Harvest Thanksgiving Year C

The Lord Make Us Truly Thankful

Readings: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 100; Philippians 4:4-9; John 6:25-35

North American Thanksgiving looks much the same on either side of the border. It is a family time as people come together to over indulge in turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy and pumpkin pie. We may even remember to say grace as we consider the bounty on the table.

And somehow most Canadians seem to have adopted the myth that the first Thanksgiving dates back to Plymouth Rock. In reality, we have an older tradition in Canada dating back some forty years prior to the American story. Furthermore, our story does not have the same association with tragedy. It also comes with an Anglican twist.

On 22 July 1578 the Rev. Robert Wolfall, chaplain to the third Frobisher expedition, celebrated the Eucharist on board the ship “Judith”. The ship’s captain Edward Fenton noted in his journal: “Tewsdaie, the xxiiith daie: we did receave the Communion altogether, contynewing that daie in prayer and thanks giving to god.” The Calendar for the Book of Alternative Services commemorates the “First Anglican Eucharist in Canada, 1578” on the 4th of September.

For All the Saints concludes its description of this event saying: “Frobisher decided to give up the idea of establishing a permanent settlement on Baffin Island and took the entire fleet back to England in mid-September. Almost a century would pass before the Anglicans again celebrated the Eucharist on Canadian soil”.

Apparently following Eucharist they ate a rather humble meal of salt beef, rock-hard crackers and mushy peas. That is what they had in their larder for the first Thanksgiving on what would become Canadian soil. I doubt that it would ever have taken hold as Thanksgiving fare.

For our First Nations people, the idea of celebrating Thanksgiving on one particular day is ludicrous. The giving of thanks they can understand. In their culture, they give thanks to the Creator every day. After picking berries or hunting they offer tobacco and give thanks for the sacrifice. They give thanks for clean air to breathe, for clean water to drink, for good health.

Our Celtic forebears had a similar worldview. Their prayers accompanied the thoughts and actions of each day as they went about their daily tasks, continuously acknowledging the God of all creation.

The notion that we in North America invented Thanksgiving is ludicrous. In reality Thanksgiving ceremonies go back to the beginning of time. The earliest rituals deal with the gathering of the community to eat together and to give thanks to the creator.

That is the setting for the passage from today’s Old Testament reading. The passage from Deuteronomy gives instructions for the festival of the first fruits, an ancient Hebrew Thanksgiving celebration. It is one that still goes on today.

I lived for a time in a part of North York that is predominantly Jewish. I was startled my first year there during the fall when my neighbours turned their patio into something that resembled a tree house. It seemed to be a fairly permanent structure. They decorated it lavishly with plants and dried leaves. I finally got up the courage to ask what they were up to. They explained that for a week they would be celebrating Sukkot, the harvest. I was invited to a sumptuous feast that took place on the patio. During the course of the evening, they retold the story, much as we read it in Deuteronomy today.

Repeating the words about wandering in the desert, and about God providing manna for them to eat, they thanked God for all the gifts they had received. "God," they said, "has heard our prayers. God has brought us to this rich and fertile country. God has saved us from oppression and want." They praised the God of history who has been with them through the ages, providing them with spiritual sustenance. And remembering what it was like to be a stranger in a strange land, they offered hospitality to those, like myself, whom they had invited to share in the festivities.

I was touched by how much the recalling of the story meant to that Jewish family. Centuries later, in a different time and space, they still recount the wanderings in the wilderness. They remember it, not as a time of bitterness, but as a time of closeness to God, of intimacy. It is the golden age of their innocency. It calls them to return to the ancient, simple and loyal faith. It gives them opportunity to reflect that everything they have is an inheritance from God. Everything belongs to God and is given freely for their use.

And that calls them, in turn, to open up their hearts to those in need. There is a sense of cooperation between God and them. God will continue to provide. They will continue to help others.

I suspect that to be truly thankful for what we have we need that sense of history. We need a story that draws us together as community. Our Christian story is certainly such a one. We come together as community. We give thanks. We break bread. We share together. We ask ourselves how we too can share fresh bread with others. At the heart of what we do at worship together, bread and wine are taken and blessed. They are the fruit of the earth. God's promises have again been fulfilled. Seedtime and harvest go on producing food for us.

