November 27, Eve of Thanksgiving

Eve of Thanksgiving 

Holy Eucharist Wednesday November 27, 7:00 p.m. 

Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the fruits of the Earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them.  Make us we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.  

The Book of Common Prayer 

On Sunday at the Announcements I spoke a bit about the importance of the Liturgy for Thanksgiving in the light of what is happening in our culture right now.  Every year the opening to the Christmas Shopping Season which is traditionally the day after Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the year, gets more and more intense and crazy.  Early openings of stores from the normal 9:00 and 10:00 a.m. have been pushed back.  7:00 and 8:00 a.m. was special, but that wasn't enough so 5:00 a.m. began, and not long after that, well, midnight of Thanksgiving Day.   

This now they want to make it begin on Thanksgiving itself.  As I said in the announcements, trying to purchase things at the lowest possible price is perfectly reasonable.  But last year the quest for discounts, on items it turns out, not Christmas presents for others, but things for oneself, resulted in injuries, assaults, and even the death of someone who was trampled over by the crowd.   

I shared a story I had heard many years ago about when the Communists took over a country and suppressed all the religious communities closing churches and synagogues.  There would be only one voice.  In a small a village a priest whose church had been forced closed would each morning put on his black cassock and simply walk from one end of the village to another.  He did same thing at the end of the day.  It reminds one of the reading from Isaiah we hear in Epiphany (Which means showing forth),  "He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make heard in the streets, a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.. he will not fail or be discouraged."  What the priest did was make a very simple, yet powerful witness, that there is another voice and another set of values. 

It seems like it is getting more necessary for people of faith to make such a witness to another set of values beyond the commercial.  It is quite possible that over time the content of our holidays and observances is being drained away.  Ultimately all that may be left of all holidays and observances is an outer shell, with them being no more significant than Super Bowl Sunday.   

So you might want to consider that making the trek to COA this coming Wednesday evening can be such an act of witness, simple, quiet, and profound.  It is a witness to another voice that says:  

The Human does not live by bread alone, but that humanity lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.... For the Lord your God is brining  you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing  forth inv valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, and land of  olive trees and honey, and land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing.  You shall remember the Lord your God and will shall eat and be full and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.