Thanksgiving Can Transform Your World
by Rev. Cory Coberforward
Readings
Matthew 8:1-17
When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.” Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?” The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment.
When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him.
When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.”
Psalm 95:1-7 (responsive reading for live service)
Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.
For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
Read the written message below with music videos
We as individuals would have nothing if it weren’t for many others. Without animals, insects, other people, the universe, God(dess), we would not be here. The reality of this is presented in every moment, whether through the road we drive on or the salad (pollinated by insects) that we’re eating! Of course, even our very body is an endless expression of this. We have much to be thankful for. And yet, these things are often the easiest to overlook even when they are the most profound things about life. We take for granted what we are used to, often seeking to force a bit more compliance out of something that has served us, strongly wishing that things would be a tad bit more perfect (to us). Thankfully, this year for Canadian Thanksgiving we seek to upend this tendency for unthankfulness a bit! So, let us give thanks.
Thanksgiving is an interesting thing. A time when we gather with family and friends to give thanks, and yet sometimes a time when we’re presented with the greatest challenges. Family isn’t always easy. It can be tough to sit across from someone who strongly disagrees with us on something, especially when they can’t help but keep bringing it up! Often, we wish for the peace of pre- or post-Thanksgiving – something else to eventually be thankful for this week!
But these kinds of challenges are a cryptic gift in a way. Think about all the things that have brought you to that moment where you can actually care about that offhand remark, that misgiving, that problem. Think about what you’ve overcome and lived through! And with infinite days ahead of you (according to all the world’s sages), even this shall pass.
I can’t help but think about our reading from Matthew 8 today. In fact, the entire chapter is the same: it depicts Christ performing miracle after miracle, but never once do those receiving the miracles thank Jesus (perhaps he was getting paid for them). Of course, this may be an omission on the author’s part, not thinking of a Swedenborgian pastor’s needs for Thanksgiving, but it also serves as an interesting case study for us. We can easily become so accustomed to the miracles around us that there are no thanks given! And for that (among other things), I give thanks for Matthew 8.
Although it may be hard to imagine anyone not giving thanks after one of these miracles – I’m sure they were quite thankful – we can each remember many times that we’ve offered of ourselves and perhaps performed a quiet, personal miracle, and yet those on the receiving end were less than pleased. In a way, our own tendency for thanklessness puts us on the other side of this coin as well, not realizing how unthankful and, perhaps, blind our sometimes-judgmental posture has become. We often do this because we care, we want things to be better, and yet, we miss the plank in our own eye for the speck in another’s! Thankfulness quite literally changes the world that we see and live in.
It fascinates me that no matter how important we think an issue is, our thanklessness can often be called just as big, the plank versus the speck of dust. In a moment of thanklessness, we miss the entire universe, and we forget that the Great Spirit moves within all things. Our challenges test our thankfulness and sense of love and joy, but they also help to embolden it, as in the aftermath of our initial reactions we can start to allow wisdom and compassion to transform how we hold something. This brings us to a place of greater peace and joy. Thanklessness can teach us the importance of thanksgiving.
Christ’s story also serves to highlight the risks of continuing thanklessness, perhaps leading us to a place where we could even try to kill God and the innocence in another. And as we learn in Christ’s story, this can seem somewhat mundane to us at the time – just another largely thankless act in the midst of a sea of them. As Christ said, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do!” In fact, in our sense of thanklessness, we can feel the most thankful when we act on our ignorant impulses – happy that “that thing” has been taken care of or feeling a passing semblance of peace after a hurtful impulse has been catered to because our minds can finally rest for a moment.
But true rest is closer than we can imagine, we don’t have to cater to our thankless impulses. What’s funny is that we can’t just conjure consistent thankfulness – because in a way it’s already here! We have to learn to rest into it, which can take some time. It involves returning to what many scriptures call prayer or a type of active contemplative meditation, building a habit of remembering our source. Call it Life, the Universe, God, Spirit, Jesus, Krishna, or consciousness, we all share a fundamental source that unifies us – something beyond words and perhaps more present than we give it credit for. Christ tells us to turn within to get to know this source, our “Father” as he puts it. To find it, sages sometimes ask questions like, “What is the parent to every thought and feeling? What comes before our ideas and perceives them, even our idea of what we are?” These types of leadings direct us back to our source and they pull our attention from entirely being invested in a world of “separate things.” Through following these types of leadings, we come to see that all “separate things” and our issues arise within a clear, open consciousness, something we share with all beings. Christ’s tactic was often telling us that heaven is within us and in our midst, inviting people to let go of hurtful habits and attachments and instead, turn to love and our natural unity with others.
We hear similar pointings in different ways from other sages. The great scientist turned mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, believed that God is at the core of every heart and every life. In the spiritual world, this is represented by God appearing as a sun above (read: within) every being – even those who choose hell, although they can’t clearly perceive that due to where they’ve chosen to live. The light from this sun is the love (heat) and wisdom (light) of life, and it not only allows us to see other spiritual things in heaven and elsewhere, but it invigorates us with consciousness: what we often call the love and wisdom that is life itself. It is from this energy that our spiritual lives are formed, and ultimately, our physical reality. But even from a Swedenborgian lens, what we often miss in this clear equation is our natural unity with God, the very core of our being and the source of our very light.
Now, I don’t expect anyone to believe or agree with Swedenborg, but it is food for thought! He would often write that “of ourselves” we are nothing, which is because the idea that anything can be “of ourselves” is indeed nothing! It is just an ignorant belief that may mislead our thinking and behavior for a time. Thankfully, we can give thanks that our very being and life are sourced in a loving God who empowers all, but who also invites us actively to turn toward greater peace and heaven within. In the midst of our unthankful moments, we can start to pull our attention toward “praying unceasingly,” noticing and remembering our oneness through God’s light and the natural thankfulness that brings.
I’m thankful for these opportunities offered by God, and I’m thankful to you, dear reader. I’m thankful for this community and for this earth; for their challenges, which are opportunities, which are gifts among so many infinite gifts. I hope to be more thankful for these. And I hope that we all follow the wisdom of so many sages across millennia, performing miracles out of their own thanksgiving for life, inviting us all to turn within toward love, joy, peace, and a little more thanksgiving.
Peace is within you,
Cory