Scripture: Psalm 107
It’s the Sunday before the Thanksgiving holiday, and a few words about the giving of thanks would seem to be in order. It’s also a Sunday when we have a few additional things to fit in to our schedule, so a few brief words about the giving of thanks would seem to be in order. I’ll try to comply. I’ll also note that I will not be the preacher at the joint Thanksgiving service this evening. Greg Anderson of Belmont Baptist, the host pastor, will be doing the sermon tonight, so I don’t have to come up with two thanksgiving sermons on the same day, and if you’re thinking of coming, you don’t have listen to two thanksgiving sermons from me on the same day, or the same sermon twice. But I do have some thoughts this morning relating to thanks giving, a little bit on the holiday of Thanksgiving, a little more on the spiritual process of giving thanks.
So far as the holiday goes, I think I just need to say a few things and then move on. The idea of Thanksgiving as an American national holiday is a little bit difficult for me, especially as it’s tied in to the story of the Pilgrims and what is often referred to as the “first thanksgiving”. The idea that what we are giving thanks for has to do with the landing of the Pilgrims and the heritage of democracy that flowed from them and all the blessings we enjoy as residents of the United States of America is a little bit difficult for me.
For one thing there is the question of the Indians, which as you know has been on my mind quite a bit recently, and whether it’s Jamestown or Plymouth colony, I can’t think about such things without remembering that from the point of view of many indigenous people, the arrival of the Europeans is not an occasion for thanksgiving. I know this is not a new thought, but I feel the need to say it anyway. I’m not going to focus my remarks on this today, but I also can’t talk about Thanksgiving, with all the mythology that has surrounded it over the years, and leave that unsaid. If we’re going to tie the Thanksgiving holiday into the story of the Pilgrims, we need to tell that story in a different way than we have done in the past. And, I’m not so sure the story of the Pilgrims serves us well anyway. The Pilgrims are not everyone’s ancestors and the nation, the culture, or the religion of the Pilgrims is not what we are giving thanks for or what the holiday should be celebrating.
I realize all this can sound a little grumpy. It even sounds a little grumpy to me, because in fact I know I am thankful to be living in the United States for lots of reasons, and I don’t want to seem or to feel ungrateful. But Christianity and the United States have been so closely connected in so many people’s minds that I think it is important to make a distinction between the two and to make it clearly wherever we can. The spirit of thanksgiving from a Christian perspective is not about being grateful for America. And if Thanksgiving is a holiday that celebrates the United States particularly—the bounty of the land, the prosperity, the freedoms we enjoy, the spirit of the people—if Thanksgiving is a holiday that celebrates the United States particularly, then from a Christian standpoint it needs to be challenged, or at least approached with caution and not uncritically embraced. The idea of giving thanks for the blessings God has showered particularly upon the United States easily slips over in ways that we don’t always realize are happening, easily slips over into the idea that God and the United States are just pretty thick, pretty tight, best buddies and are sort of working hand in hand, arm in arm. Thanksgiving as a national holiday bothers my spirit more than just a little bit.
All of this leads in to some of the other things I am wrestling with as I think about thanksgiving, the giving of thanks, in a more general sense. I referred a few moments ago to being grumpy, and in a way I meant it in a light-hearted sort of way, but I also in a way meant it as a serious issue. There are lots of things to be grumpy about, things to complain about, worry about, grieve about, be angry about, all sorts of things to be unhappy or unsatisfied with. It’s true that some of the things that you or I might be out of joint about are because of our own grumpiness, and that some attitude adjustment on our part would be the appropriate remedy and would reduce the level of anger or grief or fretfulness or whatever. But there are plenty of things in our lives that ought to upset us, indeed there are plenty of things that probably ought to upset us more than they do, where if an attitude adjustment is called for at all, it is that we should be more angry, more worried, less accepting of the world as it is. In any case, we are troubled, justifiably troubled by all sorts of things from challenges facing us on a personal level, or people we care about, to a war that some of us believe should not have been, should not be, and should not continue. In that context frankly, thankfulness does not necessarily come naturally or easily.
It is certainly not true that one can’t be both thankful and concerned about the state of the world at the same time. If that were the case, then we would all be forced to choose whether to be concerned or to be thankful, and the world would have one bunch of ungrateful, thankless people running around trying to change the world and another bunch of people who were really into thankfulness but don’t care very much about the state of the world. That’s not a very happy thought, the idea of having to choose between being thankful and concerned about improving the world, or the idea of the world being divided into those two camps. But of course that’s not the way the world is. Most of us do have both of those two impulses within us. It’s not that they can’t live together. They can and they do. But there is a challenge here.
