The True Source Of Thanksgiving
Sermon
Uplifting Christ Through Autumn
Sermons for the Fall Season
Object:
It has been said that you cannot know where you are going until you know where you have come from. You cannot understand who you are until you know whose you are. Thanksgiving is one time that forces us back to our roots -- our family roots -- and beyond to our true source.
Hopefully, Thanksgiving is a symbol of joy and thankfulness. Thanksgiving is a favorite holiday during the year. Most people like the family gathering and the fact that there is no big build-up to the day; there is not too much responsibility for the day other than being together.
If Thanksgiving dinner is served in a home and not a restaurant, then the responsibilities may be to bring a vegetable casserole, pumpkin pie, and yourselves. For the host, the house has to be cleaned, and the big bird put in the oven early, but other worries are minimized among close friends. If you eat at two, three, or four, it doesn't matter much; there will always be another football game on television, and no one is going anywhere else -- unless it is over to another family member's house for more of the same.
For most, the day is a relaxed time -- different than Christmas it seems, where there is such a build-up: decorations, buying the right gifts, worries about budgeting money, parties and dinners, perhaps vacation plans, fitting everything in, trying to keep in mind and action the perspective of the simplicity and humbleness of the gift of Christ's birth while everything around you seems the opposite of simple and humble.
Christmas is a joyous time -- both spiritually and symbolically -- but it can wear a person out. Thanksgiving is simple in comparison and as a symbol, this simplicity is also of key importance. I remember a writer describing Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving his family got together. His great aunt was there -- a very direct, thoughtful, and intelligent woman, a woman who always knew the Wall Street Journal better than any cookbook. She was sensitive, and strong, although she had been weakened by angina -- fluid and pressure taxing her heart. It had slowed her down; something had been missing the past year or so. But on Thanksgiving, she seemed her happy, strong self again, and everyone was joyful.
His grandmother -- in her eighties -- was seemingly ageless. She did not seem to get old, especially her humor and smile. Physically, she would soon have to change, but on Thanksgiving, she was strengthening all.
One of his two brothers, who had been searching, seemed at peace with himself again -- happy and relaxed; the family inwardly and outwardly rejoiced.
His other brother and his wife and children could not come this year, heading to a dinner on the other side of their family, but they were there in thought. His wife and he had felt closer to them than ever before. His parents were such loving people; he was often overwhelmed by their generosity. They were all together. He could also envision in his mind a similar display of emotions and thankfulness occurring had he and his family spent the day in Ohio with his wife's relatives.
It seemed as though some essential goodness at the heart of human relations becomes more apparent for many on Thanksgiving. Those who are separated from family and friends by miles can sense the joy that is occurring there and know they are a welcome part even though they are physically absent.
Those without family or with families who are perhaps less than they should be -- whether cold, or stifling, or culturally removed, or whatever -- the many in this position at Thanksgiving can, I believe, more than ever sense the loss, sense the gap, sense the separateness, sense the need for trust and honesty and love at the very center of their web of personal relationships. This insight of a deep need for love at the core of relationships forms the magic of Thanksgiving.
This magic was there, to some degree, I believe, from the very beginning of the holiday in our country. That first Pilgrim Thanksgiving celebration that we envision as the source of our day was a celebration of people coming together to give thanks and eat together. It was a meal of sharing together a lot of good food, not ornate, but good. Perhaps it was more fish and nuts than turkey and cranberries, and no pumpkin pie, but the best they all had, shared together.
The Pilgrims did invite some local natives to share in the celebration but really didn't expect many to show up. The invitation was sincere, I am sure; but somewhat like the times when we are on a trip or at a class reunion and we sincerely tell new or old friends that if they are ever in the area, to stop in for a visit. Very rarely does anyone actually show up later.
The Pilgrims miscalculated. They didn't know that harvest festivals of thanksgiving and celebration had been a tradition among the Northeast Coast Indians for hundreds of years, and word spread fast about the Pilgrims' invitation.
