October 12 2025 Sermon
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Cathy and I enjoyed a modest little Thanksgiving meal in our home yesterday with Cathy’s dad. It was strange to cook only a turkey breast rather than a full turkey, but with just three of us around the table it made sense. Despite our small number, it was right for us to give thanks. Giving thanks, expressing gratitude, is a part of what makes us human. From time immemorial people have given thanks for the harvest. Brené Brown in her book Atlas of the heart defines gratitude an emotion that reflects our deep appreciation for what we value what brings meaning to our lives and what makes us feel connected to ourselves and others.
Our ancient ancestors would have felt the emotion of gratitude after the long hunt resulted in killing prey that could be taken back to feed a hungry family. But positive emotions like gratitude wear off quickly. Our emotional systems like newness, they like novelty, they like change. We adapt to positive life circumstances so that before too long the new car, the new spouse, the new house – they don’t feel so new and exciting anymore. But practicing gratitude makes us appreciate the value of something and when we appreciate the value of something, we extract more benefits from it; we’re less likely to take it for granted. Robert Emmonds, a leading scientific expert on gratitude tells us that gratitude allows us to participate more in life. When we practice gratitude, we notice the positive more, and that magnifies the pleasures we get from life.
The Anglican harvest festival tradition was popularized in 1843 by Reverend Robert Hawker in Morwenstow, Cornwall, who held a thanksgiving service with bread from the new harvest. This modern tradition grew from biblical harvest celebrations like that described in today’s old testament passage from the book of Deuteronomy. The Israelites were commanded to offer up a portion of the first fruits of the promised land as a thanks offering to God. Harvest Thanksgiving officially became part of the Church of England calendar in 1862, spreading throughout the church in the following years. There was wisdom to incorporate thanksgiving for the harvest in a world in which more and more people lived in cities and had less connection with the land.
As we gather today, we given thanks not only for the harvest, we gather for the Sunday Eucharist. The Greek meaning of Eucharist is “thanksgiving”. The word comes from the Greek term eucharistia, which also means “gratitude”. This meaning is rooted in the accounts of the Last Supper in the New Testament, where Jesus is described as giving thanks over the bread and wine before breaking it. Jesus exemplifies not only and attitude of gratitude, but commands us to practice gratitude, not just for bread and wine, but for himself, the bread of life. In today’s gospel Jesus speaks to some people who are following him because they ate their fill of the bread he gave them through a recent miracle of the feeding of the 5000. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. Jesus offers us himself as gift. In our Eucharist we give thanks. We cultivate gratitude and gladness. But it doesn’t stop here in this place.
Frederick Buechner says “The place God calls us to is the place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” St Paul, in his letter to the Philippians invites the followers of Jesus to lean into their deep gladness, their gratitude. He advises them to relish their own unique gifts and charisms, and to utilize those gifts among their families, neighbourhoods and faith communities in ways that feed people’s deepest hungers. Can you name your place of deep gladness? Can you identify where your deep gladness nourishes and responds to the world’s deep hunger…for food, for shelter, for safety, for love, for dignity, for reconciliation, for God? In identifying and responding to this call, in committing to the life’s work for food that does not perish, our hearts will swell with gratitude for the countless blessings that God’s bestows upon all of creation.
Now let us turn in faith and thanksgiving to God as we continue our worship and receive the bread of life.