Given Victory

Given Victory--November 22, 2018

"The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." [1 Corinthians 15:56-57]

The work of winning is God's.  The role of receiving the gift with gratitude is ours.

Call it the division of labor in the divine economy.

On this day when our culture pauses--barely, since there are midnight sales to be attended to!--to hold off on business-as-usual in the name of giving thanks, it is worth remembering that from the standpoint of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, gratitude is our full-time calling, while God is the one who wins the victory for which we give thanks.

We have a way of turning this day into a celebration of our own gratitude--a day to focus on how good we are (or how guilty we should feel if we are not so good) at saying thank you, at expressing gratitude, and at living appreciatively.  But focusing on our actions or words of giving thanks misses the point.  To give thanks, rightly at least, is always to point our attention beyond ourselves and to the Giver of good (like recklessly good) gifts.  And that isn't for just a couple of hours while the turkey is on the table, or for a whole day from the start of the parade until the last play of the fourth quarter of the football games.  Gratitude is not one square in the patchwork of our yearly calendar--but it is the very fabric of our whole lives.  And that is simply because gratitude is a practiced awareness that we are the recipients of gifts we did not earn, of a victory we did not win ourselves, and of a life that was handed to us for free, not by our own effort, but by the labor of our mothers who birthed us into the world.  

Everything is a gift.  All is grace.  It is only fitting (or, as we sometimes say in church-speak, "indeed right and salutary") that our whole lives be an echo of gratitude.  Gratitude is the recognition that this life I am living is not my accomplishment (for which I would pat myself on the back), but a gift.  It is a realization that the people who risk loving me are not things I have earned, but channels of God's own daring love for me.  It is a realization that the bread I will break today is no less a miracle of grace than the manna given in the wilderness day by day to the freed Hebrew slaves.  God does the work of saving, of providing, and of winning the victory.  My calling is simply to receive with thanks--no more and no less.

Receiving God's good gifts with thanks, however, of course means recognizing that the good things in front of me are not mine to hoard, because they are not my achievements--anymore than happening to sit in front of the bowl of mashed potatoes at dinner makes all of them mine.  They have been set in front of me to be enjoyed, yes, but to be enjoyed by all.  Passing the potatoes is part of what it means to receive a place at the table as a gift. Gratitude means understanding the intention of the Giver is to share it with everybody else, while they also share the stuffing, the turkey, and the cooked carrots.  Gratitude means freedom from the fear of scarcity, which allow my anxiously clenched fists to let go and share. We did not earn or achieve the feast--ours is to receive, and to share so that everyone else can receive, too.

It is true when it is potatoes and turkey, and it is true when we are talking about the promise of resurrection life in Christ.  Jesus has done the hard work of dying, the difficult task of laying down his life as a gift, the long labor of giving us birth.  Ours is to receive the gift, so that our whole life becomes the passing of the potatoes, the handing off of the turkey, and the sharing in the celebration to which we have been invited.

For us, it is not a single day.  For us it is every breath of every day.  For us, every moment can be a thanks--not just for a meal, but for life beyond the grip of death and a love that will not let us go.  

Thanks be to God, says Paul, who gives us the victory.  Yes.  Thanks be to God always.