Thanksgiving Eve
Beloved. Today we have the great privilege and joy of coming into the house of the Lord to give Him praise and thanks. And what makes this most remarkable is that this day of national Thanksgiving is a national holiday. Our government has decreed a day of national thanksgiving. To be sure, you would think that especially we, as Christians, would not need any special reminder and that we would be here with or without a “prompting” from the government. Or would we? Holy Scripture is full of the command to give thanks to the Lord. We see this especially in the psalms. The epistles exude the command/ invitation to give thanks. For example, St. Paul writes [1 Th. 5.16-18]: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. So why would God through His holy prophets and apostles have to include so often the command to the believer/ faithful to give Him thanks if thanksgiving was something that happened naturally/ something we as His faithful would do anyway? The short answer is: even we Christians don’t give the Lord thanks as we should and certainly not as often as we should. We all still have our old sinful nature with us that does not want to give the Lord thanks; that thinks that what we have we earned and deserved; that thinks [Dt. 8.17], My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.
But then there is our national day of thanksgiving. This day not only reminds us to give our Lord thanks, but it also calls us to repentance for our ingratitude and lack of true thanksgiving from the heart. This Thanksgiving Day, may we not only give our Lord thanks for His many blessings to us personally and as a nation—the intent of this national holiday—but may we also repent as we find a lack of thanksgiving in our heart, and led and empowered by the Holy Spirit may we strive from now on to live a life that recognizes the Lord’s grace and mercy to us in everything and give Him thanks for blessings small and great—and even for our trials and sorrows.
On Thanksgiving Day, our government tells us to give God thanks. This is a wonderful way in which we see God using the government as His instrument, working through it. Using His representative, God is reminding us to give Him thanks. Even to the unbelievers and those who think they and they alone are responsible for all the good things they have and enjoy, this national day of Thanksgiving is a jab and poke in the conscience. It reminds them that there is Someone to whom thanks must be given—not to themselves. That’s why there’s all these distractions, additions, customs, “dog and pony shows” attached to the holiday. But at the end of the day it is still Thanksgiving Day.
The psalm we are pondering this evening is a psalm of thanksgiving to God for His salvation and care of us. The harvest and thanksgiving portion of the psalm are at the end where we have lines like: You visit the earth and water it…You provide their grain…. You crown the year with Your goodness, and Your paths drip with abundance….The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered with grain; they shout for joy, they also sing. But today we look at the beginning of the psalm, which begins literally: To You silence is praise, O God in Zion. That is a very troubling phrase– Silence is praise. –There’s no great “Alleluias” being sung, spoken or shouted. Although St. Jerome in his Vulgate and Luther in his German translation handle it fine, our English translations struggle with it, trying to make it make sense/ making sure there is some “noise” or sound and come up with translations like: Praise is awaiting You, O God, in Zion, or Praise is due to you, or Praise waits for You in silence. But silence is praise is a huge theological point and a tremendous insight into true thanksgiving, which we as Christians want to render tomorrow and each day throughout the year. We tend to think of praise lots of noise and hoopla; the louder and the more commotion, the greater the praise/ thanksgiving. Yes, we offer up loud Alleluias to God; yes, we sing Him songs of praise; yes, we offer up vocal prayers of thanksgiving. But the best praise of God is not necessarily the loudest noise. Then look at the end of this psalm where we read: The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered with grain; they shout for joy, they also sing. What a beautiful picture of the inanimate creation praising God. They praise God because God so richly blessed them with flocks and grain. And how do they give God thanks, shout for joy [and] also sing? By going about, quietly and faithfully doing what God blessed them to do—produce in abundance.
To You silence is praise, O God in Zion, or as Luther translated it: O God, You are praised in silence. Obviously this does not mean that keeping quiet and not praising God for all His gifts and blessings—as sadly happens more often than not on Thanksgiving—is good and right. But, as St. David points out in this psalm: before God volume does not matter; but what does matter is the attitude of the heart. And what matters there? –Faith!
To You silence is praise, O God in Zion. Our highest and greatest praise, worship and thanksgiving is faith. Faith is that glorious gift of God by which we, in Spirit-worked faith say, “Yea and Amen!” to the gifts and blessings of God. And what does faith do? It simply and quietly receives what God wants to give us: forgiveness of sin, eternal life, peace, joy, every heavenly blessing. In faith, saying “Yes!” to the things of God is true thanksgiving because faith recognizes our need, despairs of self in trying to gain heaven and make self right with God, and is completely and utterly thankful that God, in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ rescued us from sin, death, devil and hell and says “Yes! Thank you! Thank you!” to the promise of God. But again, faith as faith is silent. Yes, there are the outward signs and evidences of faith—even loud alleluias—but faith as faith is in the quiet of the heart. To You silence is praise, O God in Zion.
