To Whom Do We Give Thanks

A sermon podcast: This week, due to some technical issues, we are digging into the archives: all the way back to 2013. Jamie Howison preached a sermon on what giving thanks looked like in Biblical times and now... and how they are not so different.

Across the cultures, there's a long and venerable history of marking a celebration of thanksgiving for the harvest. With the hardest work done, food carefully stored and put up for the winter season. Such Thanksgiving festivals provided agrarian societies with something of a breathing space in which to mark the transition time right before winter with gratitude. Our own national holiday of Thanksgiving is rooted in that tradition. Though for the vast majority of Canadians it is now only vaguely connected to harvest to the land. Now I know there are people here who come from families with deep connections to farming into the land, who grew up on the farm, or whose parents or grandparents did, and there are even a few people connected to Saint Ben's still actively involved in farming. Some of us have gardens in our yards. Some are involved in neighbourhood community gardens. Some are members of organic farm coops. One person who's sitting here, even grows hops in his apartment to use in his craft beer making. It's a noble undertaking. 

But realistically, what percentage of our food do even the most avid of gardeners plant and tend and harvest? At most, maybe 5%. Most of what we eat comes from the grocery store, carefully washed vegetables, fruit, often coming from halfway across the world that has been carefully selected so that it displays well. plastic-wrapped meat laid out on styrofoam trays, complete with those little absorbent pads that stop up any unsightly juices. So we don't have to think about where it might have come from. It's all very convenient. It's all quite removed from the realities of the work and sweat and dirt of harvest. But what's long struck me as even more vestigial about our national institution of Thanksgiving Day, is the very idea of giving thanks. Ours is an increasingly secular society. In the 2011 census, 23.9% of Canadians declared themselves as having no religion. And of those who identified with a Christian faith, only a fragment are actually actively involved in some church community. 

So over this weekend, as families get together to devour that Turkey, to whom are they giving thanks. For many people, it's just a case of having one last long weekend before winter, providing a good excuse to get together and have a great meal. And that is by no means a bad thing. In fact, in a society in which families are less and less likely to sit down together for meals, it's quite a good thing to have that as part of our national practice. And maybe for many people, it's enough, that's enough to be generally thankful to God knows who, so to speak, for the shared meal and the statutory holiday. 

For the community, though, for whom tonight's reading from Deuteronomy was written. The idea of giving thanks at harvest time was anything but vague, or vestigial. That reading begins with this, when you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess. And right away, we need to recall that these words were addressed to a people who had not only been landless, but had been slaves. They themselves had been possessions, working the land of their owners, and surviving on what little provisions they'd been allowed. But it's all changing. This is a people anticipating a very different reality. When you come into that land, when you settle that land, you shall take some of the first fruit of the ground, the first of the harvest, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is good When you and you shall put that into a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name, take some of the freshest and the best of the harvest, and carry it to the temple and offer it there as a sign of thanksgiving to God, for the land that produced that harvest is God's gift to you. 

They're pretty clear that it is the Lord to whom they're giving thanks. It's not general thankfulness for a long weekend and a turkey dinner. It's God to whom they're giving thanks. And that's the whole point of this ritual action. When the priest takes the basket from your hand, and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, You shall make this response before the Lord your God, a wandering era man was my ancestor. From that opening line, a wandering era man was my ancestor flows five verses, which are our recital of the story of the birth of this people of God, freed from slavery and brought into this new place. Make your offering and retell that story. Tell the story of who you are, and who's you are culminating with this proclamation. So now I bring the first fruit of the of the ground that you O Lord have given me it's yours, because you gave to me first. Again, no mistaking here who is the giver of the gift of life of the harvest of all things. 

