The holiday was a little different this year, was it not? A
bit more subdued. Less air travel, but more over the highways.
Family, important as it is at Thanksgiving, has become even more
so. As we gathered 'round our festive, turkey-laden tables, we
knew that this year too many tables would have an empty chair at
the head. It might have been for a loved one tragically lost, or
it might have been for a loved one - police officer, firefighter,
soldier - who is off on alert protecting us from another outrage
of this first war of the 21st century.
It is interesting to note that it was not until we were at
war, the War Between the States to be exact, that our
Thanksgiving holiday was officially recognized by Congress. Of
course, as our children can tell us, its beginnings were in the
small Plymouth Colony in 1621 when the English Pilgrims feasted
with Indian neighbors who brought gifts of food as a gesture of
goodwill. The custom grew in various colonies as a means of
celebrating the harvest. In 1777, over 100 years later, the
Continental Congress proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving
after the colonists' victory over the British in the Battle of
Saratoga. Then it took another twelve years before George
Washington proclaimed another Thanksgiving Day in honor of the
ratification of the Constitution and requested that the Congress
finally make it an annual event. They declined - there was still
too much discord among the not-entirely-"United" States. It
would be until 1863, in the midst of the bloodiest war our nation
has ever experienced, before President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed
the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. Then it took
still another 40 years, the early 1900's, before the tradition
really caught on. After all, Lincoln's official designation was
to bolster the Union's morale, so many in the South saw the
celebration as just a Yankee holiday.
Thanksgiving today is generally a mild-mannered celebration
full of family, food and football - fun. But it is good to
remember that that is not its origin. It is more often born of
adversity and difficult times. Thanksgiving not for bounteous
blessings but sheer survival. Interesting paradox. In times of
plenty we become indifferent, and our greatest gifts are taken
for granted. But, let hard times come and the threat that these
gifts will be taken from us, and we are brought back to
attention.
There is an e-mail reflection that has been floating around
cyberspace ever since September 11th that conveys the message.
"What a Difference a Day Makes."
- On Monday, we e-mailed jokes.
On Tuesday, we did not.
- On Monday, we were fussing about prayer in school.
On Tuesday, we would have been hard pressed to find a school
where someone was not praying.
- On Monday, our heroes were athletes.
On Tuesday, we relearned who heroes are.
- On Monday, there were people trying to separate us by race,
sex, color, and creed.
On Tuesday, we were all holding hands.
- On Monday, we were irritated that our rebate checks had not
arrived.
On Tuesday, we gave money away gladly to people we had never
met.
- On Monday, we were upset that we had to wait 5 minutes in a
fast food line.
On Tuesday, we stood in line for hours to give blood.
- On Monday, we argued with our kids to clean up their rooms.
On Tuesday, we could not get home fast enough to hug our
kids.
- On Monday, we went to work as usual.
On Tuesday, we went to work, but some of us did not come
home.
- On Monday, we had families.
On Tuesday, we had orphans.
- On Monday, September 10th, life felt routine.
On Tuesday, September 11th, it did not.
What a difference a day makes! Time magazine last week:
Bars show CNN instead of ESPN because patrons want the
latest news, but a family doctor in a Chicago suburb
cancels her subscription to the New York Times because
the relentless coverage of fear and threats was taking
a toll on her. Peace Corps applications are up 72% in
San Francisco, even as Harvard alums fight to restore
ROTC, and 100 times as many Smith College students turn
out to meet the CIA recruiter as did a decade ago.
People decide to get in shape in case they have to run
down 50 flights of stairs, while others abandon their
diets because fudge is a great antidepressant, and if
the world ends tomorrow, they don't want their last
meal to be a celery stick.(1)
We live in a different world today. The events of September
11th have changed us. I was interested in the comments of
Stanford psychiatrist David Spiegel in this week's Newsweek:(2)
"We're having to rethink everything in our lives in light of the
new situation...If history is any guide, the experience may
ultimately enrich us - by granting us a common purpose and
restoring a long-neglected sense of community." Harvard's Robert
Putnam has found that community involvement - volunteerism,
charitable giving, church attendance, time spent with friends -
spikes predictably after a calamity. The effect is usually
transient. But when people come together to defend a way of
life, the experience can change them forever.
People who experienced the shock of Pearl Harbor spent
the rest of their lives voting, giving blood and
joining civic organizations at extraordinary rates. It
wasn't the sight of smoking battleships that
transformed them, says Putnam, but the experience of
tending victory gardens and helping the Boy Scouts
collect scrap rubber. Average citizens have yet to find
such roles in the new war on terror, but we seem to
long for them. Six in 10 Americans have given to
charities, donated blood or worked as volunteers in
recent weeks, according to the National Opinion
Research Center. Some 80 percent of the volunteer
agencies associated with the Points of Light Foundation
report increased participation. And in New York,
organizations like New York Cares have seen calls
double since September 11.
Perhaps this different world we live in is reason itself to
give thanks. "Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts
with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the
Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness
continues through all generations," says the Psalmist.(3) "Give
thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in
Christ Jesus," writes the apostle Paul. Perhaps the
circumstances of our recent lives will encourage us.
My friend Bill Carter tells the story of leaders in a church
some years ago who decided to track down the congregation's drop-outs. They combed through the membership roll, put together a
list of names, and sent out volunteers two-by-two to knock on
doors and invite the absent members back to church.