About ninety Indians showed up -- twice as many Indians as Pilgrims. The Pilgrim women prepared the food and worried, I am sure, about the surprise guests and the clean up. What made it more difficult was that at that time period in the Pilgrim colony, there were only five surviving women working hard to keep things prepared for the combined party of 140. This thanksgiving celebration was not just a 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. reunion and eating marathon. This first recorded New England Pilgrim harvest celebration lasted for three days! (Perhaps this was the origin of the three-day weekend.) I am sure the five women saved their words of thanks until it was all over, but for the vast majority, it was a time of joy and magic.
They were thankful they were alive, that they had enough food to stay alive a while longer, and they were thankful for their life together. The Pilgrims thanked God and the Indians thanked their harvest gods. They came together for at least three days of interacting and sharing of food and culture. It was a happening, magic, a foreshadowing of the way things should be.
Unfortunately, it was not really typical for the times. More typical, I am afraid, were reports of both Indians and Pilgrims stealing food and seeds from each other. Along the colonies shooting at Indians was more common than feeding them. Typical Pilgrim discussions concerning Indians involved not planning ways of cultural exchanges but whether Indians had souls or not. Out of this total history, however, today we tend to honor and remember only the time when the settlers and the Native Americans came together and shared food and fellowship and thanked their gods for what they sensed was good in life.
Today those who are serious about the origins of the day should do the same thing. There is something more here than just the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and Santa Claus. We need this magic today. In the midst of the cruelty of world hunger's effect on the majority of people in the world, in a time when groups of people cry out for liberation and transformation, when international rules are shattered, hostages taken, words of revenge and retaliation are uttered on all sides, when people who seem to have all the necessities argue over insignificant issues, we must go to the center of our lives and our inner web of relationships to find some meaning. We don't know where we are going until we know where we have come from. We don't know who we are until we know whose we are.
At Thanksgiving we can often sense the goodness of close, loving relationships. We can sense the magic. As Christians, we are supposed to know the source of this magic, the origin of the hope we share, the authority for loving action and the purpose of the future. It is all grounded in Christ, and yet at times I am weakened and sickened by the rumors, accusations, and the reality of distrust and anger and disharmony within churches and between members -- on all levels of the church. I am personally torn between a desire to get closer to the feelings and needs of other people, and a seemingly necessary inner feeling to disengage and look for meaning and purpose on a more manageable level where I am not so easily hurt by people.
The further each of us moves out from the center of the web of relationships, the more vulnerable we become. Yet, if we really do understand the true source of life at the center, we are commanded to move out of the center as vulnerable servants to the very fringes of our relationships.
Today is Christ The King Sunday -- the last Sunday of the church year. I believe we should look into our hearts, look beyond death and history, into the hope for reunited life. We should look for the source of our strength. We should seek the message of Christ.
Ezekiel sensed this need before Christ as have millions of others. He saw the demonic in relationships. He saw shepherds, leaders, exploiting the human flock, exercising harsh rule instead of tender care. Just like an early Jonestown over 200 years ago. Instead of feeding the sheep, according to Ezekiel, the supposed protectors ate them. The sheep were devoured and scattered even in the name of God and religion. The sheep were given no direction; no one really cared for them; they were trampled under foot. There seemed to be no source of good, no grounding in love.
Ezekiel then wrote that God promised to establish and act through one shepherd who would faithfully lead and feed the sheep:
I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled, and I will strengthen the weak, and even watch over the fat and strong. I will feed them in justice.
-- Ezekiel 34:15-16
Centuries later, we sense the answer to this dream -- as present in Jesus as the Christ. In the words and actions of this shepherd, the meaning and purpose of life itself is proclaimed.
He spoke and acted with the authority of the living God -- a God whose process of creation in love demands justice and care for all the levels of our relationships. It's a source of life at the center that pushes outward.
I know I often rebel against it, perhaps often mixing up the difference between loving and liking, but we must keep primary the insight that the source of our life and meaning is the moving love of God as shown to us by Christ the king -- a king who can say that when you feed or welcome or strengthen or heal the least, the lowest of those around you, you do it to me.
Thanksgiving is a time to look at the center of our lives and being, to examine the core, and a time to give thanksgiving for that inner gift of divine love that forms true life. An inner gift that brings the joy that is most often present in our closest levels of relationships, and remembering that our mission, given to us by Christ the king, is to understand and spread that gift of love to the outer layers of our daily life.
