The Gospel for November 25, 2004 (Thanksgiving Day / James Huntingdon)
Matthew 6:25-33
‘That is why I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and what you are to wear. Surely life is more than food, and the body more than clothing! Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they are? Can any of you, however much you worry, add one single cubit to your span of life? And why worry about clothing? Think of the flowers growing in the fields; they never have to work or spin; yet I assure you that not even Solomon in all his royal robes was clothed like one of these. Now if that is how God clothes the wild flowers growing in the field which are there today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will he not much more look after you, you who have so little faith? So do not worry; do not say, “What are we to eat? What are we to drink? What are we to wear?” It is the gentiles who set their hearts on all these things. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on God’s saving justice, and all these other things will be given you as well. -- The New Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1995, c1985
A Study
The selection of this text for the United States National holiday of Thanksgiving serves to remind us of the needlessness of the stores we put up so as to celebrate the bounty given to many of us. The message given to us in this text reinforces Jesus' emphasis on "daily bread:" the concept that what we need today will be provided for us, today.
Going overboard with feasting is hardly in consonance with the gospel message that tells us that our faith will makes us immune from these things on which the "gentiles" have set their hearts.
A Reflection
And I don't know anyone who treats this secular feast day with much of a religious bent, despite the lectionary authors' mild protestations. My family have the tradition of almost every other family -- a grand spread of a wide variety of foodstuffs. Our older son, whose family are in the Orthodox Christian tradition, has his family in the Advent fast at this time of the year, which is confusing to his children, as you might imagine. The Orthodox tradition will not impose embarrassment on a host by having its adherents fast in the face of a banquet spread before them, thus embarrassing the hosts. So when we have Thanksgiving dinner together, all will dine with equal satisfaction from what is laid before us.
This brings today's text home to us in a very personal way, since my wife and I are on an essentially vegan diet for heart health, but will splurge for the secular feast.
Amid all the food and happiness of being with children and grandchildren once again, the text haunts us with the memory that Jesus tells us that it's not necessary to have such a banquet, that we'll be provided for.
Perhaps the recognition of the contrast is what is needed, and the lesson is in observing the contrasts. Jesus was certainly not against banquets in their season, and he frequently told the religious prim-and-proper that public fasting didn't hold much water for him.
In giving ourselves the opportunity to enjoy good food lovingly prepared, and good company in a loving family, we celebrate the love that Jesus left with us in a very intimate way.
Our task now is to take that same set of feelings for our families (and our bellies) out into the world, to face down Screwtape, and to love one another as He loves us. Thanks be to God!
The Collect
O loving God, by whose grace your servant James Huntington gathered a community dedicated to love and discipline and devotion to the holy Cross of our Savior Jesus Christ: Send your blessing upon all who proclaim Christ crucified, and move the hearts of many to look upon him and be saved; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.
3:24:20 PM 
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