In four days, families and friends across the land will gather to celebrate Thanksgiving. If you happen to be the one hosting one of those gatherings there is a great deal of pressure to get it right. Your guest will arrive with certain expectations of how a proper thanksgiving ought to be celebrated and it is the job of the host to meet and if possible, exceed those expectations. So how do you know if you are doing Thanksgiving right? Well, there are a couple of known experts you could consult.
The first expert that comes to mind is probably Martha Stewart. Martha has advice on how to decorate your home for a beautiful thanksgiving celebration. Martha will review with you tabletop essentials from linen to silverware, she will tell you how to craft a centerpiece that will be the talk of the meal, she will help you create a seating arrangement for more peaceful conversations. If you want advice on thanksgiving décor and design, Martha Stewart is a good person to consult.
However, as everyone knows, thanksgiving isn’t just about stunning centerpieces and masterfully folded napkins. Thanksgiving is about food and football. When it comes to food and football there is one obvious expert whom one should consult, and that expert is the late great John Madden. For those of you who are too young to know who John Madden was, he was a legendary football coach turned color commentator for the NFL. But in his latter years Madden was best known for the way he celebrated thanksgiving. When it came to celebrating thanksgiving Madden said, “The only two things you need is a turkey to eat and a football to throw.” During halftime Madden would breakdown the best way to prepare turkey, which often involved adding multiple turkey legs to the bird. It was not uncommon for a Madden turkey to have six legs, which he would award to the best football players from the day’s game. Some might argue that Madden went too far when he introduced the turducken to the world during the 1997 Thanksgiving matchup between the Bears and Lions. A turducken is a boneless duck stuffed inside a boneless chicken stuffed inside a boneless turkey. Whether he went too far or not I’ll leave that for you to decide but if you want advice on thanksgiving food and football, the late John Madden was your guy.
If you want to do thanksgiving right, Martha and Madden are two good experts to consult. However, if you want more from your thanksgiving than décor and design, food and football; if you want to take your thanksgiving celebration to a whole new level; if you really want to do thanksgiving right, then there is one more expert you ought to consult. His name is Zaccheaus and he, even more than Martha and Madden, knew how to do thanksgiving right.
It has been said that Zaccheaus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he, but his physical shortcomings aside[1], Zacchaeus was a very successful businessman. Zacchaeus conducted his business in the city of Jericho. Jericho was about a half day’s walk to the northeast of Jerusalem. It was nestled in the Jordan valley and was a lush oasis where kings built their vacation homes, literally. Jericho was a wealthy city, which was good business for Zacchaeus whose business was the collecting of taxes. Yes, Zacchaeus was a dreaded tax collector and a rather good one at that. Luke tells us “2 Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector and was wealthy.” To be a chief tax collector meant that you had a network of tax collectors working for you. To be a chief tax collector you had to be a shrewd businessman who knew how to squeeze out of the people every drop of revenue owed to the empire. The job paid well, but to become wealthy a tax collector needed to squeeze a few extra drops of revenue for himself.
Collecting taxes made Zacchaeus a wealthy man but it did not make him a popular man. You see the people he squeezed were his fellow Jews and the people who were benefiting from his squeezing were the Roman oppressors. Tax collectors, like Zacchaeus, were seen as traitors to the people and because they used the muscle of the Roman empire to extort from the people more than was rightly owed to Rome for their own personal profit, tax collectors, like Zacchaeus, were also seen as thieves. These traitorous thieves were so despised by the people that the worst insult you could give a person was to call them a tax collector.
Zacchaeus was the chief of the traitorous thieves and the most despised among his people, and he knew it. When and how Zacchaeus came to this revelation we do not know. My fanciful imagination wants to imagine Zacchaeus was the tax collector in the parable Jesus taught about a tax collector who worshiped alongside a Pharisee but refused to look up to heaven and, “beat his breast and said, ‘God have mercy on me a sinner.’”[2]. Jesus taught that parable while He was on His way to Jericho, it is not absurd to imagine Jesus, in His omniscience, told a story about a private moment from Zacchaeus’ life. But perhaps it is safer to assume Zacchaeus simply heard the parable and saw himself in the story? Or perhaps Zacchaeus had a come to Jesus moment after having a conversation with the disciple Matthew who was himself once a tax collector? As I said, we don’t really know how this chief tax collector came to faith, but the evidence of his faith was put on display when Jesus came to town. Luke tells us Zacchaeus “3 wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.” Running was not something a dignified Jew would do, and they certainly would not climb a tree like an immature adolescent. But Zacchaeus was willing to humiliate himself if it meant that he would get but a glimpse of Jesus.
