Armodoxy for Today: Advent and Thanksgiving

In America, the country takes a break every third week of November to celebrate Thanksgiving. And although the claim is made that the United States is a secular country, the word thanksgiving would have you believing otherwise.

Today, we celebrate Thanksgiving, and it is more than appropriate that if falls in the Advent period of the Church, since the corporate worship of the Church is rooted in the act of thanksgiving.

To give thanks implies there is someone, or something, to which you offer appreciation. And while it is fashionable to negate God from the conversation, thankfulness also implies the appreciation is directed toward someone or something greater than the self.

Jesus shares this story with us, “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’”  Jesus then tells us, “This man went down to his house justified rather than the other…” (Luke 18:10-14)

Often our thanksgiving resembles the prayer of the Pharisee. Unlike comparison shopping thankfulness is not about comparing things we do or do not have with those things that others have or do not have. It’s easy to look at the blind man and be thankful for our sight. Or to see the street person and be thankful that we are not homeless. Or hear of hunger in countries threatened by famine or war and be thankful that we have food and peace. Thank God, we might say, that I am not like them!

In the history of the Armenian Church, you find that the prayers of thanksgiving are offered at times of abundance as well as times of scarcity, at times of peace and at times of war and even genocide. Thankfulness is the ability to put the ego on hold, in check, and understand yourself as a part of something greater. It is the beginning of religiosity and ultimately peace.

Today, let our prayer be for those things that are blessed in our life – family, love, beauty. We pray Psalm 26. Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my mind and my heart. For Your loving kindness is before my eyes, and I have walked in Your truth. I will wash my hands in innocence so I will go about Your altar, O Lord, That I may proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all Your wondrous works. Amen.

Happy Thanksgiving.