On Being Thankful
Sermon, November 26, 2004
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

“It is good to give thanks to God, to sing praises to Your name, O most High;
To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning, and Your faithfulness in the night seasons,
With an instrument of ten strings and with psaltery, with a solemn sound upon the harp.” 

The psalmist who wrote these verses knew what it meant to be thankful.  Our biblical ancestors understood the significance of the gifts that God bestowed upon them.  They showed their appreciation for these gifts with songs of praise, with words of joy, with offerings of gratitude. 

The rabbis developed this biblical tradition of thanksgiving by creating blessings of gratitude.  The Talmud teaches, “A person is forbidden to enjoy anything of this world without saying a blessing.  Whoever does so, commits an act of theft against God.”  (Berachot 35a) 

So before we drink wine, before we eat a meal, when we see a rainbow or lightning, when we hear good news, we are to say a blessing, we are to take a moment and acknowledge that we are grateful to God for the gifts we have received.  By instituting these blessings, the rabbis wanted to assure that we didn’t take things for granted. 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, reflecting on this important tradition, concluded that it is a serious sin to take things for granted.  He taught that being religious means looking upon the world with a sense of wonder or what he called “radical amazement.” 

Children seem to have a natural sense of wonder, an innate sense of amazement at the simple wonders of the world.  Each day is a new adventure, a new discovery.  Unfortunately, as we grow older, we lose this sense of wonder and amazement.  What was once extraordinary becomes ordinary; what once excited us now bores us.  It is time that we recapture our childhood sense of wonder, that we once again look at our world with a sense of radical amazement.

That is exactly the attitude of the Psalmist who exclaimed:  “When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your hands, the moon and stars that You set in place, what are humans that You have been mindful of us, human beings that You have taken note of us?”

Living in a post-scientific world, in which we understand so much more than our ancestors, it is difficult to maintain a sense of wonder.  And it is equally difficult to express our thankfulness for what we have. 

That is one reason that Thanksgiving is so important:  for it is a day we come together with all Americans to show our gratitude.  It is a day to be grateful for everything we have.  It is a day to be thankful for living in a great country in which we can freely practice our religion.  It is a day to be thankful for the rich bounty of our land.  It is a day to be thankful for the many blessings that God has bestowed upon us.

It is not always easy to be thankful.  When pain and suffering come our way, it is hard to show our appreciation for the blessings we do have.  In this week’s Torah portion, we read of the birth of the last of the sons of Jacob, Benjamin.  But, alas, his mother, Rachel, dies in childbirth.  Imagine Jacob’s mixed emotions, as he rejoices at the birth of his son, but mourns the loss of his beloved wife.  The text only tells us that he set up a pillar over Rachel’s grave and then journeyed on.  We can imagine that it was a painful, difficult journey, but one that brought him back to life, that enabled him to continue to thank and praise God for his blessings.

Like Jacob, we too need to continue to express our thanks to God, despite the pain and suffering that often comes our way.  We need to look upon this world with wonder and appreciation. 

Let me conclude with an adaptation of one of my favorite contemporary prayers:

Imagine a world without color, without regal red or leafy green, a world that bores the eye with gray.
We thank you God for all the colors in the rainbow, for eyes that are made for seeing and for beauty that is its own excuse for being.
Imagine a world without sound, a world where deathly silence covers the earth like a shroud.
We thank you, God for words that speak to our minds, for songs that lift our spirits and for all those souls who know how to listen.
Imagine a world without order, where no one can predict the length of the day or the flow of the tide.  Imagine a universe where planets leave their orbits and soar like meteors through the heavens and where the law of gravity is repealed at random.
We thank you God for the marvelous order of nature, from stars in the sky to particles in the atom.
Imagine a world without love, a world in which the human spirit incapable of caring, is locked in the prison of the self.
We thank you, God, for the capacity to feel happiness in another’s happiness and pain in another’s pain.

Let us thank God for all these wonderful gifts which allow us to appreciate and enjoy our magnificent world.

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