As is often the case, the volunteers discovered that most of
the people visited had found other things to do on Sunday
morning. One person said, "I would come back to church if it
didn't conflict with my tennis time." Another said, "We came to
church when our kids were involved. When they outgrew Sunday
School, we stopped going." Another said, "I enjoy going to
church on the really big days, like Christmas, Easter, and the
Fourth of July. Compared to those days, other services are a
little bit dull."
One response was different. Two volunteers named Jack and
Esther went to see a man whom nobody knew. He lived on the end
of the street, in a big house behind three overgrown pine trees.
It took the volunteers a few minutes to find the front door. All
the curtains were drawn. It looked like nobody was home.
Suddenly the door swung open, and a thin man with a shock of
white hair said, "My name's Tarnower. What do you want?"
They said, "We're from the church. We stopped by to see
you." He invited them in. They explained why they had come.
In a few minutes, he was shaking a bony finger at them.
"I'll tell you why I don't go to church anymore. It's because I
got in the habit of reading the Sunday Times before I went to the
worship service."
Esther leaned forward. "Tell us," she said warmly, "how did
the newspaper keep you from coming to church? Did you get caught
up in the sports section and lose track of time? Or the comics?"
Mr. Tarnower looked at her with wild eyes. "No," he said,
"I read the news. It's an awful world out there. There are a
lot of diseases I don't understand. Wars break out. Families
fall apart. Children run through the streets with handguns.
People die prematurely. Listen, the world is falling apart, and
the church can't do a thing about it."
"Well," Jack said, "you ought to come back. We have a nice
minister, a fairly good choir, and a Bible study on Wednesday
nights. You might enjoy our program."
"No," Mr. Tarnower said, "I don't think so. I get out for
groceries, but that's all I want to face. I went to church for a
while, but the world got worse. When my wife died, I decided to
sit in here, watch everything fall apart, and wait my turn. I
don't go to church anymore. The church has nothing to say."(4)
It would not be much of a surprise to hear that echoed this
year. But I am here to tell you that the church DOES have
something to say. Perhaps it is providential that, although the
kitchen calendar says this is Thanksgiving weekend, the
liturgical calendar says this is Christ the King weekend. It is
on this last Sunday before Advent that the church stands tall and
shouts for all the world to hear that Jesus Christ is ultimately
in charge.
The story is really incredible. Who would believe that,
nearly 2,000 years after an obscure Galilean peasant gained some
local notoriety as a wandering preacher and healer, and was
executed by the Romans, there would not be a single nation in the
world where this obscure peasant was not worshiped and acclaimed
as a king, a king whose kingdom shall never end, and who by his
power holds the universe together? Fantastic, isn't it! Where
in this world can one go and not discover somewhere a group of
people who confess Jesus as Lord and King? In countries rich and
poor, large and small, with despotic or democratic governments,
the church which Christ has gathered into one body, and of which
he is the head, is present and growing.
In the highlands of the interior of the East Malaysian state
of Sarawak on the heavily-forested island of Borneo, there is a
small village called Barrio. It is only accessible by small
planes capable of landing on the tiny mountain-ringed runway, or
by a long journey by canoes up jungle rivers and trekking on
foot. And yet, every person in that village confesses the
Lordship of Jesus Christ. In southern Zaire, where political
turmoil and corrupt government have many people on the brink of
starvation, there are small groups of Christians who gather in
rural mud-brick churches, sometimes without even a roof, and
there each Sunday, they sing the praises of a king whose name is
Jesus. Through the long years of repression in the Soviet Union
and its satellites, and in China where for so many years public
worship was forbidden, we now discover in this era when the walls
of repression are falling that the church was not only alive but
growing, and is now stronger than it ever was in those lands.(5)
Amazing! There is no other word for it. Amazing!
Yes, the church DOES have something to say. Jesus Christ
wrote no books, composed no songs, drew no pictures, carved no
statues, amassed no fortune, commanded no army, ruled no nation.
And yet, he who never wrote a line has been made the hero of
unnumbered volumes; he who never wrote a song has put music into
the hearts of nameless multitudes; he who never established an
institution is the foundation of the Church that bears his name;
he who refused the kingdoms of this world has become the Lord of
millions.(6)
Thanksgiving in a 9/11 world. For all we have to be
thankful for, nothing is so important as this: we KNOW who is in
charge and how it will all turn out. We and all around us are in
the hands of the one scripture calls "the Alpha and the Omega,
the first and the last, the beginning and the end."(7) We know who
ultimately wins.
- Kamikaze hijackers flying planes into buildings do not win;
Jesus Christ wins.
- Contemptible, cowardly attackers with Anthrax do not win;
Jesus Christ wins.
- Religious fanatics of whatever stripe do not win;
Jesus Christ wins.
And one day, at the end of history, "at the name of Jesus
every knee [will] bow, in heaven and on earth and under the
earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord..."(8)
And THAT is something to prompt a grateful shout: “Thanks be to God!”
Amen!
1. Nancy Gibbs, "We Gather Together," Time, 11/19/01, p. 30
2. Geoffrey Cowley, "Sowing Seeds of Redemption," Newsweek, 11/26/01, p. 74
3. Psalm 100:4-5
4. William G. Carter, "Something To Do While The World Falls Apart," No Box Seats In
The Kingdom, (Lime, Ohio : CSS Publishing Company, 1996)
5. Larry R. Kalajainen, "Pleased to Reconcile," Extraordinary Faith For Ordinary Time,
(Lima, Ohio : CSS Publishing Company, 1994)
6. Mack Stokes quoted by James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale
House Publishers, Inc, 1988) p. 73.
7. Revelation 22:13
8. Philippians 2:10-11
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