From the Pastor – November 2024

From the Pastor: Giving Thanks

With the approach of Thanksgiving, we are reminded of the story of the Ten Lepers. This is the Gospel Reading for the “Day of Thanksgiving” in the Church calendar. … Ten lepers on the side of the road. All of them healed, with only the foreigner, the Samaritan, returning to give thanks and praise. It is a sad thing really, but an amazing thing as well…

First Article gifts are the things of house and home, food and drink, wife and child, health, good weather, good government, etc. These are the things that come raining down from heaven and they fall upon the just and the unjust. One doesn’t have to be a Christian to receive these good gifts from God. One doesn’t have to believe in Jesus in order to enjoy all of these things. And although that might seem a bit unfair to those within the Church, this just shows to us, and to the world, exactly what type of God we have.

Our God is a God of mercy and love. He desires to give good gifts and so that is what He does. Food to eat, clothes to wear, homes to live in, jobs to work at, friends to laugh with, children to hug; these are good gifts and are given indiscriminately. Thanks be to God for that! … And they are given without price. Nothing is needed, or expected, in return. God gives and we receive, whether we recognize where it comes from or not.

That is our God, and what a wonderful God He is! … But in our text, the Samaritan returns. He returns and gives thanks. What else could he do? While the others ran to the Temple to look for a god locked in a box, this Samaritan realized that his life had been given back to him by the very God of the heavens who now stood in the person of Jesus Christ. God was not in Jerusalem, we was a couple of miles back on some dusty old road, in the flesh.

So he returns and gives thanks, and Jesus says to him that his faith had made him well. But that isn’t a good translation, for the nine others had been made well too. What Jesus was really saying was that this Samaritan’s faith had saved him. But it wasn’t even really his faith, but that which his faith grasped onto. It was Jesus who saved him, God in the flesh. And saved him not just from leprosy and a life of isolation, but saved him from sin, death, and the devil.

This month we give thanks for First Article gifts large and small, and we should. But we also give thanks for the Second Article gifts of Jesus on the cross, and the Third Article gifts of Jesus for us in Word and Sacrament. … We give thanks for all of these things because we have a God who gives. He gives to those who have not earned and do not deserve. And like the poor helpless leprous beggars that we are, we receive and we give thanks. What else could we do?

In Christ,
Rev. Eli