In many families, Thanksgiving means watching parades and football games, a day off for cooking, eating, visiting with family or friends, and maybe playing a few games.  Aside from the pre-dinner prayer or perhaps attendance at Thanksgiving Day worship, it's not an overtly religious celebration.

          But neither was the First Thanksgiving in 1621.  The Separatists, later known as Puritans, who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620, disdained most holidays.  In fact, they recognized only three:  the weekly Sabbath, the Day of Fasting, and the Day of Thanksgiving.  Because colonial life was so bound to the growing cycle, the Day of Fasting was most often called in the spring when there wasn't much to eat anyway.  The Day of Thanksgiving, however, was usually celebrated after the fall harvest when food was abundant.  Both observances occurred on weekdays--usually the day of special sermons known among Puritans as "Lecture Day," which in Massachusetts was Thursday.  Hence, our tradition of having Thanksgiving on a Thursday.

          But the famous feast shared by the fifty surviving colonists and ninety visiting Wampanoag Indians in 1621 was not an official Day of Thanksgiving.  After an unusually hard winter and the death of perhaps a third of all who had crossed the oceans for the new world, the Puritans wished to give thanks that they were alive and now gaining strength.  Edward Winslow, a firsthand observer, described that day this way:

          "Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men to gather fowl, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors.  They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week.  At which time, among other recreations, we fired our weapons, with many of the Indians coming amongst us... with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted.  They went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed upon our governor, and upon the captain and others.  And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are far from being in want."

          Hunting and firing weapons had no place in a religious Thanksgiving observance, but they did belong in the long tradition of other English harvest festivals, with which the Puritans would have been quite familiar.  The first Christian Thanksgiving was observed in 1623 to celebrate a rainfall that saved their crops.  In their world view, shared by almost all in the Puritan community, all of life was part of the experience of the Christian faith.

          Puritans believed that all of life was God's.  They lived simultaneously in two worlds - the invisible spiritual world and the visible physical world.  Both worlds were equally real to them, and there was no separation of life into sacred and secular.  All of life was sacred.  And so, whether one worships God on Thanksgiving or not, this specially appointed day can be lived "to the glory of God," because, "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it" (Psalm 24:1).  Christians can choose to be grateful wherever they are.  There's no better example of this than that it was in the depths of the Civil War that President Lincoln decreed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1863.  And choosing a Thursday in November kept alive the tradition the Puritans had started 240 years before.

          In another era, about 2500 years ago, Ezra the prophet was thankful just to be home.  His thankfulness wasn't about anything trivial.  It was about being alive and being free.  It was thankfulness for being able to worship God after decades of captivity.  It was about being alive when the rest of your family was dead.  It was about knowing again that God still loves you and cares what happens to you.  And so Ezra wrote, "With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord:  "God is good;  his love to Israel endures forever."  And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.

          Ezra and the people of Judah had been captured by Artaxerxes of Persia.  Years later when Cyrus was made King of Persia, he let them return home, re-assume their normal lives and rebuild their temple.  Their Thanksgiving Day dealt with real life and death issues.  That's why Ezra wrote, "With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the LORD:  "God is good;  his love to Israel endures forever."

          They knew captivity and now they know freedom.  They knew death and now they know life.  They knew misery and now they know joy.  So the moment they laid the new foundations on the site of the destroyed temple, they gave thanks.  The captured were home, the dead had returned to life and the hopeless had hope again.  Can you imagine the feast they had that Thanksgiving Day?

          Carol and I had our singles Thanksgiving meal last Sunday.  It's always interesting to see what some of our single friends bring, especially the guys.  A small box of cookies, a loaf of bread, a jar of peanuts.  And yet they get turkey and all the trimmings.  They brought something little and came away with something big.  And God does the same thing for us every time we come to Him.  We come with our little puny offerings, so insignificant compared with His incredible, bountiful, abundant providence.  We bring the puny and end up with plenty.  We bring the piddley and end up with the powerful.  We bring peanuts and, in Christ, come away with paradise.

