My talk today is on the Sacrifice of Thanksgiving. We don't always think of Thanksgiving as a sacrifice, but just tell that to the turkey.
But in all seriousness, in Leviticus, where it lays out the various kinds of Sacrifice, it does detail an offering of thanksgiving. A lamb is to be sacrificed, and bread and wine are to be consecrated, and the sacrifice is to be eaten not just by the priests but shared out to everyone, so that none is left for the next day. These sacrifices in Hebrew are called Todah. Todah is often translated into English as Thanksgiving, but just as often it is translated as praise, and really means to lift up the hands in praise and Thanksgiving. Many of the psalms are part of these Todah celebrations, and they often share a similar pattern. They begin with a lament for the tragedies that have befallen and sometimes are still in progress. But they end with praising the Lord for His tender mercies.
One of the clearest examples of this structure is the prayer that Jonah uttered while he was stuck for three days in the belly of the whale. “I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.”
In the depths of despair, Jonah lifts up his hands to offer up a sacrifice of Thanksgiving, in praise of a mercy that has not yet been bestowed, but with hope that as he stands still, he will see the Salvation of the Lord.
For those of us who limit our displays of gratitude for the unqualified good things in our lives, giving thanks does not really feel like a sacrifice. It is like the wealthy who made a great display of offering their gratitude out of their abundance at the gates of the temple. But when we choose to lift up our hands in praise in the very worst moments of our lives when everything has been taken from us and thanks is the only thing left that we have to give, then we are like the widow with her two mites, giving all that we have.
To give thanks inside of the belly of a whale is a sacrifice. To praise God all the day long, as Nephi did, when he had been tied to the mast for four days with a storm so bad that the ship is about to sink, is a sacrifice. To praise God, as the people of Ammon did, even as their enemies were cutting them down, is a sacrifice.
To paraphrase slightly the sermon on the mount “For if ye love them that love you, and give thanks to them that help you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if you salute your brethren only, and praise God for your blessings only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5: 46-48).
To become perfect requires the sacrifice of thanksgiving. To give thanks for receiving that which we most desired is not enough. To sacrifice grudgingly or with bitterness is not enough. It requires us not only to give up that which matters most, but to give with a glad heart and a cheerful countenance. It requires that even in the worst moments of our lives, we have the humility to offer up our gratitude.
To find the perfect example of the sacrifice of gratitude, we need only look to the Savior. If we are to say that Christ began the Atonement during the last supper when He instituted the Sacrament, then we must say that Christ began the Atonement with gratitude.
“And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves:” (Luke 22:19, 17).
Christ, the lamb that was to be sacrificed, consecrated bread and wine to share in a sacrifice of Thanksgiving. He was performing the Todah ceremony. The Greek word that is used in the New Testament and is translated as Thanksgiving is Eucharist, which is the same word that many Christian churches use for the ceremony of the Sacrament. The Sacrament is literally a sacrifice of Thanksgiving.
It was the sacrifice of gratitude that compelled Jesus to take upon Him the pains and afflictions of every living creature. Even as He fell on His face, and bled from every pore and trembled because of the pain, and would that He should not partake of the cup and shrink, it was with Gratitude that Jesus told His Father, “Not my will, but thine be done.”
But the Sacrifice of Gratitude that Jesus offered in the Garden of Gethsemane was not enough. After being drained and exhausted in the garden beyond the human ability to endure, Jesus spent the rest of that night and the better part of the next day being dragged from one court to another, defamed, mocked, spit upon, beaten, and whipped. His own people screamed for His death.
Forced to carry His own cross, Jesus’s strength finally gave out, and another was asked to help Him carry it up the hill.
As they pounded the nails into Jesus’s hands and feet and lifted Him up on a cross, let us return for a moment to Jonah and his prayer in the belly of the whale. Jonah says that he will not forsake his own mercy. Being trapped in the mouth of some great fish, covered in seaweed and terrified beyond belief, I doubt any of us would see being in such a place as a mercy. But the fish that swallowed Jonah was keeping him alive. If not for that fish, Jonah would have perished in the depths. Jonah did not forsake this mercy and instead offered his sacrifice of thanksgiving.
Just as Jonah would not forsake the mercy of the whale, Jesus did not forsake the mercy of the cross. With all of the suffering and agony that Christ had endured up until this point, the greatest sacrifice was yet to come.
Despite everything Jesus had suffered, up until He was lifted up on the cross, His Father was still with Him. But for the sacrifice of gratitude to be complete, God withdrew Himself from His Only Begotten Son and cut Jesus off entirely from His presence.
For Christ’s entire life He had enjoyed the constant companionship of His Father. Christ carried out and lived and understood His Father’s will so perfectly and completely that His soul and His Father’s were knit together with every fiber and strand of their Beings. For Him to suffer the spiritual death of being completely cut off from the presence of God would have meant tearing apart and unraveling every nerve fiber, every molecule, every particle of His immortal soul.
When Jesus prayed in the Garden, He fell on His face. When He tried to carry His cross up the hill, again, He fell on His face. At this last and final and worst test of all, when the heavens blackened and Christ was cast into the deep with fierce winds and billowing waves conspiring against Him and the jaws of Hell gaping wide to swallow Him, thanks to the mercy of the Cross, Christ stood tall with His hands stretched out.
None were with Him, not even His Father, and His strength was completely gone. The only way that Christ could have stood for that final test is if His hands and feet were nailed in place. When Christ no longer had the strength to offer up His todah and lift up His hands in praise, the mercy of the cross lifted up the hands that hung down, and strengthened the feeble knees.
Christ bears still the marks of the nails in His hands and His feet, not just as a reminder to all of us of the pains that he endured for our Salvation, but out of gratitude for the mercy of the cross that lifted Him up in those final moments when none were with Him.
Christ is perfect not only because He was without sin, but because He managed to remain grateful even during the ultimate sacrifice.
I know that when we are going through the very darkest of times when it seems like none are with us and our burdens just keep getting heavier and heavier and we are at the very end of our strength, it is perfectly understandable that gratitude would be the furthest thing from our minds. When we are in so much pain already, voluntarily submitting ourselves to be lifted up on the cross seems completely insane. But I hope that we will not forsake our own mercy. When the raging storm is coming at us and fear has melted all our bones, and all we want to do is run as fast as we can, the only way that we can stand still and see the Salvation of the Lord is if we nail our feet to the cross. When we have given and given and given and still more is demanded of us, the only way that we can stretch out our hands and praise God is to have them nailed to the cross. If we laid the crossbeam of a cross side by side with a yoke, we would be hard pressed to tell the difference. When Christ says take my yoke upon you and take up my cross, He is saying the same thing.
I have often found myself forsaking my own mercy, especially when that mercy looks like the belly of a whale or the nails of a cross. But I know that when I have found it in me to be grateful even when I have no good reason to be, and have offered up praise for a mercy that has not yet been extended, and stand still with the hope that I will yet see the Salvation of the Lord, those sharp-edged mercies have carried me through when I had no strength left. I bear my testimony that we cannot be made perfect without our own personal sacrifice of thanksgiving, and especially without the ultimate sacrifice of Thanksgiving offered by our Savior Jesus Christ. The mercy of the Cross will help us get through some of our toughest times, but Jesus will be with us every step of the way.
I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
