by CCW | 9 October 2011 12:45
Thanksgiving is a strong reminder to us of our spiritual identity. We are inclined, perhaps, to think of Harvest Thanksgiving as a form of folk religion left over from our more agrarian past when we were more directly dependent upon our labours in the fields, the woods and the seas. Or we may be inclined to think of our National Thanksgiving Day, as the left-over of the long durée of the state nationalism of the last century and more, now passé in the age of the global community and the end of the cold war. What, then, are we to make of this Thanksgiving weekend? Does it simply remain with us as a social gathering, a family event, an occasion to get together and enjoy a common meal? Or is there something more to the idea of Thanksgiving?
In the contemporary world where everything, from health care to the environment, from warfare to education, is said to be “driven by technology” or “driven by market forces”, we are in danger of forgetting the spiritual principles which belong to our social and political relationships and identities and which have a more organic character to them, something which is wonderfully illustrated in the way in which our churches are so beautifully decorated with the rich bounty of the fruits of creation at Harvest time. It is, after all, for no technological purpose or economic reason that the fruits of the harvest are before us here in the Church.
No. The point is that Thanksgiving is a profoundly spiritual activity. Pumpkins and zucchinis, apples and turnips, all the rich variety of the harvest are gathered into our churches. Why? To feed God? No. To signal the praise of all creation and all human labour to God. We are with the whole created order in giving praise and thanks to God for what God has given us without which there could be no harvest, no life, no being whatsoever.
There can be no thanksgiving without giving some thought about whom we thank and for what we give thanks; in short, the “to whom” and the “for what”. And more than just some thought, for thanksgiving, we might say, is all thought. It is an intentional, knowing and reflective act. We give thanks to God for all that we have received, for all that we do, for all that we are. And we do so whether there has been a good harvest or not! That, too, is altogether beyond the comprehension of our technological and economic reasonings.
More, too, than an atavistic reminder of our rootedness in the land, Thanksgiving places us with God. The motions of thanksgiving are nothing less than the motions of God in us. Our Harvest Thanksgiving, our National Thanksgiving, our thanksgivings for children and family, for friends and neighbours, for church and community, for graces given and received, for the myriads upon myriads of particular things which have come our way, for the many great and little blessings that are part of your life, all belong to the Great Thanksgiving of the Son to the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. Thanksgiving places us with God in the fellowship of the Trinity. And such is the meaning of the Eucharist – the great thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving, then, is a strong reminder of our identity with God. Isn’t it wonderful, and not a little divinely ironic, that pumpkins and zucchini, apples and gourds, wheat and grapes, should serve to remind us of our being as spiritual creatures who are precisely not defined by the things of this world? But neither are we in flight from the world. Harvest Thanksgiving, in particular, honours the whole created order as spiritually given. Isn’t it wonderful and not a little humorous, divinely speaking, too, that we should be taught, we might say, about ourselves as spiritual creatures by a pumpkin? How that translates to the pumpkin regatta here in Windsor, I have no idea! Yet somehow all the elements of our natural and social and political lives in spite of all their confusion and disarray are gathered up into the primacy of the spiritual relationship of God with God in God. Everything is gathered, we might say, into “the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving”.
The Fall is the season of gathering, the season of harvest thanksgiving. But the Fall is also the season of spiritual harvest as well. There is the harvest festival, if you will, of all the angels in The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels at the end of September. And in the passing of this month of October, what do we come to except the great harvest festival of spiritual life in The Feast of All Saints’? And in between, juxtaposed, as it were, between the angels and the saints, is the thanksgiving in the land, the festival of Harvest Thanksgiving. And it, too, is profoundly spiritual.
These are all communal events. They are the celebrations of our spiritual identity with God and in God and for God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. His death and resurrection is the greater death and resurrection into which we have been privileged to enter. At the heart of his sacrifice is thanksgiving. The thanksgiving of the Son to the Father is offered on the cross in the midst of our death and dying, in the midst of the greater desolations of sin and sorrow. Thanksgiving is our freedom. It speaks to the dignity of our humanity and to our human vocation to be “the secretaries of God’s praises,” as the poet, George Herbert, so wonderfully puts it. In other words, we give voice to the voiceless elements of creation, honouring the Creator in the works of his creation. In so doing we discover our truth and our freedom. For it means that we live by the Word of God who is “the bread of life.”
It is a powerful image and yet one which we, perhaps, take too much for granted. It encapsulates a whole pattern of understanding. It gathers into itself the very meaning of our lives as spiritual creatures. This spiritual understanding is about the redemption of the natural world and the world of human activity; it is about the gathering of all things to God in Jesus Christ. The image is profoundly sacramental. The Word and Son of the Father identifies himself for us as the bread of life. Word, Bread, Life, and sacrifice; in short, love, God’s love for us in Jesus Christ who gives himself for us in the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the altar. He gives himself for us in his great thanksgiving to the Father. It becomes our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. We enter into the great thanksgiving of the one who tells us,
Fr. David Curry
Harvest Thanksgiving,
October 9th, 2011
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