 | Preaching at Saint Mark’s Church Thanksgiving Day 26 November 2020 |
“Who’s Invited?“
Deuteronomy 8:7-18
Psalm 65
II Corinthians 9:6-15
St. Luke 17:11-19
INI
Our custom at Thanksgiving, which we will not be able to do this year, is to travel to Texas, and there to join with family to visit, give thanks, and eat the joys of togetherness. The preciousness of being able to gather has come to a sharper focus in our time, a time when to travel, to gather, to embrace is not available to us. Yet we all shall attempt to keep the feast, to gather virtually, and to eat in solitude, but remember and give thanks in community.
The first reading from Deuteronomy minds us of the traditions of this day. When I was a child, the women of the altar guild of St. Peter’s Church in Monte Vista, Colorado, would gather sheaves of corn, pumpkins, gourds, autumn leaves, corn cobs, and decorate the altar for this day. It was a reminder of the abundance that God gives to the people. Like the people of Israel, the people of Monte Vista, and indeed ourselves, “were brought into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing…You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that (God) has given you.”[1] For the people of Monte Vista, however, one would have to add another precious fruit, the red McClure potato – the mainstay of this farming community’s economy. That is what comes to our mind when we think of thanksgiving – the abundance of good things that are available to us. The psalm for this day reminds us of this as well:
“You crown the year with your goodness,
And your paths overflow with plenty.”[2]
Such is the tradition (and may I say, myth) of abundance in this country of ours. Abundance of food, of freedoms, of possibilities, of peace – we are taught and reminded to celebrate these things as Americans. As Christians, however, we need to be mindful of something else.
In the Gospel for this day, the Evangelist Luke reminds us of something that is easily forgotten on this day: the uninvited. Luke clues us in to this in subtle ways as he tells the story of the ten lepers. Like many of us at Thanksgiving, Jesus was on a journey. It was not a journey home, however, but a journey to Jerusalem, where he would be called upon to face difficult things. In many respects, he himself was the uninvited, the outcast. Luke sets this story in “a region between Samaria and Galilee.” There is no such place in reality. Luke betrays his ignorance of the Palestinian countryside and regions, but also makes us keenly aware of not only a vision of the so-called Galilean backwater, but of the dismissal of the Samaritan people. He is met “at a distance”, (sound familiar?) by a band of lepers – and here we have another set of outcasts. They have a prayer of request, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” They appeal to the “Master” a Greek word which implies authority and power. In this strange land, amongst these outcast people, what will the outcast Jesus do?
Who will not be coming to your Thanksgiving dinner? Well, lots of people, because we are celebrating in a difficult time. But let me ask the question again, and think back to last year, or look forward to the hopes for next year. Who will not be coming to your Thanksgiving dinner? As I think back on the thanksgivings that I have celebrated with others in the past it has been largely family and an occasional guest who have been invited to the dinner. The day, in our imaginations, is one of family unity, or at least the unity of friends. The second reading might give us something to think about at this point. Paul writes to the Corinthians:
“The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”[3]
The sowing we are invited to do, must be just that – indiscriminate, broadly cast, abundant! And here is where the outcast comes in, the uninvited. They must receive of our bounty, which is really God’s bounty. Jesus dispenses grace upon these ten lepers, one of which was a Samaritan, a double outcast.
Hot Meals[4], and programs like it, it are so important. Here, however, (and in this I preach to myself as well), it needs to be more than institutions that grant these mercies, it is we as individuals who must grant them as well. I had a companion priest teach me a lesson once, while walking along Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. As we came up to someone begging on the street, he stopped, give his name, and asked theirs, and then after a brief conversation gave them some money for a meal. This happened several times as we proceeded along the avenue. Then, he stopped, but a bundle of small bills in my hand and said, “The next ones are yours.” In humility, I drank in the lesson – a hard one to learn, and even harder to do. In many respects my teacher was an outcast as well, for a variety of reasons – yet he did this. Jesus, the outcast, does it as well.
When we are confronted with this story, we may be tempted to disdain the nine who do not give a proper thanksgiving to Jesus, who heals them. After all Jesus says no healing words, but just directs them to show themselves to the priest, as prescribed in the Law. One does come back, the Samaritan, and offers thanks, in which Jesus recognizes the Samaritan’s faith. What are we called upon to recognize in others, what faith, what needs, what healing? The remarkable words are, “Get up and go on your way.” Like Jesus, this leper is asked to continue the journey, as are we.
You have been invited to this feast, and yet you will not be able to eat or to drink. In this you will be like so many others who do not have the means to eat or to drink. We are, all of us nevertheless, bound to give thanks, to sow seed generously, and to recognize God’s works of mercy in our midst. The waters of Baptism, the words of Forgiveness, and the graces of the Eucharist are these works of mercy. In our Eucharistic Fast, forced on us by the pandemic, recognize in your hunger for the bread of life, the hunger of others, in your thirst for the cup of salvation, the thirsting of others. Listen to Paul as he quotes Psalms:
"He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever."[5]
May we like Jesus, the outcast who gathered in those who were outcast, gather in and feed those who hunger and thirst – feeding them with the bread of life, as well as the bread made for our survival. Thanks be to God!
SDG
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