Then, and only then after you've gone through that ritual, and recited the story of origins, then you together with the Levites, and the aliens who reside among you shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house, have a feast in other words, but make sure to include the non Israelite outsider who might happen to be dwelling in your land, which suggests to me that the gift of land and harvest is to be held generously, and with open hands, not clutching it may be the sharing of the feast in that way is meant to be transformational. Even sacramental, in a sense, in that it will effect or do the very thing It signifies. By bringing the basket of produce as an offering and a contribution to the shared feast. One learns to hold things lightly. By rehearsing the story of origins and of liberation, one is made aware of a deeper identity of being part of a whole people, a whole history, a whole story. And by sharing the feast with the stranger, one learns that the line between insider and outsider is so very thin, as to be finally meaningless. 

That's the nature of these rituals and these liturgies from the Old Testament, they're actually meant to do something in us to do that work of transformation, even as they're performed. Now, I'm quite sure that some who arrived at the temple with their offering did it out of a narrow sense of religious obligation. Maybe they held back some of the really, really nice produce. And maybe when they came to the rehearsal of the story, having placed the basket of the not-great stuff have been placed that there with the priest, and now they're supposed to tell the story they went "wandering Aramean was my ancestor," but I believe it just rhyme it off. I'm sure it happened. Why wouldn't it people can often turn the richest of stories in the richest of texts and the richest of prayers into wrote. And as for the presence of the aliens who reside with you in the land, probably tolerated, with a kind of a dutifully polite distance, at least by some not ever truly welcomed. But we're supposed to let you sit in on the meals, so we will. But to those who embrace the ritual, and owned the words, would have been a very different thing altogether. It would have changed them.

And I had a conversation this week, about the meaning of the words that I say when the bread of communion is broken. This is the body of Christ I proclaim, behold what you are, become what you receive. It's a theological statement borrowed from St. Augustine. Yet in a very real sense, it points to the same sort of thing that didn't work in the Thanksgiving ritual outline in the book of Deuteronomy. It points to the transformation of character of doing this action in community. Now picture it in your mind's eye. The bread was lovely, big, round, robust breads are held up, broken into two in preparation for our communal sharing. This is the body of Christ, I say. And here in one of his sermons on communion, preach to the newly baptized Agustin calm comments, my friends, these realities, like the bread and the wine, these realities are called sacraments, because in them one thing is seen the bread, while another is grasped what is seen as a mere physical likeness, what is grasped, bears spiritual fruit. And so I continue, Behold, what you are, become what you receive. And here Augustine offers these comments he says, to that what you see in front of you, you respond, amen. And by responding, you're saying, yes, yes, I see in this bread, a sign of the Body of Christ. That's what it represents the presence of Christ among us and in us and through us. 

It's not some esoteric, religious thing that needs to be preserved behind glass or kept safely in a museum. It's bread, meant to be shared, share the one bread and in doing that dare to become one people, one body. We dare to believe that Jesus binds us together in this story meal that we rehearse week in and week out. Until one day, we begin to realize that our truest identity is as members of the one body of Christ. Behold this body of Christ, it's what you are, share it, and bind yourselves together and become evermore that body. Be a member of Christ says Agustin so that your Amen may be true. But all of that only has real grip on us. If we embrace the imagery, the action, the words in all of their richness, not by rote, it's easy to fall into rote, not as a matter of habitual religious practice, it's what we do on Sunday nights. Such things can easily go dead on us. But as an intentional sharing, that can actually transform us or undo us or reconcile us. That's a very different thing altogether. 

One of the traditional names for Communion is Eucharist. from the Greek word, Eucharist, or Thanksgiving, you know what that means. For us. Every Sunday is a Thanksgiving Sunday, in which we acknowledge the giver of the great gift of life. And in these acts of prayer and song, and stillness and communion, open ourselves yet again to the possibilities of renewal, transformation, healing and reconciliation. Turkey and all the trimmings are more than fine on a dinner table. Enjoy them, wherever you might find yourself this weekend, enjoy them. But the symbolic meal set each week on this table will nourish you far more deeply. As Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel appointed for this day, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Believe it as best you can. Be thankful. And again, come to the table.

AMEN.