There is a certain kind of thanksgiving that is relatively easy.
One can be thankful for autumn leaves.
Autumn leaves are wonderfully undemanding. They do not telephone during supper. They do not borrow your tools and forget to return them. They do not have strong opinions about how the dishwasher ought to be loaded. They simply turn magnificent shades of red and gold, flutter elegantly to the ground, and allow us to photograph them while saying things like, “Isn’t creation glorious?”
Creation is indeed glorious.
People, however, are more complicated.
And sooner or later, every serious attempt at thanksgiving must come to terms with the awkward theological fact that many of God’s greatest gifts arrive disguised as other human beings.
This is inconvenient.
We would perhaps prefer blessings that were more obviously blessings.
A spectacular sunset is clearly a blessing.
A perfectly roasted turkey is clearly a blessing.
A cup of coffee appearing at precisely the moment when one has begun to doubt the goodness of creation is practically sacramental.
But another person?
That requires discernment.
Because people come with opinions and habits and peculiarities. They interrupt. They misunderstand. They tell stories we have already heard. They occasionally stand in the middle of the grocery aisle with their cart positioned diagonally while apparently considering the entire philosophical history of canned tomatoes.
And yet Scripture stubbornly insists that human beings are among the principal means by which God chooses to love us.
This should probably make us suspicious of any spirituality that can appreciate God beautifully while finding humanity mostly irritating.
Jesus never taught us to love humanity in the abstract.
He taught us to love our neighbour.
That is considerably harder.
Humanity is a splendid concept. Your neighbour owns a leaf blower.
Humanity can be admired from a safe theological distance. Your neighbour has a name, a history, an opinion about municipal taxes, and occasionally needs your help moving a sofa.
The Gospel is relentlessly particular.
Jesus does not merely speak about compassion. He touches lepers.
He does not simply proclaim that children are valuable. He takes them into his arms.
He does not merely announce that sinners are welcome. He eats supper with them.
He does not teach his disciples to love an idealized version of the human race. He places them around tables with actual people.
And anyone who has ever attended a family Thanksgiving dinner knows that this may be among the more demanding forms of Christian discipleship.
There is always somebody.
Every family has one.
Indeed, if you cannot immediately identify who it is in your family, there remains the uncomfortable possibility that it may be you.
Perhaps that is why thanksgiving and humility belong together.
To give thanks for another person is not to pretend that they are perfect. Nor does gratitude require us to ignore wounds, excuse harmful behaviour, or remain in relationships that are unsafe.
Christian gratitude is not sentimental blindness.
It is the deeper recognition that none of us is self-made.
We have been carried.
Someone taught us.
Someone encouraged us.
Someone forgave us.
Someone opened a door.
Someone made supper.
Someone stayed when leaving would have been easier.
Someone believed in us during a season when we had temporarily misplaced the ability to believe in ourselves.
Someone prayed for us.
And quite often, we never completely knew what those gifts cost.
The older I become, the more I suspect that our lives are held together by thousands of small acts of love that never make the newspapers.
A parent packing lunches.
A friend sending a message at exactly the right moment.
A neighbour shovelling a little farther down the sidewalk than strictly necessary.
A parishioner quietly checking on someone who has not been at church.
A nurse remembering a frightened patient’s name.
A teacher staying ten minutes late.
Someone putting the kettle on.
None of these actions will cause historians to revise their textbooks.
Heaven, however, may keep rather different records.
Perhaps this is part of what Paul means when he describes the Church as the Body of Christ.
We belong to one another.
Not theoretically.
Actually.
The Christian life is not a private spiritual improvement programme in which Jesus helps me become a slightly nicer version of myself.
We are being gathered into a people.
And that means some of the grace God intends for me will arrive through you.
And, rather alarmingly, some of the grace God intends for you may arrive through me.
This is why gratitude changes relationships.
When we begin to look at the people around us with thanksgiving, we stop asking only, “What do I need from them?”
We begin asking another question:
“What has God already given me through them?”
That question can change a marriage.
It can change a friendship.
It can change a parish.
It can even change the way we remember someone who is no longer with us.
Because gratitude teaches us to notice the inheritance of love.
Perhaps your grandmother taught you to cook.
Perhaps your father taught you patience.
Perhaps a teacher discovered something in you before you discovered it yourself.
Perhaps an old friend taught you how to laugh at yourself.
Perhaps someone who died years ago still influences the way you welcome strangers, set a table, say your prayers, tend a garden, or face adversity.
Love leaves fingerprints.
Long after the hand itself has disappeared from sight.
And thanksgiving teaches us to look for them.
There is also another possibility worth considering.
While we are busy remembering the people for whom we are thankful, somebody may be quietly thanking God for us.
That thought ought to humble us.
Perhaps you were the person who made the telephone call.
Perhaps you were the one who listened.
Perhaps you brought the casserole.
Perhaps you noticed.
Perhaps you remembered a birthday.
Perhaps you sat beside someone in a hospital waiting room when there was absolutely nothing useful to say.
You may have forgotten the moment entirely.
They may never forget it.
Grace has a remarkable habit of travelling through ordinary people who do not realize they are carrying it.
Which means that one of the finest Thanksgiving prayers might be very simple:
“Thank you, God, for the people through whom you have loved me.”
And then name them.
Slowly.
The living and the dead.
The family we were given and the family we discovered along the way.
The teachers.
The friends.
The neighbours.
The colleagues.
The parishioners.
The strangers who appeared briefly and left something good behind.
Perhaps even the difficult people who taught us patience, courage, boundaries, forgiveness, or the important spiritual discipline of occasionally keeping one’s mouth closed.
Thanksgiving becomes deeper when gratitude acquires names.
Because eventually we discover that grace has rarely travelled toward us alone.
It has arrived carrying groceries.
It has arrived in handwritten notes.
It has arrived with terrible jokes.
It has arrived wearing work boots, hospital scrubs, clerical collars, gardening gloves, aprons, business suits, and occasionally slippers.
It has sat beside us.
It has laughed with us.
It has wept with us.
It has annoyed us.
It has forgiven us.
It has loved us.
And through all these wonderfully imperfect people, God has been quietly saying:
“You were never meant to travel alone.”
So sometime today, perhaps before Thanksgiving arrives with its turkey and potatoes and the annual theological controversy over whether cranberry sauce ought to retain the shape of the tin, think of someone through whom God has made your life better.
And if they are still alive, tell them.
Do not assume they know.
Gratitude becomes particularly beautiful when it stops being something we feel and becomes something another person can hear.
Because sometimes the most faithful way to say, “Thank you, God,” is to turn toward another human being and simply say:
“Thank you for being part of my life.”
And perhaps that is one of the great discoveries waiting for us at the Thanksgiving table.
The greatest blessings around it may not be on the table at all.
They may be sitting in the chairs.
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Companion Prayer
Gracious God,
Thank you for the people through whom your love has found its way into our lives:
for those who have carried us, encouraged us, challenged us, forgiven us, and stayed beside us.
Give us eyes to recognize the quiet gifts of love we too easily overlook, and hearts generous enough to express our gratitude while there is still time to say it.
For those we love, for those we miss, for those who have shaped us, and even for those who have taught us through difficulty, we give you thanks.
Make us, in turn, instruments of your grace, so that someone else may encounter your kindness through us.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.