We ask God for the strength. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
Hopefully, Thanksgiving is a symbol of joy and thankfulness. Thanksgiving is a favorite holiday during the year. Most people like the family gathering and the fact that there is no big build-up to the day; there is not too much responsibility for the day other than being together.
If Thanksgiving dinner is served in a home and not a restaurant, then the responsibilities may be to bring a vegetable casserole, pumpkin pie, and yourselves. For the host, the house has to be cleaned, and the big bird put in the oven early, but other worries are minimized among close friends. If you eat at two, three, or four, it doesn't matter much; there will always be another football game on television, and no one is going anywhere else -- unless it is over to another family member's house for more of the same.
For most, the day is a relaxed time -- different than Christmas it seems, where there is such a build-up: decorations, buying the right gifts, worries about budgeting money, parties and dinners, perhaps vacation plans, fitting everything in, trying to keep in mind and action the perspective of the simplicity and humbleness of the gift of Christ's birth while everything around you seems the opposite of simple and humble.
Christmas is a joyous time -- both spiritually and symbolically -- but it can wear a person out. Thanksgiving is simple in comparison and as a symbol, this simplicity is also of key importance. I remember a writer describing Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving his family got together. His great aunt was there -- a very direct, thoughtful, and intelligent woman, a woman who always knew the Wall Street Journal better than any cookbook. She was sensitive, and strong, although she had been weakened by angina -- fluid and pressure taxing her heart. It had slowed her down; something had been missing the past year or so. But on Thanksgiving, she seemed her happy, strong self again, and everyone was joyful.
His grandmother -- in her eighties -- was seemingly ageless. She did not seem to get old, especially her humor and smile. Physically, she would soon have to change, but on Thanksgiving, she was strengthening all.
One of his two brothers, who had been searching, seemed at peace with himself again -- happy and relaxed; the family inwardly and outwardly rejoiced.
His other brother and his wife and children could not come this year, heading to a dinner on the other side of their family, but they were there in thought. His wife and he had felt closer to them than ever before. His parents were such loving people; he was often overwhelmed by their generosity. They were all together. He could also envision in his mind a similar display of emotions and thankfulness occurring had he and his family spent the day in Ohio with his wife's relatives.
It seemed as though some essential goodness at the heart of human relations becomes more apparent for many on Thanksgiving. Those who are separated from family and friends by miles can sense the joy that is occurring there and know they are a welcome part even though they are physically absent.
Those without family or with families who are perhaps less than they should be -- whether cold, or stifling, or culturally removed, or whatever -- the many in this position at Thanksgiving can, I believe, more than ever sense the loss, sense the gap, sense the separateness, sense the need for trust and honesty and love at the very center of their web of personal relationships. This insight of a deep need for love at the core of relationships forms the magic of Thanksgiving.
This magic was there, to some degree, I believe, from the very beginning of the holiday in our country. That first Pilgrim Thanksgiving celebration that we envision as the source of our day was a celebration of people coming together to give thanks and eat together. It was a meal of sharing together a lot of good food, not ornate, but good. Perhaps it was more fish and nuts than turkey and cranberries, and no pumpkin pie, but the best they all had, shared together.
The Pilgrims did invite some local natives to share in the celebration but really didn't expect many to show up. The invitation was sincere, I am sure; but somewhat like the times when we are on a trip or at a class reunion and we sincerely tell new or old friends that if they are ever in the area, to stop in for a visit. Very rarely does anyone actually show up later.
The Pilgrims miscalculated. They didn't know that harvest festivals of thanksgiving and celebration had been a tradition among the Northeast Coast Indians for hundreds of years, and word spread fast about the Pilgrims' invitation.
About ninety Indians showed up -- twice as many Indians as Pilgrims. The Pilgrim women prepared the food and worried, I am sure, about the surprise guests and the clean up. What made it more difficult was that at that time period in the Pilgrim colony, there were only five surviving women working hard to keep things prepared for the combined party of 140. This thanksgiving celebration was not just a 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. reunion and eating marathon. This first recorded New England Pilgrim harvest celebration lasted for three days! (Perhaps this was the origin of the three-day weekend.) I am sure the five women saved their words of thanks until it was all over, but for the vast majority, it was a time of joy and magic.
