The Miracle of Giving Thanks

Some requested that I post the message that I shared at the Oxford-Orion Community Thanksgiving Service tonight... Here it is!

The Miracle of Giving Thanks

One day a year, a great number of Americans sit down to a meal and, before eating, they offer thanks to God… thanks for their provision, thanks for their health, thanks for friends and family, and for many other blessings. Whether or not your family is in the habit of giving thanks before every meal, Thanksgiving is one occasion when most families in our culture are sure to say some sort of formal grace. In this time when so many of our denominational barriers are being broken down through community celebrations like this one and through ministries like Love INC, I thought it was fitting to share with you some examples of how grace before meals is “done” across the body of Christ.

Popular in Ecumenical settings: God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food. Amen.

The variation I knew growing up: God is great, God is good, thank You for this tasty food (rhyming with good… parents took a dim view of this, I think because our giggles spoiled the solemnity).

? Good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat!

Echo. Thank you God for food…Amen!

Common Protestant grace: Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed. Amen.

Anglican. Bless, O Father, thy gifts to our use and us to thy service; for Christ’s sake. Amen.

Common in religious schools in the UK. For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.

Eastern Orthodox. O Christ God, bless the food and drink of thy servants, for holy art thou, always, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Wesleyan. Be present at our table Lord. Be here and everywhere adored. These mercies bless and grant that we -- may feast in fellowship with thee. Amen

Catholic. In the name… Let us pray. Bless us, O Lord, and these, thy/your gifts, which we are about to receive from thy/your bounty. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

One final blessing…

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haOlam, haMotzi lechem min haAretz

Pentecostal praying in tongues?? Well, sort of… it’s a known tongue though, and here is the translation...Blessed are You O Lord Our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth. Where is the blessing from? To best of our ability to know, this is quite likely the very Hebrew blessing spoken by Jesus before He broke five small loaves of bread and distributed them to 5,000 men on a hill in Galilee, thus performing the only miracle, apart from the resurrection, that is recorded in all four of the gospels.

Each gospel includes the fact that Jesus blessed or gave thanks for the bread before distributing it, and John even repeats this detail in 6:23 ("near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks") It seems there is something significant in this giving of thanks, something about this giving of thanks that was essential in the production of this tremendous abundance of life-giving bread.

So I wondered: If the giving of thanks was part of the miracle, in what way was it so? Was it the fact that Jesus prayed before the meal?

As it happens, prayer before meals was a well-established Jewish practice in Jesus' day, but it’s interesting to note that it is not commanded in the Bible Jesus knew (the OT). What is commanded is a blessing after the meal. We see this in Deuteronomy 8:10: "And thou shalt eat and be satisfied and shalt bless the Lord thy God for the goodly land which he has given thee." To this day, observant Jews fulfill this commandment by giving thanks after they eat. Both the Catholic and Orthodox practices also echo this Jewish fulfillment of the law, the Catholic blessing reading this way: “We give thee thanks, Almighty God, for all thy benefits, and for the poor souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, may they rest in peace. Amen.”

If the commandment is only to bless after a meal, how is it that grace before meals has taken such a place in our religion? Well, we know that the Jewish tradition came about because the Jewish sages before Jesus had established practices that enabled the Jew to go beyond the letter of the Law to express greater piety than was required. If it was required to express gratitude to God after a meal, to do so before the meal was a special, voluntary way to show love for God. As we see elsewhere in Scripture, we know that Jesus kept the commandment to pray after meals, but His example of grace before meals is more often seen in Scripture, just as we see in this story. Thus it makes sense that we would continue the tradition of grace before meals today.

But the fact that we pray before a meal seldom accompanies the sort of miracle we saw with the multiplication of the bread and fish.

So I considered, perhaps there is significance in the prayer itself. The prayer Jesus most likely prayed had already been established by Jewish tradition, so there was nothing earthshattering or magical in the words themselves. But there is something in this blessing that can instruct us today. Note that this blessing is not on the food, nor is it on the people. Some English translations indicate that the Lord broke the bread and blessed "it" but in fact that "it" is not in the Greek text. So who is the object of the blessing? Listen again…

"Blessed are YOU, O Lord our God, King of the Universe..."

As in the commandment in Deut 8 instructed, it is God who is blessed, not the food. The focus is on God Himself, not on us and not on what we have or what we lack. Let us learn from this a key to living an abundant life in Christ, and that key is having a singular focus on God. Let our focus be not on our circumstances, our own strengths, or our own shortcomings, but on our God, our Good Shepherd who IS king of the universe, able to provide for every need, and not only able, but WILLING, for it is His good pleasure to give to His children, not only what we need, but exceedingly abundantly beyond our need. Amen?

The very words used by the gospel writers when telling this story point to our need for a singular focus on God...

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all use a word from which we get the word "eulogy" which means, literally, to speak good words. Jesus took the bread... these 5 small loaves, clearly not enough to feed 5000 men...he took what was available, looked to heaven, and spoke good words about God. We can learn a lot here, as we consider what we have and what we seem to lack. Isn't it true that God is good, ALL the time? Can we not find GOOD words to say in any circumstance? Let us take care with our words, for we know that just as a small flame can set a forest ablaze, so the tongue, such a little part of the body, can bring much pain and destruction when it is not disciplined. "Life and death are in the power of the tongue" wrote King Solomon. We also know that in order to discipline the tongue, we must discipline the heart, because as Jesus told us, "the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart." Let us set our hearts on Christ, and like Paul, may we learn the secret of contentment in any situation... the secret that in Christ is found all the strength and all the grace we need for all things.

Now, in the fourth gospel, we read in 6:11 that “Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish “ … When John says Jesus “gave thanks” he doesn’t use “eulogeo” but instead he uses a word from which we get "eucharist" and, incidentally, from which we derive the term “saying grace.” “Charis” means grace, that is, something given as a gift, and to say grace, to practice a “eucharist” is literally to give a good response for a gift, for a grace, something undeserved. Simply put, it means to give thanks or to be thankful, and thus our Holy Communion is truly a "Eucharist" when we partake with gratitude the precious, unearned and undeserved gift of God, the Body of Christ broken for us, that we might have life.

Of course, this heart of gratitude ought to extend from that Communion to all circumstances, as Paul exhorts us to give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for us in Christ Jesus. Did you hear that? Giving thanks is God's will for us, not just because He "wills" to have people to tell Him how great He is, but because He knows what this heart of continual gratitude will yield... an abundant life, one that cannot help but overflow with richness to others, so that, like the disciples on that hill so long ago, instead of stretching too little among too many people, instead of hoarding what little blessing we have, instead of feeling like people are going to empty us of whatever we have… instead of lives of poverty, we find ourselves living lives of abundance, even collecting leftovers to sustain us far beyond what we thought we could endure.

What is this Miracle of Giving Thanks? Simply this: that even in our poverty... whether material or spiritual... even in our poverty, we find abundant life when we bless God in all things, when we gratefully pour out good words from a good heart, good not because of our own works, but because of the precious gift of God, Christ in us, the bread of life.

Thank You God, for this Food... Amen!