Thanksgiving Sermon

Thanksgiving sermon
November 21, 2010
I don’t know about y’all but we at St. Peter’s have been talking a lot about first fruits lately. I would imagine that we are not unique in this utilizing of October and November as a time for the annual stewardship drive. And in that time of stewardship, we have spent some time talking about first fruits, how it is important to give to God off the top of our lives rather than out of what happens to be left-over. This is emphasized in our passage from Deuteronomy this evening, how God has saved the people of Israel and brought them out of slavery and exile in Egypt and has brought them into the land of promise that is their inheritance as God’s people. Because of this special relationship with God, the people are instructed to give the first fruits of the ground to God. It is an act of thanksgiving, an act of relationship, an act of remembering all that God has done for them and responding.
I would imagine that it was pretty easy to do this, that first year. After all, we know that it is not a hard task to be thankful to God when the milk and honey of the land is flowing freely. It is easy to be thankful when all is going well, and my heart is practically overflowing with thanksgiving to God for the glory of creation, when the skies are brilliant blue and the sunlight sparkles on the sound. It is easy to be thankful when my household is running smoothly, kids and husband are happy and healthy, and the kids are acting sweetly. (In fact, my moment of deepest thanksgiving every day is inevitably when I am putting each child to bed.)
It is easy to feel thankful when all is going well. But what about when it is not? How do we give God the first fruit that is thanksgiving when our hearts are heavy or burdened, when we don’t really feel that we have anything for which to be thankful?
There’s a great scene in the lovely book the Life of Pi by Yann Martel, that gets to the heart of thanksgiving. Pi Patel, the hero of the novel, is a 16 year old boy from India, who practices Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam and who has the gift of seeking out and holding up the kernel of what is best in all of them. Through a strange series of circumstances, Pi finds himself stranded in a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a 450 pound Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. Pi is forced to use every ounce of his reason and skill to survive, and he often relies on his faith to provide meaning and comfort in his bleak situation.
In the following passage, Pi speaks of his reliance on his faith over the course of his journey, and it is a faith that is strengthened and upheld by a spirit of thanksgiving:
“I practiced religious rituals that I adapted to the circumstances—solitary Masses without priests or consecrated hosts…They brought me comfort, that is certain. But it was hard, oh it was hard. Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love—but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation, and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up.
At such moments, I tried to elevate myself. I would touch the turban I had made with the remnants of my shirt and I would say aloud ‘THIS IS GOD’S HAT!’
I would pat my pants and say aloud ‘THIS IS GOD’S ATTIRE!’
I would point to Richard Parker and say aloud ‘THIS IS GOD’S CAT!’
I would point to the lifeboat and say aloud ‘THIS IS GOD’S ARK!’
I would space my hands wide and say aloud ‘THESE ARE GOD’S WIDE ACRES!’
I would point at the sky and say aloud ‘THIS IS GOD’S EAR!’
And in this way I would remind myself of creation and of my place in it.
But God’s hat was always unraveling. God’s pants were falling apart. God’s cat was a constant danger. God’s ark was a jail. God’s wide acres were slowly killing me. God’s ear didn’t seem to be listening.
Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out… I thank God it always passed. A school of fish appeared around the net or a knot cried out to be reknotted. Or I thought of my family, of how they were spared this terrible agony. The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shrinking point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.”
Just as love is a choice, an action, so may we also choose thanksgiving, even when our hearts are not feeling particularly thankful.
One of the most powerful things I have ever experienced was my first time attending the noon-day chapel service at Stewpot Soup Kitchen in Jackson. I had just started working there, fresh out of college, and the leadership of Stewpot had decided a while before that people needed to be fed spiritually as well as physically. And so they started holding an ecumenical worship service 30 minutes before the noon meal, and people were invited but not required to attend. Well, the service was usually packed full, as it was on this first day I attended. At one point in the service, the leader went around the room asking each and every person to name one thing he or she was thankful for on that particular day. He asked the homeless people, the mothers struggling to raise their children without enough money to buy food or clothing—name one thing for which you are thankful. He asked the mentally disabled who aimlessly wandered the streets of Jackson in an attempt to escape their abysmal group homes, and he asked the senior citizens who had to choose whether they could buy food or medications with their limited incomes—name one thing for which you are thankful. As I sat there, curious about what these worn-down people could possibly be thankful for, I was overwhelmed by the sincerity and simplicity of their responses. Every person found at least one thing to be grateful for that day, and many of them responded simply, “I am grateful that God woke me up this morning and gave me this new day.” It quickly became evident to me that they understood and believed that everything, every day is a new creation with new possibilities and new ways to love, that all that is has been given by God. And they were grateful. I will never forget the lesson that those beautiful, broken people taught me that day: at any point in our lives, any person can choose to find at least one reason to be thankful for God.
I think that too often we think that thanksgiving is an emotion that must well up out of our over-full hearts. And friends, that just isn’t the case. Thanksgiving is love in action. It is a choice that we make to live our lives a certain way. Pi Patel recognized this even as he was stuck in abysmal circumstances, he remembered that all that he had been given was really God’s and even though bad things were happening to him, he chose to carry on with his life and to carry on trying to love God. My friends at Stewpot had made the choice to be thankful as well; in the midst of their own oppressive situations, they recognized that all that they had, including their very lives, was a gift from God, and so they chose to respond to God and their neighbors with love.
And so this night we gather to break bread together, and to help each other remember that Thanksgiving is choosing a path, a way of living our lives, recognizing that all that we are and all that we have comes from God, and offering love as our first fruits, our thankful response.