The reality is, at least my reality is that the cares of the world and the cares of my life, even the relatively insignificant cares of my life, can erode my thankfulness, or crowd it out. The cares of the world and the cares of my life can sort of take over my insides, leave a lot less room for thankfulness, shrink down my gratitude until it is much less than I would like it to be. That doesn’t mean that thankfulness is impossible in a world such as ours, or in lives such as ours, burdened as they are not just with a lot of perhaps unnecessary cares, but with cares born of love. It doesn’t mean that thankfulness is impossible, or that we achieve it only by being less caring, less concerned, less loving. It doesn’t mean any of that, but it does mean from where I sit that I need to be intentional about it. It doesn’t necessarily happen naturally or spontaneously. Sometimes it does, of course. Sometimes in an unexpected moment, in a moment of grace, from out of nowhere a wave of thankfulness may wash over us. But more often, we are going to need to work at it.
And I do want to work at it. The Psalms say repeatedly, many of the Psalms say that it is “good and right” to give thanks to God. And I feel the truth of that instinctively. I am not in right relation to God, or to myself for that matter, if I am not in a mode of thankfulness. And so I do feel that I need to be intentional about the giving of thanks. I need to be purposeful about it. I need to nurture it within myself. And I need to do all this in season and out of season, when it comes naturally and when it doesn’t, when things are going well and when things are going not so well and when it’s all I can do to choke out a few words of thanksgiving. Because the kind of thanksgiving that is “good and right”, the kind of thanksgiving that is good for my soul, is not a thanksgiving for good fortune. It’s not just a matter of remembering to be appreciative of the good things of life, remembering not to take them for granted, though of course that’s a good thing too. But the thanksgiving I want to cultivate in myself is not just that. It’s a thanksgiving that is not dependent on things going well or on recognizing the good things in life that are there alongside everything that is not good. It is a matter of being able to have a spirit of thankfulness for the whole of it, the tears and the laughter, the joys and the sorrows, the sin and the grace, the living and the dying—to be able to be thankful in everything and through everything, and even in some deep sense for everything.
Just as it’s sort of ludicrous to think of a world that is divided into camps, those who have a heart to change the world to make it better and those who have a heart to give thanks for the world as it is, so it’s not my soul’s desire to divide my spirit into a thankful part and a “make the world better” part. It’s not a matter of striking a proper balance between divine discontent on the one hand and contented thankfulness on the other. It’s a matter of finding a way to be truly discontented and deeply thankful at the same time, a way to mourn the way the world is or to cry out in anger or frustration or sadness and to be inclusively grateful at the same time. It’s not such an easy thing to do, I think. It is where I feel my heart needs to be.
Psalm 107 is helpful. It’s one of the many psalms, as I said, that encourage us to the giving of thanks. It is also one of the psalms that combine that giving of thanks with the recognition of the many realities in our world that in a common sense sort of way we would not give thanks for. “Some wandered in desert wastes…were hungry and thirsty…some sat in darkness and in gloom…were prisoners in misery…some were sick…even drawing near to the gates of death…” But, the Psalmist points out, God is at work even here to set free, to bring justice, to bring love, to bring life. And all of that too, of course, is not different from our thanksgiving but part of it. “Let them—let us—thank the Lord for God’s steadfast love, for God’s wonderful works for humankind.” Let us thank the Lord for the whole of life, for the God given, God infused whole of it.
And so I recommit myself to cultivate thanksgiving within my spirit. And I pray for it, and in putting my prayer to words, I think I cannot do better than the words you heard earlier from Walter Brueggemann…
“We begin this day in gratitude,
thanks that is a match for your self-giving,
gratitude in gifts offered,
gratitude in tales told,
gratitude in lives lived.
Gratitude will, but not so easily lived,
held back by old wounds turned to powerful resentment,
retarded by early fears become vague anxiety,
restrained by self-sufficiency in a can-do arrogance,
blocked by amnesia unable to recall gifts any longer.
Do this yet. Create innocent space for us this day
for the gratitude we intend.
In thankfulness
we will give,
we will tell,
we will live…Amen.
Jim Bundy
November 18, 2007