A Sermon for Trinity 20 (Thanksgiving Sunday)
October 13, 2024 at Holy Communion
Ephesians 5:15–20, Matthew 22:1–14
“Make the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16). In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ☩ Amen.
I’ve been saying to many people over the past few days that, although Christmas is delightful, and Easter is the well from while I draw my very life, Thanksgiving has a special place in my heart. Every year, I want to take this funny little half-holiday—half sacred, half secular, half a vacation and half just a little extra pause—and build it up into one of the great occasions of the year.
As backwards as this may seem, one of the reasons it is so important for the church to celebrate Thanksgiving is that it is a secular holiday. What we’re celebrating is not an event in the life of Christ, not a moment in the history of the church, but the simple blessings that God rains down on the good and the bad alike. We celebrate God as the Creator, the Maker, the Provider—which he always was, even before we knew him as the God incarnate in Jesus. We remember that the life of the church is just one moment in a bigger drama of God and his world.
But with all the good feelings floating around for Thanksgiving, there’s a line in our Epistle might catch in the throat. “Make the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16). The days are evil? Haven’t we just celebrated that, through God’s provision, our days are full of joy and our every real need is met? What does it mean that “the days are evil”?
We find the beginnings of an answer in one of our beloved Thanksgiving hymns, “Come, ye thankful people, come.” As I reflected on this hymn this week, I realized that it’s not exactly a Thanksgiving hymn. The first stanza does suggest that we sing it after the harvest, certainly.
Come, ye thankful people, come raise the song of harvest home!
All is safely gathered in ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied.
Come to God’s own temple, come, raise the song of harvest home.
But then the rest of the hymn is devoted to presenting one of Jesus’ parables, the one in Matthew 13 (v. 24–30) which describes the world as a field in which a man sowed seed, but his enemy sowed weeds, which the farmer waited until the harvest to separate. Yes, it is the parable using an image harvest, but it’s point is important year-round, and, in fact, that reading is assigned five weeks from now at the very end of the church year. Listen carefully to the next two verses of the hymn:
All the world is God’s own field, fruit unto his praise to yield;
wheat and tares together down, unto joy or sorrow grown.
First the blade, and then the ear, then the full corn shall appear.
Lord of harvest, grant that we wholesome grain and pure may be.
For the Lord our God shall come, and shall take his harvest home;
from his field shall in that day all offenses purge away;
give his angels charge at last in the fire the weeds to cast;
but the fruitful ears to store in his garner evermore.
This is actually one of Jesus more angular parables; it has a hard edge, because it is effectively a parable of coming judgement. The good and the bad grow together in this field of the world, but at the harvest they will be separated.
So when our Epistle says that “the days are evil,” it means that, although we may have the physical harvest of the fields behind us, we are still living on this side of the great harvest at the end of the age. The days are evil because we live in a time of ambiguity. We see the first sprouts of real gifts which the Master planted in this field which will grow and ripen and endure to eternal life. But we also live in a field where too often the good plants are choked by weeds. We live in a world where relationships rupture. We live in a world where our entanglement in society so often means that we are, even if remotely, complicit in violence. God will come and sort this whole mess out, but he hasn’t yet.
Every day Christian pray to their Father: “Thy kingdom come.” The kingdom of God is a kingdom which is to come, a kingdom for which Christians wait. Even though the kingdom is in one sense already among us because we gather in Jesus’ name to live according to the principles of the kingdom (Luke 17:21), we would make a terrible mistake to think that our first faltering attempts at kingdom life were the real thing.
If we believe that these days are evil, it is only because we also believe that the goodness of the Lord will overwhelm this world like a flood. “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). And if we believe that these days are dark, it is only because we also believe that we’ve seen the first hints of dawn that will bring to light every thing hidden in the darkness of this ambiguous world (Luke 8:17). “The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed” (Romans 8:18).
St Paul’s point, though, is not to get us down because the world is not yet what it will be. “Because the days are evil,” he says, “make the best use of the time.” If you know that the harvest is coming, it makes little sense to fritter away your time watering all the little weeds in your garden. They’ll be pulled up any day now. Give yourself to things that will last, to the plants which God will gather into his barn when he comes. Paul says that singing “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,” having a song in your heart that’s just for God, and “giving thanks always” (Ephesians 5:19–20) is worth your time. Praise and thanksgiving is not a weed that will be plucked up and thrown into the fire.
This is the point of today’s parable as well. When the king invites you to a wedding feast for his son, anything else you might be doing immediately becomes a waste of time; and any resistance to the invitation becomes foolishness at best, or wickedness at worst. Everyone in this field of the world is invited, “both bad and good” (Matthew 22:10), but the important thing is to put on your best and celebrate the occasion the way it deserves to be celebrated.
Our Harvest Thanksgiving, the ordinary blessings of secular life which we give thanks for, the joy we share around the table: these are all signs the final harvest and the kingdom banquet. We celebrate not just in gratitude, but in hope. For Christians who know where this whole show is going, nothing is more urgent than getting ready for that celebration, even by beginning it here below as best we can.
Even so, Lord, quickly come to thy final harvest home!
Gather thou thy people in, free from sorrow, free from sin;
there forever purified, in thy presence to abide.
Come with all thine angels, come, raise the glorious harvest home.
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