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.
This spiritual sensibility undergirds our thanksgiving festivities particularly in terms of harvest thanksgiving. The various fruits of the harvest are gathered into our churches. Why? Out of our thoughtfulness that the bounty of the harvest depends upon our working with the good order of God’s creation, our awareness of the gift of creation and our human labours within it.
There are as well our national days of thanksgivings which recall us to the spiritual and intellectual principles that properly belong to our political communities at least in the truth of their being. Sometimes, too, there are designated days of thanksgiving for deliverance from threatening dangers be they natural events or human events. Once again, acts of thanksgiving remind us that we are part of something larger than ourselves. Thanksgiving is our thoughtfulness about our ethical relations to creation, to one another and to God.
To God? Yes and not just for the good things of creation including our own being but because God is God and most “divinely like himself,” as the poet and preacher John Donne succinctly puts it. This is the highest form of thoughtfulness and the highest form of prayer is thanksgiving as the gathering of all things into unity in God.
To see life as a gift changes how we see one another for it means to respect and honour the image of God in each other. In so doing we give thanks to God for what belongs to the truth of each person. In thanksgiving we take delight in God and in the things of his creation, including one another. This is the exact opposite of seeing the world and one another as merely instrumental or utilitarian goods, things to be used and manipulated for our own private interests. Instead thanksgiving recalls us to our freedom in God and with one another. Blessed thanksgiving to everyone!
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy