Giving thanks

 This Sunday was Thanksgiving Sunday in Canada. As I have mentioned here, and in a sermon or two, I tend to pay little or no attention to the non-church calendar and instead focus on the church (or liturgical) calendar. This Sunday I ended up preaching about thankfulness, the sermon title was the question, “What are we thankful for?”

What makes it a bit more interesting is that our texts don’t really talk about thankfulness all that much. We have one of the pillars of general revelation in Psalm 19, the ten commandments, Paul talking about himself and Jesus telling another dangerous parable. Where does thankfulness or Thanksgiving come in? The Bible does talk about giving thanks and being thankful in several places but something struck me about how we are thankful. I realized that there are times when, if I am asked what I’m thankful for, I put it in terms of what other people might think I should be thankful for. From there I considered what people who observed Paul might think he would be thankful for.

The Philippians passage lets us see the outer image, at least one of them and inner desires of Paul and the two are quite different. The question I talk about is, what would Paul be grateful for: the outer or the inner? Give it a listen and let me know what you think. Also, I think I have come up with the best analogy to help us understand what it might have meant to be a Pharisee ever!

Knox Presbyterian What are we thankful for? (to download, right click and select “Save Link As . . .”)

St. Mark’s Presbyterian What are we thankful for? (to download, right click and select “Save Link As . . .”)

Blessings,