KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 6 October
Thoughtfulness
Thanksgiving is a kind of thoughtfulness. It is profoundly spiritual in its awareness of God “from whom all good things do come” and of the created order as the expression of God’s good will. It is the counter to the arrogance of entitlement and to the ignorance of privilege both of which divide and separate us from one another and from God. We are not owed the good things which we enjoy and seek. We are not better than and superior to everything and everyone else.
Thanksgiving is our thoughtfulness towards God in creation and redemption and towards one another in creation. In this sense, thanksgiving complements our reflections on Genesis 1 and 2 about our being made in God’s image, on the one hand, and about our connection to everything else in creation, from dust to angels, on the other hand. Our readings this thanksgiving week in Chapel pick up on those themes.
The reading from Deuteronomy highlights creation as “the good land” into which “God is bringing you.”It is described as ”a land of brooks of waters, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing”; what will proverbially be called “the land of milk and honey” in other scriptural passages. These are all the things for which we should be thankful in our awareness of the givenness of creation but, as Deuteronomy makes clear, these things depend upon our awareness of God’s Word and Will in creation by “keeping the commandments of God and walking in his ways and by fearing him,” honouring him. Thus thanksgiving is to God as the ultimate author and source of all good things. Prepositions matter! Our ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ activities were also about our engagement with the good land of creation, not as possession but as places of respect and care.
The reading from Luke about the ten lepers who were healed but only one returned to give thanks to Jesus helps us to understand who we are in the sight of God, at once made in his image and the dust into which God breathed his spirit. Only about the one who turned back, “and he was a Samaritan,” an outsider as it were, whom Jesus calls “this stranger,” is it said that he was “made whole” or saved. God seeks our ultimate good, our wholeness which is more than being healed. It is our thoughtfulness towards God. In returning and giving thanks we are being made whole and as such take hold of the truth of our being in God. The one who turned back “giving him thanks” recalls us to the freedom and dignity of our humanity. It is found in recognizing creation not as entitlement but as gift and thus acknowledging God as the giver and sustainer of all life.
