St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, October 10, 2010

Thanksgiving Sunday

Touching Grace – Rev. David Mundy

Deut. 8: 7-18 Luke 17:11-19

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Have you notice that many of the novel and movies about the future are rather bleak in their forecast? One of the best examples in terms of both a novel and motion picture is The Road by Cormac McCarthy, although neither will ever be described as the “feel good story of the year.”

One of the poorer movies, in my estimation, is the Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington, which, interestingly enough, tries its best to be a religious story. Now, I’m always aware that, when I suggest that a movie isn’t worth seeing, someone will come up to me afterward and say, “I loved that film – it changed my life!” so this is all subjective.

The central character played by Washington is named Eli, and he wanders the Earth in a time when the planet has been devastated by some disaster, perhaps a nuclear war. Religions have all but disappeared but Eli is himself a deeply religious man, sort of a futurist Jesus figure, except for the fact that he kills a whole lot of people. This is Hollywood after all, so a certain amount of mayhem is necessary.

After smiting a bunch of his enemies, Eli is captured by an evil warlord. A beautiful young woman named Solara is sent to seduce information out of him about the location of a mysterious book, which turns out to a bible. But her feminine wiles don’t work on Eli, and it turns out she is frightened by the consequences of her failure.

Perhaps the best scene in the film –maybe the only good scene – is when Solara and Eli break bread together. Before they eat, Eli invites her to join hands with him, something she does reluctantly. Then he says what we might call a table grace or a blessing. She obviously has no idea of God and no previous experience of this strange practice but it moves her, as though expressing thanks or gratitude for anything is opening up a world of possibilities. She actually invites her mother to do the same the next time she sees her. In this harsh and dangerous world, offering a simple grace is an oasis of light and hope.

Here we are on Thanksgiving Sunday, a time when we respond to the grace of God in Jesus Christ by offering our own thanks and gratitude. There are several people here this morning who are Americans by birth and this is not your traditional Thanksgiving, but you all may be surprised to know that Canadian Thanksgiving goes back to around the same date as American Thanksgiving and was originally celebrated in November as well. Consider this a sort of “advance poll” on the U.S. Thanksgiving – or at least the opportunity to chow down on two big dinners!

In both countries, Thanksgiving is not part of the religious calendar, strictly speaking, but it has been adopted as one in North America and it is a nice fit. In fact an online poll to which about 20,000 people responded found that about 50%, or half, were going to have their Thanksgiving meal today, Sunday. And this may be one of the few occasions in the year when many of these families say a blessing or a grace.

We even have scripture readings now which invite us to consider what it means to be grateful to God for the richness of our lives.

The passage from Deuteronomy finds the people of Israel about to take up residence in Canaan, the proverbial “land of milk and honey.” Most of us will recall bits and pieces of the “back story” for this one. After escaping Pharaoh in Egypt and wandering for decades in the wilderness, a scouting party sneaks across the Jordan river. When they return most of them say that they don’t want to live there. The taxes are too high, and the health care system is creaky, to put it mildly. Okay, I made that part up, but they don’t like what they see.

The minority report comes from two men, Joshua and Caleb, who claim that it is a place of abundance. They haul back a load of grapes to prove that it is rich agricultural land, and there are also natural resources. Canaan does sound a lot like Canada doesn’t it?

As the people of Israel are about to “take the plunge,” Moses says, “hold on, hold on.” Then he appeals to their memories saying that even though the times were lean in the wilderness, God always provided. And he warns them against two great enemies of faithfulness to God: self-sufficiency and complacency. Even though Moses knew he wasn’t going to enter the Promised Land, he was well aware that once people started living off the fat of the land they were going to be prone to amnesia about how they got there. He was wise enough to realize that while they had escaped the misery of slavery in a distant land, they could enter back into a slavery of a different kind and not even be aware of what is happening.

Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant homes and settle in . . .

and more and more money comes in, watch your standard of living going up and up –

make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God . . .

