The Mystery of Thanksgiving

By a show of hands how many are still stuffed from Thanksgiving? Kim’s family and mine both live in Nashville, so it’s one place for lunch and the other for dinner. To say we’re still stuffed would be an understatement. But every year in preparation for the big day I try to train my stomach for the feast. I got in a lot of preparation this year. By a show of hands how many are still eating leftover turkey? I don’t know about your family but mine is notorious for leftover turkey. You could stop by our house for New Year’s and we would probably still be eating turkey sandwiches or whatever other turkey concoction my mother can up with. I don’t think you can blame her though, I mean, have you see these things? They’re enormous! I mean seriously, what are they injecting into these birds to make them so huge. I know some of you are hunters, but if I was out turkey hunting and one of these things came around the corner I would scream like a little girl and run the other way. Even if your family isn’t still eating leftover turkey at New Year’s one tradition that I’m sure a lot of us have in common is the practice of going around the table and sharing what we’re thankful for. Usually the youngest one at the table starts, and if he or she is anything like the kids in my family then they’re probably thankful not to be in school that day. And then it’s older brother’s turn and, well, he's thankful not to be in school that day. Dad’s thankful for the 48 hours of non-stop football that he is about to enjoy. Mom takes a little more serious route, she’s thankful that there was enough money to pay all the bills this year. Grandma is thankful to have the whole family together under one roof for the holidays, and Grandpa is grateful he and Grandma made it there safely and didn’t get run off the road by that crazy driver on the interstate doing 72 in a 70. It’s a wonderful tradition to sit around the table and share what we are thankful for, but one thing that seems to be missing most of the time, especially in those wonderful Thanksgiving Day specials on TV, is who exactly it is we are giving thanks to. Now, maybe some of you are diligent about it, but a lot of times we just give thanks to no one or nothing in particular. It’s kind of strange if you think about it, when the famous TV family sits down for the “Hallmark moment” around the dinner table and share how thankful they are for all of those wonderful things that always sbring us to tears, who exactly are they thanking? Themselves? Their parents? Or maybe the sacred deep-fried turkey? You see, every year we are quick to shout from the rooftops that “Christ has been taken out of Christmas”. We boycott Wal-Mart and write letters to ABC, NBC, and CBS demanding equal time for Jesus, or at least Santa Claus, but there wasn’t so much as a whimper when God was taken out of Thanksgiving. It even sounds odd to the ear when you hear it. Isn’t thanksgiving about turkey, family, and those people in the funny hats from Plymouth? Where exactly does God fit in between Thanksgiving Day football and Black Friday shopping hysteria? I want to suggest to you that God is every bit as important to Thanksgiving as “Christ” is to Christmas, for without God in Thanksgiving we miss the very meaning of life itself. We are creatures created to give thanks.

I’m sure we are all familiar with the story of the Thanksgiving. But just in case you aren’t smarter than a 5^th grader, let’s take a second to turn back the pages of history and reacquaint ourselves with this most American of holidays. The old familiar story of Squanto and the Pilgrims that our children do such a wonderful job of portraying at their school plays, wasn’t actually the first Thanksgiving. The first Thanksgiving took place two years earlier, just down the coast in Virginia at a place called Berkeley Hundred which was about 20 miles north of Jamestown, one of the nation’s first European settlements. The celebration that took place in Virginia was much the same as the famous one in Massachusetts, minus Squanto and his friends, but what makes it really interesting is that unlike the Pilgrim’s feast, the Berkeley Thanksgiving was planned before they ever crossed the Atlantic. It was part of the ship’s charter that the day the people arrived in their new home should be remembered annually as a day of thanksgiving to God. The Charter of Berkeley Hundred read: “We ordain that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God." The people of Berkeley knew exactly Who it was that had brought them safely across the Atlantic. They knew exactly Who it was that had provided for their needs in the New World, and they gave thanks accordingly. The famous Pilgrim Thanksgiving was much the same. Their Thanksgiving was a day full of prayer and worship thanking their Creator for the blessings in their lives. For the next 150 years, until 1777 each state was expected to celebrate it’s own Thanksgiving Day, so there were actually several different Thanksgiving Days. It was George Washington who officially instituted the national holiday that we celebrate today, but even 150 years later, the purpose of the holiday was not lost on our first president. In the first Thanksgiving Day Proclamation he said, “Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness. Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country.” However, even with a national proclamation, several states refused to recognize the holiday. This was the case particularly in the south, where we refused to celebrate the holiday on the grounds that it was “a relic of Puritanic bigotry.” The great Abraham Lincoln also recognized to Whom it is we give thanks. In his Thanksgiving Day proclamation which came during the midst of a bloody Civil War he said, “It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union." [In case you’re still stuck on Washington and Lincoln’s dates for Thanksgiving, it was FDR in 1939 who formally instituted the second to last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day.]

