It has been a rough year. Now that we have arrived at Thanksgiving, many people wonder how they can give thanks in the midst of what seems to be an overwhelming number of problems. People have given thanks for years, though, no matter how many difficulties surrounded them. And that is the subject of this sermon!
This Thanksgiving will be anything but traditional. Oh, there are plenty of frozen turkeys in the meat case at Kroger, but most of us won’t be eating them with our extended families. It’s just too dangerous this year; one of those extended family members might be an asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19! And because we won’t be visiting with friends and family, we’ll miss out on everything that we have come to expect from Thanksgiving Day. We won’t hear Uncle Harry holler at the intercepted passes during the afternoon football games. We won’t hear Cousin Marge comment, as she does every year, about how the kids are just growing up too fast! We won’t even have to listen to Grandpa pontificating about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket as he sits at the head of the table. No, all those Norman Rockwell scenes won’t be taking place this Thanksgiving, and it’s all because of an invisible virus that has put our lives on hold for almost a year! That virus is behaving like the weeds in Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30). Jesus’ disciples knew all about weeds that appeared in a wheat field. They were all too familiar with weeds that spring up and cause us no end of trouble.
When Matthew wrote his gospel, of course, he knew nothing about viruses or a global pandemic. Some biblical scholars think that Matthew was talking about people in his church which at that time was made up of a very mixed bag of Christians. The wheat may have been devoted followers of Jesus, and the weeds were those who were there for other reasons. Christians, for example, had a reputation of taking care of their own, so that no one in their church community went hungry. That might have attracted people who were more concerned with their stomachs than with their spiritual lives. Other church members might have been spies, sent there by the Roman authorities who wanted to find a reason to arrest members of this new religion. When Matthew wrote his gospel, the weeds that he talks about might have been sitting in the church pews! Today, we aren’t worried about Roman spies; and people who want a handout usually go to the food pantry or show up at the soup kitchen. No, we’re standing among other weeds today; and we don’t have to look very far to see them.
Over here is a patch of financial problems. Lots of folks are standing in those weeds. They live from paycheck to paycheck – if they even have a paycheck! They don’t have enough money to feed their children, or to buy them warm clothing for the winter. Some have even been evicted from their homes because they lost their jobs during the shutdown after COVID hit. And the worst part about these weeds is that if you stand there for very long, their tendrils snake around your ankles and hold you there. These weeds are really nasty!
Right next to the financial weeds is a big patch of medical problems. Lots of us are standing there. Some of us have medical concerns of our own, while others are coping with the medical needs of loved ones. Those weeds can get so tall that they dwarf us! If we get stuck in these tall weeds, they are all we can see; and pretty soon we can’t see the wheat at all.
And all around us are weeds that have popped up during the election season. I’m not even talking about our country as a whole – plenty of weeds there, though. I’m talking about the relationships that have been strained, even broken, because we disagree on how to go about repairing the problems that face us. We even disagree about what those problems are! Oh, yes, we have weeds all around us. And Jesus tells us that they aren’t going anywhere any time soon. When God comes at the end of time to harvest the field, those weeds will be burned in the fire. But until then… well, here they are.
The Pilgrims – our ancestors who first celebrated Thanksgiving on these shores – lived among weeds, too. Those early settlers landed on what is now called New England late in the fall, just as winter was setting in. The supplies that they had brought from Europe weren’t adequate to get them through that year’s harsh winter. Many were already ill with scurvy after the long overseas voyage. Others became ill from cold and hunger. Some starved to death. Of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, over half died during that first terrible winter. We tend to forget how tall and abundant the weeds were then. Over 250 years later, in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln established an official Thanksgiving Day, the weeds may have been different, but they were just as abundant. In that year, our country was divided by civil war. During the previous summer, the Battle of Gettysburg had stopped the invasion of Confederate troops into the north, but at a terrible cost – almost 50,000 troops killed or wounded in just three days of battle. During those days, just as in the time of the Pilgrims, the weeds threatened to choke out everything else. But even in the middle of all those weeds, both the Pilgrims and President Lincoln chose to give thanks. They couldn’t ignore their weeds, and it was very difficult to simply make the best of them. So they decided to give thanks for what they did have instead of focusing on what they didn’t have! They gave thanks for loved ones who survived cold, hunger, illnesses, and battle. They gave thanks for friends who supported them when they were certain that they could not get through another day. They gave thanks to God whose presence went with them whether their days were good or bad. They gave us a good example to follow as we struggle to live among our own weeds!
We can choose to give thanks, too. Some years ago, several people who are Facebook friends of mine posted daily what they were thankful for during the month of November. Now, I know these folks; and I know that they all have weeds in their lives: some small, some large, and some very large, indeed. You might be interested in what they were thankful for.
I am thankful for co-workers who care enough about me to phone me when they hear there's a huge accident that would keep me from getting home safely.
I am thankful for the songbirds in our yard.
I am thankful for my spouse. It’s not always easy, but it is completely worth it.
I am thankful for warm jammies.
I am thankful for books, because I love to read!
I am thankful for conveniences – a washer, a dryer, and a dishwasher.
I am thankful to spend time with my family.
I am thankful for the opportunity to learn. Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to get a good education.
I am thankful for laughter.
I am thankful for life.
Are you thankful for some of those things? I know that you are – and for many others that I didn’t mention. This year, I invite you to give thanks despite the weeds in your life, no matter how many of them there are and how big they are. I invite you to hang on to God’s promise that the weeds won’t last forever, and that one day, they will all be thrown into the fire! I invite you to join the Pilgrims, Abraham Lincoln, and all the saints throughout the ages in giving thanks to God for all the good things in our lives. Even in the midst of the weeds, may you have a blessed Thanksgiving!
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