You, eternal Trinity,
are Table and Food and Waiter for us. You, eternal Father, are the Table that
offers us food, the Lamb, your only-begotten Son. He is the most exquisite Food
for us, both in his teaching, which nourishes us in your will, and in the sacraments
that we receive in Holy Communion, which feeds and strengthens us while we are
pilgrim travelers in this life. And the Holy Spirit is a Waiter for us, for he
serves us this teaching by enlightening our mind’s eye with it and inspiring us
to follow it. Amen.
That lovely prayer comes from Catherine of Sienna in the
1300s. Thanksgiving is a day about a lot of things – sales, parades, football,
and family. But primarily, Thanksgiving is about food. What exactly the first
Thanksgiving was really like, it’s hard to separate legend from history. But we
know it was a harvest festival in which the pilgrims gathered with Natives to
give thanks to God, and still today, what is most essential to this day is a
feast done in a spirit of gratitude.
I’ll
say more about it later, but it’s also why it’s so important for people of
faith to gather on this day to celebrate the Eucharist on Thanksgiving Day. As
you know, “Eucharist” is a Greek word for “good thanks,” so celebrating the
Eucharist is quite appropriate today. The danger in not actually taking time
beyond a 20-second prayer said before someone says “pass the gravy” is that we
might forget who the subject of our thanks is. You can hear the parade
commenters or read opinion columnists in the paper speaking about the importance
of gratitude today. You might even hear it around your table this afternoon –
the importance of remembering the blessings of life and giving thanks. To be
clear, that’s not a bad thing to do. But gratitude isn’t helpful without
subject. If we don’t recognize that God is the one from whom all blessings
flow, we might end up thinking that it’s our hard work or dumb luck that has
gotten to us where we are. So coming to church on Thanksgiving helps us to
remember that we are not thankful in the abstract, rather we are thankful to
God. But I’m preaching to the choir because you’re the ones who know this and
came this morning.
So
when we think about the meals that we’ll be partaking in later today, I bet we
could have some rather heated debates about the “proper” way to build the meal.
In my house, my wife and I disagreed about whose family had the best stuffing
recipe. And before I tell you that it was my grandmother’s recipe that is the
best, you might already be thinking that by calling it “stuffing” instead of
“dressing” that I’ve already made a mistake. The truth of the matter though is
that there are all sorts of traditions in our families about today’s meals –
some of you will have macaroni and cheese, cauliflower soufflé, or sweet potato
casserole and some of you would never dream of having those items at your
Thanksgiving table. My sister-in-law chooses to eat a vegan diet, maybe you’ll
have a vegetarian at your table today, so not even everyone can agree on the
turkey. But there’s one food that is pretty much a staple at every table:
bread. Whether it be dinner rolls, crescent rolls, or an artisan loaf, bread is
a constant not only at Thanksgiving but in pretty much every meal and culture
around the world.
As
Christians, bread certainly is a central image in our faith. We pray for our
daily bread as we ask God to give us what is necessary to get us through each
day. Bread is a symbol not for the extravagant hopes and dreams that we might
hold in our hearts, but for the simple sustenance that sustains us. Though, in
John, Jesus tells us that bread can be so much more than simply what gets us
through the day because the Bread of Life can satisfy us forever. On this Feast
of Thanksgiving, it’s a wonderful occasion to spend some time with what it
means that Jesus is the Bread of Life.
Now, for Jesus’ original hearers, the image of bread
would have immediately conjured up the story of their ancestors in the
wilderness between Egypt and the Promised Land. The Hebrew people were
wandering in the desert with little in the way of food, and so God provided
manna from heaven for them. The manna was just enough for them that day; it was
their daily bread. And the tradition is that the manna tasted like whatever the
taster wanted it to taste like. So to some, it might have tasted like chocolate
mousse, or strawberries and cream, or maybe a juicy cheeseburger. The point
though is that God provided for the people when they were short on options. In
their minds, they learned that God was a God of sustenance and abundance. And it
also tells us that God is something like our grandmother – someone who takes
great delight in feeding her loved ones.
