Thanksgiving Sermon

From a bird's eye perch, the plowed fields of autumn in southeastern Minnesota create an agrarian quilt alongside the harvested corn and bean fields.  Seen up close, the acres upon acres of turned soil appear as waves of brown loam, rolling one into another.  To the untrained eye, these plowed patches are just sections of soil, districts of dirt, but to the farmer whose livelihood depends upon these patches of turned earth, these are the promise of a future, the hope for another crop, and the base upon which life is built.

It was along one of these furrowed fields in southeastern Minnesota that an image of the very kingdom of God was revealed.  While I participated in an internship with six rural churches, a contingent of farmers from what was then war-torn El Salvador had come to meet with their counterparts in this rich and fecund river valley in the heart of Minnesotan farm country.  Sustainable farm practices were discussed and relationships developed that would transcend national boundaries.  The image that remains with me occurred near the end of the El Salvadoran's visit. 

As a group stood around pickup trucks and discussed the remaining itinerary, two men—one El Salvadoran and the other from southeastern Minnesota—moved to the edge of what looked like a sea of loamy soil.  The plowed field rose above them ascending a hill on this particular farm, and the two farmers kneeled by the edge of the earthen sea and began to pick up chunks of turned soil.  Nutrient-rich dirt crumbled between their hands and returned again to the sea.  What was so amazing about the image was the tidal wave of realization regarding all that divided these two and, yet, all that connected them.  War.  Immigration.  Language.  These were the barriers that made rapport so difficult and complex.  And, yet, the land connected them.  Bound them together.  Earth to earth and dust to dust.  Their common heritage as tillers of the field allowed them to speak a language that moved beyond the particulars of their distinctive pasts, allowing them to connect, to see their shared humanity, and, perhaps, to understand a bit more about the other.  It was communion at a profound level.

Meanwhile, the exchange between these two farmers was not earth shattering.  Indeed, the only record of it exists within this reflection today and the memories that they themselves share of the event.  Yet, the exchange was one of the innumerable encounters that exist in life where we become aware of all that divides us and, simultaneously, those things that connect us.  Throughout human history, we have exhibited too often the desire to differentiate, to divide, to distinguish between one and another.  Within this propensity to discriminate—with all the positive and pejorative resonances that that inveighs--invariably, one is better, the other worse.  One is worthy, and the other not.  One is valued, while the other is dispensable.  The structures that we have developed as individuals and societies often obfuscate the privilege that we enjoy.  The miracle of our fortune to be born at a specific time in a specific place allows for untold opportunity.  And while we can be mindful of this reality and even act to try and level the playing field so that others may share in the opportunity we enjoy, there may exist a barrier that we experience in understanding our need, our limits, and—strange as it may seem to say in this beautiful and prosperous location—our poverty.

Ironically, reading the story of the ten lepers from Luke in today's gospel may reveal this very situation.  It is very easy to read the story as a lesson in thanksgiving.  That is, the 9 lepers are examples of how not to respond to the good that befalls us, and the one leper is our crowning example of how to properly give thanks.  However, the story is filled with the complexity of the social history that permeates every society and this complexity cannot help but impact how we read this narrative.  The truth is that the one leper who returns to Jesus is not an example of how to give thanks so much as he is the example of what to do when there is nowhere else to go.

Indeed, the world in which he lived viewed him as doubly troubled.  That societies discriminating eye saw his skin disease—leprosy—as a punishment by God for something he must have done.  Meanwhile, as a Samaritan, he would be considered unclean, and no self-respecting priest would have anything to do with him.  Therefore, after Jesus dismisses him to go and see the priest, he literally had no place to go.  Thus his thanksgiving as a model for our thanksgiving is a bit odd.  We consciously choose to offer thanks today.  We actively engage in thanksgiving.  And the idea that we might be unacceptable or unworthy to stand in this space and offer thanks is, probably, not something we are used to thinking about. 

Yet, that is at the heart of this lesson, and here we are.

And the example of the one leper who returns to Jesus is instructive for us.  Rather than an example of how to give thanks, perhaps the story exists as a reminder of how we all—to varying degrees and in various situations—have moments where we have no place to go.  In those moments, God in Christ is the very place that we are told will always receive us, regardless of the situation.  Furthermore, the great equalizer that does connect us one to another is the mortality that we can consider.  Like the farmers kneeling beside that vast field of plowed earth, the soil of our life sifts through our hands, and we cannot help but recognize all that divides us and, yet, the profundity of that which we share. 

That scene in southeastern Minnesota and the leper returning to Jesus rightly frame our Eucharistic gathering here.  The communion of the two farmers is a communion that we participate in as well, albeit in a different time and space.  The life sifting through their hands is replaced with the life placed within our hands, and the reality of what connects us and transcends us hopefully is never lost.  Meanwhile, the leper's thanksgiving—literally Eucharist—is one that emerges not out of power and control but out of limitations and vulnerability.  Our coming to this table is a participatory echo of that truth.  We, too, have no place else to go, and the face that met that leper millennia ago meets us in this meal.  Accepting us as we are and calling us to replay this gift in our own lives and in the myriad ways that we might for our own life and, equally, for the welfare of those farmers in El Salvador or southeastern Minnesota, or for the lepers in our own midst, or, another way of saying it, is for the salvation of the world.