Clearly from the beginning our forefathers understood the purpose of Thanksgiving. So where did we go wrong? When did we push God out of His central role at Thanksgiving and replace Him with turkey, football, and Black Friday shopping? To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t think that there is one particular moment in history that we could point to and say “There that’s it.” I think, instead, that it has been a gradual process. We never intentionally set out to remove God from Thanksgiving, but apparently no one has ever stood up to insure that He stays the central focus of this holiday, this holy day. So we have sat by and watched as slowly but surely turkey replaced prayer, football replaced worship, and shopping replaced thanks giving.

But perhaps it goes back even further, maybe even to the Garden of Eden itself. We are all familiar with the story of Adam and Eve and how they ate the forbidden fruit and were cast out of paradise, but do we really understand what their sin was? Believe it or not I think if we understand what happened in the Garden it might shed some light on what has happened to Thanksgiving. For those of you that skipped Sunday School, God had given the fruit of all the trees in the Garden for Adam and Eve to eat, every tree except for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. For a while, at least, Adam and Eve stayed away from the forbidden tree. Then one day that pesky serpent showed up. If you read the text carefully you will notice that more so than stealing forbidden fruit, the serpent is tempting Adam and Eve with divine equality. The serpent said to Eve “You will not die; for God know that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” You see the temptation of Adam and Eve, and the sin that they eventually committed, was that they tried to snatch divinity away from God, they tried to put themselves, mere creatures, in the place of the Creator. This is why we still suffering with sin: not because of some sort of genetic disease that was passed down biologically from our ancestors, but because we continue to commit the sin of Adam and Eve. We continue to sin like Adam because we are continually trying to put ourselves in the place of our Creator. I think this sin is at the heart of why we have let God slip away from Thanksgiving. In a society that tells us to grab life by the horns and that we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, we are left with a world that does not have a place for God. We have convinced ourselves that we are the source of all that we have, all that we are, and all that we will ever be. We give to ourselves the thanks that is due to God alone. We have put ourselves in the place of our Creator. Nevermind one day out of the year, we have devoted our entire lives to the worship of ourselves.

