November 23, 2014 ~ Feeding a Thankful Heart from John Knox Kirk on Vimeo.

A sermon preached at John Knox Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on November 23, 2014.

Psalm 138
and Luke 17: 11-19
(Click above link for the Scripture texts upon which this sermon is based)

Editorial note: I’m working on correcting spacing issues. Thank you for your patience in the meantime.

I don’t regularly preach about our secular, national Holidays,
but there is some considerable overlap that warrants
turning our attention to Thanksgiving.

I remember my very first thoughts of Thanksgiving,
images born of kindergarten dramas and grade-school assemblies:
Pilgrims and Native Americans,
Turkeys, Corn, a harvest feast,
Tables piled HIGH with food: a celebration of gratitude.

That romanticized portrayal of native peoples and European colonists
living together in peaceful harmony,
has left me with an enduring love for this National holiday.
…Never mind its historical inaccuracy.

Add to that the years of accumulated memories
of feasting with family and friends,
and THIS holiday, THANKSGIVING, looms large for me.
I gather my experience might mirror yours, as well…

The Thanksgiving holiday has become a kind of
SUSTAINING MYTH of the American Ethos.
Like clockwork, the fourth Thursday of every November reminds us
that we as a people have come through adversity
and ought to pause long enough – at least once a year –
to express gratitude.

As a nation, if we lose Thanksgiving – not only the holiday, but, more importantly,
that attitude of gratitude –
we lose SOMETHING of the American character.

I find it fascinating that recent immigrants to the United States,
those who have no direct historic link to the descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims—
or even to the lands from which those Pilgrims came—
that these new arrivals to our shores so readily adopt this holiday.
Perhaps only the 4th of July comes closer than Thanksgiving
to defining what it is that holds us together as a people, as a nation.

/ / /
Timothy Hart-Anderson is pastor of Westminster Presbyterian in Minneapolis.
He too has reflected upon this interesting facet of new immigrants,
and has said this:[i]

My family and I moved to Minneapolis
from San Francisco only a few years ago,
and I still remember the last time we celebrated Thanksgiving in that city.
The evening before the holiday,
I was dispatched to the neighborhood grocery store
to pick up the missing ingredients for some delicacy.
Thanksgiving was less than a day away, and you could feel it in the air.

I marveled at the typically diverse San Francisco crowd in the store –
black, white,
Asian, Hispanic, immigrant,
gay, straight, [liberal, conservative],
old, young, single, married, pierced, tattooed –
all the variety any American city can muster,
and every one of them – every one of them –
was preparing for the same feast.
I suddenly saw all at the same table,
and it was a marvelous, uniquely American, sight indeed!

In front of me in the checkout line was a European-looking woman
who spoke English with a heavy accent.
The clerk recognized her and asked,
“Do they celebrate Thanksgiving in Russia?”

“No,” she said, laughing as she started to unload her grocery cart
stuffed FULL of turkey, boxes of stuffing,
sweet potatoes, canned pumpkin, and a roasting pan,
“But I’m in America now,” she said.

Rev. Hart-Anderson provides a wonderful vision of a tradition
that happens all around this country this week, in San Francisco,
Minneapolis, Chicago, Rural Missouri, or Jackson and Johnson Counties.

Of course, those celebrants at the first Thanksgiving feast long ago – in 1621 –
were also immigrants, refugees really, in a strange land.
Perhaps newcomers to this country have always had the most reason to be grateful,
for like the Pilgrims of old,
they tend to come out of difficult places and trying times. [Read more…]