Looking Ahead to October 8, 2023 -- Thanksgiving Sunday

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Deuteronomy 8:7-18 
• 2 Corinthians 9:6-15

The Sermon title is Why Are You Thankful?

Early Thoughts: Gratitude is like a muscle. It gets stronger with exercise. I suspect, in fact I firmly believe, that Gratitude also feeds Generosity.

There is a myth in North American culture (perhaps more prevalent in the US, but also in Canada), the myth of the "self-made man" (and in the myth it is almost always referred to in male terms). When we challenge that myth we may get push back. I remember in the 2012 US Election when President Obama pushed back at the idea that anyone got where they were without support from the community (because the community built roads and systems and infrastructure) by saying "You didn't build that". Some people found that a horrible thing to say, some of us saw it as a very accurate statement. In this passage Moses, knowing that people have poor memories or see history in different ways at times, pushes people to remember that they got where they were because God was with them.

This reading from Deuteronomy reminds us that one of the first steps in gratitude, in being thankful, is to remember. We are thankful when we remember that we are the recipients of gifts. We are thankful (or are more likely to be thankful) when we remember that we did not get what we have all by ourselves.

So what gifts have changed your life? Why do you give thanks this year? Look beyond the obvious, easy answers. I encourage all of us to look at various parts of our lives and find the more hidden gifts, the more hidden reasons we are thankful.

There are practices of life that have a transformative effect. Gratitude/Thanksgiving is such a thing. The more we recognize that we have to be thankful for, the more we share our words of gratitude and thanksgiving the more we are changed. When we recognize that we have been gifted, we are more likely to share those gifts with the world around us. We are more likely to do that sharing cheerfully and freely rather than as a task that we 'ought' to do. And then that sharing has the potential to be transformative in the world, which leads to more sharing, which lead to more transformation... and so on.

It is Thanksgiving weekend. Of course we are called to be thankful all year round, however this is the weekend when we are perhaps a little bit more intentional about it. Let us take time to reflect on the gifts we have received. Let us take time to reflect on how our gratitude gets shown in the way we live our lives. Let us, knowing the we have been given gifts, pledge to pass that giftedness on to the world around us. Let us all be both Grateful and Generous.
--Gord