Instability is the theme of Thanksgiving in 2024.
War continues to take lives and inflict harm. We survived the coronavirus pandemic only to encounter an incredibly higher cost of living. Trust in leaders and institutions is running low.
How shall we respond to the worries that consume so much of our mental and emotional energy?
We will prepare sumptuous feast of thanksgiving.
Celebrating a Thanksgiving feast during a precarious time is counterintuitive and countercultural.
The commodification of Thanksgiving and its fusion with Christmas presents an idyllic encounter. Well-dressed, healthy families gather, laughing, watching football, sharing their favorite foods, and making memories. People can’t wait to arrive at the host’s home, having completed the task of waiting for their favorite annual recipe. Friends pile into a vehicle to hit the stores early on Black Friday while others stay home and graze on leftovers.
The idyllic picture excludes realities we might not want to share. Family members resisting the call to gather, dreading encounters with difficult and argumentative people, and in the worst-case scenarios, witnessing substance abuse, enduring criticism (or excoriation), and receiving verbal assaults.
For many, the traditional Thanksgiving evokes images of the best of times – great food and company. For others, Thanksgiving is traumatic, and they would prefer not to observe it at all.
Can those who would prefer to avoid Thanksgiving and those imagine life without it share common ground?
Jesus’ Meal with his Disciples
The meal Jesus shared with his disciples was not thanksgiving, but it includes much of the drama of both positive and negative experiences. Jesus devoted himself to his disciples and shared an intimate and festive meal with them before his betrayal, passion, and crucifixion. They had become close. Many of his disciples expressed their love for him and he called them his friends.
Jesus had become irritated with his disciples inability to understand, to keep vigil, to fast, and he admonished them. He corrected their lust for power and misunderstanding of his mission. He knew their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, the temptations they would struggle to overcome, and he shared this intimate meal with them anyway.
The same men who shared this festive meal with him denied him, fled from him, and betrayed him, right after dinner was over. He was arrested and put to death – and he still forgave them, and came to them again, when he was risen, breaking bread with them.
The meal that became the cornerstone of Christian communal gathering was traumatic. It was beautiful and awful at the same time, filled with the human highs of unparalleled friendship and the lows of a lack of loyalty and trust. What kind of love can bring the innocent one who had completely given of himself to his friends back to those who had forsaken him? The love of God made that possible, an inexhaustible love that desires to reconcile the people who failed their friend.
One could argue that the dilemma of humankind remains unsolved, given all of the brokenness around us. Others would point out the dangers of asking those who have suffered from neglect to return to those who hurt them, endangering them for more rounds of abuse and mistreatment. I recall a conversation with a friend who had been so mistreated by family that they rented a cabin to be alone with their pet on Thanksgiving. They considered it a more pleasant alternative than spending the day with people with a history of hurting them.
Reconciliation and forgiveness for those who have inflicted harm on us doesn’t necessitate a restoration of a dysfunctional relationship. It is entirely possible that hurtful family members are behaving because of their own past of receiving hurt from others. The vicious cycle of the afflicted becoming harmful tears asunder the fragile bonds holding us together. The story of Christ’s resurrection provides hope for forging new bonds anchored in love. Many of those forsaken, forgotten, and neglected have received the grace of new friendship – made possible by people willing to give of themselves to others, and receive others as true friends.
Most of us know someone who inspired us to be better. My person was far from perfect. He was grim, gruff, rigid, often narrow-minded, with a quick temper and personality as hard as a walnut. I’m sure some of it was hereditary, some learned, and some forged by survival instinct. The brutality of a totalitarian regime, a war, and immigration can have a hardening effect, especially when one experiences so much death and suffering.
And yet, this man was there for me whenever I needed him, despite his occasional outbursts. We had a falling out once, and it took a year to thaw out. He was humble enough to admit his faults. I weep tears of sorrow and joy remembering him to this day. His best friend described him aptly when we buried him: “he could talk with anyone, regardless of their background or education.” He gave as much of himself for others as he could, despite living in poverty. I am grateful that he was in my life, and he remains so to this day.
It is this dynamic connection between gratitude for what was and recreating it in the present that makes thanksgiving relevant. The past is filled with regrettable events, many of which were hurtful. But the past also gives us hope that we can become people filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit, people who strive to love as God loves, people capable of genuine friendship, who are not imprisoned by the trauma of the past.
My Bearer of Hope
In my case, a man whose love for me was inexhaustible went out on a limb to engage, serve, and love others, despite the pain he had endured in his past. He did not deny the pain of war, persecution, and sudden death of loved ones – he wept for those taken too soon until his last day. But he clung relentlessly to the hope that God’s love would right the wrongs, would mend the wounds, would wipe away the tears, would usher him and his loved ones into a future worth fighting for. He placed his trust in the God who gave completely of himself to save humankind from its most bitter enemy – death. He might not have known it at the time, but he was bearing witness to the power of God’s love to mend, to make us whole, in this life, in his own way.
I have heard enough stories of other faithful women and men who bore witness to the power of God’s love to build up a community anchored in love when previously there were only dry bones. The world around me screams that life is so uncertain, only a crazy person would dare to hope, to place their trust in God. The most powerful force inside me insists that God will remain God – the one who seeks the lost sheep to return them to the flock because of irresistible love.
Thanksgiving is often an occasion to sit at the table and say one thing you’re grateful for. This year, in a precarious time of chilling division tearing humankind asunder, let us remember the people who inspired us by their genuine love for others, and honor them by becoming true lovers of humankind in the present. They have borne witness to the truth that God is going to do what God does and make everything right. They dared to believe; may God give us the grace to do the same, through their prayers.
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