Clergy Notes — Harvest Thanksgiving, October 13, 2024

Thankfulness in a time of peril is perceived in many varied ways. It can seem like an absurd, sick joke. It can be regarded as an escape hatch into a deluded world of magical thinking. It can be held as a life preserver, the only object between you and annihilation.

Thanksgiving in a time of peril means avoiding the temptation that gripped the Hebrew people in the absence of Moses. Frightened by the seeming absence of God, they seek solace in an idol whose only worth is material. Jesus’ boundless love summed up in his simple forgiveness of his lynch mob, impels me to another way of seeing. A way of seeing that is not determined by the loss of the lights in my life which have blinked out; but by the daily abundance of love expressed in the many gifts grief might otherwise obscure from my view. Jesus warns us that we cannot serve two masters – the material and the spiritual. One is limited and stingy; while the other is an eternal fountain of plenty.

God’s creation implies an economy of sharing made possible when we experience, deep in our soul, the epiphany that we really possess nothing except the tokens of love we are privileged to steward for a while. In all the endless ages of existence, God has spared us this moment to experience its glories. Even in a time of peril – and, maybe especially in a time of peril – it becomes almost impossible to withhold our thanksgiving and gratitude.

Following your heart, being open to transformation, and then allowing yourself to enter into that journey requires us to perceive the world and our place in it in a new way. Jesus invites us to form one attachment through which all other attachments are defined and made possible. He invites us to be oriented to God, to celebrate gifts and blessings where we find them, as we have them now, as we hold them in memory, as we anticipate them in the eternity that lies ahead.

And beyond celebration, we are asked to steward and share these gifts, for all that we have comes from God, and is returned to God – whether we choose to believe that reality and participate in it, or not. This is the living embodiment of thanksgiving – a daily occurrence, rather than an annual observance.

Revd. Neil Fernyhough

Click here to find the Liturgy at Home for Sunday, October 13, 2024.