Just before today’s passage in John happened, Jesus had
just fed the 5,000 by multiplying the loaves and fishes. Not surprisingly, this
has piqued the interest of the crowds and they’ve followed him to the other
side of the sea. Jesus tells them “You are looking for me not because you saw
signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” For Jesus, the feeding of
the 5,000 was so much more than a miracle about feeding people who were hungry
one afternoon, it was a sign that he will feed those who hunger for righteous,
peace, and eternal life. When Jesus tells them that they are to give their
loyalty and allegiance to him, the one God has sent, they ask for some evidence
to support such a claim, as if the feeding of the 5,000 wasn’t enough. They
crowd notes that Moses provided bread in the wilderness, which just so happens
to be exactly what Jesus had done, but they’re still not connecting those dots.
Jesus corrects them though: Moses didn’t give them the bread, God did. And just
as God sent manna down on the people, God has sent Jesus down to give life and
sustenance to the people. The people are interested in this sort of wonder bread
that gives eternal life. Jesus then, famously, says that he is the Bread of
Life.
All those things that that the manna did, Jesus himself
does even more abundantly. The way that we’re most familiar with receiving
Jesus as the Bread of Heaven is in the Holy Eucharist, that sacred meal in
which Jesus comes to us through a piece of bread reminding us of the love,
grace, mercy, and peace that God intends for us. Just as we heard in the
Deuteronomy reading, the abundance of God’s blessing is best celebrated in
community. What’s so important about community when it comes to thanksgiving is
that those who are blessed with riches can share with those who are lacking.
And so the command in Deuteronomy is for the people to come together after the
harvest and recount their history of how Abraham wandered from home, then the
people were enslaved in Egypt, then God liberated them and brought them into
the land. And then they were to feast, not only with their fellow Jews but with
the foreigners who lived among them to celebrate this bounty.
The same is true in the Eucharist – we are to gather with
those who are like us and those who are unlike us, those who are rich and those
who are poor, those who are young and those who are old, those who are black
and those who are white, those who are liberal and those who are conservative
and we are to break bread with them because what unites us is that we all
depend on God. And as we partake of the Eucharist, we recall the story of being
lost in sin, of wandering as we search for meaning and purpose, and that God
came to us in Jesus, endured the Cross, rose victorious from the dead, opening
to us the way of everlasting life and flourishing.
The manna and harvest festival for the Jewish people
reminded the people of all those things, and the Eucharist reminds us of those
same truths. You might think of the Eucharist as sort of that trail of bread
crumbs that leads us home when we are lost. The Eucharist proclaims that God’s
love is for us all and that God desires to nourish us forever. Bread crumbs leading
us towards God’s love, that’s certainly one good way of thinking about the
Bread of Heaven that we receive in the Eucharist.
Another
helpful bread image might be one that you’ve probably encountered many times –
bread is good for dipping. You go to an Italian restaurant and you use bread to
soak up olive oil and herbs. I remember when we lived in the DC area, you could
find any type of ethnic food you could think of. One time we went to an
Ethiopian restaurant and in that cuisine, you don’t typically have silverware,
you get something like a spongy sort of tortilla to pick up and eat the food.
Jesus as the Bread of Life helps us to soak up the abundant life that is
intended for us. Jesus shows us the way of love, he saves us from having to be
our own saviors, he gives us peace that comes from trusting that all shall be
well. The prayer attributed to St. Francis that so many people use says, “Where
there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is
discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.” Well, Jesus is
the bread that allows us to soak those sorts of things up. Jesus is where we
find pardon, union, faith, hope, light, and joy. And once we’ve soaked them up,
we can then enjoy them and share them with those around us.
Most
of the best spiritual disciplines are about awareness – awareness that you are
always in God’s presence, that you are always loved, that all of life is a
blessing. And a really simple spiritual discipline based on today’s reading is
to let bread remind you God’s provision and love for you. Every sandwich you
eat, every slice of French toast, every dinner roll on your table today can be
a way of remembering the Bread of Life, Jesus, who gives us not only our daily
bread, but the bread which feeds us forever. Thanksgiving is a day to recall
these ways in which God feeds us physically and spiritually. But thanksgiving
is more than just a day, it’s a posture of life. Thanksgiving is how Christians
are to be in this world because we are Eucharistic people. We are people who
seek unity in the midst of division, we are people who see hope in the face of
death, we are people who see abundance in the face of fear, we are people who see
mercy in the face of sin. And in response to this hope, love, and mercy, we say
“Thanks be to God.”
