• Joel 2:23-27

Prompted by the destruction caused by a wave of “locusts” that utterly wiped out the crops, this text, attributed to a “Joel,” addresses the “soil” and the “animals” and then the “children of Zion” with assurance that all will flourish again.  The Lord promises that rain will pour abundantly as a “vindication” for all that the Lord’s people have endured.  Then the “threshing floors” will be full again as will the “vats” with both wine and oil.  “I will repay you for the years that the locusts have eaten,” the Lord assures.  Once again you “shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.”  This will renew/sustain the preexisting relationship between the Lord and the Lord’s people.

• Psalm 126

The psalmist summons the people to praise the Lord who “restores” the fate of the Lord’s people beyond the wildest dreams anyone could ever have!  Mouths will be filled with laughing and with singing!  Even other nations will notice and acknowledge what “Great things the Lord has done” with/for the Lord’s people.  The psalmist uses the natural cycle of sowing seed from the seed bag and then reaping the harvest to allude powerfully to the ways the Lord’s people might begin a journey in “tears,” but finish it “with glad song.”

• I Timothy 2: 1-7

When the writer of this “letter” in the manner of Paul’s original letters commends the community of believers to offer “prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings… for everyone [including] kings and all in high positions…” he is commending a well-established Jewish practice.  (A sacrifice for the Emperor’s health was routinely offered in the Temple.)  The writer seems to imply that the ensuing public order and peace will make it easier to spread the gospel to everyone.  After all, “Christ Jesus gave himself as a ransom for all.”   This message is at the core of Paul’s’ gospel to “the Gentiles.”

• Matthew 6: 25-33

Matthew’s text presents a lengthy “sermon on the mount” given by Jesus as a catalog of teachings for the first followers,   In this excerpt, (which Luke’s text follows very closely, 12: 22-31), the topic for instruction is the right relationship of the followers of Jesus to things, including food, drink and clothing.  “Do not be anxious” about these things.  Look at the birds  which labor at none of the tasks that occupy humankind so intensely, yet “your heavenly Father feeds then.”  Are you not more “valuable” than birds?  Look at the abundance and beauty of wild lilies, which do nothing for their well-being, yet, not even “Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these.”  Just reason: if God does so much with and for creatures and wildflowers, which are here today and gone tomorrow, will not God “not much more clothe you?”  Fretting and obsessing about things are a sign of “little faith.”  God knows your necessities.  Therefore, seek first God’s reign and “all these things shall be yours as well.”

Biblical texts do not trivialize nor disrespect human emotions.  (Indeed, their understanding of human behavior is as precise as a clinician’s and as insightful as someone with profound wisdom!)  The prophet “Joel” depicts accurately and sympathetically the genuine anxiety of the nation after a devastating plague that not only wiped out the crops, but the pastures for grazing by domesticated animals and the habitat of wild animals.  The excerpt from Matthew’s “sermon on the mount” fully understands the anxiety people have about “things,” not just discretionary “things,” but daily essentials like food and drink and clothing.  While acknowledging these genuine human anxieties, however, these same texts invite readers/hearers to not stay stuck in anxiety; to risk a different point of view; to move beyond “little faith.”   The counter-view offered in the appointed gospel for Thanksgiving Day is direct: “Do not be anxious….”  The psalmist goes further: expect the unexpected, be ready for some fulfillment beyond your wildest dreams.  What establishes the legitimacy for such hope and promise that are offered as a counter-balance in times of genuine anxiety?  “Joel” provides the most direct answer: we hope for renewal/restoration after times of crisis if we have accepted the promise that all that exists–me, all others all creation– is, in the first place, a demonstration of a supreme goodness that set everything in motion and prevails against all odds; he expects renewal after the current crisis as the newest iteration of God’s original covenant.

In Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination, Walter Brueggemann cites the text that is today’s appointed gospel as among those passages that invite one to adopt a very particular point of view.  He writes that the biblical message:

“asserts, affirms, and celebrates that the human self, each precious one, me and all my neighbors, is a product of God’s majesty, power and generosity.”  When a person adopts this point of view, she also realizes  that “I exist is a reality that is referred outside myself to the mystery of God to which I can only respond in gratitude and doxology.  Because I exist, I must sing a song that voices my life in unfettered gratitude.”   In the “doxological community” that grows up around this point of view “it would never have occurred to anyone that he was self-made or self-sufficient.”  And because such people realize they are not “self-securing, either that she must or that she could secure and guarantee her own existence, because all of life is a gift (see Matt 6: 25-33; I Cor 4:7)” (p. 30)

Times of actual threat are inevitable in the human condition; they incite genuine and appropriate anxiety for individuals, communities, nations and nowadays, global networks, including the damage to “this fragile earth, our island home”  by humankind.    But the biblical texts invite us to move beyond fear and “anxiety,” beyond “little faith” to a much broader and deeper faith.  If we adopt the point of view that goodness/communal action/resilience are at least the match for destruction/alone-ness/fear and we link that belief directly to  an acceptance of God’s benevolence as the instigator and perpetrator of all that is, then humankind will survive and flourish beyond our wildest dreams.  Among such people, thanksgiving is spontaneous, irresistible and even necessary!