Thanksgiving and Giving Thanks

It’s an odd sort of thing we do this time of year.

I don’t mean odd in a bad way.  It’s actually quite beautiful to set aside a day to spend with family “giving thanks” for all that God has given us.  We all know that Abraham Lincoln signed Thanksgiving Day into existence as a national observance over a century and a half ago.  We also know that the holiday itself has much deeper roots than that.  Even on American soil, the holiday is over five centuries old, dating back to the classic feast celebrated by the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock. 

And it’s not like the Pilgrims made the idea up.  God’s people have been sharing thanksgiving meals together since the dawn of written history.  We’re all aware of the “animal sacrifices” of the Old Testament.  In Christian theology, we usually speak of these sacrifices primarily in terms of the blood offerings which somehow foreshadow the work of Christ on the cross.  This aspect of the sacrificial system is indeed important.  But we often miss the equally important celebratory aspect of the offerings.  Most of the required sacrifices commemorated some special act which God had done in the life of His people.  All but a very few also involved a communal meal.  The blood and fat of the animal was sacrificed, along with one hindquarter.  The remainder of the animal was taken home by the celebrant and eaten together with family and friends, party style.  When we read that Noah sacrificed on an altar after the flood, there was almost certainly a thanksgiving feast involved.  Likewise with Abel, Abraham, Job, and Moses.

The impulse to give thanks is so primitive, in fact, that it’s really odd that we haven’t gotten better at it over time.  Many families will gather, eat until they can’t move, plow through the Mall Mobs on Black Friday, and complain about bad calls in a myriad of football games without ever pausing to reflect on why we call the day thanksgiving to start with.  Some of us will only be thankful when it’s over.

One day a year has been set aside for us as a nation to give thanks, and we struggle to meet that simplest requirement.  We’re like gratitude camels, storing up our thank-yous all year long in hopes of remembering a few of them at the kick-off of the Holiday eating season.

By rights, there should be no Thanksgiving holiday.  We should be thankful continually.

Maybe we should institute a National Day of Griping, instead.  For 364 days out of every year we should be gloriously, exuberantly thankful.  Then on the third Thursday in November, we could gather to voice all of the complaints we’ve been storing up all year.  We could comment on how the Turkey is even drier than last year and how bad the crowds are at the mall.  We could paste on dreary faces.

We could all become University of Kentucky football fans for the day.

Then, when it’s over, we could all return to our grateful, thanksgiving-filled lives, knowing that Christmas and basketball season are just around the corner.

Barring all of that, though, we should at least find within ourselves the grace to spend one day in joyful reflection for all of what God has done for us.

May your turkey be moist and your Thanksgiving Day truly blessed.

A Well Rounded Faith

A couple of years ago, Jeff Foxworthy hit the television with a show called “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?”  The premise of the show was familiar.  Contestants answered questions to earn money.  They decided when to keep what they had earned and when to risk their earnings in order to answer another question and earn even more money.  The twist involved the nature of the questions.  Questions for the show were gleaned from elementary school text books.  In other word, they were things that all of us, once upon a time, probably knew but have now mostly forgotten.

As I comb my memory for factoids I remember from elementary school, the most enduring thing I can dredge up is “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

I’ve since learned that Columbus was probably not the first European to land in the Americas, and that he had no idea before he set out that there even were Americas.  It’s become fashionable to trot these facts out at Columbus Day to sort of knock a bit of the luster off the story we learned in fifth grade.  In spite of these little quibbles, though, what Columbus did was wildly remarkable.

Scientists in Europe had been speculating on the shape of the earth for some time, of course.  Aristarchus is the first to have published the theory, back in the third century, only to have his ideas quashed by the prevailing Aristotelian school of philosophy.  In Columbus’ day, astronomers found themselves at odds with the Roman Catholic Church.  Nevertheless, the idea that the world was round and orbited around the Sun had gained traction in the thinking community, and most experienced sailors had quietly shifted from the old way of reading their navigational instruments to new procedures based on the new science that just plain worked better.

Within a decade or so of Columbus voyage, Copernicus would publish his famous paper which would launch further explorations by scientists like Galileo and Kepler.  Galileo, in particular, would face sever persecution from the Church for his insistence on this new picture of the universe.

So what did Columbus do?  He didn’t make the Earth round, of course.  Neither was he the first to say that he thought that it was.  He didn’t even succeed in proving that the Earth was round.  The debate about the shape of the Earth continued for centuries after his famous voyages.

What he did:  Columbus found himself living in a world with two very different ideas about the shape of reality.  He chose one, and he set about the business of living as though it were true.  For Columbus, the question of the shape of the world was not merely academic.  It was a matter which shaped his actions and course he plotted through the world.  He didn’t just say that the world was round, he lived it.

I think modern Christians are often far too preoccupied with polishing up the details of our belief system.  We speak of “belief” in terms of the things we are willing to say are true, and we promote the idea of a salvation based solely our academic insistence on this particular set of facts.  I’m not sure that this is what Paul had in mind when he used the word “faith.”  Biblical faith appears to be a more dynamic and active sort of thing…  not so much what we say is true as living as though we really believe it.

If the church at the turn of the sixteenth century had been watching, they would have witnessed a profound act of true faith being perpetrated by a heretic.

Chasing Chariots

Over the last couple of weeks, the Common Lectionary has taken us on a couple of road trips. 

