Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It’s not just the food, family and friends. It is the reminder that this act, this giving thanks, is so important for our souls. Thanksgiving is a time to slow down, to be “full” of thanks, to remember how blessed we really are. Thanksgiving is the lever that pumps joy into our hearts. Gratitude revives the childlike joy that had withered. “The root of joy is gratefulness…It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”[1] As Ann Voskamp details in One Thousand Gifts, the act of thanking God for the little things in life we take for granted primes the pump of joy. “God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.”[2] But giving thanks is hard when the circumstances of life have robbed our joy. This holiday many wonder if they will have joy again. Is it possible the seeds of hope can be found in the first Thanksgiving, taking root in this hard ground so that joy may spring again?
THE FIRST THANKSGIVING
When was the first “Thanksgiving”? Historians debate whether the first Thanksgiving celebration in North America occurred in 1620 with the Pilgrims and Native Americans, or earlier in Jamestown, Virginia in 1610, or even earlier by Spanish explorers in Texas in 1598. I would argue the first “Thanksgiving” celebration was centuries earlier, around 33 A.D.
This first celebration was initiated by Jesus on the night before He was crucified. He gathered his closest friends (even the one who was about to betray him) and celebrated the Jewish Passover. The Passover is that ancient meal commemorating God’s deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. It also recalled the night God delivered them from death: the death angel “passed over” the Israelite houses smeared with the blood of the lamb. And so Jesus, on this dark night before he was nailed to a cross, infused the Passover meal with new meaning. He took a cup of wine, which in the Passover tradition signified God’s salvation over slavery and death, and announced it was his own blood that would open the floodgates of forgiveness and salvation for all people, for all time. He then took the bread, which in the Passover tradition signified the “bread of affliction” the Israelites had suffered in slavery, and announced it was his own body, pierced and broken for all humanity. Jesus told his followers to celebrate this simple meal of wine and bread often, remembering with thanks that God is near, God is in control, God loves you.
EUCHARISTEO
But before they drank the cup and ate the bread that night, Jesus “gave thanks.” Jesus always “gave thanks.” He gave thanks before he multiplied 5 loves to feed 5,000. He gave thanks before he raised Lazarus back from the dead. The Greek, in which the New Testament is written, has one word for “thanks giving” and it is eucharisteo. The early Christians called this simple meal Jesus initiated as the “Eucharist.” A simple meal, things we hold in our own hands, is transformed into hope by giving thanks.
The next day, a Friday, Jesus played out what we have to be thankful for. We give thanks because just as the God of the Hebrews had “seen the affliction” of the Israelites and had “come down” to deliver them from slavery and death (Exod. 3:8), now God has actually “come down,” joining humanity in its affliction. We give thanks because on that Friday, God made a bond with humanity so tight and binding that it can never be broken. God entered fully into our suffering and fully into our death. God smeared his own blood over all of our failures, over all of our disappointments, over all of our losses. The bond of God’s love is so strong that not even death can separate. We give thanks because on that Friday, the Romans drove nails into Jesus’ hands and feet, fastening him to the cross, hoisting it up for all to see. He hung there for hours, humiliated and jeered at, gasping for breath. His blood poured out, his body broken. Then he died.
Watching all this were some women, including the wife of Clopas (John 19:25). They took down Jesus’ lifeless body, wrapped it tight in linen cloths, and placed the body in a tomb. Crushed and defeated, Jesus’ followers made their way to their homes. Death and injustice had won.
“THEIR EYES WERE OPENED”
But there was another meal that changed everything and changed forever our perspective on life and death. Two days later, on a Sunday afternoon, two of Jesus’ followers made their way home to Emmaus, a suburb of Jerusalem. Luke tells us one of them was Clopas, whose wife had been watching Jesus as he died. I think it was Clopas’ wife who was with him on this journey. As they walked in silence, suddenly Jesus himself “drew near and went with them.” He walked with them on this lonely journey, but Luke says “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” Jesus was with them, but they hadn’t realized it yet. He asked what they are talking about, and “they stood still, looking sad.” They told him they “had hoped” that Jesus of Nazareth would “redeem” Israel. They were dejected, but also confused. Some of Jesus’ followers had told them earlier in the day that the body of Jesus was no longer in the tomb, and some said an angel told them he was alive. What does this all mean? Their visitor’s reaction was shocking. “How foolish you are and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Messiah have to suffer like this and then enter his glory?” (Luke 24:25, 26). The couple was bewildered. Why in the world did the Messiah have to suffer?
As they continued to walk, the visitor explained passage after passage, from Genesis through Moses, Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Zechariah 9-14. When they finally arrived home, they persuaded the visitor to stay and eat with them. As they sat down, everything changed. The visitor took bread, “gave thanks,” broke it, and gave it to them. Suddenly, their “eyes were opened,” and they realized this visitor was none other than Jesus himself. He really was alive! And then he was gone.
When did they recognize him? Luke says it was when they gave thanks and he broke the bread (Luke 24:35). As they watched him break the bread, they saw his hands. His hands still bore the nail scars. Although his body was transformed and glorious, his hands were still pierced. As Henri Nouwen reminds us, “The resurrection had not taken his wounds away, but, rather, they had become part of his glory.”[3] The wounds that the risen Jesus still bears tell us two things at once: that Jesus has conquered death, but that he has not left us alone. Jesus is alive, and just as God is the one who gives new life every day, in raising Jesus He has begun a new creation. Jesus is the firstborn, the “first fruit,” the guarantee of a new creation. That hope transforms our suffering. Our pain is not meaningless and it is not final.
But the nail scars tell us more: until the new creation, God does not leave us as orphans. God promises, “For I am the Lord your God, who takes hold of your right hand, and says to you, ‘Do not fear; I will help you'” (Isaiah 41:13). God takes hold of your right hand with his nail scarred hands. God walks the long journey with you. Just as the rainbow was God’s pledge to Noah’s world that life on earth would continue for generations, so the nails scars in the risen Jesus are God’s pledge of both eternal life and His continuing Presence. It was when Clopas and his wife gave thanks for the nail scarred hands of Jesus that “their eyes were opened” and they realized Jesus was with them in their pain. Giving thanks is the lever for joy and hope. Hope in the God who hurts with us, hope in the God who is faithful, hope in the God who raised Jesus from the dead.
THE CHOICE TO GIVE THANKS
The psychologist Eric Erickson said there are only two choices we can make in life: we can either despair and give up hope; or we can accept what has happened and learn to integrate it into our lives. The only way to integrate, to make sense, is to give thanks. Thanksgiving calls God into the picture–not a far away God, but a God who walks the road with us; a God who is present now in our sufferings; a God who can always, always, transform bad things into better things; the God who stands over and above death and has secured life forever for you.
As Melody Beattie wrote, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” Paul, writing from prison, put it this way: “Have joy in the Lord always. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by praying and asking, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:4-7).
[1] David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness: The Heart of Prayer (New York: Paulist Press/Ramsey, 1984), 204.
[2] Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 57.
[3] Henri J.M. Nouwen, Seeds of Hope (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 182.