would have been any sweeter. Speaking from her prison of doubt and hurricane-induced trauma she spoke words of hope for herself and words of gratitude to God through us. Thanksgiving calls conversations like that one to mind, and I’ll never forget the power of her testimony and the gratitude that was evident in Grace’s heart.

V.

Lastly one of the things I would like to forget about Christmas is the very thing that ministers complain about every year and that I “hit around” during the children’s sermon on Sunday. Namely, that we start making our Christmas lists in February; that Christmas stuff is now appearing in October (soon I think it will be like white shoes and labor day!); the joy of Christmas is lost in the maintenance of the “to do” and shopping lists.

Thanksgiving somehow has escaped all of that. Instead of losing its focus in the glitz and tinsel, Thanksgiving stays close to home and close to heart with a turkey roasted or fried seeming to be its only cultural occlusion.

Why then do I love Thanksgiving so? What is that last reason it is my favorite? As Colossians leads us to think, our speech should always be gracious – that is what Paul writes in the final verse we read tonight. And far too often our speech rarely is gracious. Its filled with details and complaints and decisive comments of profit and loss and other such weighty and worldly matters. But today and tomorrow, speech is gracious.

Today and tomorrow we remember that there is much for which to be thankful to God, when much of the time we easily forget the source of our blessings. To be sure, everyday for Christian men and women should be a day of thanksgiving. And while there are no perfect days, tomorrow, as day remembered and offered as a day of thanks comes as close as we are likely to see this side of heaven.

Surrounded by blessings with names like family; currency like love; sweet flavors and rich tastes that inspire joy; the beauty of the earth, splendor of the skies, and hearts overflowing with gratitude, let us give thanks indeed. Amen.