No Worries (Reflections on Thanksgiving 2022)

 

Text: Matthew 6:25-33

“…and can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” (Matthew 6:27) 

What do you do when you’re isolating with COVID-19? Watch old movies on Youtube, of course. During my recent quarantine I found this old rom-com from the ‘90’s called It Could Happen to You. The plot is about this NYC cop who splits a lottery ticket with a coffee shop waitress as a tip, and they end up winning millions of dollars. Silly, I know, but there’s this one scene in the coffee shop where the officer watches the waitress being particularly kind to a sickly looking young man. He whispers to her, “He’s got it, hasn’t he?” She nods in assent. 

He’s got it? It took me a second or two to remember. “It” was HIV/AIDS, the pandemic which ravaged entire neighborhoods back in the mid1980’s. After two and a half years of COVID, George Floyd’s death and Black Lives Matter, an attempted coup and attack on American democracy, innumerable climate disasters, an immigration nightmare, a war in Eastern Europe, and gargantuan inflation I’d almost forgotten about that diabolical virus which killed so many and had us so worried back in the day. 

Funny, isn’t it, how one disaster or crisis can make us forget the disasters and crises which came before it? It also makes us forget that we somehow manage to survive each of these existential threats as they come along. Martin Luther reminds us the very confession of God as Father Almighty and Creator is a declaration that “God protects me against all danger and shields and preserves me from all evil.” Which is not to say that bad things won’t happen to us. They certainly will, but we are shielded from despair and eternal destruction. Knowing this and trusting in this gives us the courage to go on even in the face of disease, violence, and the spookiness of inevitable change. 

Why a national holiday just for giving thanks? Why not? I’ve often called Thanksgiving the “forgotten holiday.” It gets squished between the over-the-top gaudiness of Halloween and the over-the-top commercialism of Christmas. That’s a shame, because, if we look at how this holiday came to be, we will certainly find some really inspiring stuff. Yeah, we all know about the First Thanksgiving back in 1621. School kids see their classrooms decorated with pictures of those Pilgrims in their tall hats, feasting on turkey, and showing remarkable neighborliness with the Native Americans whose land their descendants are about to steal. But that first feast—which may or may not have involved turkey—came after a brutal year in the wilderness when the Massachusetts Bay Colony lost one half of its members. Think about that: one in every two of those brave seekers of religious freedom was dead before the first year was over. 

Now, I’m thinking there must’ve been a pretty strong desire among those folks to turn the Mayflower around and decide the Church of England wasn’t so bad after all. But instead of mourning their tragedy, they decided to stick it out and offer thanks to God that they were still there, still alive, still provided with food, and still able to worship as they chose. 

So the harvest feast of gratitude became an American tradition. It didn’t become a national holiday until Abraham Lincoln signed it into law in 1863—right in the middle of the Civil War. Lincoln gave in to a lady named Sarah Josepha Hale who had been lobbying for 17 years to make a day of Thanksgiving an official, national observance. If we consider the soul-crushing violence of those days, we couldn’t imagine a crappier time to say, “Thanks, God. Everything’s swell.” But Lincoln had a little more vision and insight. I guess he knew that, as bad as things were, they could’ve been a lot worse. He figured that, if God was inclined to punish America for slavery and bloodshed, this would certainly be the time. But God was still good. There could’ve been a famine, but there wasn’t. European powers could’ve taken this opportunity to attack and claim territory (which really kept old Abe up at night), but they didn’t. All northern industry could’ve collapsed, and the Union could’ve been destroyed, but it wasn’t. So Lincoln told the nation: 

“I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States… 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 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.” 

Such a prayer would not be amiss today. 

I can't say that things haven't been tough here at Faith these last few years. We’ve had to make due with a lot less than we’ve had in the past. Since the start of the pandemic in 2020 twelve of our members have passed away, some have moved away, and some have gone to nursing facilities. Things change, but God doesn’t. 

We give thanks tonight for our friendship with the Beersheba Seventh Day Adventist congregation, the Auctus AA group, the Golden Age Seniors, our Girl Scouts, the Never Surrender Hope support group, our Sunday School and VBS, our partnership with our Synod, the 355 pounds of food and personal supplies we just sent to Feast of Justice, and the abundant produce from our vegetable garden which feeds the hungry in our neighborhood. And we can be thankful for our new friendship with the Grace and Truth Bible Church whose members will begin worshiping here starting next month. God has used and continues to use this facility to God’s purpose and to God’s glory as a place of compassion here in Northeast Philadelphia. 

We can’t see what lies before us, but we can look back and see what’s behind us. As Americans and as members of this congregation we have been through so much in the past. Surely, there will be hard times ahead. But we will endure. God is good. ALL the time. 

No worries. Only thanks.