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What is it that saddens your heart?  I suspect that for most of us, sadness finds us when we see pictures of children who are hungry, children who are without clothing or shelter, children who are abused.  Or sadness may find us when we’re disappointed by certain events in life.

When I was about eight or nine years old, Cecil B. DeMille’s movie, The Ten Commandments, was released.   You’ve probably seen it.  It’s shown on TV each year on Easter Sunday, which always seems a bit odd to me, but that’s when it typically appears.  Anyway, my mom and dad took me to see the movie and, at the end, I remember crying all the way home.  When my parents asked me why I was crying, I told them that it was because Moses didn’t get to cross the Jordan River and enter the Promise Land.  Instead, he dies atop Mt. Nebo.  

It seemed so sad, so unfair!  I mean, after all, here was Moses who had faced Pharaoh, the Egyptian king.  Here was Moses who had lived through the Ten Plagues.  Here was Moses who had led his people through the wilderness for forty years—and a cantankerous people at that!  And now, here was God telling Moses that he wasn’t allowed to enter the Promise Land.  It made me very sad indeed.

It also makes me sad when I run into people who have no idea whom to thank for all their blessings.  People who haven’t a clue that all good gifts come from the hand of a loving and generous God.  People who take and take and use and use and enjoy and enjoy, but who never give a thought to where these gifts come from. 

Such ingratitude deeply bothered old Martin Luther too, because in the margin of one of his Bibles, Luther once wrote that when we come to the dinner table and neglect to give thanks to God, we’re no better than the pigs that come to the trough, eat, leave, and never think about whom to thank.

Moses is also concerned about us forgetting this God who blesses and blesses.  In today’s First Reading, Moses and the Hebrew people are in the land of Moab, standing on the banks of the Jordan River, ready to cross over to the Promise Land.   The book of Deuteronomy, from which our reading comes, has been called “Moses’ Last Will and Testament.”  Before crossing over, Moses reminds the people of the blessings of God and of the challenges that await them.  God has journeyed with you throughout your forty years of wilderness wanderings, Moses reminds them.  God has given you the Ten Commandments to help guide your lives.  And now, Moses warns them, you’ll be crossing over into a land filled with people who have other customs, other ways of living life, even strange gods.  

But in so many other ways, this is an incredible land to which God is sending you, says Moses.  It’s a land with many challenges, but it’s also a land filled with so many good things: an abundance of water, which must have sounded like heaven to people who’d been in the desert for a generation.  A land filled with fertile fields and orchards that will produce in abundance.  A land filled with iron and copper so that you can make everything from pots to weapons.  A good, rich, abundant land.

Sound familiar?  Can you imagine what our ancestors thought when they landed on the eastern shores of our own country?  In some places forests as far as they eye could see.  Rivers and lakes teeming with fish.  Farm land so rich that it could produce crops the likes of which had never before been seen.  

And even though in the last 300 years so many have taken so much for granted; even though so many have used and abused the land, the water, and the air; even though these resources are limited, we nevertheless have been incredibly blessed with the gifts of the earth.  

Historically, you know, we’re a people of the land.  Probably most of us can, at some point, trace our heritage back to the land, back to those who tilled the soil.  We know that, but do our children?  When I was growing up, certain fruits and vegetables were only available at certain times of the year.  We looked forward to the peaches and raspberries and watermelon that came to us only in summer.  But now, now so many of those once one-season crops are available all year round.  It’s easier now, I think, to take those things for granted.

But taking the gifts of the earth for granted is exactly what we mustn’t do.  Moses warned his people at the Jordan River, and he warns us too.  “…do not forget the Lord your God,” he says.   When you come into this new land, Moses says, and have built your houses and eaten your fill—when you’ve met the basic needs of life; when your flocks and herds have multiplied—when you’ve achieved economic security—you’re in danger!  You’re in danger of exalting yourselves and forgetting the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and the house of bondage.  

Do not say to yourself, “My power and the
might of my own hand have gotten me this
wealth.”  But remember the Lord your
God, for it is he who gives you power to
get wealth….

Having a thankful heart is one sure way of not forgetting this God who blesses us with such amazing abundance.  And how sad for those who don’t know whom to thank, except themselves.

And a thankful heart is also a generous heart. We pray each day, “Give us this day our daily bread.”  But, you know, there’s a hidden parenthesis that follows this petition.  “Give us this day our daily bread, so that….  So that we may be fed, and so that our neighbor may be fed as well.

For God has basically two ways of feeding us: either directly or indirectly.  And, frankly, there aren’t too many of us anymore whom God feeds directly.  There aren’t any of us here this morning who work the land and plant the seeds and harvest the crops.  We’re totally dependent on others to feed us.  Long before we put food on our own tables, there’s the farmer, the co-op, the wholesaler, the grocer, and the journey we make to pick up our daily bread.  We’re totally interdependent.  

And just as we’re dependent on others, so others are dependent on us.  That’s why our food banks are so important.  That’s why we brought 6500+ pounds of food last year, and why we hope to bring another 6500 pounds—or more—this year.  So far we’ve brought over 5400 pounds of food, which means we have about 1100 pounds left to reach our goal.  Which, in turn, means that we have a real challenge for the first Sunday in December.

Thanksgiving for God’s multiplicity of blessings means having generous hearts.  It means that we know that all good gifts come from God’s open and generous hands.

But God doesn’t stop blessing us with his hands.  God also blesses us with his generous heart.  Moses reminds his people that God is generous because of his promise:  

…it is (God) who gives you power to get
            wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant
            that he swore to your ancestors….
That covenant given generations earlier to Abraham and Sarah:
            “…I will bless you,” God told them, “…and  
in you all the families of the earth will be      
blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3).

For God’s heart is always a heart of promise.  God’s heart is a gospel heart.  And as God blesses his creation out of his hands with daily bread, so God also blesses us out of his heart with the Bread of Life.  God blesses us with Jesus.  

It’s no accident that one of the names for the Lord’s Supper, for Holy Communion, is the word Eucharist.  The word means “thanksgiving.”  We gather at this Table and we offer our praise and thanksgiving because God has given us his heart in Jesus.  And in doing so, Jesus has given his life for our sake.  And in giving his life on the cross, He has given us life eternal, life that overcomes the power of sin, evil, and death.  And we are thankful.  

The Lord be with you.

        And also with you.



Lift up your hearts.

We lift them to the Lord.



Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

    It is right to give our thanks and praise.

(ELW, p. 107)

O course, we certainly don’t need a specific day on which to be thankful.  A thankful heart is a way of life, each and every day.  But setting aside a special day, a Day of Thanksgiving, that too can be a good thing.  For it’s a reminder to us of this God who delivered our ancestors from the bondage of slavery and brought them to the Promise Land, is also the God who has blessed us with every good and precious gift, the gifts of this hand, and the gift of his heart, Jesus our Lord.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.