Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

True Thanksgiving, dear congregation, is an overwhelming experience. It occurs in a moment of realization, in a moment of clarity, or in the words of the Gospel in a moment of “seeing”. The one leper who returned to Jesus “saw” that he was healed. Then he praised God for it and thanked Jesus, implying that he not only knew the source of his healing was God the creator, but also that Jesus was the one who made such knowledge possible.

A friend of Matthias and mine had surgery this year to correct a problem with his kidneys that he had had since childhood without knowing it. Since a few years this problem had caused a lot of pain and puzzlement, stress, and questions if family and job put more stress on him than he could handle. Four days after the surgery - still in the hospital (this was in Germany; here he would probably have been kicked out the next morning), he was able to get up for the first time and sit in a chair while a nurse was changing the sheets. As Bruno sat and watched her he was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude that he had not known before. This moment in which a fellow human being gave him the gift of changing the bed sheets to make him more comfortable became the focal point in which all his memories of the good things that had ever happened to him ran together. All of a sudden he could “see.” He later spoke of his thankfulness for all the many people in his life and how he wondered if he had ever thanked them enough, told each one how much they had meant to him (including quite a few unhappy family relationships.) I guess this came as such a surprise if not shock to him that he took the mild spring air that came in through the open window as a sure sign of the presence of God the creator spirit. It was Monday, the day after Pentecost.

The moment our friend was overwhelmed by the unexpected sense of thanksgiving, he remembered: he remembered all the people in his life, and interpreted their presence as a reflection of the presence of God.

There are other similar stories: A year ago Jim Bowers spoke a prayer of thanksgiving at the annual party of thanksgiving that he and Bette always gave for family and friends. When he saw all of his family and friends gathered, who with their presence and their stories reflected like stones in a mosaic his own life story and memories of how he became who he was, Jim was overwhelmed with emotion and gave thanks and praise to God who created us all.

Thanksgiving has to do with memory, it occurs while remembering. When you will sit at a Thanksgiving table today or will choose a more quiet moment to become still and give thanks, many of us will thank for health, for family, for work, for community, for the ways God guided us. Things that on the outside may seem the ever same things we were thankful for the last year and the year before last and the year before. But what may seem to be the ever same prayers of thanksgiving are filled with the life and wonder of our memories. The memories of our own life stories, the memories we share with parents, siblings, spouse, partner, children, friends. These are memories of joy and sadness, victory and failure, pain and healing. Such are the memories we have as individuals, but also as communities, the church, as a city, as a country. Our memories give us the sense of who we are, a sense of identity, belonging, how we became who we are as individuals and communities, a country, as church.

Key memories will be the difficult times in which we came into our own: in times of uncertainty and fear, in the modest and humble beginnings, also in the realization of shortcomings, in the confession of mistakes, of things done and things left undone.
Both the people of Israel and the church are people of remembrance and thanksgiving, or: remembrance in thanksgiving. And also here, some of the key memories are stories of hardship, misery, failure, even death on a cross.

Each time the Passover is celebrated, it is a rite of remembrance, in the reading of the passages in the book of Exodus a re-enactment of the liberation from slavery and misery in Egypt. Passover is then the rite of thanksgiving in light of the good land, the land with flowing streams and springs, a land of barley, wheat, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, olive trees and honey (Deut. 8:7-9). Even if the beginnings of those Hebrew tribes in the land of Canaan were much more humble, in all respects, economic and military, than some of the Biblical reports suggest, the remembrance of the land as one flowing with milk and honey should be seen as the grateful acknowledgment that even the simplest and smallest gifts were utterly undeserved, yet they made survival possible and sustained faithfulness in the one God who saved Israel from slavery and misery.

The church also is a people that remembers, remembers in thanksgiving the story of salvation each time the Eucharist is celebrated. Eucharist is the Greek word for thanksgiving. Each time we follow the command of our Lord to “do this for the remembrance of me,” we give at the same time thanks. Remembering and giving thanks really become one. All our Eucharistic prayers always recount the history of God with God’s people so that while remembering we become aware again of our utter undeserving of the most gracious gift of God’s turning toward us and forgiving us, and giving us new life. Hear one example: “You have filled all creation with light and life ... Through Abraham you promised to bless all nations. You rescued Israel. Through the prophets you renewed your promise, and at this end of the ages you sent your son who proclaimed your kingdom.” The different Prayers of Thanksgiving we use here in the liturgy each retell slightly different aspects of God’s story with us and for us. One of them makes very explicit the connection between remembering and thanksgiving. Hear these familiar words: “Remembering, therefore, his salutary command, his life-giving passion and death, his glorious resurrection and ascension, and his promise to come again, we give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, not as we ought, but as we are able; and we implore you mercifully to accept our praise and thanksgiving...”

As we now go from this place to prepare for the feast of Thanksgiving Day, let us take with us from this time of remembering also the end of the same Eucharistic prayer, lest we become self-centered and in essence unthankful:
that “receiving the forgiveness of sin, we may be sanctified in soul and body and have our portion with all the saints.” The Holy Spirit sanctifies us in soul and body, makes us holy, set apart and leading us beyond our own boundaries to live lives of service, outreach, and care. Our grateful memory of the story of grace and salvation compels us to go out with shouts of joy and thanksgiving and tell the story of God all over again.

May the Spirit come into our windows, make us see with open eyes and help us respond with true thanksgiving.

Amen.