          It's because God is good.  He's always like that.  He doesn't look at what we've done, or what we can do, just who we are, His beloved children.  "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied," said our Lord (Matthew 5:6).  We all hunger, not just for good things, but for the love of a few good people and for a right relationship with God.

          It was Thanksgiving Day recently in a small rural church where everyone knew everyone else, perhaps a little too well.  And in the front row sat Don, son of Howard and Myrtle Schmidt;  Don, their son who rarely came home and never came to church, who lived in New York and was a dancer in Broadway shows;  Don, who was dressed in a coat a shade of purple no one had ever seen there;  Don, their son who had never married because he was gay.  It was the first time he'd been home in years and Howard and Myrtle knew that the others knew about Don, so it was a Thanksgiving Day of mixed emotions.

          Pastor Larson was in the middle of a sermon he'd dreaded preaching, because he just couldn't make it gel. And struggling as he was for the right words, he asked one of those rhetorical questions he didn't really want answered, when all of a sudden Myrtle stood up, stood right up in the middle of a sermon. Pastor Larson had asked, "Don't we all have something to be thankful for?" and Myrtle's impulse was to give her answer out loud, a most unLutheran-like thing to do. When she realized what she'd done, she became embarrassed and flustered, so Pastor Larson said, "Myrtle, thank you for responding. Do you have a blessing you'd like to share with us?"

          She hesitated, but finally said, "God is so good.  We just don't realize all the blessings He gives us.  Oh, we have our troubles," and she turned and placed her hand on Don's shoulder.  She continued, "I've been praying for my son for years, but then sometimes a mother's life is nothing but prayer.  And I'm not telling you anything he doesn't already know.  But a few weeks ago he called us on the phone, something he rarely does.  You see, it was September 11, and we didn't know he'd gotten a job in the World Trade Center.  Our boy was on the 55th floor of Building One when the first plane hit, and he was calling to tell us he was okay.  Here we'd been watching this horrible thing on TV and our own son was right there in the middle of it all, and we didn't know!  He told us how he'd helped people get out, carrying a woman down 55 floors, going back in the building two or three times for others, and then walking away just before it collapsed."

          Her voice trembled, but she continued.  "God is so good.  Our son helped save people and himself was saved from certain death, all in the same day.  I just don't know what more I can say in thanks to God."  Pastor Larson, sensing this special moment, stepped out of the pulpit and came down and stood in front of Don.  "The peace of Jesus be with you, Don," he said, and gave him a big hug.  And all the others there exchanged the peace of Jesus, a second time actually, with handshakes and hugs and even some tears.  You see, they'd already passed the peace, just before the sermon, but Don had somehow been left out -- no hugs for him then.  But not this time - everyone came to touch him because he'd already touched them.  Pastor Larson never finished his sermon that day.  The Lord and His people finished it for him.

          You and I may not turn out the way our parents wanted, but God still loves us.  It's one thing for God to love us when we're good and obedient, but when we turn our backs on Him, then what?  That's the test of His love for us all - to love us when we're at our worst.  Romans 5:8 says, "God showed His great love for us in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners."

          God also tells us in Psalm 103:  "I will not always accuse, nor will I harbor my anger forever;  I do not treat you as your sins deserve or repay you according to your iniquities.  For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is my love for those who fear me;  as far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed your transgressions from you.  As a father has compassion on his children, so I, the LORD, have compassion on those who fear me;  for I remember that you are made from the dust."

          My friends, I pray this Thanksgiving Day finds you knowing that God is good, and realizing how little you bring to God and how much He gives you back.  Ezra's people knew how good they now had it -- "With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the LORD:  "God is good;  his love to Israel endures forever."  And His love endures to Epiphany's people forever.  Let's never forget it.  So let's thank Him for His goodness, today and every day.  Amen.

Copyright © 2001 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.