I had the opportunity last week to listen to N.T. Wright give a lecture on the book of Acts. For those of you not familiar with Wright, or as he likes to be called “Bishop Tom”, he is an Anglican Bishop and one of the leading New Testament scholars on the planet. He had an interesting insight on the book of Acts, in particular the scene of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. Before he was Paul, he was Saul and Saul was a devote man of God and a good Jew. In fact he was a Pharisee. We tend to demonize Pharisees today, but in Saul’s day the Pharisees were the most devote and Godly men in their community. As such they were enraged that this man named Jesus from Nazareth was going around making claims about God that seemed like blasphemy to them. In response, men like Saul were sent out to take care of the problem by arresting anyone claiming to be a Christian. So, Saul was sent to Damascus with letters from the high priest authorizing him to arrest any Christians that he might find there. This was a holy task for Saul; an assignment directly from God Himself. Like any good Jew doing God’s work Saul would have spent time praying, fasting, and meditating in order to prepare himself for the assignment God had given him. And so, it is not hard to imagine that on the long road from Jerusalem to Damascus, Saul continued in his meditation, clearing his mind of any distractions so that he could focus solely on God. It is quite possible, then, that Saul was meditating on a passage from the Old Testament that was commonly used during his day to help one focus on God: Ezekiel 1. If you have ever taken the time to read Ezekiel 1, then you know just how strange this passage can seem. During this vision, Ezekiel sees all sorts of colorful wheels and beings dart back and forth in front of him. It can be a difficult passage to understand. Some people have even gone so far as to suggest that Ezekiel might have been having a UFO encounter. Since I don’t think that the Bible is too concerned with aliens I’m going to have to assume that this is not the case. If you aren’t familiar with Ezekiel’s strange vision, let me describe it to you. When the vision begins Ezekiel sees these colorful wheels and beings darting back and forth in front of him and at first he is not sure what they are. Then he realizes that the beings are seraphim, or angels, and that the wheels are connected to something. As he looks up a little bit higher he can see that the wheels are connected to a chariot. As he continues to look up even higher he sees the body of someone standing in the chariot. Finally, as he looks up even higher he sees the face of the person in the chariot and he realizes that it is God enthroned on high and he falls on his face as if dead. So, if we imagine Saul riding on the back of his horse on his way to Damascus, meditating on Ezekiel’s vision, he begins to see the colorful wheels and angels darting back and forth in front of him. He looks up higher and sees the wheels connected to a chariot and begins to think to himself that this vision seems incredibly real. As he looks up further and sees the body of the rider the vision becomes even more vivid, until he looks up to see the face of the rider and realizes that his vision is real and that the face is not the one he was expecting, it is Jesus of Nazareth, and he falls on his face as if dead. Falling on their face as if dead in the presence of God is the response of God’s people throughout scripture. Abram fell on his face when God made a covenant with him to make of him a great nation. In Leviticus the nation of Israel falls on its face when the presence of the Lord consumes the burnt offering. Moses and Aaron fell on their face at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting when the Glory of the Lord appeared to them. Joshua fell facedown in the presence of the Lord before he conquered the Promise Land. King David fell on his face as if dead when confronted with his sin. Even Jesus fell on His face before the Father when He prayed for deliverance in the Garden of Gethsemane. And John fell on his face as if dead when God revealed to him a new heaven and a new earth.

So, the question for us is this: if we truly believe in a Living God, the Creator of the universe from Whom all blessings flow, then when is the last time that we fell down on our face as if dead in His presence? Hopefully, the answer is not “never.” Far from falling on our faces before the Living God we too often stand boldly in front of Him as if we were His equals. We must never forget that we are the creatures and He is the Creator. As we read in Philippians 2 the great work of salvation was accomplished through Jesus Christ because “though he was in the form of God, [He] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,” or as the text literally reads “as something to be snatched away.” Whereas Adam tried to snatch away divinity from God by stealing the forbidden fruit, Jesus, although in the form of God, refused to elevate himself, he refused to snatch away, “but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”

We should understand that “falling on your face as is dead” doesn’t simply describe a physical posture. It is a way of life. As Christians we are called to die to self, and so we proclaim with Paul “It is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives within me.” But do we really mean it? If we relegate worship to 20 minutes on Sunday morning, and if even on a day entirely dedicated to giving thanks to God, we don’t even mention his name, then the answer, tragically, has to be no. The Christian life is a life of worship, and it is a life that has to be lived every moment of every day.

So what does a life of worship look like? We worship God because we love Him, but even more so because He first loved us. So, we worship Him in much the same way that we act towards the people in our lives that we love. We sing songs for the ones we love and to the God we love. But if all we did was sing to our husbands or wives, would that be enough to keep our marriages alive? Or how long would our friends stay around if the only love we showed them was a nice song or two? We have to put our love into action both in our relationships with the people we love and with God. We do that with God by loving others in the same way that He has loved us. We are compassionate, forgiving, and slow to anger. We pray for our enemies and give grace to those that don’t deserve it. We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and take care of the poor. We touch the untouchable and befriend the unlovable. We give without expectation of ever receiving. We are humble, when we are tempted with pride. We are slaves to everyone. And in all these things we give thanks to the God who gives us life, never forgetting that all the blessings that we are given in life are just that, gifts, not possessions that we have accumulated on our own. If we can do that, if we can live lives of thanks giving then we will have found what so many have searched so long for, the meaning of life. We are creatures created for worship.

So as we leave another turkey day behind and begin a new holiday season, perhaps we can learn from our past and begin to discover the true meaning of Thanksgiving, that hidden somewhere between the deep fried turkey and Black Friday shopping is the meaning of life. We are creatures created to give thanks, to worship. And if we could only learn to live everyday as if it were Thanksgiving, giving thanks to our Creator for the life He has given us and the life He continues to sustain for us, then maybe, just maybe we could be the people we are meant to be: Christians.