THOUGHTS OF A NUN

Fellowship makes the Feast

Thanksgiving, 2006
Matthew 6:26-34

When I was living on my own, before coming here, I often found myself in a dilemma regarding hospitality.  Friends and work colleagues – especially my superiors at work – would invite me to dinners or parties, and most of them had large, nicely appointed homes.  They would put on lavish spreads, even hiring people to help prepare and serve the food, if it was a large party.  I appreciated being invited to these events, and I usually enjoyed myself at them, but afterwards, I always felt as if I could never repay my hosts.  I could call or write with words of thanks, to be sure, but I never felt I could reciprocate.  My house was small, in a modest neighborhood.  It was furnished with odds and ends which gradually improved over the years, but the emphasis was on the gradually.  What could I offer these people from the wealthy suburbs, or from the posh townhouses of Boston’s Back Bay?

I did entertain in that house from time to time, and I vividly remember the first and last parties I gave there.  The first was a house-warming, shortly after I moved in.  While it was not a total disaster, it left a lot of room for improvement. People came, they looked around and admired the house, they nibbled and chatted for a while and they left…it was an “open house”.   That’s what you do at an open house.  But I realized they probably weren’t staying as long as they might have if I had owned more than one comfortable chair.  When everyone had left, the house did not feel significantly warmer.

About 16 years later, I had sold the house in preparation for moving here, and I gave a “house-cooling” party, as a way of saying goodbye to as many people as possible. What a difference.  There were groups in the backyard, groups on the front steps, sitting in the living room, standing around in the kitchen and dining room. The difference wasn’t in the furniture – even though there were lots of places to sit, and it wasn’t in the food – even though this time I featured New Skete cheesecake.  The difference was in the fellowship.  The first time, I had invited mostly friends from work; this time, most of the people I had invited were people I had gotten to know through church over about a 10-year period.  Some of the people who came that evening had much greater wealth than I, some had much less.  And yet all were enjoying themselves comfortably together.  The bonds formed in the church community leveled the field.  There was love in that gathering, there was life. 

The prospect of giving thanks for all that God has provided leaves me with that same feeling of inadequacy as I felt at being wined and dined by people who were out of my league.  What’s been provided is too overwhelming.  How do we give thanks for...everything???    Especially, how do we give thanks to the One who needs nothing?  What can we possibly have that God could want from us?  The answer lies in what made the difference between my house-warming and my house-cooling….it is also provided for us directly in scripture:  it’s love.  “I desire steadfast love (or ‘mercy’) not sacrifice.” 

Love of god is surely part of what god wants from us, but I believe that God finds our love for one another to be of at least equal value.  Our gathering together in love is our thank offering to God.  Gathering together with the kind of love that levels the field is how we reciprocate God’s generosity, and it is how we follow the words of today’s Gospel passage: “strive first for the kingdom of God”. In the kingdom of God we are not separated by discrepancies in any kind of wealth – not financial wealth, nor wealth of talents or accomplishments or knowledge or power over one another.  The field is level.  Striving for that level field is how we give thanks, and – if we listen to the Gospel – how we ensure that God’s gifts keep coming to us.

It is no accident that the sacramental feast we are about to celebrate in the Divine Liturgy is called “eucharist” –  basically Greek for “thanksgiving”.  We give back to God that which is God’s as thanks for all that God has given and done for us.  But above all, we gather as the collective body of Christ – united in God’s love – to give this thanks.  I’m convinced that nothing pleases God more than to see us gathered together in love in this way – which is why Jesus promises always to be with us at these times. 

In a few hours we will sit down together to a feast.  Let’s remember that it is our love for one another – not the turkey and trimmings – that makes it a feast, and through that love, the feast becomes our thanks to God.  It is both God’s gift to us and our gift to God.