Another way that silence is praise and thanksgiving is that we are in awe and amazement. On Thanksgiving Day, take some time to ponder and meditate upon God and His glory and majesty. He is the almighty Creator who made the world and everything in it. It is He who is keeping the world going. It is He who is providing us what we need, when we need it. He works through our work and the work of others to grant us every blessing that we are enjoying and thankful for. In His almighty power and knowledge, He is working all events/ weaving a wonderful tapestry for the spiritual good of all His dear Christians. Nothing is by chance or fluke; it is all the gracious working of our Lord in His almighty power for us, all part of His preserving work/ guardian care of us/ His creation. How that leads to awe and amazement and thanksgiving in heart and life. To You silence is praise, O God in Zion.
But don’t stop there. In the quiet, of your heart stand in awe and amazement as you ponder the grace and mercy of God toward us. Here He is—the almighty and holy God—and here we are, sinners worthy only of death and damnation. David writes in our psalm: Iniquities prevail against me; as for our transgressions, You will provide atonement for them. We, by our sins, rebel against God and are His enemies from conception and birth on and earn nothing but hell; but He turns to us a fatherly heart, and He Himself, the Son, the Second Person of the holy Trinity, becomes also true man/ one of us. He, the holy God-man, enters this world of sin and endures every wretchedness. He takes our sin upon Himself and goes to the cross loaded down with every sin ever committed and there suffers the wrath of God over those sins and pays the penalty for us. By this we are forgiven our sin, clothed with His holy righteousness, made heirs of heaven and reconciled and at peace with God. Our silence is praise as we ponder and meditate on this great mystery of the grace and mercy of the holy God to us sinners. We are silent in amazement and wonder as we in faith ponder these great mysteries. That’s exactly what St. Mary did at the time of Jesus’ birth [St. Luke 2.19,20]: we read that whereas the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, what was the holy mother doing? Silence. Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Our praise is silence; our silence is praise and thanksgiving.
To You silence is praise, O God in Zion. When we are silent, we can hear God’s word; when we are silent, we are not boasting of ourselves, we are not the center of our attention, but out attention is turned elsewhere—to our Lord, His work, His will, His Person. When we are silent we can actually hear God speaking to us in His word. How our hearts will be thankful not only on Thanksgiving but every day as we are silent hear our good and gracious Lord tell us of Himself, His love, mercy and grace toward us, His saving work. Silence is praise and because it is praise the devil and our old sinful nature don’t like it. We easily fill our lives with noise, sight, distractions and they drown out the voice of the Lord in His word wanting to teach us. And again, the more we hear and learn the Lord, the more aware and thankful we become to Him for all His gifts and blessings—physical and spiritual. Yes, silence is difficult; it has many enemies. But let us make use of silence to hear the Lord in His word; faith will grow as will our praise and thanksgiving to Him.
Silence is praise as by faith we calmly submit to the Lord’s will. As we submit to the Lord’s will, we give Him praise and thanks for the good and for what we think is the bad. That calm submission of the heart in silence is faith and it is, as difficult as it may be at times, praise to Him—praise by which He is exalted and thanked. Silence is praise because it is not murmuring or complaining or saying “the Lord has done me wrong.” When the heart is quiet in faith, it yields itself humbly and patiently to the Lord’s will and way. It bows before Him quietly and with complete confidence. That’s a reason why so many people are unthankful—their hearts are restless; they think they deserve better; they do not want to submit their will to the Lord and say “Thy will be done.” There is no silence—just complaining and malcontent. But the heart that submits itself to the Lord in complete confidence and is silent before the Lord, praising and thanking Him by that silence, hears the Lord’s comfort in trial and is strengthened until He grants deliverance. And what joy and thanksgiving there then is—both for the deliverance and strengthening.
Silence is praise because that silence is also longing for the Lord and His gifts. Our text: O You who hear prayer, To You all flesh will come. Blessed is the man whom You choose, and cause to approach You, that he may dwell in Your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your house, of Your holy temple. Dear Christian how blessed we are and what great cause we have for thanksgiving. We can come to the Lord’s house to offer Him our praise and thanksgiving. He has forgiven us our sin—the greatest reason we have for thanksgiving. What good is any other blessing if our sins are not forgiven us? Here in His church, gathered around our Lord’s word and sacrament, we are offering the greatest thanksgiving, as we are praising Him by our silence—silence as we receive these gifts in faith, as we meditate and ponder His person and work for us, hear His word, submit our hearts to His will and hunger and thirst for all that God’s grace gives us and satisfy our soul with it. To You silence is praise [and thanksgiving], O God in Zion. Happy Thanksgiving. INJ