Thanksgiving 2006 | Matthew 6:25-33
In Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL, the Ghost of Christmas
present takes Ebenezer Scrooge to view the celebration of Bob Cratchit
and his family. Scrooge was horrified at the meagerness of their feast,
and incredulous as to the degree of merriment the Cratchit’s were
able to muster despite their poverty.
Dickens’ tale was not just a lush fantasy, it was also intended
to be a stinging social commentary. In pointing out the disparity
between the rich and the poor in his own day, he presaged a culture of
prosperity in our own, and speaks to us as well.
Few of us here are what I would consider rich. Many of us squeak by
from month to month, barely staying one step ahead of our debtors. Just
this week Lawson and I were reflecting on how neither of us are any
further ahead now than we were ten years ago—and don’t
really expect to be ten years hence. And yet, when we gather around the
Thanksgiving table, piled high with sumptuous food, we are expected to
celebrate an abundance that many of us do not actually enjoy.
And the disingenuity doesn’t end there. Thanksgiving is supposed
to be a HAPPY time, and yet for lots of folks, it isn’t. Families
are often troublesome entities, and many of us feel obligated to gather
with people we wouldn’t ordinarily choose to hang out with and
pretend to all feel some warm glow that we really don’t.
That’s enough to make anyone depressed, and I’m sure you
are all aware of the statistics of depression that follow in the wake
of the holiday season.
I would like to suggest that Thanksgiving is often a difficult time
because we feel obliged to buy into an in-authenticity that quite
frankly rubs most of us the wrong way. We gather with people we’d
rather not. We project a cheerfulness that many of us do not feel. We
celebrate an abundance that most of us have not actually experienced.
Yes, won’t someone PLEASE break out the wine? Because we could
all use a drink about now.
I believe our Gospel reading is calling us to a readjustment in our
perception of Thanksgiving. Our culture holds Thanksgiving to be a
celebration of abundance, but I would like to suggest that this is a
distortion of its origins. For the Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth
Rock did not hold their feast as a celebration of prosperity or
abundance. Their meal was a celebration of survival. They weren’t
celebrating a happy time—over half of their number did not make
it through that hard winter. Their meal was an expression of gratitude
that they didn’t all perish.
It may be true that many of us live on the edge, financially. But the
very fact that we are Americans, that we live here, is a richness that
is often invisible to us. The quality of life of our lower middle
class, and even our poor is greater than that of most of the world.
When I went to Brazil with Flavio, I was completely devastated by the
extreme poverty I witnessed. There were miles upon miles of cardboard
and tin shacks, and millions of children that call those places home.
It was a rude awakening, and it opened my eyes to how really good we
have it, despite the struggle and the strife to make ends meet. At
least we have ends to put together. Thanksgiving is not a time to
celebrate how much we have, our prosperity, our abundance. Thanksgiving
is the time we set aside to say “thank you” to God, to the
Universe, to Life, for the fact that we are here, that we have had
enough to make it through another year. It is not a celebration of
abundance—it is a celebration of “enough-ness.”
Jesus’ words in our reading go completely counter to our
mainstream culture. While our media, and our president, are encouraging
us to “buy, buy, buy,” we watch everyone around us
scrambling to acquire as much as possible in a mad orgy of hoarding.
And we are not immune to these messages. We, too, want to have more;
we, too, want to squirrel away as much as we can for the possible lean
times ahead.
But Jesus is making like some irresponsible hippie, saying, “Oh,
dude, don’t worry about any of that. Look at the birds and the
flowers. They have enough, don’t they? So will you. Just let go,
just trust. There’s enough here for everybody. Don’t get
all bent out of shape about tomorrow. All you really have is today,
anyway.”
Crazy hippie. But…he’s right, you know. There IS enough
for everybody. If people didn’t hoard, if the rich shared what
they had with the poor, there would not be a single child who would go
to bed hungry tonight. No one would starve to death today. No one would
die of AIDS because they had no access to medication. We have
everything we need to end world hunger, and disease, and despair. We
have it all, right now. We have everything we need except the
willingness to do it. Those of you who don’t like to acknowledge
the reality of “sin,” I submit to you that sin isn’t
about who sleeps with who or upsetting your mother. Sin is letting
millions and millions die when we have the power to stop it. And
that’s REAL.
I suggest that this Thanksgiving we try something new, something
counter-cultural, something absolutely crazy. I suggest we celebrate
what we actually FEEL rather than what we’re SUPPOSED to feel. I
suggest we celebrate what we have ACTUALLY received rather than some
pretended abundance that many of us will never know. I suggest that we
gather with people that genuinely bring us joy rather than those that
give us headaches, regardless of who it will offend. I suggest we
celebrate an AUTHENTIC Thanksgiving this year.
This Thursday, let us gather around a table with people we love, and
let us reflect on how outrageously unlikely it is that we are even here
at all. Let us raise our glasses to the fact that we have glasses to
raise and something to put in them. Let us give thanks for the life we
share and the fact that we have been granted enough to see us through
another year. Let us pause in gratitude for the gifts, however meager,
we have received, and let us pause yet again to remember those who will
not sleep with full bellies that night.
Let us eschew the myth of abundance that has caused such poverty, and
leave behind the expectations of who we are supposed to BE, who we are
supposed to be WITH, and how we are supposed to FEEL. Let us give
thanks to God for who we actually are, for those we truly love, and for
the “enough” that we actually have. Like Scrooge, we may
all be surprised at the joy that can be generated not by celebrating an
abundance we do not experience, but the enough-ess that we have.
Let us pray…
Blessed are you, Sovereign of the Universe,
For you have given us food enough to sustain us
Shelter from the elements, clothes to keep us warm
And people who love us, and that we love.
What more, truly, can we ask?
We do not ask for more than we can use,
Instead we give you thanks for giving us enough for this day alone,
And we ask that others might have enough as well.
For we ask this in the name of that crazy hippie who said,
“Don’t worry about it—there’s enough for everybody!”
Even Jesus Christ. Amen.