It’s been over twenty years ago, but I still remember an observation by my friend and colleague, Pr. William Weedon, in the course of our work together on the Lutheran Service Book project, that when everything is a gift, then all that remains for us to do is thanksgiving. Whether that was his own way of putting it, or whether he had gotten it from others, it was from Pr. Weedon that I first heard it, and I am certainly thankful for that gift. It is both simple and profound, and it cuts to the heart of the matter, that every good and perfect gift is from above, and that we live, not by any merit or worthiness of our own, but by the goodness and mercy of our Father in heaven.
Returning thanks for the good and gracious gifts of God is something that the Small Catechism teaches us to do after meals, of course, but I learned that practice especially from my Grandpa & Grandma Stuckwisch, not only from when we’d visit them on holidays, but especially from the time we lived with them in Seymour, Indiana, while my Dad was at the Seminary in Fort Wayne. It wasn’t until I was at the Seminary myself that I put two and two together and realized that the prayer of thanksgiving we said with my grandparents after every meal was from the Catechism. But the actual practice of returning thanks was significant, and it taught me something salutary.
The “meet-right-and-salutariness” of thanksgiving is actually all over the place in the Epistles of St. Paul. I had a sense of that from my own reading and study of the Scriptures, to be sure, but a book by David W. Pao, Thanksgiving: An Investigation of a Pauline Theme (InterVarsity, 2002), confirmed what I had noticed. Dr. Pao is not a Lutheran, and I did not agree with him on every point, but he demonstrates how persistently the Apostle exhorts his readers to give thanks. And that is in perfect continuity with the fact that the Gospel itself is such an utter gift of God’s grace. As we stand on the receiving end of all that God does and says and gives to us in Christ Jesus, it is certainly the case that our faith toward God and our fervent love for one another is expressed and exercised in and with thanksgiving.
In one of my all-time favorite Pauline passages, the Apostle asserts that “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the Word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:4-5). That very point is preeminently exemplified in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, in which ordinary bread and wine are consecrated by the Word of God to be the Body and Blood of Christ, then given and poured out for us Christians to eat and to drink in faith and with thanksgiving (eucharistia). We give thanks in the celebration of the Sacrament, not only in following the example of our Lord Jesus Himself, who gave thanks to the Father in His institution of the Holy Supper, but also because it would hardly be appropriate to receive such tremendous treasures as He gives us in the Holy Communion without returning thanks. As Dr. Marquart once expressed it, only a cad would not say “thank you” for such gifts!
Such thanksgiving is appropriate, not only for the Lord’s Supper at the heart and center of the Church’s faith and life in Christ Jesus, but so also for all that our gracious Father in heaven daily and richly provides for this body and life on earth, and for the Life everlasting of body and soul in Paradise hereafter. “For all this, it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him,” as the Small Catechism teaches already in its explanation of the First Article. Indeed, the administration of the Lord’s Supper with thanksgiving, sanctified by the Word of God and prayer, catechizes us in the Christian way and manner of life. Our bodies and souls, eyes, ears, and all our members, our marriages, homes, and families – and all that is meant by and included in our daily bread – all of these good gifts are rightly received with thanksgiving, which we offer to the Father in the Holy Spirit through our merciful and great High Priest, the incarnate Son, Christ Jesus.