Thanksgiving Day Sermon 2003

Luke 17:11-19 

“Thanking God in Christ” 

Thanksgiving Day is not a Christian holiday.  This is not to say that Christians don’t celebrate it.  It is rather to say that it doesn’t fall anywhere in the calendar of the church year.  It is an American holiday, unknown to Christians who live in other countries.  On October 3, 1789, President George Washington gave this Thanksgiving Proclamation: 

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and 

Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their Joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanks-giving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”  

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the greatest degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us. 
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the People, by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executived and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

God most certainly did bless America as President Washington said.  God relieved the American people from the ravages of war.  He led them as well in the establishment of peace.  It was by God’s fatherly providence that the new nation survived without descending into the kinds of violence and anarchy so common after revolutionary wars.  God brought peace to the newborn nation and it was a peace based on respect for law.  The Constitution of the United States guaranteed civil and religious liberties that, while perhaps eroded, still stand today.  It was good and right for all Americans to acknowledge with thanksgiving to almighty God the many blessings He gave to our infant nation.  It is good as well for us to do so today. 

As Christians living in America we give thanks today for the blessings God has showered upon America for well over two hundred years.  When in the history of mankind has one nation enjoyed such a sustained period of freedom and prosperity as we Americans have enjoyed?  And it is only right – in obedience to the Fourth Commandment – that we should also honor those men through whom God has brought these blessings to us.  George Washington was such a man. 

Washington claimed the Christian faith as his own.  He faithfully attended the Episcopal Church of his day, regularly attending Communion.  From a diary of prayers that he kept we read this portion of a prayer that clearly confesses Christ as Savior from sin: 

Direct my thoughts, words and work. Wash away my sins in the immaculate blood of the lamb, and purge my heart by thy Holy Spirit, from the dross of my natural corruption, that I may with more freedom of mind and liberty of will serve thee, the ever lasting God, in righteousness and holiness this day, and all the days of my life. 

While Washington confessed Christ, his Christian confession was severely compromised by his membership in the Masonic Lodge, though historians debate among themselves about how strongly attached to the lodge he was.  The Masonic Lodge, as you may know, teaches salvation by works and denies that Christ alone is the way to heaven.  It promotes prayers and worship that deliberately exclude any reference to Christ so as not to suggest that faith in Christ is necessary.  The white apron that the Freemason wears at lodge rituals symbolizes, in the words of Freemasonry, “that purity of heart and rectitude of conduct that are so essentially necessary in gaining admission to the celestial lodge above where the Supreme Architect of the Universe presides.  No Christian ought to belong to the Masonic Lodge.  Yet we must admit that Freemasonry is as American as George Washington. 

George Washington was deprived of what we take for granted.  He never received thorough instruction in the pure doctrine of God’s word as taught in Luther’s Small Catechism.  While he knew the basic tenets of the Christian faith, he was not solidly grounded in the wholesome truth as God has graciously preserved it for us in the Six Chief Parts of Christian Doctrine with which we are familiar.  George Washington knew enough about God to recognize Jesus Christ as His only Son.  He also acknowledged that we Americans should all bow down before God in thanksgiving for His many blessings on our land.  One thing George Washington did not know enough to do, however, was to acknowledge Jesus Christ in the thanksgiving he offered to God on behalf of America.  Whether it was the evil influence of Freemasonry or, which is more likely, Washington simply conforming to the religious spirit of his day, it doesn’t matter.  The father of our country was taught and he taught others to gives thanks to the Father while ignoring His eternal and only begotten Son. 

This has become the American way.  But it’s not the Christian way and it’s just plain wrong.  Thanking God the Father without acknowledging Christ His only begotten Son and our only Savior from sin is ultimately a futile and useless gesture.  Without Christ, the material blessings of our heavenly Father are treasured only for themselves and they won’t last.   

Nine of the ten lepers surely felt deep gratitude.  Who can doubt that they gave thanks to the Father in heaven who, through Jesus Christ, brought healing to their bodies?  They had suffered so much.  They were segregated from society on account of their deadly and contagious disease.  They were forbidden to associate with healthy people for fear of infecting them.  They had to stand at a distance away from healthy people and cry out “Unclean, unclean!” as a warning to others and a bitter reminder to themselves that they were unclean.  It is inconceivable that when Jesus cleansed them – and they surely knew that Jesus was responsible for their healing – that not a one of those nine men even offered a silent prayer of thanksgiving to God. 

But only one returned to Jesus.  Only one fell at Jesus’ feet.  Only one acknowledged his need, not only for healing of body, but for redemption from his sins.  Only one saw that God is not to be worshipped in the abstract, but in the concrete, that is, in Jesus.  The Scriptures don’t record a single word that man said.  We know he was a Samaritan and that he had a loud voice.  He likely lacked the great eloquence of the father of our country who referred to God as “that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”  But eloquence is not required in our prayers.  Jesus is.  For without Jesus there simply can be no true prayer, no true thanksgiving, no blessings that will last for longer than a little while. 

I know of no nation upon which God has more richly showered His blessings than America.  Not the least of God’s blessings on this country was founding it on sound principles of governance and providing our nation in its infancy with a leader of such exceptional integrity as George Washington.  But God does not bless nations for the sake of the glory of the nation.  America has not survived these many years under God’s blessing because she is America.  God has blessed this nation for the sake of His holy, Christian, church.  It is always for the sake of Christ’s church and for her benefit that God blesses the nations of this world.  It is Christ’s Church that can lay claim to the promise God gave some four thousand years ago to father Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3)   

In Christ all the families of the earth are blessed.  In Christ and only in Christ is our country blessed.  But that blessing cannot come to America as she prides herself in being America.  It can only come to our country as she cries out, ”Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  As we see our leprous sin, corrupting us through and through and leaving us too loathsome for the company of heaven so that we must cry out, “Unclean, unclean!” Jesus sees us.  He doesn’t send us to a priest but becomes Himself the Priest.  He invites us to lay before Him, the only Mediator between God and man, the sins from which we cannot set ourselves free no matter how we try.  He sets us free.  He offers up Himself for our sins.  He bears in Himself the leprosy and uncleanness of the whole world.  He sends us His Holy Spirit who establishes in us the faith that makes us whole.  In this faith we give thanksgiving to God today.  We have met God in His eternal Son, the Man Christ Jesus.  We will never worship God, pray to God, or give thanksgiving to God apart from Christ, His only Son, our Lord and Brother.  

Amen.

Rev. Rolf D. Preus

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