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Thanksgiving

Deuteronomy 26
When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, 2you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” 4When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, 5you shall make this response before the Lord your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, 7we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.” You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. 11Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.


Hands up if you feel eighteen. Put your hands down if you are still under eighteen and trying to be older.

Eighteen seems to be the age named most often by those who make the argument that they don’t feel their age. And I suppose it makes sense. Eighteen is the age of arrival: becoming an adult, getting to enjoy a handful of adult things, gaining a sense of greater responsibility in the world while still having few responsibilities. Sounds perfect, in fact—who wouldn’t want to feel eighteen all the time.

Then life sends reminders. A job, kids, debt, what doesn’t fall out turns gray anyway and then you’re old. And then somewhere in the middle, middle-middle, or maybe late-middle, your eyes crap out. Now, you’ve heard me complain about presbyopia, literally “old persons’ eyes,” and the trial of not being able to hold something far enough away and still see it. But I’m talking about the next in a series of humiliations beginning with something called the bifocal.

Yes, the bifocal. An evil invention whereby some very practical person figured out a way to aid the vision of people who have failing sight in at least two directions. An invention that says “give up now” because everyone can see that sinister line across your glasses, simply by looking you in the eye.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the emotional response. Not the sad approach of late-middle age and early old age, but the fact that while I wear these things it appears (from this side) that I am perpetually tearing up. And maybe that’s intention, the glasses themselves saying “go ahead, cry for your lost youth, after all, you’re not eighteen anymore.”

***

The story of the Israelites follows a pattern of growth and development that seems somehow to mirror our own:

You begin in a place of comfort and blissful ignorance, certain the world revolves around you. You become as a willful toddler, cast out of the garden, and forced to make your way in a harsh world. You’re four years old. You have a series of misadventures (for the Israelites, this most often seems to involve pretending you wife is your sister), but slowly you reach a sense of maturity. Later, by no fault of yours, you find yourself suffering in bondage, say down in Egypt, or maybe to a big mortgage. Eventually relief comes, but you’re still wandering, looking for the promised land that some tell me is called retirement. When you finally get there, and you will get there, you develop elaborate ways to express your thankfulness. For while you remain eighteen in your mind’s eye, you have the maturity and experience to know that before all else, you need to thank God for the passage from there to here.

And today, of course, is all about thankfulness. It is about acknowledging the passage from there to here and all the good gifts God has blessed us with on the way. It is about looking back and looking forward, knowing that this God of promise will continue to provide.

For the Israelites, thankfulness took the form of a command. It fits in the retirement stage of my previous imagining, where the Israelites have reached the promised land and must adhere to a ritual that is set long before. Our passage from Deuteronomy is set in the future tense, saying “when you arrive you must immediately do the following.” The people must gather up the first fruits of the harvest, take them to an appointed place, and recite the following:

“Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.”

The priest will take the basket with the offering, set it on the alter, and then the recitation continues:

“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, 7we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.”

A couple of things to note first. Amy Jill Levine, noted Old Testament scholar, would want us to note the essentially legal tone of this passage. While we are quick to hear this as liturgical language, meaning language set in the context of public worship, she would have us remember that this is also the language of covenant fulfillment.

And the covenant, the one that is fulfilled as baskets are filled and words are recited, begins way back in Genesis 12:

1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. 2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

The covenant is further refined, of course, with more detailed promises of offspring, and a land, and that small but unforgettable matter of circumcision. So this is a contract, as Levine says with ‘the party of the first part’ being God and the ‘party of the second part’ being Abram (later Abraham) and later still the entire nation of Israel.

So the people have been faithful, they have suffered the vicissitudes of a long journey from there to here, and now they must fulfill one last condition, reciting the sacred history of liberation and reminding themselves of the great deeds that God has done. But there is another thing to note here, and that is the small issue of time.

The words to recite, indeed all of Deuteronomy, was most likely written in the early seventh century, BCE, in the time of King Josiah, when religious reform was the order of the day. Some of the book may have been written as late as the early sixth century, maybe during the Babylonian exile or immediately after. So we have words written in the future tense for events that happened 600 years earlier. The introduction to the passage says “When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess,’ words written centuries after the possession has happened and maybe even after the land has been lost in exile.

But the time confusion continues. Listen to part of the oath again:

We cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders.

Yes, but the ‘we’ is entirely symbolic, because we know, in fact the Bible makes it clear, that the generation that were liberated by God and crossed the Reed Sea, and wandered in the desert perished there and would never make it to the promised land. The first group to recite this were already speaking outside of time, and every subsequent generation would do so as well.

But the oath is clear, because after all, this is the fulfillment of a contract. Even down to today, the faithful recite this oath in the immediate language of presence, ignoring the trivial question of human time and thinking instead of God’s time. The same happens in the Passover ritual of the Seder meal, when the youngest child asks the question “Why is this night so special?” And the answer is the same:

This night is like no other in our year, for this night is special to the people of Israel. This was the night when we passed from death to life, from slavery to freedom.

It wasn’t our ancestors, it wasn’t Moses and Miriam and the other heroes of the faith: this night WE passed from death to life, from slavery into freedom.

***

We are all immigrants (except our First Nations brothers and sisters) and we all arrived on these shores with the promise of freedom, of greater prosperity, and a greater potential for our children. Ask my father if he is Dutch and he will be offended (in a playful way) and insist that he is Canadian. It is not that he lacks pride in the nation of his birth, only that Canada is his chosen home, the promised land that has given so much to him and his tribe.

So as a nation we give thanks, and many will mark this occasion with a giant flightless bird, and vegetables we seldom eat, and in gatherings we ought to gather more often. And while the bird may come in many flavours, sage and savory here, curry over there, maybe jerk with some coocoo on the side, the thankfulness is universal, for the good land we enjoy, and the blessing of God we enjoy each day.

And these celebrations happen outside of time. They are for our distant relations, entering the land of Canaan, the brave ones who crossed the sea to Canada, for us and for the generations to come: We trust in the promises of God and we never stop thanking God for what we have. Now and always, Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 2:55 AM