In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
It is a joy to spend part
of this day with you as we celebrate the Eucharist. As you may know, Eucharist
is a word which means “good thanks” in Greek. There is no better way to
celebrate Thanksgiving than gathering in the name of God to give thanks for the
grace, love, and salvation with which God blesses us.
This morning I’d like to
reflect on our Gospel text from Matthew in light of Thanksgiving. Jesus tells
his disciples, ourselves included, to not worry. In doing so, he tells them to
look at the birds of the air and to consider the lilies of the field. And by
telling us to look and consider, I think he’s asking us to do more than have a
quick mental image of birds and flowers and the immediately worry about getting
the turkey in the oven and centerpieces on the table. Think about birds and
flowers.
Any young child can tell
you what a flower needs to grow: dirt, rain, and sunlight. And while birds may
be more complex, they build their nests from twigs and eat worms and insects
from the dirt. We seem to more readily see the dependence of life in birds and
flowers than we do in ourselves. Our culture values things like
self-determination, autonomy, and independence. Stories of people who “pull
themselves up by their own bootstraps” are often seen as stories of strength.
But none of those culture virtues are the virtues of the Gospel. Jesus’
ministry was about giving thanks, being vulnerable, and dying to self.
And there is a reason why
on a day like Thanksgiving we must stop and realize that we are dependent on
others. The air we breathe comes from plants. The food we will eat later today
was once alive. We are gathered in a church that we did not build. Physics
teaches us that things are deeply interconnected, that the atoms that make up
our body were present at the time of the Big Bang and will one day be a part of
someone or something else. Our being is intertwined with others. We are very
much contingent beings. And once we realize that we are very much indebted to
each other and all of Creation, we are able to properly give thanks.
The 14th
century theologian, Catherine of Siena once wrote “God could have easily
created humanity possessed of all that they should need both for body and soul,
but God wishes that we should have need of the other, and that we should be
God’s ministers to administer the graces and gifts that we have received from
God. Whether we will or not, one cannot help making an act of love.” We are
created, she says, in order to help one another and in order to receive from
one another.
Though Christmas doesn’t
start in the Christian calendar until the evening of December 24, we all know
that by the time we get home from this liturgy that Santa Claus will be making
his way down 34th Street, thus ushering in the season of secular
“Holiday.” Lest I end up “tilting at windmills” like Don Quixote, I’m not going
to try to fight against cultural Christmas. But perhaps we might let these
lessons from Thanksgiving influence the way we spend the next several weeks.
Because we are dependent,
we are given the task of sharing the gifts and graces of God with others. Today,
as you take stock of your life and give thanks for what you have, consider how
you might be able to be a vehicle of God’s grace to someone else. If you give
thanks today for a warm home, perhaps you can support the shelter at Rowan
Helping Ministries. If you give thanks for food on your table, then donate
food. If you give thanks for family, tell them how much you appreciate them and
be family to those who are lonely this time of year. If you give thanks for
health, use your strength to support the weak. If you give thanks for God’s
blessings upon you, be that blessing to others.
In giving thanks, we also
recognize that we have received a gift. A lot of people will say that this time
of the year is a season of giving. But I disagree. What we will celebrate on
December 25 is not what we give, but rather we have received. Pay attention
over these next four weeks about what you receive, and give hearty thanks. I
owe it to my mother that I am in the habit of writing thank you notes. It’s
amazing how much people appreciate being appreciated.
When I sent out thank you
notes to everyone who pledged in our stewardship effort, I had several people
mention to me that no one had ever directly thanked them for their gift to the
church. Most every week, I sit down and write thank notes to people that have
done things around the church. I do so because it is important to value people
for what they do, and to make ourselves thankful for what we have received. By
being thankful, we find the joy in being dependent on one another. As Catherine
of Siena said, it is through being dependent that we encounter love. So as we
prepare ourselves to celebrate the day that love came down, may we do so by
reflecting on what we have received and giving thanks.
Jesus then says “So do
not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s
trouble is enough for today.” It is an invitation to stay in the present. On
Thanksgiving this is a good thing to do. We should consider the past in order
to express gratitude, but we too often stay there. Social scientist Brené Brown
notes in her research on vulnerability that we are the most overweight, in
debt, addicted, and medicated population in US history. And most of that
buying, eating, drinking, and binging is done to either help us to forget the
past or to be less anxious about the future.
In his classic work The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis writes
about a demon who gives advice about how to lead humans away from God. At one
point the demon advises that “The Present is the point at which time touches
eternity… Our business is to get them away from the Present… the Present is all
lit up with eternal rays.” The demon knows that present is the only time in
which life actually happens, as the past is gone and the future never arrives.
The only time in which we can truly experience love and gratitude. The present
is a pure moment, unblemished by pain or anxiety.
And as we enter into the
days ahead, we will certainly have plenty of opportunities to remember past
arguments or frustrations, perhaps as soon as you see a certain family member
this afternoon. December is a month full of obligations and of things to be
anxious about, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are very few things
that we truly need to do, but there are many that we have convinced ourselves
that we should do. It goes back to the idea of dependence and receiving. If
all you receive out of your “supposed to’s” are anxiety and stress, then maybe
it’s something that you lay aside. Because as Jesus says, we aren’t going to
add anything to our lives by stress or guilt.
Today is a day to give
thanks to God from whom all blessings flow. When we give thanks, we do so
acknowledging and celebrating our dependence on God and one another. As we express our
gratitude, we are invited to consider all that we receive. Jesus encourages us
to live in the present so that we might be most attuned to the grace of God
that is currently being manifest in our lives. So let us now turn to preparing our
hearts and minds to partake of the heavenly feast as we give thanks to the Lord
our God in the celebration of Holy Eucharist. Amen.
