First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
November 18, 2001
Scriptures: Psalm 100 and Colossians 2:1-7
Coming home from the Royal Oak’s Farmers’ Market along about 9:30 yesterday morning, the lovely lady I live with was overheard to say: “Let’s see, we’ve got brussels sprouts, new potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans for the casserole, shrimp for the appetizer….Becky said she would bring the dessert….I’ve got everything but the turkey. Unless, that is, you want me to get a ham.” Which I don’t. Although I’ll concede that a ham might be easier than a turkey. I don’t really think Kris wants a ham. And I know Julie doesn’t want a ham. So I guess I’ll have to go out to the woods this afternoon and “bag” us a turkey.
Which certainly isn’t biblical. I went so far as to look up the word “turkey” in a biblical encyclopedia last week, where it wasn’t. It should have been right between “turban” (an ornamental Egyptian head covering made of fine linen, later adopted by the Jews as the headgear of the High Priest) and “turtle dove” (a smallish pigeon used in Temple cultic sacrifices).
Turbans and turtle doves….but no turkeys. Biblically speaking, we’d be better off with a leg of lamb on Thursday (or a roast from the fatted calf). But for me and my house, it’ll be turkey. Which was also the bird of choice for my colleague who serves in a rural area out-state. He penned a live one in his yard, well before the holiday….fed it grains and cereals to fatten it up…. saw his kids give it a name and render it tame….all the while maintaining that it wouldn’t faze him one iota to take an axe to its neck when the day arrived. Thanksgiving came. Thanksgiving went. And everyone enjoyed the turkey for dinner….seated, as he was, next to my friend’s brother-in-law.
I begin lightly, intentionally. Because we Christians have a reputation of not being satisfied until we have taken every holiday and sucked the joy out of it by at least fifty percent. Preachers, especially, are seen as holiday-dampeners, seeming to suggest that we will never get the “true meaning” of it, unless we take the fun and pleasure from it.
Instead, I would turn you to no less a giant of the spiritual life than Teresa of Avila, who is fond of reminding Christians that “there is a time for penance and a time for partridge”….“penance” having to do with falling and failing, “partridge” having to do with feasting. Therefore, in the spirit of St. Teresa, let me declare Thursday to be a day for feasting….meaning, have the partridge (roasted on the platter, not seated next to your brother-in-law). And if there be moments taken for serious reflection, let someone remember another of Teresa’s magnificent aphorisms, “that the most serious business of heaven is joy.”
Or, if you resist being taught by a Catholic, consider the Hasidic Jews, who are almost off-the-charts when it comes to orthodoxy. To all outward appearances, it would appear that their mood is as black as their suits. But that would be wrong. For even though they pay strict adherence to Torah law and Sabbath ritual, I am told that they have a stated commitment to taking joy in this world as it is….in life in this world as it is….and in every hour of life in this world as it is.
Can you and I do that this Thanksgiving? That’s what everybody seems to be asking. Or has too much happened for the holiday to do its work in us (or have its way with us)? Nancy Gibbs, who authored that marvelous essay in Time Magazine entitled “We Gather Together,” says that this is just the kind of holiday we need right now…. “an intricately complicated one that comes at the end of a bitter harvest and yet finds something sweet to celebrate.” “For the first time in a long time,” she writes, “we are now pilgrims, finding ourselves stripped down to bare essentials and a single carry-on bag to sustain us in this strange new world.” So it should be no surprise that people are making a special effort to get home this year….dust off the fine china….unfold the good napkins….and make time for a sometimes-messy conversation with the people who know us best. “This is the year,” she adds, “when we will find out how we are doing on the character test. Namely, have the events of autumn left us hardened or humbled….bitter over what we have lost, or grateful for all that we have left (which we, until recently, took for granted)?”
On one hand, the Bible commands gratitude, quite apart from whether we feel it or not. I remember once telling my mother that I shouldn’t have to write a thank-you note for a shirt I didn’t like and wouldn’t wear….even if hell froze over and I had to face its icy blasts bare-chested. What my mother said to me was as memorable as it was unpreachable. So you can bet I wrote the note (even though, sticking to my principles, I never wore the shirt).
Saying “thanks” was something I was taught to do. And for that lesson, I am grateful. For I learned that good behavior is not necessarily feeling-based….meaning that life requires you to do things that do not always come easily, naturally or genuinely. Sometimes you say “thank you” because “thank you” is called for.
In my survey of biblical literature, I learned that gratitude was once a required ritual. King David even appointed Levitical priests to “invoke and thank the Lord” (I Chronicles 16:4)….a practice continued by Solomon, Hezekiah, clear unto the returning exiles from Assyria. In other words, the Hebrew kings appointed priests as quasi-secretaries to write the people’s thank you notes to God.
But while at least half the biblical references to giving thanks appear as mandates (“do it because it’s time to do it, not because you feel like doing it”), the other half suggest more spontaneous forms of gratitude….ones that arise from us, quite apart from prior thought or intentionality. Such gratitude is described as an expression too insistent to deny, or a feeling too big to contain. In those instances, the Bible suggests that gratitude owes more to an overflowing heart than it owes to an obedient will.
So how is your heart this Thanksgiving….humbled or hardened? Humbled, I hope. Times are tougher than we thought. Life is harder than we thought. Security is more fragile than we thought. Tomorrow is more imperiled than we thought. Nancy Gibbs is right. For the first time in a long time, we do have more in common with the pilgrims than we thought.
