The GREAT Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. A once a year holiday in the secular world. Too bad for them.
Once a year?….pshaw….
We have Thanksgiving every single week…and not just any ol’ordinary Thanksgiving, it’s a GREAT Thanksgiving. Go ahead, take a look on page 5 of the bulletin. The Great Thanksgiving is the communion portion of our service---when we, a holy people share holy food.
Each and every week we gather around the dining table of our Lord to offer thanks for all that we have and all that we are. Everything. Our blessings and our burdens. Our hopes and our fears. Our happiness and our worries.
The Great Thanksgiving of our Lord doesn’t seek only the good. The Great Thanksgiving of our Lord requests---longs for---everything we have. And all that we are.
We are called each and every week to place it all –our joys and our triumphs, our sorrows and our losses---on this altar. And by giving it all to God we are doing exactly what Jesus is saying in this evening’s Gospel: we are turning it over to God. The whole kit and caboodle. Doing that is an act of true and thorough and full thankfulness.
In a few moments we’ll recite A Litany of Thanksgiving. A Litany where we offer thanks for the good as well as the challenges of life.
I encourage you to pray this litany fervently, honestly and whole-heartedly.
Because God wants it all—every last bit of it. So please, PLEASE give it all to God. Even those things too difficult to express, those things to painful to utter—offer them to God. For when we give them to God—only when we give them to God can we, like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, live in true and full faith.
In your pews are note cards. If you care to write down specific blessings or burdens go ahead. After I sit down I’ll give you a few moments. You may place them in the offering plate to be blessed as part of our Great Thanksgiving where they’ll serve as a physical reminder that God wants it all, every single thing.
So whether you write your blessings and burdens down or you silently pray them during the Litany or you hold them in your heart for another day know that our Great Feast of Thanksgiving: the Holy Eucharist will be here every single week and this—this altar? It’s always ready to accept your gifts. +