If you start thinking to yourselves, I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine! – well think again.

After a meal, satisfied, bless God, your God, for the good land he has given you.

This is a call not to just think about gratitude in general terms, or even in services of worship but to regularly, specifically, express our thanks to God in the elemental act of eating a meal.

Do you say a blessing or a grace before you eat, or after you eat, as that verse suggests – that’s where we get the phrase “return thanks?” I will confess that I have no concrete evidence when I say that my feeling is that even those of us who are religious don’t express our gratitude for our meals the way we once did and there are probably lots of excuses, if not reasons.

In our hectic lives we don’t sit down at the meal table as often. Parent of children know how challenging this can be. Perhaps we are at a stage of life when we are on our own, and eating on our own, so saying a blessing slips by the wayside.

We have become prosperous societies in both Canada and the U.S. and so our bigger concern has become how to eat less food rather than honest-to-God gratitude that there is a meal on the table.

Saying grace may seem like an anachronism, a quaint little notion from the past. Certainly we can ask why we really need to say anything out loud, as though God needs to hear our voices. But surely we lose something when we no longer express our thanks, in the way we lose

And honestly, we go through those tough times in our lives when our landscape is bleak. We are more bewildered or even resentful about God rather than brimming with gratitude.

So in a way something as simple as saying grace can be our reality check about whether we are really are thankful for what God has given us,

When our three children were growing up, we said grace virtually every evening at our supper meal, and we tried our best to sit down together for that meal, even though there were the pressures of many activities. We joined hands around the table as a part of that ritual and their was something important about that element of touch.

I may not have mentioned before that our family was perfect in every way during those growing up years. So no one ever said “she had her eyes open during grace!”, nor did I ever respond “how did you know she had her eyes open unless your eyes were open?” No one ever said “he squeezed my hand really hard!”, nor did anyone ever say “she kicked me under the table during grace.” Somehow even a prayer can be a combat zone with children. Well we kept at it, not because every grace was a meaningful communion with God by any stretch. Some of them were short and to the point and definitely not in the spirit of a blessing. They were our attempts at saying that what was on the table and everything in our lives was a gift from God. That life itself is a gift of God.

We have maintained that ritual of a grace at mealtime through to adulthood with our kids, including holding hands. It has been interesting as the boyfriends and girlfriends have joined us at the table. I get a kick out of the slightly startled look on the faces of some of them the first time, especially the boyfriends who may have to hold my hand. And for those who may have no background saying grace there is the feeling that they are looking around for the ouija board –“if they start chanting I’m outta here!” They probably feel like the poor schmuck, Greg, in Meet the Parents. Those of you who saw that film may remember how he is put on the spot by his prospective father-in-law to say grace, and the hilarious way he bumbles through it.

In our gospel reading today Jesus is approached by a group of lepers, who were social outcasts in that time, feared because of their disease and shunned by everyone, even their families. They desperately want to be healed. This is a curious story because Jesus doesn’t heal them right away. He says, go see the priests and get “certified.” On their way to the priests they realize that they have been healed of their affliction, but of the ten only one comes back to Jesus to say “thank you.”

Today, on our Thanksgiving Sunday, we might make the commitment not just to say grace at our big meal, but to revive the practice from day to day. We may be in the minority, and we may bumble a bit ourselves but practice does make perfect! We have been given a gift of abundant life and eternal life in Christ. That alone is worth our gratitude.

We were in the province of Newfoundland this summer and we stayed with friends who live in an outport. They were wonderfully hospitable and we enjoyed eating and visiting together. At one meal the man of the house offered to pray, a bit of a surprise because guess who they asked at most meals? Let’s join together in this grace, as a reminder of the touching grace we have received in Christ.

As you blessed the loaves and fishes

Bless the food upon these dishes

As the sugar in the tea

May we all be stirred by Thee. Amen!