But isn’t there a connection between gratitude and deprivation? Doesn’t food always taste better when we’ve been starving for a while….health always feel dearer when we’ve been suffering for a while….the beloved always seem sweeter when we’ve been separated for a while? You would think it would be simple to feel gratitude when satiated….when the good life, good stuff, good folks and good times just keep coming and coming, like a waterfall of bounty that fills our cup and drenches our souls. Except I have never found it to be so. Instead, life’s preciousness is always seen for what it is, when we know it is fragile and fleeting….when we know it will not last….when we know “they” will not last. So, in the words of William Blake, “kiss the joy as it flies.” In a world where somebody can go off on a plane and not come home….go off to war and not come home….even go off to work and not come home….I suspect that some of us are giving a little more thought to “home” than we did just a few months ago. For if September 11 has taught us nothing else, it has driven home a pair of lessons….that crisis can serve as a catalyst for reconciliation….and that the only antidote for fear of the enemy that we don’t know is love for friends that we do. In the face of terror, very few of us think: “If only I’d made one more widget, merged one more company, or sued one more client.” Instead, we think about relationships…. those that need tending and those that need mending. Which includes, for some of us, the relationship we have with God and the church.
I had an incredibly moving thing happen yesterday following a funeral in our sanctuary. The woman who died was four years my junior and, for 13 years, my neighbor. I hadn’t seen her much in recent years. The last time was nine months ago, when I buried her first-ever grandchildren….twin girls, born too soon….born too small….born too undeveloped to survive. But before the spirit that was in them, left them, I held and baptized them. They were like a pair of Barbie dolls in my hand. Except they didn’t then, and never would, look like Barbie. Their grandmother said good-bye to them nine months ago. Then, nine days ago….on a Friday…. she and her husband drove to Big Rapids and said good-bye to her dad. After the funeral, everybody in the family came back to the old homestead on Highway 131 and had one of the best evenings they could remember….everybody together for the first time in 20 years. They shared laughter and tears, stories and memories. Along with food. Followed by sleep. Until 3:00 in the morning, that is, when she had the heart attack that took her home for good.
We had her service yesterday. We gave thanks for her 57 years. We called her “the glue of the family.” We told her story. We offered God’s promise. We sang “Amazing Grace.” And then we put her casket into the wagon. After which a cousin approached me in the hall. Struggling to get out a word, she told me about 20 long years outside the church. No faith. No worship. No nothing. “I used to sit in the pew and daydream,” she said. “Today, I sat in the pew and was transfixed. It’s like I was riveted to your every word. Even if I never see you again, thank you for making God and the church a possibility for my life.”
Except it wasn’t me, don’t you see. I was just the one at the microphone when everything in her came bubbling to the surface….need….hurt….hunger….loss….and (yes) gratitude. Everything that could have hardened her, humbled her. And ripened her. To the point of splitting her open….which is when a lot of things can work their way out….but which is also when a lot of other things can work their way in. Over and over again, all she could say was: “Thank you…. thank you….thank you.” And, through her tears, she was smiling.
Terrible stuff happens to people. Even to you. And you can be angry, I suppose. But, says Frederick Luskin of Stanford (who conducts forgiveness workshops around the country): “I’ve had any number of patients say to me that it’s hard to take a grudge seriously when you look at the World Trade Center.” To which I would ask….even a grudge against God?
Paul, writing from a Roman prison, tells the Colossians to “abound in thanksgiving”….even though, circumstantially speaking, it wasn’t a very good time for the Colossians and an even worse time for Paul. But, then, maybe gratitude is easier when the glass is nearly empty than when the glass is nearly full. More people, I suspect, count and remember their blessings when they can use their fingers rather than a calculator.
Pondering all of this yesterday morning, before setting pen to paper yesterday afternoon, I thought:
How sweet it is that it is sunny this late in the year….that, one more time, Julie will be home for Thanksgiving and my folks will still be here….that the crimson geraniums from last May’s “Now’s Our Chance” campaign are still alive in my yard, along with one incredibly gutsy pink rose that is going to vie with the geraniums for the title “Best of Show” or “First in Snow.”
And then there is the tree on the other side of my yard….the tall, stately Bradford Pear….the only tree with leaves….all its leaves….all its throbbing-with-life, brilliantly-red leaves….and then recalling that Toni Segitz gave us that tree, seven years ago, in memory of Bill.
Wandering through the Farmers’ Market, I realized that for a mere ten dollar bill, I could buy enough morel mushrooms to mix with some scrambled eggs, thus producing instant “heaven on a plate” some cold winter’s morning. And knowing that I had (in my possession) the ten bucks for the morels….sufficient taste buds to enjoy to morels….and the capacity to appreciate “forkfuls of heaven” until the real thing comes along.
I also have work that still needs doing….good people to do it with….and, as yet, a burning desire to keep on doing it (when it would be so easy, so tempting and so understandable to mail it in from some far-off zip code of the spirit).
And, last night, there were a few friends to celebrate my wife’s birthday (which is today)….along with the fact that she has a birthday….and that she is my wife.
Do I deserve all of it….any of it….more of it….or none of it? Darned if I know. I don’t go down that road, given that it won’t get me anywhere. Concerning “deservedness,” I’ll make no claims. But I’ll take it….enjoy it….give thanks for it (completely and utterly unprompted, thank you, Mother). And then I’ll carve the fatted partridge, leaving an unbroken drumstick for me.
To everything, a season. Happy Thanksgiving.