Last week, Luke's gospel recounted the story of the Road to Emmaus, the famous post-resurrection event in which Jesus walks along the road with his disciples unrecognized until he is invited into their home to break bread.

This week, we Encounter Philip in the eighth chapter of Acts as he comes alongside an Ethiopian eunuch to teach him about Christ. 

Philip is known (traditionally) as "the Evangelist," based largely on the weight of this story.  The setting falls into the period immediately following the first Jewish persecution of the church in Jerusalem.  Many of the first converts to Christianity (including Philip) have left the city to live in the world at large.  Traditionally, the Apostle John travels to Asia Minor, for example.  One legend places Mary Magdalene in southern France during this period.

Philip, evidently, decided not to stray so far from Jerusalem.  The first we hear of him outside of Jerusalem places him in Samaria.  You don't have to be much of a Bible scholar to know how Traditional Jews felt about Samaritans in those days.  The bad blood went back generations.  That Philip would set out from Jerusalem to take up ministry in Samaria says a lot about his heart and character.  What ever drove him from Jerusalem, it probably wasn't fear, and it certainly wasn't a desire to find a comfortable place to live out his years.  This was a man driven by his calling, and a man who believed that the fulfillment of his calling meant living and ministering among marginalized people.

The trend continues in the story of the Ethiopian eunuch.  The text tells us that this man was returning from worship in Jerusalem.  What the text doesn't tell us, because the author would have assumed that his readers all knew, was that as a foreigner and a eunuch, the man would have been doubly forbidden to enter the Temple.  Evidently, he traveled there to simply get as close to the God he had come to believe in as he could.  It would have gone without saying in his own mind that there would always be some irreconcilable distance between himself and God.

But what distance he can cover for himself, he covers.  In fact, he has either borrowed or purchased a copy of a scroll containing the writings of Isaiah.  This is one of several indicators in the story that this man was a somebody.  Regular joes didn't drive around in chariots or own scrolls.  This fellow was some kind of dignitary.

According to the text, Philip ran to meet the chariot.  Apparently, he also jogged along side the chariot for at least a few minutes, discussing the scriptures, before the eunuch finally invites him to step up into the chariot.

The parallels between these two stories can hardly be coincidental.  Just as Jesus walked along side the disciples on the road, so his disciple, Philip walked alongside the eunuch's chariot.  Just as Jesus waited to be invited into the disciple's home, Philip waited to be invited into the eunuch's chariot.  In both stories, scriptures are explained.  In both stories, Jesus is ultimately revealed.

It's almost as if Philip is trying to imitate his rabbi.

I wonder what it would look like to "walk along side" the marginalized in our own time?  What if we learned to simply wait until those whose journeys we share were ready to ask their questions and invite our responses?

This is a scriptural picture of evangelism that I think the church needs to recapture for today.

By the Way...

I once heard a comedian comment that he loved people with a sense of humor.  He told of a time he overheard a passenger aboard an airplane ask the stewardess how much longer until the plane landed in Miami.

"Gosh.  I don't know," she answered.  "We've never actually made it that far."

I hope she was joking.  And not just because planes are supposed to land in airports.  We all know they usually do.

But if I ever DO wind up on a plane destined to go down in a ball of flames, I'd like to think there's a chance that at least one person on the plane would meet the occasion with good humor.  After all, is there any evidence that bracing yourself against the seat in front of you and hyperventilating actually makes any sort of difference in this situation?

Nope.  Didn't think so. 

May as well enjoy what's left of the ride.


Look at it this way:  at least there's a chance that you and your baggage will land at pretty close to the same time.


All kidding aside, the real problem with airline travel is airports, anyway.  And it's not just that they're anonymous, soulless buildings with over-priced restaurants.  It's the whole idea of a whole mode of travel that's destination-driven.  Air travel is a beginning and ending with a vast empty space in between.  No number of in-flight movies or bags of peanuts can make up for the fact that you're hurtling through space in a sensory deprivation chamber just waiting to be someplace else.


Get on a bike, or take a walk or a ride in the car, and you're on a journey.  It's not just about a destination, it's about all the little places you go through along the way.


Ours is a goal-oriented, product-driven, destination-loving culture.  And all that type A angst has found its way into our spirituality.  American Protestantism has become all about achieving salvation (through faith, of course... not works) and arriving safely at our eternal destination.


Jesus spoke seldom to people about going to Heaven.  I don't think the destination is what drove him.  After all, he'd already been there.


On one occasion, though, he did talk about going back.  He told his disciples "Where I go, there you shall be also..."


They must have exchanged meaningful glance before Thomas piped up with the obvious question.

"Uh.  Where exactly is it we're going again?  I need to put it in my GPS."


At least I think he said something like that.  I didn't actually take the time to look up the Bible verses, but I remember it being something like that.


Jesus passes up a perfect opportunity, here, to talk about the glories of the final destination and spell out the details of exactly how to get there.  Instead he says (again, I'm working from memory here):


"Way?  You want to know the way?  You want a road map?  What fun is that?  No, no, no."


Then he grinned a lopsided grin and said  "Me.  I'm the way.  I'm all you need to know."


And then he prayed a prayer and started walking.


If there's a one way, non-stop flight to Heaven, please feel free to stand in line and buy your ticket. 

For my part. I'd rather find a few good-natured traveling companions and go on foot.  Who knows what we'll see and discover along the Way.