An Extra Thanksgiving
Sermon
Aug. 3, 2008 Bill Piston
Aug. 3,
2008
Delivered
by Bill Piston
If you could have an extra holiday, celebrate a particular
holiday twice a year rather than once, which one would it be?
Given the choice I would not have to think twice. I would pick
Thanksgiving. I would pick Thanksgiving because I have many happy
childhood memories and joyful adult experiences associated with it. I
would pick Thanksgiving because my favorite hymns are the ones we sing on that
holiday. And I would pick Thanksgiving because for me it represents an
opportunity for uncomplicated harmony with the Creator. Christmas and
Easter raise complex theological issues – to say the least – but Thanksgiving
merely asks us to slow down and acknowledge God as our creator, the author and
sustainer of all our blessings.
When I was a child, Thanksgiving Day meant having dinner with my grandparents,
an easy task physically as they lived right next door to us and our back yards
adjoined. Along about two o’clock we would head over -- myself, my mother
and father, and my two brothers. Sometimes my dog Ralph would accompany
us. It wasn’t unusually for him to go over first; he knew a good prospect
when he smelled it. And oh! those smells!
Entering through the back porch we came right into the kitchen. Does
anything on earth smell more pleasant that a kitchen on Thanksgiving Day?
When you came into my grandmother’s kitchen after that short walk through the
cool November air, the aromas embraced you like a physical force; they wrapped
around you like a warm blanket on a crisp fall evening. They bespoke, in
odors that were mingled yet distinct, of all the pleasures that would shortly
be ours.
The family gathering began with hors d’oeuvres in my grandfather’s library, a
somewhat formal name for what was the most welcoming room in the house.
Large bookshelves lined the walls and for my family any room with books in it
was a welcoming one. Granddaddy always sat at one end of the couch.
When she wasn’t running back and forth to the kitchen Grandmother perched
hesitantly in her own small leather arm chair. We boys always fought over
the room’s one rocking chair, until Mother forced us to take turns. That
rocking chair and Grandmother’s leather chair now sit in my living room, and
many of the volumes that constituted my grandfather’s library now rest my
bookshelves, each with Granddaddy’s personal bookplate, which reads “My books
are my friends; I like to keep them.” The hors d’oeuvres were sweet pickles,
green and black olives, and blue cheese spread on celery stalks. All of
which I liked well enough, but that did not stop me from sneaking a piece of
hard candy from the glass dish that sat on an end table. This was a type
of multi-colored, mysteriously-flavored hard candy that Southern grandmothers
conjured out of thin air; you certainly never saw it for sale in stores.
During these preliminaries my grandmother might sit still for as much as ninety
seconds. She would refill the hors d’oeuvres tray whenever its contents
shrank by as little as ten percent. She had grown up on a farm in
Tidewater
When it was time for the meal we moved to the dining room, distinguished for
this special occasion by fancy plates, silver, and candles. Granddaddy
sat at one end of the table, my father at the other. Grandmother took a
chair close to the door leading to the kitchen, but she rarely sat down.
After asking the blessing my grandfather carved the turkey with the same
careful precision he brought to every task in his life. He carved far too
slowly for three hungry young grandchildren! When I carve our turkey
today I use the same knife Granddaddy used back then; I’m a lot faster but also
a lot less skilled. We had both stuffing and dressing at
Thanksgiving. The dressing was a special oyster and chestnut
recipe. I disdained this concoction, to the dismay of my
seafood-loving grandfather, who had grown up on the shores of
The wine we drank to accompany this meal formed an important
ritual, for at age sixteen I was allowed a full glass for the first time.
At Thanksgiving Granddaddy always drank a German wine called Riesling.
Riesling is perhaps too sweet to be the perfect accompaniment for turkey, but I
still enjoy drinking it today because of its happy associations. The
turkey was wonderful, of course. I’m one of those people who genuinely
like turkey. I don’t eat it out of obligation and I can go through a lot
of turkey leftovers before I tire of it. Despite eating vast quantities
of food, there was always room for dessert. I might have a small slice of
pumpkin pie, but my favorite was Grandmother’s apple pie (the product, like the
apple sauce, of my grandparents’ miniature orchard). Instead of having my
pie ala mode I copied my grandfather’s
These pleasant memories reveal some of the many reasons why I like
Thanksgiving, but they do not explain why it is my favorite holiday, one
that has a particularly spiritual meaning for me. I could just as
easily bore you with my memories of our family vacations at the beach, or of
our celebration of Christmas. Christmas meant my Grandmother’s exquisite
rolls plus roast pork (which I like even better than turkey) and Christmas
meant presents, too. How can you top that? Stories about these
occasions would underscore the fact that in many ways I enjoyed a very
privileged, almost “Leave It to Beaver” or “Ozzie and Harriet” childhood.
