The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor
© 2024, Dr. Tamilio
After I gave Patty all the pieces for today’s worship service and sat down to begin writing these words, I realized something. The Gospel Lesson that is listed in the bulletin is the one for today. Makes sense. Why would we read one for a different day? However, there is a different Gospel Lesson slated for Thanksgiving, so I want to share that one with you as well. This comes right in the middle of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
Matthew 6:24-33
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you — you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
In other words, relax. Chill out. Stop worrying. We spend so much time worrying that we forget to live. Well, we live, but not in the present moment. As I’ve said before, we are time travelers: our guilt keeps us in the past and our anxiety propels us into the future. We hardly live in the now, but, ironically, now is all we have. As that old adage declares, “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift, that is why it is called the present.” As quirky as this sounds, it is so true. Now, right now, is a gift. It is a present. Maybe, as we prepare for Thanksgiving, it would do us well to take a moment and take stock of all that we currently have and why there is so much for which to be grateful. We will get back to that in a minute.
One of the things I love about this passage from the Sermon on the Mount is that it is as much about trust as it is about anything else. We need to trust that God will continue to provide for us, just as he does the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. In his book The Sermon on the Mount: They Key to Success in Life, the late 19th / early 20th century scientist and philosopher Emmet Fox says that following about this passage: “Of course, [Jesus] did not mean that you as a human being are to copy the lives or the methods of the birds or the flowers literally, for you are infinitely higher in the scale of creation than they are. The lesson is that you are to adapt yourself completely to your element as they do to theirs. Your true element is the presence of God.”[1]
Let me add something to what Fox says. I had a professor named Russell Pregeant in the seminary. In his book Engaging the New Testament: An Interdisciplinary Approach, he writes that this passage from the Sermon on the Mount has “implications for the reader: God’s wholehearted servants will be free from anxiety over mundane needs, depending totally upon God’s provisions.”[2]
So, if we combine the two, we can see that our true element (meaning our true contextual reality) is the presence of God, and we need to trust that God will provide. These may be the two greatest reasons for us to give thanks. God is with us always and God will provide for us. This does not mean that life isn’t hard. This doesn’t mean that we will not struggle sometimes. It does mean, however, that God is with us in the midst of it all.
Dr. Marcus J. Serven, writing for the Geneva Foundation, has a lengthy article in which he enumerates twelves ways that God guided the Pilgrims to the New World, directing them every step of the way. He begins discussing how during the twelve years prior to them embarking in the Mayflower, “The Lord providentially delivered them from untold misery and death just prior to the resumption of war between the Netherlands and Spain when they determined to move to the New World.”[3] Serven spends a great deal of time looking at various documents that the Pilgrims kept — diaries, journals, even prayer books — and how God guided them to the shores of Cape Cod rather than Northern Virginia due to them getting a late start and the storms that they caused them to change their course. Serven writes, “The Lord overruled any problems with the weather, and potential plots against them. In the end, He providentially brought the Pilgrims to a place of safety and isolation where they could establish their colony in peace. In New England, they were able to live as ‘free men’ and worship according to the Bible.” We know how the story goes. Inhospitable weather and sickness claimed half of them. Eventually, they were befriended by Squanto who taught the Pilgrims the ways of the Native Americans: how to plant corn, how to fish, and how to hunt.
Eventually, the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in October of 1621. Contrary to what people who are attempting to rewrite history claim, this was a feast that we shared with the Indians. Serven quotes the following by Edward Winslow, a passenger on the Mayflower, who, in his book Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, there is a lengthy piece that cuts to the heart of what this holiday (this holy day) is all about:
Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling [hunting for birds they could eat], so that we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little outside help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time…many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their great king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it is not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.
Translation: the Pilgrims and the Native Americans hunted together and shared a feast together — one that lasted for three days — to thank God for bringing them to that moment: a moment of survival, a moment of peace, a moment of cooperation with people who were very different. They thanked God for his goodness and provisions. This was the first Thanksgiving.
Consider the lilies of the field. Consider the birds of the air. God provides for their every need. And God will provide for you and yours. Happy Thanksgiving as you bask in that reality, and in those promises — the promises of a God who is love and will never fail us. As a grateful people, may this be our prayer during the coming week.
Amen.
[1] Emmett Fox, The Sermon on the Mount: They Key to Success in Life (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1934, renewed 1966), 103.
[2] Russell Pregeant, Engaging the New Testament: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 203.
[3] Marcus J. Serven, “Pilgrim Fathers: Testimonies of the Providence of God,” from The Geneva Foundation (online). Published November 22, 2023.