The giving of thanks is something you can’t not do…!

December 14, 2025

Scripture: Luke 1:47-55, Psalm 50:14-15

Today’s gospel reading from Luke is a very well known passage in the story of our faith. It is known as the ‘Song of Mary’, or the Magnificat, a Latin word meaning ‘magnify’. The passage is a prayer that Mary speaks aloud during a visit to her cousin Elizabeth’s house in the hill country of Judea. She sings this song of praise to God in response to Elizabeth’s greeting upon arrival. For Elizabeth has just told Mary that ‘she is so blessed to be the mother of Jesus’, and that the child in her own womb who was to become John the Baptist ‘leaped for joy’ at the sound of Mary’s greeting.

This ‘Song’ of Mary’s has been a part of our faith’s Christmas story from the very beginning, recalling themes from the Old Testament as well as speaking to the future focus and ministry of her son Jesus. There are a number of ways to hear this passage, but I want to focus on one in particular. And that is the giving of thanks with which Mary begins her song. I believe this practice, this response of Mary in what was surely a momentous as well as to some degree troubling time in her young life has something important to teach each one of us.

Even just a close reading of the gospel accounts, in fact of the whole body of scripture reveals that the giving of thanks, is so much a part of the history of our Christian faith expression. We find it throughout from the very beginning in the Old Testament through to the giving of thanks when Jesus broke the bread and blessed the cup at the Last Supper. However, to some extent I think this practice may have lost some of its meaning since then, at least in the eyes of God. Let me explain…

I think we find exuberant offerings of thanks to God in the history of our faith not because it is some requirement or duty to do so, but for an entirely different reason. And this ‘difference’ is something I have long thought about. In fact, when I was younger and just beginning to explore what it meant to be a ‘professing’ Christian, I sometimes got tripped up over what seemed to be an over the top amount of praise and giving of thanks in various gatherings of Christians…finding myself thinking, ‘wasn’t God more interested in what we were actually doing, other than just sitting around and lifting our eyes, hands, and souls in ardent prayers of thanksgiving recited almost as some sort of mantra’? Doesn’t that seem like it might have been just a bit tiresome for god to hear this over and over? I know it was so for me! 

Which in some ways reminds me of the daily reading for Wednesday of this week from Psalm 50. And in particular where the psalmist refers to what it is that God is actually asking from those who want to be ‘in the divine good graces’ so to speak.

Now this may seem like a bit of a stretch, but the psalmist is referring to the common and prevalent Hebrew practice of offering blood sacrifices of various animals for the atonement of sin, as well as for other needs of the worshipping people. And in some way, even though the solution, or actually the request from God in this psalm is for the people to ‘offer thanks’ rather than repeated blood sacrifices, I think the thanksgiving being referred to in this passage is of a particular nature…and perhaps different from just saying thank you to God because ‘that’s what we do’, rather than speaking from the innermost parts of one’s heart and soul. Sort of what it sounds like Mary was doing when she spontaneously began to ‘magnify’ God. In other words I am trying to draw a distinction between what many do when it comes to giving thanks and praise as a sort of required formula for ‘righteousness’…as an obligation to retain, or perhaps to regain God’s favor. I believe the giving of thanks referred to in Psalm 50 is referring to those who find themselves lifting their heart and soul in thanksgiving…because they can’t not do so.

Let me share just a few verses of that psalm to show you what I mean. In speaking through the psalmist God seems to be saying…‘And yet I do not need bulls from your farms or goats from your flocks; all the animals in the forest are mine and the cattle on thousands of hills. All the wild birds are mine and all living things in the fields. “If I were hungry, I would not ask you for food, for the world and everything in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Let the giving of thanks be your sacrifice to God, and give the Almighty all that you promised.’

And, while I am still just a bit troubled sometimes by what seems to be rote or almost insincere prayer, at least with the giving of thanks, I find that the longer I have known God, and the more interaction God has had with me…that there are times when giving thanks is not a conscious act or decision at all, but rather just what happens…as tho it is out of my control…for in some ways I think it just might be.

I am convinced, that the offering of a sincere expression of gratitude and praise to God is the natural response of someone who truly sees and knows just how good and loving our Lord really is. As it seemed to be with Mary, giving heartfelt thanks to God should not be something we choose to do…rather, as it wells up from within us and comes forth from our innermost being, it is something we cannot help but do. As the underlying melody of our whole faith expression, lifting our hearts in thanks and praise is a pathway onto which we place ourselves, a way that opens into a living relationship with our Lord.  

We give thanks as Mary so spontaneously uttered because we have recognized and are so overwhelmed with the mercy and love that has already been extended to each of us. Starting with, ‘My soul magnifies’, this song of Mary, welling up from the depths of her soul, was one of such deep gratitude that it truly served to ‘magnify’ her Lord, thereby making the nature of her Lord and God larger, more visible, and more apparent. So, as with Mary whose prayer served to increase the awareness of God to those around her…so should our sincere prayers of gratitude do as well.

One note of caution however before we close. It is always very risky to judge another person’s outward faith expression, for you truly do not know the intent of another’s heart, or the depth of their relationship with God. However, we have also been warned by our Lord to always seek to be discerning, and in particular when it comes to ‘false prophets’ whom we might come across. I am confident however as well that we are each able to hear or to see when the nature of our God of love is being distorted, or when a particular way of method of ‘group worship’ in particular is more about glorifying the practice or the messenger, rather than revealing or magnifying the true nature of our God.

So, let us open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to the presence of God in our midst. Let us take note of every instance, of which there are many…of every instance where we know deep down that God has drawn near…and then, let us surrender to the flow of grace that wells up from our innermost parts as we find it necessary to give voice to the feelings of thanksgiving rising up within us. 

For in some mysterious way, letting God speak through our deepest inner feelings and emotions, causes or enables the love of our God to be ‘magnified and made visible’ to all those around us. 

And not only is that so desperately needed in these times…

…‘doing what we can’t not do’…is the only ‘sacrifice’ our Lord is seeking!

…amen