Thanksgiving Day

An Attitude of Dependence

Thanksgiving is a feel-good holiday. For most people, at least, it is about good times, family, and good food.

A clergy mentor of mine once told me that on holidays like this the only roll of the homily is to evoke that good mood. To evoke feelings of warmth, gratitude and the aroma of roasting turkey. Actually, at the time he was mostly talking about Christmas and Easter. And I generally agree with him. However tempting or important it may seem to a preacher, Christmas and Easter are not the times to rage against secular culture or to launch into a complex theological treatise on the nature of the incarnation or the resurrection.

But I just can’t do it on Thanksgiving. I just can’t preach a sermon that is evocative of a warm feast and nothing more. Any of you who come regularly to these services know that I really struggle with preaching Thanksgiving. The traditions of Thanksgiving are wonderful, but when we try to bring the holiday into the church, it gets very complicated. Fraught with all sorts of theological pitfalls.

One is a sort of spiritual smugness. A well-intentioned effort to be grateful that ends up focusing on the special gifts that have been given just to us. Spiritual smugness. Please be careful. It is one thing not to take for granted the gifts we have been given, however they have come to us. It is a good thing not to take for granted the special gifts we have been given. It is a very different thing to thank God for privilege and plenty that other people have been denied. Please think twice about thanking God for privilege and plenty that other people have been denied.

As I was stewing over this yet again this year, I remembered one of my favorite prayers in the Prayer Book. It wasn’t in the 1928 book; it’s one of the great additions to the current book. In seminary we called it the Charlie Price General Thanksgiving. Charlie Price had input in quite a bit of the current book. He wrote this prayer; it’s in the back with the extra thanksgivings. He was on the faculty at Virginia Seminary when I was there. (I’m thankful for having known and learned from Charlie).

The thanksgiving includes this line: "We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence upon you alone."

Every part of that sentence is important. We thank you. We give thanks. Not just for stuff we have, but for disappointments and failures. We give thanks for disappointments and failures. But not just because they are good for us. And not for all disappointments and failures. We give thanks for those particular disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge, to recognize, what is already true. That we are dependent upon God. God alone.

Disappointment and failure are not the only way to come to an acknowledgment of our dependence on God, but they do seem to be particularly effective.

So for Thanksgiving this year, to modify a popular cliché, I’m trying to cultivate, not an attitude of gratitude, but an attitude of dependence. An attitude of dependence upon God. To be mindful, aware of my dependence upon God for all that really matters.

And it’s a wonderful place to be. To be aware of dependence on God is a wonderful place to be. Not because it’s “character building” to be put in my place. Not because it’s some sort of spiritual “consolation prize” in times of personal failure. To rest and trust in God to provide what I truly need, maybe not everything I want, but to depend upon God to provide what I truly need is a wonderful attitude to live with.

I am reminded, too, of a line from one of my favorite hymns: “I came to Jesus as I was, so weary worn and sad; I found in him a resting place and he has made me glad.” He has made me glad. Even if you’re not weary worn and sad, resting in Jesus is a place of comfort, of gladness.

Dependence upon God means acknowledging that my happiness or success or fulfillment is not dependent upon the things or even the people of this world, but upon the love and presence of God with me. It is to find a place of surpassing comfort, peace and gladness. To acknowledge dependence on God alone eliminates the fear of loss. It eliminates anxiety about failure in the endeavors of the world. It is a place to rest in joy and hope.

This Thanksgiving, join with me in trying to cultivate an attitude of dependence. Dependence upon God alone.