We didn’t “do” Thanksgiving here at church on Sunday. It’s nearly always a question: Do we make that Sunday before the holiday a “thanksgiving” Sunday? or do we observe Christ the King Sunday which, according to the church calendar, almost always coincides with that weekend? This year, Christ the King won out. (I’ve read the ending, BTW. He always does win in the end.)
So, as we get ready to send our CW Current a day early, ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, this holiday whose preparations and smells are already engulfing many of you seems like an obvious subject for today’s Weekly Word.
I’m not inclined, though, to opt for the easy “what I’m thankful for” question. (Except, you know, it would give me the perfect way to share the delightful news that we’re expecting a grandbaby next May!)
I have to blame my family—three now-grown boys—for getting me away from the “what I’m thankful for” question. I can hardly utter or hear those words without seeing their eye-rolls at the Thanksgiving table. They’d know it was coming—that moment where I would make everyone wait to dive into the meal until each one stammered out an answer. They’d choose the oddest things. Not “my wonderful parents” but “my ice scraper.” Not “our warm, comfortable home” but the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series.
Not only that, but like so many things in our culture, the history we used to celebrate with this holiday has coughed up its distortions. I know a church that found it had to give up a very long tradition of annual Thanksgiving pageants, once they began to notice the cultural appropriation and colonialism wrapped up in their tradition. We can lament that loss or we can educate ourselves. One of you sent me a meaningful reflection on this subject from an Iowa-clergy-colleague-turned-Minnesota/Dakotas-UM Bishop Lanette Plambeck, which I commend to you, if you’d like to learn more. (She also comments on Christ the King Sunday with a perspective that connects with what I said last weekend!)
So, I’m not going to ask you what you’re thankful for.
But I will keep you away from your turkey or lasagna or whatever feast you might be preparing with two more small things:
First, if we’re going to give thanks, I hope we’re remembering the Giver. I hear so often the language of “thankfulness” used as if it’s a personal attitude rather than an actual connection, to God who is the source of all things. When we give thanks, we’re actually thanking God! Everything that is comes from God. Open up Psalm 95 if you need that reminder.
For [the Lord our Maker] is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture
and the sheep of his hand.* (Ps 95.7)
*words that also connect with what I said last weekend; imagine that!
Second, once we start thanking God, which I actually hope you will do, how can we ever stop? From ice scrapers and Buffy to parents and storm windows, and from the possibility of new life to those who care for us in illness and death, and from cinnamon and rock salt to Handel and evergreens, from teachers and airplanes to string theory and tricycles: we will always run out of words and time before we will exhaust all our thanks to God.
Long ago, my husband Dan told me what he’d been taught as a Roman Catholic schoolboy: that it’s always OK to add to your prayer, “and all the rest.” In case that helps you get started, knowing you’ll never end, there it is.
