HomeTHANKSGIVING: Abundant food, abundant wealth, abundant life; these should give rise to abundant gratitude.
READING:
Proclamation Establishing Thanksgiving Day by Abraham Lincoln.
SERMON:
Good morning!
I hope that each and every one of you has wonderful plans for the coming holiday. Our daughter is coming down from Cambridge to have another Thanksgiving dinner that can’t be beat. Thanksgiving and the season it ushers in are a time of great happiness for me nearly every year.
Before I begin the celebratory part of my sermon, however, I do want to recognize those who lost something so that I might celebrate, and to acknowledge those who will not be having a happy Thanksgiving this year.
Think of this as similar to the drops of wine during a Passover Seder, the drops that indicate sadness for the suffering of others.
This morning my thoughts go out to those of whatever nation or part of the world, whether they know of Thanksgiving or not, who suffer this day or who will suffer next Thursday.
I think of the home I have and the area I live in; and of those whose land was stolen and whose people were killed that I might live where I do.
I think of the riches of food that will be on my table this week; and of those who labor in fields picking vast amounts of vegetables in an abundance that they themselves will never enjoy because they cannot afford to.
I think this morning of people in refugee camps around the world who hope for deliveries of just enough food so that they and their children can survive to see tomorrow.
I think of those living in boxes under bridges in New York City who wish they had food and a bed to sleep in every day.
I think of those warriors of whatever cause on battlefields throughout the world who wonder whether they will survive the night, no less the week.
I think of those facing death from disease or at the hands of their fellow human beings who know that this will be their final Thanksgiving, and of those who will not live to see this coming Thanksgiving.
I think of them and their loved ones, who suffer already from anticipatory grief.
In thinking of those who suffer, I think of the hopes they have in their hearts for themselves and their families, I think of how similar their dreams are to mine, how basic their desires right now are, how much they long for and hope for what I take for granted; and I give thanks this day to whatever divinity or fate may have determined that I would not be one such as these.
Somehow here we are again with Thanksgiving just ahead and so many other holidays right around the corner. I am more surprised than ever about how quickly this season has rolled around again.
I treasure it as a time of gathering of both friends and family, as a time of happiness and sharing. That it will always be in my mind.
However, as we prepare for our Thanksgiving celebrations, I want to take some time to remember what this holiday originally was about.
Abraham Lincoln declared the celebration of Thanksgiving in the midst of an awful civil war, a war the outcome of which still hung in the balance. It was still possible in 1863 that the southern secession might succeed. And it was quite clear that even were it to be crushed the death toll and the loss of property would be astonishingly high. Gone were the heady early days when troops marched gaily off to war thinking that the conflict would end in a matter of weeks, or months at most. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers had already died, and so many a family would face the day of Thanksgiving without one or more of its members. What, then, was to be celebrated?
Lincoln named some of the things he saw. And he spoke of them as “the gracious gifts of the Most High God”
That first official national day of Thanksgiving is said to have been modeled on the Pilgrims first harvest feast. They had arrived in what for them was the New World in November of 1620, and in October of 1621 they held their three day Thanksgiving celebration. By that time, about half of the members of the colony were dead. And it was several years before the problem of hunger in the colony was solved.
H. U. Westermayer wrote:
The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.
“Seven times more graves than huts”.
Since half of the Pilgrims died, it almost certainly must be that everyone lost a family member or other loved one: a parent, a child, a life partner—perhaps even one of each.
And yet they were grateful and gave thanks.
We all have reasons in our lives to complain of things. Each of us faces difficulties, disappointments and suffering. That is universal enough to call it a given of human life.
Few of us in this room, however, have faced the level of loss and suffering that the Pilgrims did. Yet they gave thanks.
The message, you see, of Thanksgiving, is to focus on what we do have, not on what we lack. So often in life we human beings have our attention on what we want next or on what we feel we do not have rather than on seeing the abundance that fills our lives. You and I are not in the position of the pilgrims, or the people in the refugee camps of Darfur, or the people living under bridges in New York City. Most of us have a reasonable expectation that we will eat today, and tomorrow and next week and throughout the coming year. We have so much more to be thankful for than most of the people of this planet, but more than that, we have so much more to be thankful for than the vast majority of those Americans who have celebrated Thanksgiving throughout the history of this nation. Most of us are very well to do in comparison.
The second aspect of Thanksgiving is alluded to by Lincoln in his Proclamation: I should recognize that I am the beneficiary of undeserved gifts. Lincoln said of the gifts given to Americans, “They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy”.
Putting that in universal terms, I am the recipient of an abundance of gifts that I have done nothing to earn. That is a genuine and genuinely humbling truth: I am the recipient of an abundance of gifts that I have done nothing to earn.
As a person born in this country, I have a right to speak, to protest, to vote. As a person born in one of the wealthy portions of the world, I have fairly easy access to food and clean water. As a person born on this planet, I have life; and I have senses and a mind to appreciate that life.
In a smaller sense, this congregation is a gift from others, one you and I had no hand in creating, though there are those here who maintained it during difficult times so that it could be here today to welcome new people. If you have found something special here, something, as so many have said, that simply does not exist in other areas of your life, give thanks to those who came before you. It is their gift to you.
It is a truth of existence that the universe owes me nothing. Many of my resentments in life are about what I think I ought to have, or deserve to have; or what I feel is unfairly kept from me. But the truth is that the universe owes me nothing. It did not even owe me life, no less all of the rest that I have.
How much more special that makes those gifts.
Buddhism (especially Hinayana Buddhism) recognizes that we are part of the All and just happen to be a temporary assemblage of atoms with consciousness. (That is a gross simplification, but it is also true.) There was no need for this particular assemblage to come into being.
There was no requirement upon God or the Cosmos that I—the “I” that I am--have life or breath.
There was no mandate that I have eyes to see, or vision to peer into future possibilities.
There was no law that I have ears to hear, or a mind to grasp the meaning of words and truths.
There was no rule that I should have a heart to beat, or a heart to be moved by love, to feel and share that special emotion.
These things are pure gift.
And how shall I respond? When I recognize the nature of all that I have been given, the bounty and abundance, should I not literally fall on my knees and weep tears of joy?
But if I am more restrained than that, if I am less overtly emotive, might I not at least pause once each day and let gratitude fill my heart? Might I not pause once a year and let myself give thanks for the miracle of life and of all else that has been granted to me? Might I not look out the window of this building--or out the window of the night time sky--at the beauty of all that is around me and might I not sing silent Hosannas for whatever force or power brought all of this into being, and brought my senses to life?
W. T. Purkiser is quoted as saying: Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.
So might I not put that thanks into action; not just the action of feeling full with gratitude, but the action of using my blessings to bring similar abundance to others?
If they hunger, let me bring food. If they are naked, let me bring clothing. If their hunger is for human companionship and compassion, let me bring myself.
And in all things, let me be aware of just how much I have received and how much I have to give.
When I sit down to my Thanksgiving table this week, let me feel genuine gratitude for those who sit at the table with me. And let me not just feel that inside, but let me show it to each person there; let me show them that I appreciate their presence with me that day.
And even should I sit there alone, may I be filled with gratitude for life, for breath, for food, for hope, for future possibility, for past love, for moments of peace and joy.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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