Video of Matins is here. The sermon begins around the 19:45 mark.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What is the appropriate response to a gift given? If we think about the exchange of a gift and the gratitude in return, what makes one appropriate to the other? If you give a gift to someone, and that person does not acknowledge the gift or thank you for it, maybe the relationship isn’t what you thought it was. Or maybe there was a mistake. Or maybe there were good intentions, but those intentions were never made concrete. If you give gifts to your young children, you might try to teach them to say thank you, but you don’t expect them to give equal gifts to you. You receive their home-made or made-at-school gifts with gratitude because they’re from them, not because the gifts are so expensive. Between friends, there may be an expectation of returning the gift, roughly equal, even if you wouldn’t say it out loud. Gifts to your spouse are dangerous, aren’t they? What if your gift doesn’t match the cost or thoughtfulness of your spouse’s gift, or vice-versa? These various relationships revolve around gifts and gratitude in one way or another.

Sometimes it’s easy to receive gifts, but much harder to write a small note of thanks. My mother, for example, is always very good at writing thank-you notes. Her notes of thanks are, to this day, always timely, always thoughtful. I have no doubt she tried to teach me to do the same, and occasionally I succeed. But why should writing a note of thanks feel like a chore? Are we grateful? Do we appreciate the gift? Then why should expressing that be difficult? And then, because we know we should be grateful, we try to create opportunities for gratitude: we have “small business Saturday,” where we help the people who own businesses in our own community, instead of giving to huge commercial conglomerates; we have “Giving Tuesday,” where we can assuage a little of our guilt for spending so much on ourselves the Friday before.

At other times, receiving a gift can actually be a burden, because it seems to create an obligation of giving a gift in return. There’s actually a form of debt created, at least in our own minds, especially if the gift is an expensive one. We’re almost required to give an equal gift in return.

At still other times, the words “thank you” and a card don’t seem to cut it. The gift is so generous, so abundant, that no human words can fully express what we feel and what the gift means. No doubt you have received gifts like that. I have. I suspect the single leper who returns to Jesus must have felt like that. He comes back, giving glory to God in a loud voice, he falls on his face at Jesus’ feet, and he “gives thanks.” The gift of God is there, in the man, Jesus.

That word for “giving-thanks” is made up of two words: one is the word for “good.” We heard it last Sunday, translated as “well done,” spoken to the first two servants in Matthew 25. And the second part of the word is a word for “favor,” or “gracious gift,” or a “precious gift,” as a tangible sign of someone’s good will toward someone else. Actually, that second word, charis, where we get our English word “charisma,” can mean not only the gift, but also the gratitude. “Eucharist” is the English version of what the leper gives to Jesus. It is a good, or an appropriate, gratitude. It is fitting. Of course, even though it is called “a fitting gratitude,” the thanks that the leper gives does not match or equal the gift. After all, how could we, who are finite and temporary, give appropriate thanks to a God who has given us both temporal and eternal life? Unlike all the rest of our human relationships, the gifts we receive from God are so absolute, so complete, so all-encompassing—literally, everything—that there is no obligation that could properly be repaid. Not our life lived for Him, not our life lived for others, nothing. There is no repaying this “debt.”

God has made us and all creatures; He has given us our bodies and souls, eyes, ears, and all our members, reason and all our senses, and still takes care of them; and He gives us clothing and shoes, food and drink, houses and homes, wives, husbands, children, and everything else we have; He richly and daily gives us everything we need to support these bodies and this life; He defends us against all danger, and guards and protects us from all evil; He does all this purely out of His fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in us. For all this, it is our duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him (Small Catechism, First Article of the Creed Explanation).

Praising Him, returning to thank Him at all times and in all places, in every circumstance is the appropriate gratitude. How do we serve and obey Him? Not by giving Him something He doesn’t have, or something He needs from us. Well, God has organized everything perfectly. He gives to everyone what they need, but He does it through other people. There is not a single thing that you or I have received that doesn’t come, in some way, through someone else. All of it is from God, but it gets to us through other people, whether that’s a job that someone pays me to do; or farmers, truckers, and stores by which we get a lot of our food; or doctors and nurses who do the work that aims at our healing; or parents or spouses or governments. Some how, some way, everything we have comes to us through someone else.

It’s all a one-way gift from God, but between people it’s also always mutual; it goes back and forth. Giving thanks, practicing thankfulness, being reminded of everything for which we have to give thanks, is an ongoing training in outward righteousness. It is a habit that has to be formed in us. But the way it gets formed in us is that God keeps giving and giving, overflowing our cups—not only more than we deserve, but more than we even think to ask for. He gives and gives and gives some more. Of course, some people only focus on what they don’t have, or what other people have, or they give all the credit to themselves for what they have. But you are here because you know that there is no source other than your God, who has not only given you what you need for this body and life, but everything in Christ for this life and the eternal, resurrection life. Your eucharist is for the daily bread God gives you, but also the bread for the eternal Day, when Christ gave thanks and gave His body with the bread and His blood with the wine. His crucifixion as the offering for the sin of the whole world, and His resurrection life given to you in Word, baptism, absolution, and supper.Because of that eternal gift, even what we judge as evil or bad will come to nothing in Christ and the life He gives us. “O bless the Lord, my soul, nor let His mercies lie forgotten in unthankfulness and without praises die! ‘Tis He forgives thy sins; ‘tis He relieves thy pain; ‘tis He that heals thy sicknesses and makes thee young again. He crowns thy life with love when ransomed from the grave; He that redeemed my soul from hell hath sov’reign pow’r to save. … His wondrous works and ways He made by Moses known, but sent the world His truth and grace by His beloved Son” (LSB 814:2-4, 6).

To bless the Lord is not to give Him something He doesn’t have, as when He blesses us. It is to say, literally, a “good word,” and that “good word” is a “good gratitude,” an appropriate thanksgiving, where everything we have has been freely given to us, and God gives freely to all people through us. It is all gift, and it is all gratitude, for Jesus’ sake. “O bless the Lord, my soul! Let all within me join and aid my tongue to bless His name whose favors are divine” (LSB 814:1).

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 11/22/23