A Thanksgiving Blessing
Father Martin Malzahn
Old Bergen Church
November 2022
“Oh my goodness, it is a joy to be here with you my brothers, sisters, and friends of faith.
And oh my goodness the great sadnesses of the world in November of 2022: a shooting rampage of murder in a queer bar in Colorado Springs, an earthquake in Indonesia, war in the Ukraine, the rise of antisemitism and threats against synagogues right here in New Jersey—to say nothing of the perennial animosity that mosques and Muslim people feel—sadness seem to be compounding to bring sorrow and misery to our consciousness.
But wait. According to a meme, or Brazilian novelist Paulo Cohelo “The universe is conspiring to bring you joy. When you are loved you can do anything in creation. There’s no need to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.”
That seems to me to be another way of talking about one of my favorite passages of scripture which is part of the Christian Bible. However, the Turkish Community to whom Paul writes in Ephesus, called Ephesians, was also most certainly Jewish as well as the omni-present ‘spiritual but not religious.’
St. Paul (or another author who writes like Paul) says in Ephesians chapter 6, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Whew. Can someone pray for this preacher because he’s going to talk about Jesus at an interfaith thanksgiving service in a way that he (that’s me) hopes speaks warmly to all people of good will and expressions of faith.
‘May some word of mine be some word of God’s for some one of God’s. In the love of Jesus.’ Amen.
So, you already may have picked up, and it’s not a surprise to anyone who spends more than a few moments talking to me, that I think deeply and read widely.
As such it will probably not be a surprise to you if I say, that on Thanksgiving Day of 2009 I arrived for dinner, intentionally forgetting the wisdom not to talk about religion or politics with a book about Politics AND Religion, by seminary professor and perennial political stump speech firebrand Cornel West, Democracy Matters.
I was in fact disappointed that my hosts, parents of a four-year-old and a six-year-old—an English Professor and Hospital Chaplain—were not impressed; nor did we actually discuss the book. Instead, we passed the potatoes and watched their children perform a spontaneous play.
Sigh. What was I thinking?
As the parent of a now three-year old, I get now what I did not get then…after, after the kids perform that’s when you get to speak like an adult. (Which may not sound like I’ve gotten anything at all.)
Let me say in my defense, I was or perhaps am following the model of my father, who for years brought with him not one but a stack of books—as though these were the delicious sides that people could not wait to feast upon.
For example: Thanksgiving 2011, after being forbidden by my sister to bring books to her fiancé’s house, my father brought with him to the table a copy of a physical newspaper, the local one, The Denver Post.
In this neatly folded newspaper he had circled a column about prayer that he used as the dinner prayer. The author said, “it seems as though saying grace has morphed into an expected ritual with little meaning behind it. Is anyone at the dinner table genuinely bowing their head with pure humbleness and praise when the food is being blessed? If we’re being honest, the thoughts are more like, “Can you please hurry this prayer up? I’m hungry and my food is getting cold.”
That’s probably not wrong.
And it’s probably not too far off from what is happening in the extended meditation of the feeding of the 5,000 in the Gospel of John chapter 6 when Jesus began the miracle by offering a blessing.
Afterwards Jesus says, by the way that miracle, it wasn’t about bread.
“Jesus was aware that his disciples were complaining about his teaching. He said to them, “Does this offend you? He goes on to say, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”
At my father’s funeral seven months after Thanksgiving Dinner my sister remembered in her eulogy why dad had brought the newspaper to dinner.
Among the dinner guests were a couple and their teenage son whose best friend and surrogate uncle was a war photographer. He had been killed in Libya documenting armed conflict the previous spring. Their grief was still raw.
My father, a Lutheran Minister, an always caring ambassador of God, had wanted to speak a word of grace and peace to people who were not traditionally religiously observant.
He also wanted to speak a word of truth to those who were too smart to settle for memes of sentimentality.
He read from the now unfolded paper, whose ink stuck to his fingers, “Many people use the time to vocalize their thankfulness for a variety of things other than food, like nice weather, good health…and the company of friends and family. While it is seemingly important to a growing faith to be vocally thankful in prayer, is the dinner table the most appropriate place to share these appreciations?
