A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

Thanksgiving Sunday • November 24, 2024

Joel 2:21-27, Matthew 6:25-33 

It was the year nothing went right. May was in college in Georgia; she decided to go to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving. So Jacquelyn and I were on our own. Then, a friend of ours named Tara was going through a difficult time, so we invited her to come visit. I volunteered to cook, so the women could visit. Now Tara and Jacquelyn both love Victorian home and our town was full of them, so on Thanksgiving Day itself I set about cooking the meal I’d planned while they took off for a walk around our town. 

The real challenge of a dinner like this is getting everything to come out on time. I’d researched the traditional dishes and put a turkey breast in to brine the night before. I patted it dry, rubbed it with oil and spices and put it in to roast, setting the timer according to the directions in Betty Crocker. I chopped and mixed and spiced the various side dishes and got them going. I had everything timed and thought I was doing fine. I was doing the “blast turkey with high heat then turn down” method, so after a half hour, I intended to turn the oven down; instead I turned it off; mistake number one. I didn’t realize what I’d done and thought we were on course. The kitchen mess was mounting when the women returned, talking about how hungry they were and that the house smelled great. They started to pick up bits to eat in the kitchen, I shooed them out, sternly ordering just like my grandmother used to do, “No snacking! You’ll spoil your dinner!” I checked the turkey; not done. They complained about being hungry; I snarled back, “No snacking!”  We waited; I checked the turkey again and it clearly wasn’t cooking. I finally figured out what had happened—along with the fact that we were a solid hour or more from being having dinner ready. Meanwhile, the rolls had burned beyond redemption. Mistake number two. 

It’s a scary thing to tell two hungry women dinner is delayed. I frantically looked around, saw a baguette, sliced it up, spread it with some garlic and tomato sauce and bits of onion, put it on a plate and took it to the women, announcing as if I had planned it all along, “This is the appetizers.” I was so frustrated, angry at myself for my mistakes, feeling like nothing was going right when I heard from the other room the song the choir sang last week: “Give Thanks with a grateful heart.” Except the words were different; instead of,  “Give thanks with a grateful heart”, they were singing, “Give thanks for the appetizers.” We all laughed. The turkey eventually finished. I dropped it on the floor taking it out of the oven, it didn’t matter; we were still laughing about the song. We still do. 

Our Thanksgiving celebration is like the Susquehanna, a river with many sources. Some are harvest festivals, which both the English and the Native Americans celebrated. Some of the streams are legends: no one called the people at Plymouth ‘Pilgrims” for almost 200 years. So there was never a “Pilgrim Thanksgiving”. And we have no record they ate turkey at all on that day; most of the meat was venison, much of the meal was fish and seafood. There is the long history of Thanksgiving celebration in the Biblical record, the New Testament commands to give thanks and most of all the deepest current, which is the power of giving thanks to transform us.

Where shall we dive in? Let’s start with the message we read earlier from the prophet Joel. We don’t know much about him or his time. One thing that’s clear: he preached his Word in the midst and aftermath of a time of fear and desperation. Hordes of locusts had eaten crops and people were afraid. It’s fear Joel addresses here, fear that robs hope, fear that paralyzes. To this fear he says, 

He begins with the ground of faith, the history of God’s blessing, and follows the rhythm of creation from land to animals to the trees that bear fruit and the vines that give wine. Only then does he come to us: the children of Zion. God’s first and foremost blessing is creation itself; God’s creation is the ground of hope. “Do not fear…be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things!” The answer to fear isn’t redoubled effort, it isn’t what we do at all; it is a Thanksgiving that remembers and appreciates what God has done and invites us to hope in what God will do. The final movement of this song is faith: “You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other.” [Joel 2:27]

Jesus is also addressing fear in the passage we read earlier because our fears make us worry. 

³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
[Matthew 6:31-33]

Matthew has wrapped this saying into a summary we call the Sermon on the Mount. We don’t know the exact setting but it’s not hard to guess. Jesus is on the road with his disciples. There must have been times they wondered where the next meal would come from, how they would raise the funds they needed for the ministry, for their own needs. Just like Joel, Jesus calls them to remember God’s creative blessing. He asks them to look around at the lilies, at the birds;
he invites them to put God at the center and give thanks. Thanksgiving is the real cure for fear. Thanksgiving is the doorway to hope.

We’re living in a fearful moment. The locusts of our fear of terrorism and different people are trying to eat up our hope. It’s a story that sells ads, so the media is urging them on; it’s a story that gets attention, so some people who want to lead are telling us the solution is to get rid of the locusts. Last week, I quoted Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming, and it’s line, 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

It is especially important that we remember and take to heart the lessons we heard today. Our hope is there; our worry can only be satisfied by the peace of remembering God’s providence and power.

In this moment, in this week, it’s good to remember the Thanksgiving story. It is so overlain with legend and lore that it’s hard to remember the real details. This is the Thanksgiving story. A group of refugees who wanted to worship in the Reformed way, like us, fled persecution in their native land. They went to Holland, where they formed a little cultural enclave. But they don’t really fit in; their religion is different, stricter, their values are different also. So they returned to England and contracted to found a colony in Virginia. Half of the people going weren’t part of the original religious group; they were called ‘strangers’. After a terrible yoyage, they go off course and end up in Cape Cod in November. A measles epidemic had decimated the native population; these new settlers survive by stealing corn from caches those vanished natives left behind. They settle in a protected bay and name it after their departure city: Plymouth. They have a hard time fitting in but some of the native people, the Wampanoag, in the area help them out, teach them how to get along, and they adjust, they adapt. Almost half of the original 102 settlers die the first winter. But eventually they learn to grow corn and other things, they learn to eat the local seafood, clams, lobster and so on. They learn to hunt. 

A year or so later, things are going well. They decide to take a few days off and plan a feast. They invite their neighbors who take one look at the food and decide to supplement it with local meats. Later, the whole experience is romanticized and becomes a kind of living legend. The refugees are now called the Pilgrims. They go on to found churches and communities; they create a culture of congregational democracy that trains people to live in hope, believing God is present and they have a purpose. We are meant to be that people. We are their children. Let us like them, like faithful people in every time, from Joel to Jesus to Plymouth to York, give thanks, the thanks that remembers the Lord our God is in our midst.

Sometimes things succeed; sometimes they fail. The Thanksgiving dinner where nothing went right? It’s remembered by all of us as a wonderful, special one. Somehow, the song—give thanks for the appetizers—the act of giving thanks even when hungry, the choice to see the gift and goodness rather than focus on the failure and fear it transformed the moment. It can transform any moment; it can transform us. Give thanks—this week, always. Give thanks for the appetizers; give thanks to the Lord above. Give thanks and see if it doesn’t grow into a harvest of grace.

Amen.