They were thankful they were alive, that they had enough food to stay alive a while longer, and they were thankful for their life together. The Pilgrims thanked God and the Indians thanked their harvest gods. They came together for at least three days of interacting and sharing of food and culture. It was a happening, magic, a foreshadowing of the way things should be.
Unfortunately, it was not really typical for the times. More typical, I am afraid, were reports of both Indians and Pilgrims stealing food and seeds from each other. Along the colonies shooting at Indians was more common than feeding them. Typical Pilgrim discussions concerning Indians involved not planning ways of cultural exchanges but whether Indians had souls or not. Out of this total history, however, today we tend to honor and remember only the time when the settlers and the Native Americans came together and shared food and fellowship and thanked their gods for what they sensed was good in life.
Today those who are serious about the origins of the day should do the same thing. There is something more here than just the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and Santa Claus. We need this magic today. In the midst of the cruelty of world hunger's effect on the majority of people in the world, in a time when groups of people cry out for liberation and transformation, when international rules are shattered, hostages taken, words of revenge and retaliation are uttered on all sides, when people who seem to have all the necessities argue over insignificant issues, we must go to the center of our lives and our inner web of relationships to find some meaning. We don't know where we are going until we know where we have come from. We don't know who we are until we know whose we are.
At Thanksgiving we can often sense the goodness of close, loving relationships. We can sense the magic. As Christians, we are supposed to know the source of this magic, the origin of the hope we share, the authority for loving action and the purpose of the future. It is all grounded in Christ, and yet at times I am weakened and sickened by the rumors, accusations, and the reality of distrust and anger and disharmony within churches and between members -- on all levels of the church. I am personally torn between a desire to get closer to the feelings and needs of other people, and a seemingly necessary inner feeling to disengage and look for meaning and purpose on a more manageable level where I am not so easily hurt by people.
The further each of us moves out from the center of the web of relationships, the more vulnerable we become. Yet, if we really do understand the true source of life at the center, we are commanded to move out of the center as vulnerable servants to the very fringes of our relationships.
Today is Christ The King Sunday -- the last Sunday of the church year. I believe we should look into our hearts, look beyond death and history, into the hope for reunited life. We should look for the source of our strength. We should seek the message of Christ.
Ezekiel sensed this need before Christ as have millions of others. He saw the demonic in relationships. He saw shepherds, leaders, exploiting the human flock, exercising harsh rule instead of tender care. Just like an early Jonestown over 200 years ago. Instead of feeding the sheep, according to Ezekiel, the supposed protectors ate them. The sheep were devoured and scattered even in the name of God and religion. The sheep were given no direction; no one really cared for them; they were trampled under foot. There seemed to be no source of good, no grounding in love.
Ezekiel then wrote that God promised to establish and act through one shepherd who would faithfully lead and feed the sheep:
I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled, and I will strengthen the weak, and even watch over the fat and strong. I will feed them in justice.
-- Ezekiel 34:15-16
Centuries later, we sense the answer to this dream -- as present in Jesus as the Christ. In the words and actions of this shepherd, the meaning and purpose of life itself is proclaimed.
He spoke and acted with the authority of the living God -- a God whose process of creation in love demands justice and care for all the levels of our relationships. It's a source of life at the center that pushes outward.
I know I often rebel against it, perhaps often mixing up the difference between loving and liking, but we must keep primary the insight that the source of our life and meaning is the moving love of God as shown to us by Christ the king -- a king who can say that when you feed or welcome or strengthen or heal the least, the lowest of those around you, you do it to me.
Thanksgiving is a time to look at the center of our lives and being, to examine the core, and a time to give thanksgiving for that inner gift of divine love that forms true life. An inner gift that brings the joy that is most often present in our closest levels of relationships, and remembering that our mission, given to us by Christ the king, is to understand and spread that gift of love to the outer layers of our daily life.
We ask God for the strength. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
