For me,
today, Thanksgiving is all about food. And scripture backs me up, sort
of.
Certainly
Deuteronomy does with its reference to wheat, barley, vines and fig
trees, and pomegranates, olive trees, honey, and bread with out scarcity.
That feast is preceded by Moses’ reference to the hunger of the
Israelites before entering the Promised Land—a hunger which was
intended to help them understand, “One does not live by bread
alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
Nevertheless, the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey must
have been music to the ears of those who had wandered for forty years
in the wilderness.
James
in his epistle does not say Thanksgiving is all about food, per se,
but does say that you and I are to be “a kind of first fruits
of his creatures.” Traditionally, in the Temple, the first fruits
were offered to God as a sacrifice, as an act of thanksgiving for God’s
blessings. James is saying that you and I are like those first fruits
as Paul says, “to present yourselves as a living sacrifice to
God.”
And then
Matthew in this morning’s gospel says, “Don’t worry
about it. Don’t worry about food, and don’t even worry about
clothing.” In essence, Matthew says that God will provide because
God knows that we need all these things. Instead, he says, “Seek
first the kingdom of God and all these things will be given to you.”
So, I’m
going to take Matthew at his word and seek first the kingdom of God
In Matthew’s gospel itself when I read,
And
again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, “The kingdom
of Heaven may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for
his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the
marriage feast; but they would not come. Again he sent other servants,
saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, behold, I have made ready
my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves are killed, and everything is
ready; come to the marriage feast.’ (But they would not come.)
Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those
invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the thoroughfares and invite
to the marriage feast as many as you find. And those servants went
out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both bad and
good; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
Luke expands the specificity of those who are invited to include the
poor and the maimed and the blind and the lame. It is truly a banquet
of rich fare in the kingdom of God—gifts from God to all. No one
shall be excluded except by their own choice. All will be included in
this feast.
Invariably
on Thanksgiving Day I am drawn to the food of this thanksgiving meal,
this Eucharist which is a Greek word meaning thanksgiving. It is in
fact a foretaste of the heavenly banquet in that parable where all are
invited to sit at the table of the King of Love. “The King of
Love my shepherd is whose goodness faileth never. I nothing lack if
I am his, and he is mine forever.”
Moreover
the offering of food at this table is nothing less than the offering
of Christ’s whole life for us when he said, “This is my
body and this is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.” Very
specifically, in every Eucharist, we remember the offering of Christ’s
life, death, and resurrection. By remembering we recreate, we make present
that which happened before, so that Christ’s presence is every
bit as real in this meal which we share as it was real for his disciples
the night before he died and as it will be real in the kingdom of Heaven.
In the
Prevost family on Thanksgiving Day I am often heard to say that we take
Matthew’s advice literally in that we are not anxious about what
we shall eat or what we shall drink, but rather how much we shall eat
and how much we shall drink. And yet traditionally for the Prevost family
the nourishment of family and friends is what truly sustains us, including
the fact that Thanksgiving was often November 25 as it is today, which
then today would have been my mother’s 90th birthday. And so this
Eucharist as a foretaste of the kingdom of Heaven comforts me that my
mother is now numbered among those in God’s kingdom as are those
for all of you whom you have loved and see no longer, some sadly very
recently. Their welcome and safekeeping is mirrored here in our welcome
and safekeeping and is cause for great thanksgiving indeed.
A wonderful
story of food and thanksgiving and grace and generosity is told in this
little excerpt from Forward: Day by Day. The text is from Luke, “The
spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good
news to the poor.” The story is this:
Snow
fell on me as I waited for a cab in Washington, D.C. A rumpled homeless
man in a stocking cap and fingerless gloves asked me for money to
eat.
Most
of us want to be certain that anyone we give money to is worthy (which
usually means working or actively looking for a job) and we don’t
want them to spend the money on alcohol or drugs. So we donate through
a church or a community organization, and pastors usually encourage
that kind of giving.
I gave
the man $20 because I had just been to the ATM machine and I had nothing
smaller. He stared at me for a moment and stammered, “M’am?
You meant to give me a dollar, didn’t you?” When I said
no, he put his head back and began to yell, “Thaaaank you, Jesus!”
over and over again. He went to a nearby coffee shop and came out
with a huge cookie and a cup of coffee, still singing out , “Thaaaank
you, Jesus!”
What
if a beggar misuses my money? That isn’t my business. Giving
to a beggar is between me and God. What they do with the money is
between the beggar and God. Man does not live by bread—or cookies—alone,
but they sure help the hungry.
Thaaaank
you, Jesus!
Amen.
