The Dream of the Thanksgiving Table.

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Words

Almost twenty-five years ago, when I was finishing up my residency as a chaplain at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, my supervisor asked me if I had considered being a full-time chaplain.

Actually, I had. Being a chaplain, especially at an inner-city hospital, was meaningful work. But it required an additional year of training and I was anxious to get out into the world—and into parish life.

Oh, how that world has changed.

Here, in the twilight of my career, things have come full circle. I am not officially a chaplain. But in practice I am. As a “supply” pastor, I preach in the small, dying churches in the little towns near where we live. I am there to preach, true; but in practice, it is like being a hospice chaplain.

Last week, I preached at the small Congregational church in our town. In preparation, going through my files for the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost, I came across a sermon I preached at an Interfaith Thanksgiving service twenty years ago.

I was surprised that it almost stood the test of time.

And I share it with you now so that you can, hopefully, remember what this day is about.

The Dream of the Table (lightly edited for pomposity)

Tomorrow, for a precious few minutes we will actually get it right.

We will be the people we actually know we should be. From soup kitchens to suburban dining rooms, from the formality of the Four Seasons to the humbleness of a hometown diner, from Mississippi to Massachusetts, we will sit down at table together. Family and friends and the forsaken. We will offer a prayer of thanks—maybe the only time all year we stop to remember and give thanks. In that prayer, our memories will turn to those we love who are away, and those we love who have passed on. Generational lines will blur. We will share, willingly, gladly, cheerfully what we have.

Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, we will once again get a glimpse—a fleeting glimpse—of the real American dream. 

The dream of the table.  Where all sit together, where all are equal, where all share, where no one goes hungry.

This dream is a little flame which cannot be extinguished.

Not for want of trying.

Retailers would love to pry us away from the table; lure us away from the table with the ephemera of things to buy. But in this country, amazingly, the sacredness of this day has not been sacrificed to the gods of commerce. Thanksgiving remains a true holy day. It is our one secular Sabbath.

We are a country divided, split almost right down the middle; and yet on Thanksgiving our differences will, for a brief, fleeting moment, fade.* The Detroit Lions, America’s improbable Thanksgiving Day team since 1934, will play the Green Bay Packers this year at Ford Field. 

I can just about guarantee that, during the game, we will see live shots from Iraq.  19 and 20 year-old men and women waving “hi” to Mom or to their husbands or wives or children, as they get ready to eat some pre-fab turkey meal in a country where they are strangers. 

Who, among us here, wouldn’t gladly invite any of them to our table?  Who among us here, wouldn’t gladly invite those caught-in-the-crossfire Iraqis who now have neither home nor table to our own table?

We know, in our hearts, just how important this day is. It is a day for Dreamkeeping;  it is a day that we become, whether we know it or not, dreamkeepers.  The dream that America is a table where all sit equally.

We rarely measure up to that dream;  however, that dream occasionally breaks through in all its splendor and propels us to a higher level. The power of that dream led Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence;  it is what gave Rosa Parks the courage to take the seat she so justly deserved;  it is what led Emerson to coin the Americanism “do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”.

And before that, it was the dream of the prophet Isaiah:

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

And the dream of the prophet Micah,

Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

And the vision of Jesus:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Prepare the table, let us sit down together and break bread.

That is why Thanksgiving is a holy day.  We are at our best when we are at table with one another. There is no room for the things that separate us.  We rub elbows;  we serve each other; we reach across the divide that we encounter every day.

So tomorrow, when you sit down to table, consider it a sacred act. Know that you are a dreamkeeper. Know that this is who we are at our best. Treasure those few hours. Store them in your heart. Be a dreamer.

For without dreamers …

*This has not aged well

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& Music

I recently released this piece, sort of a complement to the sermon.

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Thank you for reading! Apologies in advance for typos. (I am a dyslexic proofreader!)

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