On Thanksgiving Day, I wanted to share excerpts from a beautiful sermon preached by Barbara Brown Taylor--to my mind, one of the finest preachers in the "business" today. How does one give thanks when events in the great world, and in the smaller world of one's own life, do not seem to lead one to gratitude? Taylor's faith-filled response to that question merits reflection.
Without too much etymological violence, Thanksgiving Day becomes Eucharist Day, a day when we are called to offer thanks to God for the whole of our lives.
Which is not always an easy thing to do.
Last week, I found a bumper sticker that summed it all up, an example of the laugh-until-you-cry school of humor. “Life is hard,” it says. “Then you die.” . . . As I was showing it around yesterday to great hilarity, one perceptive person declined to laugh, cocked her head, and asked, “Have you had a hard week?”
I have had a hard year, and not just me; the world has had a hard year.
Three thousand years ago the Jews formulated blessings—berakoth—for every circumstance of their lives. Come weal or woe, they had a blessing. If it were good news, then “Blessed be he who is good and does good.” If it were bad news, then “Blessed be the judge of truth.” As far as they were concerned, humankind has a duty to pronounce a blessing on the bad in life as well as the good, because all life came from God.
And when we gather for eucharist, for thanksgiving, what we toast is the whole of our Lord’s life, the defeats along with the victories, the gentle birth alongside the violent crucifixion, the sleepless night in Gethsemane alongside the empty tomb on Easter morning. Because, in retrospect, in faith, we believe that it is all a single tapestry and the removal of a single thread diminishes the whole creation.
Our challenge this Thanksgiving morning is to see our own lives the same way, to learn how to give thanks at this altar not only for the mixed blessings of Christ’s life but also for our own, to say “thank you” for the whole mess, the things we welcome as well as the things we risk our souls to escape.
“Thanks be to God,” we say, because we believe that God is somewhere to be found in everything that happens to us. “Thanks be to God,” we say, because we believe that the cords of God’s love are never severed, however dark or convoluted our path through life may sometimes be.
God is God, and our lives are our lives, and we can love them or leave them, give thanks for them or whittle them away with regret. Our dare this morning is to embrace all that we have ever been and done and haul it up upon the altar, and there to recognize our lives as sacraments, outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace.
So happy Thanksgiving. Happy Eucharist. Whether we leave this place to join friends and family or to dine alone . . . God goes with us, and there is no corner of our lives that he does not inhabit. Let us be on the lookout for him, and ready with our chorus: “Thanks be to God. Alleluia. Amen.”
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