Community Thanksgiving 2017

A Reflection for the Community Thanksgiving Service at Outer Banks Presbyterian Church

November 19, 2017                                                                Thomas E. Wilson, Preacher

Deuteronomy 8:7-18               Psalm 104        Matthew 25: 31-40

Like many of us in America, I grew up with Thanksgiving as a part of my life and understood it through the eyes of a child, a view I maintained long after I supposedly grew up.

Through those eyes of youthful nostalgia, there were pageants in elementary school before the vacation where we dressed up as Indians and Pilgrims and had turkey in the school cafeteria that day. The ladies of the churches would put together Thanksgiving baskets for some of the poor in the community and the young people would deliver them. On Thanksgiving Day families would gather and watch television on the big black and white to see the parades pushing the opening of shopping season for Christmas, watch a football game usually with the Detroit Lions playing the Green Bay Packers, eat an unholy amount of food, and congratulate ourselves on the blessed lives we were living because we worked hard and went by all the rules.

Through the eyes of youthful nostalgia, we would eat the foods that we did not usually eat, like a big turkey - and the more it looked like a Norman Rockwell illustration the better. It was an outward and visible sign that we had more than enough to eat, and the gathered together families’ tables would groan with all the special stuff we got to eat. But it was a special day, unlike any other day in the year, like something the adults called “dressing”, but we children called  “stuffing”. It was an appropriate name for what we were doing was stuffing ourselves with food and drink, stuffing ourselves with conversations and the gossip of cousins and families’ triumphs and trials of the past year, stuffing our eyes with spectacles on television, stuffing our ears with the noise of multiple conversations all at once, stuffing our time with games and activities, and stuffing ourselves with visions of early shopping.

In essence we had an arrangement with God - God did his work and we did ours, and as long as he stayed on his side of the street, we co-existed nicely. We had a lot in common with the people the writer of the Hebrew Testament lesson from Deuteronomy cite who declare, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.”

Yet, there are moments when I look at Thanksgiving without the handicap of nostalgia. I see with the eyes of faith, and I see it all as grace. I remember all the people I have had Thanksgiving with over my seventy years of life, and I thank God that God allowed me to live in places and at times in which I got to know these people before they died; they now feast at another table. The eyes of faith see the gift of time when we move from chatter to sharing things of deep importance so that we enter into Holy Time and the space between us is sacred space and we are walking on Holy Ground.

The eyes of faith see that that there are people who are not at our table who are hungry and I did not feed them, naked and I did not clothe them, sick and I did not minister to them, in prison and I did not visit them, vulnerable and I did not stand by their side and work for justice with them. At the same time, the eyes of faith see the hungry that I with others did feed, the naked that I with others did clothe, the sick that I and others did minister to, those in prison that I with others did visit, the vulnerable that I and others did stand with. The eyes of faith listen to the story that Jesus tells about the sheep and the goats and see that I am both a sheep and a goat.

The eyes of faith tell me that I and others are called to live into being members of God’s family, and I and so many others are blessed with caring for others in that family. The eyes of faith tell me that I and others have fallen short of that invitation to love. The eyes of faith tell me that I and so many others are loved by the God of mercy. The eyes of faith tell me that Thanksgiving is an opportunity for us to see all that God is doing in our lives. The eyes of faith tell me that this is a good time to give thanks for all the gifts we have received and had the opportunity to give. The eyes of faith tell me that it is the love in, under, over, and through all of the gifts for which we truly give thanks.

Thanksgiving 2017

Paid work done doesn't need a thank you

but opportunity and skill to work does,

praying thanks for chance given there is

and gifted times to develop skill through.

Thanksgiving is time accounting of gifts

around we as, fellow gifts are counting,

beyond number, growing and mounting,

unencumbered by worth; beyond us shifts

to giving of gifts as deep purpose of breath.

Knowing we lose everything as time ends

we practice giving ourselves away as friends

to the one who gives us both birth and death.

The outward forms of gifts will fade thereof,

but behind all the gifts, undying lives a love.