Thoughts

Turning Thanksgiving Inside-Out

by Chris Brennan Homiak

America's Turkey Day seems to be all about food, family, football, parades, and shopping. And sometimes gratitude manages to make a brief appearance. Growing up, the day began with watching the parades with fancy floats and Broadway samplers, then flipping to the Detroit Lions game. Mid-afternoon, a turkey and/or ham would be ready, along with three or four big casseroles, rolls, fruit salad, and pumpkin pie. Most years, before eating weād go around the table and share some things we were grateful for, then share a prayer. Iād stuff myself until tired-turkey syndrome kicked in, and then I'd retire to the couch for a nap. When I got up, Iād eat some tasty leftovers. The day after Thanksgiving, weād join the frenzied crowds at the mall to start off the Christmas-shopping season.

This year, I'm trying to look at Thanksgiving with new eyes. I started by asking, ćWhatās this holiday about? and What challenge does Jesus offer for this cultural holiday? For the first question, I went to wikipedia. I found out that Thanksgiving has roots in an annual Harvest Festival, celebrating the end of the Harvest. Thanksgiving was originally a much more organic feast of gratitude, celebrated by people who had worked the land for their food all season, and had just finished an exhausting preparation for winter. Today weāre such passive consumers of our food, so isolated from and ignorant of the growing process, that itās hard to really feel gratitude about our food or ćthe endä of the harvest season. Produce and canned food supply stays stable all year round in our grocery stores. I wonder how participation in harvest or even a greater connectedness to seasonal and local food sources might re-awaken harvest gratitude. What if we primarily bought locally-harvested meat and vegetables? Or what if we paused for a few minutes before stuffing our faces to consider the whole life-journey of each menu item?

Wikipedia also shared the story Americans often point to about Thanksgiving, the story of the native Wampanoag people hosting the Pilgrims at a three-day feast. Thanksgiving was an event of radical hospitality! People who were intensely different were able to share and feast together, depleting their winter storage in a generous act of welcome and community. The original celebration was much more outward-focused and boldly inclusive than our feasts are today. At best, my Thanksgiving tables have included estranged cousins or classmates far away from home.

What if we invited the homeless, widowed, and stranger into our own homes to share the meal? I think Jesus challenges us to do just that in Luke 14. All throughout the gospel of Luke, heās eating with different outcasts, but here he stops to give banquet instructions. Rather than inviting the social network of friends and family who can pay you back, Jesus says to invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. Jesus blurs boundary lines and preaches an inclusive banquet. The servant is sent to the streets and lanes, and even beyond the city gates, inviting the destitute and disabled, the prostitutes and refugees, the homeless and jobless. Jesus urges us to invite the people who can teach us something about gratitude, who can humble us and show us a new kind of self-giving and simplicity.

For me, real gratitude involves recognizing Godās generosity, but it also demands relationships of redistribution. God is creating and sustaining a world that has enough resources to meet everyoneās needs, but we live in a world of tragic inequality; while I stuff myself on Thanksgiving, there are people in the world without food, shelter, water, or access to basic medical care. Godās care, concern, and provision are for the whole world, and thus my ćblessingsä come with a tremendous responsibility to look beyond to those who have less material resources. Jesus challenged the American perspective of success and blessing when he called the poor and hungry blessed in Luke 6; perhaps that is another reason Jesus encourages us to invite them to our table, to be in the presence of the truly blessed ones. If we donāt have relationships with the poor and hungry such that they would come to our table if invited, perhaps we could join them at theirs. Volunteering at feeding ministries is a good starting point.

The roots of the Thanksgiving celebration and Jesusā banqueting instructions challenge us to turn this holiday feast inside-out: from passive consuming to connectedness and care for creation, and from self-serving gluttony and greed to others-focused generosity and gratitude. Jesus acknowledges in the last ten verses of Luke 14 that this wonāt be easy or comfortable, and your family and friends may not be up for it. Our consuming culture would rather we do anything but pick up a costly cross, follow a revolutionary, and create transformative community.