Thanksgiving Day, Year A
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
November 23, 2023
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
No audio or video is available from this service.
Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday for pretty much as long as I can remember. I mean, Christmas was great as a kid, what with all the lights and toys and vast overload of stuff. And the Fourth of July was always exciting with the bands and parades and explosions and barbeques. But Thanksgiving has always just been better. It was calmer and more peaceful. Less anxiety and more simplicity, despite the feasting and family dynamics—a genuine celebration that somehow allowed for napping and rest. Thanksgiving has always just felt less tense to me, somehow.
Some of that might be because this is one of the least commercializable holidays on the planet. After all, it’s pretty hard to sell someone gratitude. And there’s only so much advertising you can do before everyone’s already bought their turkey or sweet potatoes or whatever else they’re planning to enjoy. That’s probably why stores have become so eager to jump past Thanksgiving to Black Friday and Christmas!
The churches I went to growing up never really celebrated Thanksgiving, at least not with a day-of service. But when Shannon and I began attending an Episcopal church, coming together that morning just felt natural, like it was an element that was always part of the day, even though we hadn’t know it. And that makes perfect sense. After all, any time we come together for Eucharist, we gather to give thanks.
And I mean that literally: the word “eucharist” translates into English as “thankfulness” or “thanksgiving”!
So every Sunday of the year, we join as one body in order to give thanks. Every special service—weddings, conventions, confirmations, even funerals—we celebrate by giving thanks. Week in and week out, in good times and bad. In sunshine or dust or wind or ice, we, as a new creation, give thanks. No wonder coming together on Thanksgiving just feels right: our entire worship—the Christian life itself—is centered on thankfulness!
We sing with a voice of gratitude. We hear God’s word with grateful ears. We confess our faith with grateful tongues. We greet and reconcile with grateful hearts. And then we join with all saints in that Great Thanksgiving dinner, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. We gather and worship and listen and commune not out of habit or duty, but out of gratitude to God for the gifts of life and love and reconciliation. We come forward to feast as one body on the one body and blood. We transcend time and space as together—however briefly—we realize the Reign of the Heavens. We gather on this wonderful, quietest of holidays because our nature as God’s children is Thanksgiving.