We have
been told not to be anxious about what we shall eat and what we shall
drink because God is an abundant provider for which we have gathered
this day to give thanks. And I will share with you again how it is every
year that I have been blessed with the anticipation of knowing that
on this day I am not anxious about what I shall eat and what I shall
drink, for the table at our house will be set to be surrounded later
today with family and friends for the feast with which we will be so
amply provided. The table itself has been in the family for sixty years
or so, and all the extra leaves have been added to accommodate the guests.
Setting the table is something of a ritual connecting us with three
or four or more generations of those who have celebrated Thanksgiving
in our various families. Damask, silver, china, crystal, all, could
they speak, with stories to tell of celebrations past of harvest home.
The table decoration is a more recent tradition for us, about thirty
years, of a pineapple-turned-turkey, with a red felt turkey head and
neck, had been the product of a church fair that caught our fancy and
has been our centerpiece each year since. You have to buy a fresh pineapple.
That part doesn't keep. There are other traditions which grace our table
as well, place cards some of which re-emerge each year, offering readings
or a song after the main course, and an extraordinary number of pies.
We have been and, God willing, will continue to be blessed by our Thanksgiving
table, but especially this day as we are conscious of other Thanksgiving
tables.
Today
we certainly remember that table of some 370 years ago around which
the Pilgrim fathers and their families and native Americans gathered
to give thanks to God for this land's plenty after a year in which survival
had been much in doubt, but a celebration which we call in our national
life The First Thanksgiving. Most of us have a picture in our mind's
eye of that table and its occupants because it is such a part of our
national heritage, how Pilgrims were dressed, what the Indians looked
like, the Mayflower in the background, wild turkey and corn and fruit,
all of it subject to a certain amount mythology which has grown up around
it, but nonetheless a table of hope and of gratitude in the face of
all the grim realities of utter dependence upon God's bounty in the
new land of those English Calvinists.
The prayers
offered that day in the spirit of sojourners who have found their way
to a new home would not have been in a spirit that different from the
prayers offered at a table some 1600 years before that. That was the
table in an upper room with Christ at the head surrounded by disciples
giving thanks for the deliverance of the Jews from their bondage in
Egypt, their passover from death to life, a sacred meal of lamb reminding
them that their forebears were saved in the land of Egypt from the angel
of death by the blood of the lamb marked over the doors of the Israelites.
It was preeminently a meal of thanksgiving, that Passover celebration,
and we remember that the Greek word for thanksgiving is Eucharist. We
also remember that every meal is sacred to the Jew, and that Christ
took bread and wine, gave thanks to God, broke the bread, and gave it
to his family gathered round his table. This was also his last supper
with them, and at that table he identified himself with the meal and
with his disciples in a way that would not be forgotten and would in
fact be recreated every time followers gathered in his name when he
said, "This is my body, this is my blood."
It is
no accident, therefore, that today we have first come to this table
in remembrance of Christ's institution of his last supper. The plate
of the paten, the cup of the chalice, the dressing of the table and
its focus as we gather around it to receive the host who is our Host,
connects us with all of God's bounty, however we may be sharing with
others later in this day, with the spiritual aspirations of our forbears
in this land and their ancestors before them, with early Christians
who remembered after Christ's resurrection that he said he would be
with them always and especially as Christ was invoked and then given
to them at the table of their worship, connected with those who wandered
for forty years in the wilderness fed by God's manna from heaven, connected
to Abraham called by God to be the father of a holy people, and connected
to those even farther back who began human awareness of a Creator God
who has given us this island home of which all have been called since
to be good stewards.
There
are other tables we need to remember: those without much food or without
any food, tables serving the poor in soup kitchens, tables serving those
who are simply lonely, tables in other, more hostile lands. Before we
approach our tables today, please remember those tables as our offering
will go toward the support of our Township's food pantry.
But then
we are also connected to that table referred to in John's revelation,
that heavenly banquet,
Where
hunger and thirst are no more, where the sun shall not strike them,
nor any scorching heat, for the lamb in their midst will be their
shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God
will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
It is
the table of eternal thanksgiving, of eternal praise, where saints and
angels and the souls of all the faithful departed are filled with the
glory of God and thanksgiving. This meal is a foretaste of that meal
provided by the loving God of us all who invites us to this love-feast.
Many will remember my love for what Georger Herbert wrote of that invitation:
Love
bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin. But
quick-eyed love observing me grow slack from my first entrance in,
drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, if I lack anything. "A
guest," I answered, "worthy to be here." Love said,
"You shall be he." "I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah,
my dear, I cannot look on thee." Love took my hand, and smiling
did reply, "Who made the eyes but I?" "Truth, Lord,
but I have marred them; but my shame go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve." "You must sit down,"
says Love, "and taste my meat." So I did sit and eat.
Amen.
