Thanksgiving is Counter-Cultural in More Ways Than We Think

Note:  This service was not recorded on video. Our apologies.

Thanksgiving Sunday, 13 October 2024

Joel 2:21-27
Psalm 126
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Matthew 6:25-33

 

When I first came to Canada I lived in residence at the Vancouver School of Theology. I was 23 and everyone else was 17 or 18 and I have never felt older since. I mean, the other kids were nice or nice enough, and I wasn’t much older than they were; the difference was that they were living on their own for the first time and I had already done that.

But residence is a great place to meet people, at least for me it was. And so aside from my fellow students at VST I had another circle of friends, some of them theological students like Peter from New Zealand and Sujata from Calgary who studied at Regent College, but others were taking other subjects like James who had come from the Philippines to study law with plans to return and work for justice in his homeland, and that was what was motivating him. We were all blessed by our our friendship.

My friend Liz was our honorary international student and perhaps the one who had brought us all together. An Anglican, she had just returned from a five year teaching assignment in Thailand with Mennonite Central Committee. And it was Liz who introduced me to the work of the Canadian artist William Kurelek.

Kurelek, the child of Ukraininan immigrants, was born in 1927. His art often depicts the life of immigrants on the prairies, the hardship of making a living on land that had never been cultivated, the wide expanse of the land, and the loneliness felt so far away from home.

While his work also displays the joys of daily life, it has a certain melancholy to it. One painting depicts a farmer plowing a field with a baby strapped to his back because the mother is ill. Another shows a husband and wife blacksmithing together as pioneer life did not permit the traditional division of tasks into male and female. A painting of a small train station next to a grain elevator in what otherwise appears to be the middle of nowhere shows a small group of people with all their worldly possessions. The text accompanying this picture reads, “Those who already had relatives or friends living in the new country were fortunate. There was someone to help them find work and a place to live in, to explain the new customs and laws and to ease the loneliness.”¹ Another image shows six men sitting together in a rooming house.

I found Kurelek’s work deeply moving, and when Jackie and I moved to the prairies I remembered the life Kurelek had described. And when I was in my first call there were many people who told me about their arrival in Canada, about cold winters they had not been able to imagine, life in rooming houses, and finding work as seamstresses.

While Kurelek depicts the life of those newcomers as hard and sometimes lonely, not speaking the language and being bullied at school, or feeling overwhelmed by the task of homesteading, yet unable to return to the old country, he always depicts this life as life in community. The community of families, husband and wives working together; of rooming houses; of ethnic communities, and of churches. Life is hard but life is made possible by the sharing joys and sorrows.

In some ways, these images speak of how far we have come. Most of the hardships Kurelek paints and describes are not hardships I experienced when I came to Canada, although I know the story of my brother-in-law who only spoke Dutch when he first ventured out to play with children in the neighbourhood was laughed at. Some things remain the same.

But I can also say that my group of friends back then, consisting mostly of people who had come from elsewhere, had made similar experiences in navigating a different culture and customs; and like others before us, we found community and friendship with one another.

I am thinking back to this time in gratitude but also because it seems to represent what Thanksgiving is about. Thanksgiving may be about material things like a roof over our heads and food on the table, and people who love us, everything else is superfluous in some sense, though we may enjoy it; but at the heart of it, Thanksgiving is a counter-cultural celebration, for it celebrates not our independence but our dependence, as the old hymn sings,

All good gifts around us

Are sent from Heaven above

Then thank the Lord, oh, thank the Lord

For all His love.²

We do not usually speak of dependence, for our goal – we have been told – is our independence. Independence is our definition of freedom. To do what I want to do when I want to do it.

In contrast to our modern definition, Plato (in the Republic) sees the Tyrant who can do what he wants when he wants to as the most unfree person because he is unable to curb his desires. Tyrants, we know, are lonely. And in our world people have become lonely.

And so in an individualistic society such as ours the celebration of Thanksgiving is an anomaly. That the celebration of Thanksgiving is a harvest festival is not a coincidence, for as much as we may engineer crops and fertilize our fields (industrial agriculture is a theme for another day), we cannot control the weather and so at the end, when the harvest is brought in, and we don’t have to go hungry, we know that the harvest is a gift, for it is beyond our control.

The section of which our passage from Matthew is part, begins with a warning of wealth which seems ironic for we so often give thanks for the comforts of our lives. Yet Jesus reminds us that we cannot serve two masters.

That the passage about the lilies in the field and the birds of the air who neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns follows this warning is not a coincidence. It is not a coincidence because wealth requires focus, possessions require maintenance and guarding, yet our goal is the Kingdom and its righteousness.

Thinking of the pioneer life that Kurelek painted, fences are not to keep neighbours out but to keep cattle in (when at last people were able to acquire cattle). People supported one another for they knew one day they would need their neighbour’s help. They may not have done so out of charity but they did it nonetheless.

Looking at the table in our midst: The communion table is the table for all, not for some, and the gifts of God are shared at this table. The communion table is a sign of the heavenly banquet where all is shared and where all are welcome. Skills must be practised and our sharing at this table is our attempt to redirect our life from acquisitiveness to the generosity of the Kingdom of God.

The part of our reading that always puzzles us is Jesus’ admonition not to worry. I am a worrier. I worry about many things. And the objection we bring to Jesus is that there are so many things to worry about, that we have assumed responsibility for things, that people depend on us, and that not worrying is not only impossible but also irresponsible.

And yet, Jesus’ words are not to suggest that there are no important things we should tend to, only that our priorities should be guided by the Kingdom of God. Therefore, the demand not to worry is about a shift in focus, away from our goals and toward God’s goals. In the explanation of the Lord’s Prayer Martin Luther writes, “The kingdom of God comes by itself even without our prayer; but we pray in this petition that it would come to us also.” So to orient ourselves toward God’s reign is to welcome God’s reign, which mean that we don’t reign.

There is an old prayer that can help us. It’s central phrase is the petition that we would fear nothing except losing God.

We give thanks today and in giving thanks we acknowledge that we are not self-made, that we are not independent, but that we depend on each other’s grace and the grace of God. And that grace gives us life.

Thanks be to God.