As God would have it, Zacchaeus got more than a glimpse of Jesus. In an act of divine providence Luke tells us, “5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” Zacchaeus, as you might expect, immediately scrambled out of the sycamore tree. But before he reaches the ground, let’s take a moment to pause and ponder. Luke began this section by telling us Jesus was passing through Jericho. It might interest you to know where Jesus was headed. Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem. In fact, the next day is now famously known among us as Palm Sunday. In a week’s time Jesus will be “pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities”, Jesus will be punished so that we might have peace, and He will be wounded so that we might be healed.[3] Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem to fulfill all the prophecies in scriptures and pay for the sins of all the people of the world. But before Jesus does all of that, He tells Zacchaeus, “I must stay at your house.” That statement is not the most profound thing Jesus has ever said. These words do not provide us with an earth-shattering revelation. We do not discover a deep theological truth in these words. But, for a sinner like Zacchaeus, there is a great deal of comfort found in these words. Jesus was busy, but He was not too busy for Zacchaeus. Jesus was on His way to save the world; but first Jesus wanted to bring salvation to the house of a traitorous thief like Zacchaeus. Jesus did not come to seek and save a nameless people, rather Jesus came to seek and save individual sinners, sinners like Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus was understandably eager to have Jesus as a guest in his home so that he might give thanks for all that Jesus had done for him. No doubt, as the host of this Thanksgiving celebration, Zacchaeus was under some pressure to get it right. As Luke describes the thanksgiving celebration that Zacchaeus hosted, he does not tell us about the décor or design, and he does not tell us about food or football, instead Luke tells us, “8 Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Zacchaeus publicly confessed before God and man how he cheated his own people. Our English makes it sound like a question, but the original Greek makes it clear this is a clear, honest, sincere confession. It is a confession that sought to make restitution. A Gift to the poor was simply that, a gift. Zacchaeus owed them nothing, he just wanted others to feel a fraction of what he felt for the gift Jesus had given him. Even the amount Zacchaeus paid back was beyond what the law required. The law required Zacchaeus pay back the amount defrauded plus 1/5th, but Zacchaeus wanted to treat people the way Jesus had treated him, so he gave them more than the law required; more than they deserved. When Jesus saw how Zacchaeus celebrated thanksgiving He said to His host, “9… Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.” Zacchaeus got it right.
If you want more from your thanksgiving than décor and design, food and football; if you want to take your thanksgiving celebration to a whole new level; if you really want to do thanksgiving right, then do thanksgiving the way Zacchaeus did thanksgiving, recognize, repent, restore. Start by recognizing what Jesus has done for you. You may not be a traitorous thief like Zacchaeus but look into the mirror of God’s law and you will see that you have failed to love your neighbor just as badly as Zacchaeus failed to love his neighbors. You have done, whispered, or thought mean, nasty, ugly things to them and about them. You have not taken their words and actions in the kindest possible way. You have been jealous of their stuff and envious of their lives. You have no doubt hidden your sins against your neighbor better than Zacchaeus hid his sins against his neighbors, but you deserve to be despised just as much. But Jesus decided that He must stay in your house. So, through the waters of baptism Jesus invited himself into your heart, through the proclamation of the word Jesus makes Himself a guest in your soul, and through the feast of forgiveness Jesus assures you that He came to seek and save not simply the people of the world, but Jesus came to seek and to save you, specifically, individually, particularly, you. You want to do thanksgiving right; then be sure your celebration is full of recognition of what Jesus has done for you.
Recognition of what Jesus has done for you will lead you to repentance of the things you have done to others. Now, there is no need for you to air your dirty laundry before all your thanksgiving guest, that would be weird and awkward. There is need only to confess specific sins to the specific people against whom you have sinned. This confession will of course be made first and foremost to God for all sins are sins against God, but then confess what you have done to whom you have done it. Confess it clearly without qualifier. Confess it honestly recognizing the damage you have done. Confess it sincerely with the intent that you will not do it again. You want to do thanksgiving right; then be sure your celebration includes repentances for the things you have done.
Repentance always leads to a desire to restore what has been broken. Sometimes that is literally paying people back 4 times what you have taken, but most often it requires an expense of a different kind of currency, like your time. It has been said that it takes four times as long to rebuild a trust as it does to establish a trust. I am not sure how technically accurate that is, but the thought is clear. If you have sinned against someone in thought, word, or deed, your sin might have taken but a moment, but it is going to take time for the person you sinned against to forgive you. Give them that time; give them whatever time you think they deserve and then give them four times more. You want to do thanksgiving right; then be sure your celebration includes the time needed to restore what you have broken.
If you want to do thanksgiving right Martha Stewart and John Madden are good experts to consult. Décor and design, food and football are certainly part of a proper thanksgiving celebration. However, if you want to take your thanksgiving celebration to a whole new level; if you really want to do thanksgiving right, then do what Zacchaeus did, recognize, repent, and restore. If you celebrate thanksgiving the way Zacchaeus celebrated thanksgiving, you will be doing thanksgiving right. May God grant you all a happy thanksgiving. Amen
[1] Teeheehee. See what I did there?
[2] Luke 18:13
[3] Isaiah 53:5