Perhaps I should say an “Andy Griffith Show” childhood, since I grew up in
Why then, do I remain happy at Thanksgiving? Why has my father’s
death not spoiled this family-oriented holiday for me? The primary
reason is simple. Although my father’s chair sat empty at Thanksgiving,
my grandfather continued to sit at the head of the family table. Over the
years I developed a much closer relationship with Granddaddy than I ever
enjoyed with my father. My grandparents lived into old age and I can
accept their deaths without it spoiling Thanksgiving. I think of my
grandfather whenever I carve a turkey, but the memory makes me happy rather
than sad.
There is more to it than that, however. Thanksgiving represents one of
those aspects of my life where I believe I detect the subtle hand of the
Creator, where I feel like God has been working on me, and for me, all along,
but without my always realizing it. Over the years I have come to
appreciate Thanksgiving on a more deeply spiritual level than other
holidays. I’m embarrassed to confess that I feel closer to God at
Thanksgiving than I do at Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, or
at Easter, when we celebrate His resurrection. But it is true. And
I don’t just mean around the family table; I mean in church, too. Perhaps
you experience a profound sense of God’s presence while listening to Handel’s
“Messiah” or our choir’s magnificent Easter cantatas. I get much the same
feeling in relation to the three hymns I selected for our service today: “We
Gather Together”; “Come Ye Thankful People, Come”; and
“Let All Things Now Living.” These hymns are joyful and upbeat, the sort
of tunes a guy can sing. Some people might consider them at first glance
to be “light weight” when compared to other selections in our hymnal.
Perhaps, but they are not “light weight” for me. I often choke up in the
middle of them. There have been times when singing these hymns that I
have experienced a profound sense of God’s presence, a sense that God is with
us, loves us, and will take care of us. This is a closet as I have ever
come to feeling communion with the Creator.
I would argue that these three hymns are deeply
spiritual. Consider the lyrics of “We Gather Together.” They invite
us to enter God’s presence with thanksgiving; to praise Him; to acknowledge His
sovereignty and our complete dependence upon His Grace. You can’t get
much more Presbyterian than that. “We gather together to ask the Lord’s
blessing; He chastens and hastens His will to make known; The wicked oppressing
now cease from distressing; Sing praises to His name, He forgets not his
own.” These lyrics remind us that God is not distant, but present.
He is present in every aspect of our lives and in every particle of
Creation. We do not always understand God’s plan for us. When He
chastens us we resent it; when bad things happen we get angry. But we
accept on faith God’s lordship in our lives and strive to serve Him as best we
may. “Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining; Ordaining,
maintaining His Kingdom divine; So from the beginning the fight we were
winning; Thou, Lord, wast at our side, all glory be Thine!” Isn’t that a wonderful expression of
communion?
There is an in interesting bit of Protestant history
behind this hymn (you knew I was going to turn this into a history
lecture). “We Gather Together” was written in 1597 by Adrianus
Valerius, a Dutch poet, to commemorate the victory of
the Protestant Dutch over the Catholic Spanish at the Battle of Turnhout. This occurred during the long struggle of
the
“Come Ye Thankful People, Come” has a harvest theme to which I, the middle
class son of a pediatrician, have no direct affinity. My grandmother
never regaled us with stories of her upbringing on a farm adjacent to the
You can go on-line or consult various encyclopedias regarding how to interpret
“Come Ye Thankful People.” The hymn begins with an acknowledgement of
God’s sovereignty and our dependence upon God: “All is safely gathered in; Ere
the Winter storms begin; God our Maker doth provide; For
our wants to be supplied.” But it quickly moves on to God’s final
judgment and the end of the world: “Giving angles charge at last; In the fire the tares to cast; But the fruitful ears to
store; In His garner evermore.” Can you think of another hymn where we
Presbyterians so blithely sing about the final judgment? Whether Alford
mean it that way or not (and there is controversy over the issue), I (and
others) interpret the “tares” in this hymn to represent sin, not sinners.
It is sin that will be destroyed, not souls. God is the author of
everything. His reason for permitting sin to exist is a mystery we cannot
fathom. Listen to the lyrics: “All the world is
God’s own field; Fruit unto His praise to yield; Wheat and tares together sown;
Unto joy or sorrow grown.” Yet we will not remain prisoners of sin
forever. “For the Lord our God shall come; And
shall take His harvest home; From His field shall in that day; All offenses
purge away.” All our sins will be purged. No one will be left
out. No one will be left behind. We—all of us – have been pardoned
for our sins through the sacrifice of Jesus, who died for us on the
Cross. But this pardon comes to us as a gift of Grace. Since we
have no power of our own, sin will remain in the world until Jesus returns.
