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Thanksgiving Sunday

Jeremiah 29
This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 2
4 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”


There is one among you who possesses special knowledge in the realm of bacon.

Yes, I have a bacon angel. I don’t want to put anyone on the spot, except that say that I remain grateful that this bacon angel will send a text or email every time bacon goes on sale. (There is a sub-theme here about a certain academic who refuses to allow flyers in the house, but that’s another sermon).

This week, however, the bacon angel let me down. Bacon is on sale at Food Basics for $1.88 just now (stay in your pews) and there was no text, no email, nothing. I stumbled on the bacon myself, thankfully, but there was another controversy waiting in the wings. After scoring the $1.88 bacon, I announced that I was going to add it to the stuffing. Turkey with bacon stuffing.

And this, of course, prompted a deep philosophical conversation about tradition versus innovation, the nature and purpose of Thanksgiving, and the role of bacon in the household economy. In the end, tradition won over innovation, and the bacon remained in the fridge. But if you think you can take hold of the bacon baton, and you have a hollow bird at home, it’s $1.88 at Food Basics.

And I will concede that what can only be described as a traditional holiday, may have less room for culinary innovation than say Christmas. There were no turkeys in Bethlehem, but there were in New England, which is the source of much of our celebration.

Yes, some have tried to claim that Champlain celebrated something akin to a thanksgiving in New France, maybe the Irish or the Scots carried the tradition directly from the old country, but I think we’re mature enough to concede that our tradition is American, brought by Loyalists and immigrants from the U.S., and modeled on what was already happening south of the border.

Even our lectionary of scripture readings, mostly developed in the U.S., has Thanksgiving readings scheduled for the end of November, that are optional for our use, including Deuteronomy 26 (“harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you”) and Jesus’s words “I am the bread of life” (John 6)—the promise that whoever comes to him will never be hungry.

The other choice, which we are following this morning, is to take the regular readings of the day and apply them to the holiday. And it seems to be a good fit. Jeremiah speaks and says to the exiles:

4 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.”

It is a stirring commendation from the prophet that has watched the people carried off into exile, and now must share a word of hope. He shares a word of hope that is not without controversy, something we’ll turn to in a moment, just after we review the story of the one also known as “the weeping prophet.”

It begins with Jeremiah’s call, given the unenviable task of telling his fellow Judeans that the end is near. God is going to allow the Babylonians to overrun the nation, punishment for their great disobedience, and Jeremiah must let them know.

It should have come as no surprize. Recalling commandments one and two (worship one God, and no idols) the people of Judah might have know that worshipping Baal, erecting high alters to Baal, and generally considering Baal a good guy would only end badly. So the commandments were soundly broken, and it fell to Jeremiah to tell them what would happen next.

I brought you into a fertile land
to eat its fruit and rich produce.
But you came and defiled my land
and made my inheritance detestable.
8 The priests did not ask,
‘Where is the Lord?’
Those who deal with the law did not know me;
the leaders rebelled against me.
The prophets prophesied by Baal,
following worthless idols.
9 “Therefore I bring charges against you again,”
declares the Lord. (Jer 2)

What follows are dozens of verses that state and restate the ways Judah has strayed from the LORD, and the final verdict:

“The whole land will be ruined,
though I will not destroy it completely.
28 Therefore the earth will mourn
and the heavens above grow dark,
because I have spoken and will not relent,
I have decided and will not turn back.” (Jer 4)

So the exile begins, and the court officials, the leading people, the builders and the artisans are all carried off to Babylon, captives of the Babylonian king. And this, of course, will precipitate a variety of responses among the leading people now in exile. Some will experience only defeat, a sense of utter hopelessness expressed in some of the Psalms. Some will attempt revolt, acts of resistance against the Babylonians that end badly. And some will listen for the word of the LORD, that eventually comes from the same prophet that shared the news of destruction:

4 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.

So the real shift is less the transition from sorrow to hope—significant in it’s own right—but the shift from God’s destructive anger to God’s word of hope, the shift from punishment for sin to forgiveness in the face of exile. The people are encouraged to live their lives in hope, building houses and enjoying the fruit of the land, because God can’t seem to remain angry for very long.

And eventually they will return home, and other prophets will provide the context for the journey, but for now they remain in Babylon, urged to “seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it,” they are told, “because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

One of the reasons that these passages continue to resonate is our own experience of exile. One in six Canadians was born somewhere else and made their way to Canada. Add to this the children of immigrants and you get many more, and then add the rest who are in the land that once belonged to our First Nations brothers and sisters, and we now inhabit.

In other words, and with a sizable exception, we are all exiles: settlers from far away isles, or refugees from America, or settlers, or one of the many waves of later immigrants that make up our land.

And like the Judean exiles, there are a variety of responses to life in a new land. Some continue to weep for the old country, and struggle to find a home. Some become nativist, resisting each subsequent wave of immigrants, quickly forgetting their own story. And some embrace their new land, discovering that exile represents a new beginning, and the ability to “build homes and settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce.”

As we look forward to welcoming our own exiles, in maybe as little as two weeks from now, I give you the story of Walid, a Syrian refugee in Calgary, planning his first Thanksgiving in Canada. Pleased to learn that the local Co-op store sells Halal Turkey, he is planning a meal of both Syrian and Canadian food. He is thankful for the security they enjoy and the warm welcome they have received in Calgary. He is particularly thankful for school: "My kids now are students,” Walid says, “they study everything now."*

And like all Canadians, he partakes in our shared obsession: "I don't like the weather,” he says, “maybe in one hour, it changes."

May we continue to give thanks, recalling the good land and God’s many gifts, and may we continue to welcome exiles, as we too were once exiles. Amen.

*http://www.calgarysun.com/2016/10/08/syrian-refugees-celebrating-first-thanksgiving-in-calgary

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 6:09 AM