Series on the Divine Liturgy, Part 2

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Oops!

What do you do when all your hard work goes unnoticed? What do you do when others reject good things you’ve done for them? Those were the questions God had to ask himself after freeing his own people from slavery in Egypt.

Two weeks ago, I spoke about how God acted to free the Israelites. But after he freed them, he did not abandon them. Yes, they were in the harsh wilderness, but he took care of them. 

He gave them instructions for life on Mt. Sinai. He showed them the way to the Promised land by means of a cloud and fire. He fed them with manna from heaven, and he quenched their thirst by giving them water from the rocks. 

Yet, all this went unnoticed by the Israelites. 

When they approached the Promised Land, Moses sent twelve spies to scout the land of Canaan. The spies returned with a report that the land was indeed fruitful but inhabited by strong people and fortified cities.

Despite all the miracles and provisions they had experienced, the Israelites were afraid of the inhabitants of Canaan. They responded with fear and ingratitude, complaining against Moses and Aaron, and lamenting that they had ever left Egypt. They even expressed a desire to return to Egypt, saying, “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this wilderness!” (Numbers 14:2).

Can you imagine after everything God had done to give you a better life, telling him, “Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather be a slave building the pyramids.”

What!?!?!

The ingratitude of the Israelites is astounding! It’s no wonder God punished them by making them wander in the desert for 40 more years until that unthankful generation had passed away.

Ugh!

Ingratitude isn’t just an emotion that others direct at us. We too can be ungrateful towards others, or ungrateful for what we have, or ungrateful for the experiences life gives us.

May may think we deserve better, or that someone is doing what they’re supposed to, or we feel that no one has earned our gratitude, so we put on a tough exterior and bottle up our gratitude instead of sharing it.

When we do this, there are grave consequences.

Spiritually, gratitude is essential for finding contentment and peace. Without being thankful we become separated from our faith, from God, and from our faith community. In place of all this, we can become self-centered and egotistic.

Emotionally, research has shown that gratitude is strongly correlated with increased happiness. Without it, we can foster feelings of bitterness, resentment, and dissatisfaction. As a result, we may become withdrawn from our friends and family members.

And, as if negative spiritual and emotional consequences weren’t enough, there are also physical consequences. Our immune system can be bolstered by gratitude. So, with out it, we can have higher stress levels. In turn, this may mean an increased risk of conditions such as heart disease, hypertension, and depression.

If those Israelites were harboring a lot of ingratitude as they wandered around the desert, it may not have taken all 40 years for them to all pass on!

Aha!

Two weeks ago, I spoke about how the Liturgy is a remembrance of the Great Passover, of how Christ trampled down death by death bestowing life upon us all. Through Liturgy, we both remember how God has acted in the past, and we remember how he will act in the future … yes, we’re remembering a future event.

Today, part two of our series, we see how the Liturgy is also our ultimate act of gratitude: our thanksgiving to God for what he has done and will do to set us free and restore us to health.

In this sense, the Divine Liturgy is our response to remembering what God has done for us.

Whee!

You’re recall that, at one point, I come out of the altar facing all of you. I lift up my hands and proclaim, “Let us lift up our hearts.” After you respond, I then say, “Let us give thanks to the Lord.” Do you remember what your response is? It’s, “It is proper and right [to give thanks].”

The prayer that follows this hammers home the centrality of gratitude in the Divine Liturgy. I realize you don’t always get to hear this prayer, as it’s often said silently by the priest, so let me recite a portion of it here:

“It is proper and right to hymn You, to bless You, to praise You, to give thanks to You, and to worship You in every place of Your dominion.”

Right away, the prayer acknowledges that worship is a complex thing, but it includes the act of thanksgiving. The next part of the prayer explains what we’re giving thanks for:

“You brought us out of nothing into being, and when we had fallen away, You raised us up again. You left nothing undone until you had led us up to heaven and granted us Your kingdom, which is to come.”

If you are unsure that this is the reason, the prayer circles back around to gratitude.

“For all these things, we thank You and Your only-begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit: for all things we know and do not know, for blessings manifest and hidden that have been bestowed on us.”

I think this last line is very important. We thank God for blessings seen and unseen. There are many blessings in our life that we may not know are blessings. Things may happen to us that we think are hindrances, but, in reality, may be a blessing. For example, maybe you’re upset you didn’t get into the college you wanted. Yet, you met your spouse at the college you did go to. If you had gone where you wanted, you probably wouldn’t have the family you have now. Blessings are all around us, whether we realize it or not. For this we give thanks. But, the prayer continues:

“We thank You also for this Liturgy, which You have deigned to receive from our hands, even though thousands of archangels and tens of thousands of angels stand around You, the Cherubim and Seraphim, six-winged, many­ eyed, soaring aloft upon their wings, singing the triumphal hymn, exclaiming, proclaiming, and saying …”

At this point, you all, as the gathered people, complete this prayer by saying,

“Holy, holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth, heaven and earth are filled with Your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.”

In other words,  your response is to recognize God’s holiness in what he has done. You thank him, through the Liturgy, and then bow down in awe of God’s greatness.

You see, Liturgy is a beautiful and awesome thing.

Yeah!

You may not realize this, but thanksgiving is what we, as humans, were created for. It’s typically understood that Adam and Eve were made to be “priests” of creation. Part of that role included offering creation back to God in thanksgiving. As we all know, they failed to do that, and were caste out of paradise into this fallen world. 

So, when we gather on a Sunday morning to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, we are fulfilling the role that was given to humanity by God in the very beginning. We are doing what we were made to do. And, as a result, at every Divine Liturgy, we are stepping back into paradise. 

Think about it. In paradise was the tree of life, and the serpent tricked mother of humanity into eating some of its fruit. Now, we have the tree of life—that is, the cross—by which stands the Mother of God. 

It’s often said that Eve once eat fruit from a living tree and experienced death. Now, we eat from the fruit of a dead tree—the Body and Blood of Christ—and experience life. 

The paradise created through the experience and participation in the Divine Liturgy is one that we’re not exiled from—it’s one we’re invited into. And it begins with our thanksgiving. 

We enter into the paradise by giving thanks, being grateful for God’s grace, mercy, and love. And this abundance of joy flows out of us as we go back into the world. It’s flows out of us as deeper bonds with our brothers and sisters in Christ, as unending joy, and as an intense sense of peace in our souls and bodies. 

Through our weekly thanksgiving, we become healed and whole. We become children of God … a God who always looks after us.

Thank you, O Lord.

Amen.