Only then, freed from sin by God’s action, will humankind be worthy of eternal
communion with its Creator. Thus the final, anticipatory verse: “Even so,
Lord, quickly come; Bring Thy final harvest home;
Gather Thou Thy people in; Free from sorrow, free from sin; There, forever
purified; In Thy garner to abide; Come, with all Thine
angels, come; Raise the glorious harvest home.” The harvest is thus not
so much a metaphor for judgment as it is a metaphor for communion, an event to
be anticipated with joy rather than fear.
The third hymn I chose for us to sing is “Let All Things Now Living.” We
don’t restrict this one to the Thanksgiving season as we do “Come Ye Thankful
People” and “We Gather Together,” but it always makes any list of suggested
Thanksgiving hymns. We haven’t gotten to this one yet today, but you
probably remember it. It opens: “Let all things now living a song of
Thanksgiving; To God the creator triumphantly raise.” These words are set
to a traditional Welsh folk tune entitled “Ash Grove,” and in my opinion you
will have to search far and wide to fine another melody even half as
lovely. The hymn was published in 1939 by Katherine K. Davis. This
remarkable woman is most often remembered for writing a hymn entitled “The
Carol of the Drum,” better known as “The Little Drummer Boy.” The story
of that famous tune, and
It seems to me, however, that “Let All Things Now Living” exists outside of
time, with a transcendent theme that sets it apart. “Let all things now
living a song of thanksgiving; To God the Creator Triumphantly raise.”
That sounds almost New Age, doesn’t it? -- the idea
that not merely humans but all living things should praise their Creator.
Perhaps, but one of the psalmists of the Old Testament used the same
metaphor. The last verse of Psalm 150, which is the last psalm, reads:
“Let everything that had breath praise the Lord.” Indeed, the hymn’s
biblical allusions are many. Consider these lyrics: “God’s banners are
o’er us, His light goes before us; A pillar of fire shining forth through the
night.” The book of Exodus describes how Yahweh led the Israelites in the
wilderness: “And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to
lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go
by day and night.” [Exodus: 13:21] Like the two hymns we have already
sung, “Let All Things Now Living” contains many references to God’s
sovereignty, reminding us that we need only look about us to see evidence of
His majesty. “His law he enforces, the stars in their courses; And sun in its orbit obediently shine; The hills and the
mountains, the rivers and fountains; The deeps of the ocean proclaim him
divine.” God is everywhere, in everything He has created. And how
should we respond? How should we respond when considering our own place
within the vastness of eternity? When confronting this awesome universe we
barely understand? Katherine Davis clearly believed that our Creator is
ever-present, for she wrote that the God who “fashioned and made us, protected
and stayed us” will also “guide us on to the end of our days.” And thus,
as her hymn concludes triumphantly, “We too should be voicing our love and
rejoicing; With glad adoration a Song let us raise; Till all things now living
unite in thanksgiving; To God in the highest, Hosanna and praise!” Every
living thing is to be united in praising God. Every living thing is to be
in communion with the Creator.
For me the three hymns I have discussed and the Thanksgiving holiday itself
have a very comforting message. We should accept God as God,
all-powerful, majestic, and unknowable, yet also mysteriously present
throughout all aspects of Creation. While we cannot eliminate sin from
the world, we know that are redeemed by God’s Grace and look forward eternal
communion with God. Through the sacrifice of the God’s only Son, Jesus,
who is the Christ, the Messiah, the Lord’s Anointed, we have been
redeemed. Therefore we should live upright and righteous lives worthy of
that sacrifice. We should be a thankful people who share what we
have. We should be reconciled to one another. And we should
anticipate the harvest with joy. The bad experiences in our past and our
fears for the future should not prevent us from appreciating the wonders of the
present – wonders that include pumpkin pie, turkey, family, friends, and joyful
hymns that remind us of our Creator’s majesty.
The entire membership of my family has not been gathered
simultaneously for a Thanksgiving diner for many years. This is hardly
surprising. My brothers and my sisters-in law, my nieces and nephews,
don’t live next door to me with adjoining back yards, like I lived next door to
my grandparents. Since moving to Missouri Nancy and I have done many
different things on Thanksgiving Day. Sometimes we have gone out of town,
sometime not. Sometimes we have invited friends to eat with us, and at
other times it has been our very great privilege to share Thanksgiving in the
homes of our friends. Whatever the circumstances, however, I think
Thanksgiving will always remain my favorite holiday. It is one I would
gladly celebrate twice a year -- for the food;
for the friendship; for delightful hymns; and for that special sense of
communion with the Great Mystery who is the author of our being. To God be all praise, power, and glory, forever and ever.
Amen.
William
Piston
August
3, 2008