He paused to read the room, which somewhat surprisingly, was listening to his every word.
He continued, “English writer G.K. Chesterton said, “You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, like one that accompanies a minister who has just read from a newspaper before a Thanksgiving Dinner.
Then, I think, or I could be making this up for dramatic purposes, but it’s the kind of think that could have happened, my Haitian Catholic wife, mystified by the practices of a Protestant Pastor who not only didn’t pray in a way she recognized as prayer, but critiqued that kind of prayer, then used the words of a newspaper as a prayer said, “Umm. Merci? Bon Appetit!”
And we, guests who did not speak a word of French, again this could be my imagination said, “Merci indeed” and began passing food.
Here’s the thing friends; hear this loud and clear; prayer is powerful thing.
Also, we aren’t very good at it.
Oh, we are good at making up rules: You need to close your eyes. You need to be reverent.
Your tradition may even say you need to do ablutions or have a minimum number present. We might be good at identifying the circumstances in which to pray:
When you are overwhelmed;
When you are grateful;
When you are fearful;
On the Sabbath…
What we, any of us—Buddhists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Protestants of all kinds, are most certainly not good at is, saying, “grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before opening a book…”
As though all the world is a place for and every occasion is a kind of prayer—an opportunity for union with God. This is what happened, say some Christians, when Jesus fed 5,000 people.
“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them…” Jesus’ disciples said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”
“But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, ‘Does this offend you?’”
“’Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe…For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.’”
Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.’
I’ve been thinking about this passage of scripture in the Gospel of John and about the passage from Ephesians, in light of this gathering of faithful, interfaith, people, and in light of the oh so sad news I watch daily on my phone.
Jesmyn Ward in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly paints perhaps another picture that you may hear more easily. She says that as an adult, she carries the poverty of her Mississippi youth inside of her remembering emptiness.
“How that emptiness permeated every bit of me. How I was hungry in my belly and ravenous to fill my brain with something that would one day help ensure that I would not be hungry forever.”
Jesmyn was desperate not just food but for stories of hope and resilience… Were the first followers of Jesus hungry too not just for food…but, as the namesake of our local College, Saint Peter says, ‘for the words of eternal life?’
St. Paul, or someone who writes like Paul, says plainly to Jesus followers, (and Jews, and ‘spiritual but not religious’ people) we spend too much time thinking of the wrong things. (Probably the things on our newsfeed.)
“Our struggle” scripture says, “is not with flesh and blood, but rather principalities and powers…” the way through this struggle is union with God through prayer.
Jesus’ teaching about prayer; poverty, and hunger is complex. He says it’s not bringing something to a place: bread, fish…books, even prayer—whatever external thing it is that we think a place needs that will ameliorate the ills.
Rather, Jesus talks about bringing himself…and by extension we bringing ourselves. This is what is needed.
Here’s the tricky thing though. It’s not and don’t take this the wrong way, Pastor Jon of Old Bergen Church that this place needs…or our interfaith choir, or the music director, or Father Martin or even, you…though we are glad you’re here.
What is needed is God who will work through us.
The Letter of Ephesians, is for some, a post-resurrection Rosetta Stone to understand Jesus and God working in us.
St. Paul (or someone pretending to be Paul) writes that we can be manipulated by spirits which overwhelm us and seek to make us lose faith.
In an effort to keep the faith, “put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.”
So far as I know it’s not literally a belt-buckle that we need to wear. Nor was it, Jesus says bread we need to eat.
Which also means it’s not books that needed to be brought to the table…yet hungry people did need bread; grieving people did need a prayer from a newspaper…what was in
each was God.
So, perhaps we do indeed need to visualize our belts as truth, our blouses as righteousness and our shoes as readiness.
More to the point we need to embody, truth and righteousness. You never know when passing the potatoes or watching a spontaneous play is when God shows up to feed us and work through us.
As Paulo Cohelo says, “The universe is conspiring to bring you joy. When you are loved you can do anything in creation. There’s no need to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.”
May God, as we understand our Creator, be in Colorado, in Indonesia, in the Ukraine; in synagogues, in mosques, in hospital rooms, in lecture halls, in food pantries; may God be with and in you.
With love and thanksgiving. Amen.