Thanksgiving Weekend
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
When the Apostle Paul is saying to us this morning that we were called out to be a distinct and separated people, he is not saying that we should live in some sort of sectarian enclosure surrounded by walls in a fortress sort of environment. He is not telling us to keep everyone else out so that we will not be contaminated by those around us. There are some people who mistakenly interpret those words in the direction of fortress mentality, but that is not at all what the Apostle means. He is saying that we have to be a distinct people, God’s own, and that the way of our life has to be clearly different from the way of the fallen world around us. Why ? We are to be this way because we know Who is the Truth.
We know Jesus Christ. We live in Jesus Christ. Because we live in Him, and because this relationship of living in Him is one of love and life, and joy and peace, we have to share it with the people around us. We always have to be careful to guard the peace that is within us, and to be faithful to Him who is the Truth. It does not take much for any one of us to fall into a hole, and live like everyone else who is without the Lord in this world. It is a complicated thing being yeast and salt in the world (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33), because we have to keep our identity. We have to be active. We have to be life-giving and creative in the world, and yet not take all the darkness of the world into ourselves, and become poisoned and paralysed by that.
You and I who are living in the world must keep our eyes perpetually on the Lord – not just the physical eyes, but the eyes of our heart. We must always remember Whom we are serving. When we are slipping, we must always ask for forgiveness and restoration. It is a daily exercise.
It was very interesting, flying back from Chicago the other day. It turned out that I was sitting next to an important person in the steel industry. He was a person who had an understanding of how life is supposed to be. For a change, I was not unhappy that I had my ear talked off for an hour and a half while I was in the plane, because this particular man, who has travelled, and is travelling all over the world, has a decent sense of how a human being is supposed to live. He is some sort of a Christian. He was talking about this Thanksgiving weekend, and saying that he is always teaching his family (and now he has grandchildren) that if we are going to be thankful in our life, the best way to be thankful is to keep giving. When it is his birthday, for instance, most of the time he does not let people give him presents. He gives presents to his family and his friends on these celebrations. He said that with regard to Thanksgiving, for him it is not just an occasion for eating and being tokenly grateful to God. For him, Thanksgiving is also an opportunity for making sure that other people have something to eat, too. This man had some sense about what is the right way to live.
Just this morning, the Lord Himself who is always giving to us, gave us an example of how this love has to be lived out. When the Lord comes across this funeral procession at the gate of the city of Nain, He encounters something that was very familiar to Him but of which we in Canada with our moderately socialised system are often not conscious. This widow’s only son, who is young, has suddenly died. She has no-one left in the world. A woman who is a widow with no family in that sort of a society (in those days for sure, but in most of the world still to this day), has no way to survive. In certain societies she could work and she could survive, but there are many societies in which a woman is not allowed to work publicly. For such a woman it means starvation ; it means begging on the street. It is a complete catastrophe, an implosion of everything, and it even could mean death. She has no-one to look after her and protect her, because that is how those societies work. The Lord in His compassion restores her son to her. We can imagine, to a certain extent, the joy of a widow, who, having lost her son, has her son restored to her. However, I think we cannot really comprehend the enormity of the joy, the magnitude of the joy and the gratitude to the Lord that she must have felt at that particular time.
You and I also have been given everything by the Lord very much in the way the widow of Nain had been given her whole life and everything about her life back to her. We have been given everything. It is important for you and for me, if we have not developed that habit yet, to begin to learn how to give thanks to God sincerely every day for all the wonderful things that He is giving to us : our lives, our families – everything. As we are raised in our western ways, we are so accustomed to thinking about life as though we are doing and accomplishing everything ourselves, as though we achieved everything that we have through some sort of enterprise in one way or the other. In such a case, the Lord is definitely on the back burner of everything. For us, He is the source of everything. If I have acquired anything, if I have anything that is good in this life, then it is because the Lord has blessed it to be so, and He has given me Grace to accomplish whatever it is. Whatever it is that I have and can do, I have to share it : I must share it.
This is the way of Christ, the way in Christ, the way in love. Nothing can be held in a closed hand. It must always be held in an open hand. Everything in our whole life must be held in an open hand. It is a perpetual offering back to Him in gratitude : an open hand and an open heart. Brothers and sisters, during this Divine Liturgy we are giving thanks. All our life as Christians is taken up with giving thanks. While we are giving thanks, let us seriously do what we are saying in our prayers : “Let us commend ourselves, and each other, and our whole life unto Christ, our God”. Let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.