November 21, 2007 – The Eve of Thanksgiving
Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Philippians 4:4-9; John 6:25-35
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It has been a long time since I stood before you on Thanksgiving eve to preach. For the past three years we have given this opportunity to our interns - Betty, Joel and Katie – now Pastor Betty, Pastor Joel and almost Mrs. Brantner. For them and the opportunity to be a place of learning, I give God thanks. Thanksgiving – a day to give thanks. But how to adequately prepare for a sermon given on the occasion of an American holiday. So, as I was pondering that and preparing for this time I kept thinking about the basics. Back to the basics.
The foundation of our American Thanksgiving celebration goes back almost 400 years to 1621, in the small Plymouth Colony, when the English Pilgrims feasted with members of the Wam-pa-no-ag Indians who brought gifts of food as a gesture of goodwill. The custom grew in various colonies as a means of celebrating the harvest.
Over 100 years later, in 1777, the Continental Congress proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving after the victory at the Battle of Saratoga in the Revolutionary War. But it was twelve years later that George Washington proclaimed another national day of thanksgiving in honor of the ratification of the Constitution, and requested that the Congress finally make it an annual event. They declined.
It took another 100 years and the end of a bloody civil war before President Abe Lincoln, in 1865, proclaimed the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving.
It still took another 40 years, early in the 1900's, before the tradition really caught on. For you see Lincoln's official Thanksgiving was sanctioned in order to bolster the Union's morale. Many Southerners saw the new holiday as an attempt to impose Northern customs on their conquered land.
Thanksgiving today is a mild-mannered holiday full of football, hot apple pie, and family reunions. But that's not a realistic historical picture of Thanksgiving. It is more often born of adversity and difficult times, when it would seem so much more reasonable to respond with bitterness and ingratitude. Yet so many of the greatest expressions of thanksgiving have occurred under circumstances so debilitating one wonders why people give thanks. Paul, writing from a prison cell and probably knowing that he would soon die writes to the Philippians, "I give thanks to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
When I looked back at my notes from 2001, the last time I preached on Thanksgiving Eve, guess what my sermon theme was? Back to Basics. Now, perhaps that means I have been around here too long, or perhaps this is just the kind of occasion when we are once again drawn, yes, even “pulled” to return to our roots, to get back to basics, to “come home” as it were – to a place that may not even have existed except in the collective memory of lives lived and things for which we yearn. Let’s face it, there are probably not many of us who ever really had a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving, where everyone in the family gathered and all were kind and loving and the hearts at the table, not to mention the world, were at peace.
More likely we hope for that kind of reunion, but end up with the same rag-tag group of rowdy relatives, and the same family squabbles, the same craziness around a table laden with more food than we should eat in a week. So what do we have to be thankful for? Nothing.
But let me say more about that. If I were to ask you if you believe in God, I am confident that you would all answer a resounding “Yes!” After all, isn’t that what we confess every time we say the creed together in a worship service? “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth…” We have that in common.
But what we also have in common is that we have difficulty differentiating between our lifestyle and our life. As Bishop Maahs reminded us last Sunday, “A life is different than a lifestyle---it encompasses everything you are, and you believe in. It’s messier, in one sense, and it’s harder to change. You can’t just trade in your car for a different car and call it a change of life. No, a life includes big problems and sorrows and well as big joys and happy times. And these problems need more than a new purchase to solve them. (As) Tom Long describes the difference: ‘A LIFESTYLE …(is where we) show our strength. A LIFE, on the other hand, is every aspect of who we are, (including) both weak and strong.’”
Our lifestyle is all our doing. We’re the ones who make the money, choose the house and car and clothes, participate in our families and make our choices.
But do we really have a life? If we do, and if we’re honest about it, we know pretty clearly that it came from somewhere outside ourselves. As author Safiyah Fosua puts it,
“The words ‘harvest’ and ‘thanksgiving’ are linked together in many cultures.
Most who till the soil know that our feeble human efforts do not produce crops;
crops require sun and rain and other variables that are beyond our control. The
early settlers and the indigenous people they found here also recognized the
importance of God's provision for survival. Hundreds of years later, a
commemorative meal serves as a reminder for us to thank God for those things
necessary for our survival.”
We did not give ourselves life. We are not the authors of the intricacies of our attractions to others who will or will not become our friends or our partners. We do not cause the seed to germinate and produce grain, or a child. And according to Luther’s explanation to the Third Article of the Creed we do not even “make a decision for Christ,” but “we believe that we cannot by our own reason or strength, believe in Jesus Christ or come to him;” but that it is the Holy Spirit that “calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth.” In our gospel tonight verse 29 agrees: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
So what have we contributed to our “life?” Nothing. God has done it, God does it all. God provides what we cannot, and God does it abundantly, (with the living bread from heaven, Jesus.)
People have gotten just a whiff of that reality for thousands of years. As soon as we human beings looked at the heavens, so wondrously made, or pondered the depths of the deep, or gazed at the face of their own child, we knew. We knew that the greatest gifts, the most awesome mysteries, the essential wonders of our lives do not come from us. They come from God…to us -- for us -- as a free and loving gift. And as the guests who will be at your table tomorrow probably asked you, “What can we bring?” this host says, “just bring yourselves.” Just come and spend time with me – just come and let me love you.
What do we contribute to the God in whom we live and move and have our very being? Nothing. Not even our belief comes from ourselves, and that’s ok with God. Because God knows us better than we know ourselves. And God knows, that once we truly understand, once we feel the absolutely nothing-ness of what we have to offer back to God, can we be free to respond as any loving parent wishes their children will respond. God’s hope lies in our realization that we are not God. Not to the world, nor even to ourselves. Because once we admit that, submit to that, surrender to that, we are free.
So what can we do with that freedom? We can give thanks. We can sit in awesome wonder and try to count our countless blessings. We can look at those we love and let anything other than that love melt away. We can see the pain in others and reach out a hand to care. We can feed those who do not have enough to eat and clothe those who cannot provide for themselves. We can bring companionship to those who are alone and comfort to those who grieve so deeply that they cannot catch their breath. We can cure the sick and free the captive and reach out in whatever way needs doing, and we can thank God for the inconceivable privilege to stand in as disciples of his dear Son.
Because when Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples,
he summarized in these gestures his own life. Jesus is chosen from all eternity,
blessed at his baptism in the Jordan River, broken on the cross,
and given as bread to the world.
Being chosen, blessed, broken, and given
is the sacred journey of the Son of God, Jesus the Christ.
But when we take bread, bless it, break it, and give it with the words,
"This is the Body of Christ," we express our commitment
to make our lives conform to the life of Christ.
We, too, want to live as people chosen, blessed, and broken,
and thus become food for the world…
the Living Bread from heaven – the Body of Christ.
