Jesu Juva
Philippians 4:6-13
November 25, 2021
Thanksgiving Day
Dear saints of our Savior~
It is shaping up to be a fantastic Thanksgiving! After last year’s lockdowns and quarantines, it will be great to gather with family and good friends to give thanks. There’s a touch of winter in the air. It’s a good day to use the fireplace.
There’s only one, tiny problem on this Thanksgiving Day: I’m not very thankful—certainly not as thankful as I should be. It’s a terrible thing to admit (especially for a pastor). But the truth of the matter is most days, most of the time, including today, I’m not very thankful. Day by day, hour by hour, true thankfulness is lacking. I have no problem accepting thanks; but giving thanks—it doesn’t come naturally. Moments of genuine thankfulness are fleeting, at best. Moments of thankfulness are just that—moments—moments that come and go all too quickly.
In America it’s great to be grateful—to be thankful—to say “thank God,” even for the little things. But this cultural attitude of gratitude is mostly a sham. In fact, it’s mostly irreverent blasphemy. If you don’t believe me, just type the words “Thank God” into a Google images search, and see what comes up. (Think beer, bacon, and bourbon.) At best, that’s an irreverent mockery of what God gives, and of who we are, and of what we deserve.
The other extreme is when our gratitude is grounded in shallow sentimentality—as in, I’m thankful for snowflakes, for rainbows and puppies. That’s fine. But Christianity is not a sentimental religion. Christianity is the religion of God providing only His Son as a cold-blooded sacrifice to save sinners who didn’t even want to be saved—sinners who aren’t even very thankful much of the time.
Where thanksgiving is lacking, it’s a sure bet that contentment is lacking too. How can I be thankful for what God gives if I’m not content—if I’m not satisfied—with what God gives? Maybe that’s why my ears perked up this morning when I heard Paul’s words to the Philippians—when he said, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. . . . In any and every circumstance,” he wrote, “I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”
Have you learned this secret—the secret to being content? Contentment is the opposite of coveting. Contentment means that you’re at peace—you’re satisfied—with the people, the things, the vocations God has given you. Regardless of circumstances—regardless of how you might feel on a given day—regardless of whatever good or bad may transpire—knowing the secret of contentment transforms your whole outlook. Instead of feeling empty over all the things you don’t have, you feel full (which is appropriate for Thanksgiving). You are filled with the overwhelming awareness of how good God is to you.
Oh, and by the way, don’t confuse contentment with complacency. They’re totally different. Being complacent is just going with the flow, like riding an inner-tube down a long winding river. You get where you’re going while basically doing nothing. But contentment—contentment is doing something—doing exactly the things that God has given you to do—even though it sometimes feels like you’re getting nowhere. Be content, but not complacent.
Have you learned the secret of contentment? Whatever reasons you may have to be discontent, St. Paul had more. Paul had been flogged and beaten and threatened with death over and over again. Once he was nearly stoned to death. Three times he had been shipwrecked. He lived like a refugee. He had been afflicted with a particularly nasty malady—what he called his “thorn” in the flesh—which the Lord refused to take away. False teachers were always one step behind him, trying to uproot the Gospel seeds he was planting. And as he wrote the words of today’s text, he was under arrest, locked up. And yet, Paul knew the secret. Beneath all his burdens bubbled up contentment and thankfulness. “I can do all things,” he wrote, “through [Christ] who strengthens me.”
What about you? Can you make Paul’s confession your own? Is your mantra, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” or, is your mantra, “I never get what I want?” Paul had an advantage over us: The Lord had called him directly. Do you remember? God struck him blind on the road to Damascus—spelled out for Paul with unmistakable clarity that he would suffer and serve as an apostle to the Gentiles until the day he died. Paul knew what to expect.
We may not have that kind of clarity from God; but we do—all of us—have God-given callings in this life. Contentment begins with believing that—that God has personally placed you at this particular point in time and space because He has work for you to do. Your life isn’t a random collection of haphazard events. You are where you are—you have what you have—you do what you do—by the divine design of God the Holy Trinity, who has named you and claimed you personally in the waters of your baptism. The job you have, the spouse you have, the parents you have, the children you have, your status as student, citizen, neighbor and friend—you have it all from the good and gracious hand of God. These people, these callings, these statuses—they are all yours by God’s divine design. He has delegated all of this to you. You have a holy assignment. And that means that your labor and your life are precious and valuable to the God who gives you your work. Now you know the secret.
Contentment can be yours—whatever the circumstances—for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. You can be content in life and, yes, even in death. You can be content because your gracious God was not content. God was not content that you should be separated from Him by your sin—not content that disappointment, pain, and suffering are all that you could ever have to look forward to. Your God was not content simply to write you off as a lost cause.
God the Father was not content—so much so that He sent His only Son—sent His Son to be executed on the cross as your sacred substitute—to buy you back as His own precious child. It was a blessed exchange: the sinless life of Jesus for your sin-filled life. The holiness of Jesus in exchange for the blackness of your sin. All His good for all your bad. In this Jesus is contentment. You can do all things—you can faithfully carry out every, single God-given vocation—through Christ who gives you (His) strength. He takes your weakness and gives you His strength. He takes your faithfulness and He Himself gets the results.
And all this He does with this promise on His lips: “Be content with what you have because I will never leave you; never will I forsake you.” And He gives proof of that at this altar. Whatever your kitchen will be serving up later today, it can’t begin to compare with the meal served here. This meal matters more. This meal gives contentment. This meal gives forgiveness of sins. In this meal, the body and blood of Jesus—the strength of the Savior—is imparted to you. Now—now you know the secret.
We aren’t traveling very far this Thanksgiving. But do you remember those trips you took as a child, with mom or dad in the driver’s seat? If it was a long trip, it wasn’t too hard to fall asleep there in the backseat. Do you remember that feeling of safety and security, knowing that the people who loved you most were getting you where you needed to go? (Over the river and through the woods?) You could have been driving through blizzards, ice, or storms—but as a little child in the back seat, you weren’t worried. You weren’t anxious about anything. Dad was driving. It never even crossed your mind that you might not get where you were going.
That’s how it can be for all of us on this Thanksgiving Day in the year of our Lord 2021. You can rest secure. You can be content and thankful in all circumstances because you know the secret: you’re safe in the backseat. And Someone else (someone who loves you to death) is steering you right here, to where you’re supposed to be. He doesn’t guarantee trouble-free travel; but your safe arrival at His side is a certainty.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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