The bread and wine are products of our hands. People make that bread and produce that wine. In bringing food and drink as an offering to God we are enacting the deepest facet of human experience. We are acknowledging our dependence upon the Creator and Sustainer of all things. We are putting our trust in God and thanking our Creator for all that we have.

Yet we can easily lose sight of the ordinariness of the food and drink we offer. We can become mesmerized by them. We can be taken up by the words and the actions. We can bury our heads in our prayer books and fail to know and understand our obligation as we break bread. Our obligation is to the poor, to the disenfranchised, to those who suffer, to the alien, to the stranger in our midst.

We know well that obligation. Yet it is very easy to pass it off, to expect that social agencies should deal with hunger. Yet clearly, the gospel message points out our obligation to be good stewards of all that God has created and to share our bounty with those who are in need.

Today's gospel is no exception. Jesus continues to provide for those in need. He continues to offer bread for hungry people. Jesus is being hounded, much like a modern rock star. He has fed five thousand people. The crowds find him. He tries to explain that their reasons for seeking him out are the wrong ones. The bread and fish he gave them will not solve their problems. They will get hungry again. “But my way of living!” he is saying, “That can change everything!”

There is much hunger in our world, and it isn’t all about food. Many hunger for love, acceptance, life and truth. The North American way of life is to try to satisfy our hungers in material ways. We come to services to give thanks for such things. I hope that today we will go away filled with what our true thanksgiving is. I hope we will go away thinking about what we can contribute.

We live in an age of spectaculars and extravaganzas with glitter and glamour, and yet some of the most splendid moments are quite common and simple – a glass of cold water when you are hot and thirsty, a kind word, an embrace or a touch given with sincerity. These are the things that really matter. No act of love is so small that it is insignificant. This Thanksgiving can we be satisfied with smaller things?

In the world there are many who are hungry. There are many who are in exile. There are many who are so caught up in despair that they can think of no justifiable reason to give thanks. As Christians we need to be aware of them all, and to address their physical needs as generously and bountifully as Jesus did when he fed the five thousand. We also need to celebrate the God who gives us much to be thankful for, even in the midst of a broken world.
When Jesus becomes the Bread of Life for us, we become bread to others about us. This becomes our purpose in life and gives present, perpetual and eternal meaning to life. It gives real reason to give thanks. Amen.

Harvest Thanksgiving

Don’t Forget to Say Thank You

Readings: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 65; 2 Corinthians 9:6-15; Luke 17:11-19
As children, whenever we went to a party at a friend's house, the last thing my mother always said to us was the reminder, "Don't forget to say thank you!" I remember, as well, the painstaking care with which I wrote notes after Christmas to aunts and uncles saying thank you. I am the first to admit, that since I had very practical relatives, I did not always feel grateful for the socks or the hat and mittens, but what mother said went. I sat down the day after Christmas or my birthday, and dutifully wrote a note expressing my sheer and utter gratitude for the lovely gift.

In this electronic age, writing thank you notes is a lost art. I feel fortunate on the occasions when I receive a message on Facebook that at least the gift has been received. It would seem that gratitude has become a radical response. I say this in the sense that it seems to be unconventional, surprising, perhaps even shocking to write a thank you note. We seem to have the sense that saying thank you to God is important, but why? God does not have a need to hear us say thank you. The fact that is so often overlooked is that we ourselves have a need to say thank you. Gratitude is important to our wellbeing.
The power to appreciate and be grateful is a gift from God. Thankfulness is not something that one can put on. It is something that wells up in us. I suspect it has little to do with how much we have, and everything to do with our ability to allow God’s grace to permeate our lives. “Give us thankful hearts” is certainly a good and realistic prayer, not only at Harvest Thanksgiving, but the whole year round.

For the people of Israel giving thanks was about remembering the good things that God had provided. It is very much a part of Jewish faith to do that kind of remembering. They recognized that God wants us never to forget that it is not by our power and our strength that we exist as servants of God, but by the grace extended to the least among us. The passage read this morning begins by remembering the past, not with a sense of nostalgia and longing for the good old days, but with a view to correcting the present and looking to the future. They are not to take things for granted; they are to remember that what they have belongs to God. They are reminded that as God journeyed with them through the wilderness times, so God is with them in their time of prosperity.

For Paul it was also about remembering God’s bounty. He reminds the Corinthians about their need to give as God gives. It is his stewardship sermon. “God provides abundantly,” he tells them, “so that you will have enough not only for yourselves, but also to share with others who are in need.” He is not talking about having enough resources to be self-sufficient, to be independent, to get rich, but enough resources to be able to help one another.
In the Gospel. it is about having a sense of gratitude for all that God has provided. It describes an encounter between Jesus and a group of ten lepers who sought healing from him. Instead of healing them on the spot, he sent them to show themselves to the priests. That was the requirement before they could return to society. They did as Jesus told them to do. They scurried off to show themselves to the priest. As they went in obedience to Jesus they discovered that they had been cured. One of the lepers, a Samaritan, a foreigner, gave praise to God for his cure and returned to thank Jesus. He received more than a cure. He became whole. It is not that the other nine lacked faith. They were all healed. Yet their faith remained incomplete, because it did not result in gratitude.

What can make us truly grateful? Such a question always brings to mind a certain episode of “Frasier”. He and his brother Niles are in the café as usual. Niles says to him, “Are you happy!”

Frasier turns the question back to Niles, “Why do you ask?

Niles responds. “It’s just that I saw an orphan receive a pair of cheap shoes. And there was such an expression of gratitude on his face. He was so happy. Why was he so happy? Here I am wearing a pair of $400.00 shoes. I look at them and wonder if I even really like them. Do you like them? They have tassels. I don’t really like tassels. What do you think?” And Frasier spends the rest of the show trying to decide what it is that makes him happy.

Like Niles we wonder sometimes how people who lack the luxurious lifestyle that we take for granted can be happy. How can they be close? How can children living in misery in Haiti or Peru or Zaire ever laugh? How can they play and sing when we can’t with all that we have? How can they play and sing and hold hands, and fall down on the ground and rejoice? But they can.
Surely the most effective thing we can do is to give thanks. Do we really believe that prayer has anything to do with what happens in the world? Do we pray for the leaders of our country really expecting that something powerful could happen? Do we see the signs around us of God's presence in our lives? Do we care for this world in a way that expresses our gratitude?

We hear over and over again that climate change is real, that it is having a dramatic effect on our world. We see it in our weather patterns. Unprecedented violent storms like the ice storm last winter! Weather systems that linger on for long periods of time! Drought in parts of the world, flooding in others! We see documentaries showing picture of open water in the Arctic, and of animals and birds that are in decline. There are predictions about climatic change and the probability that Canada will face more floods, droughts and tornadoes with the increasing levels of ozone in the atmosphere. The most perplexing part of it is that no one wants to take responsibility for the changes that are occurring. My suspicion is that change will come about because each one of us begins to take seriously our obligation to God and to this wonderful creation. We have an obligation to be thankful for God’s bounty.

Our Christian story is about remembering to give thanks. We come together as community. We break bread. We share together. We ask ourselves how we too can share fresh bread with others. At the heart of what we do at worship together, bread and wine are taken and blessed. They are the fruit of the earth. God's promises have again been fulfilled. Seed time and harvest go on producing food for us.

The bread and wine are products of our hands. People make that bread and produce that wine. In bringing food and drink as an offering to God we are enacting the deepest facts of human experience. We are acknowledging our dependence upon the Creator and Sustainer of all things. We trust and thank God for all that we have.

As we celebrate the harvest, can we make certain that what we have is not a hindrance to our relationship with God and with one another? Can we lift thankful hearts to a loving God who cares for each of us, and provides for our needs? Can we learn to share our bounty, and in that sharing find the happiness that God would have us know?

May we be moved beyond the gratitude of satisfaction to the risk of generosity! Amen
 
thank for it.