My Mother’s Favorite Holiday

Scripture — Matthew 6:25-33 (NRSV)

Jesus said, “I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Devotion

My mother’s favorite holiday was Thanksgiving—mainly, she said, because it was sort of nestled in between Halloween and Christmas and no one expected her to do anything or have any particular feelings about it.  If you understand why that would make a day someone’s favorite holiday, then you understand my mother.

I shared this story on Facebook once, and was promptly asked “No one expected her to do anything? But—all the cooking?” Well, when both my maternal grandparents were alive, they did all the cooking. When my grandpa died when I was fourteen, my grandma said that she didn’t want to do the big Thanksgiving spread without him. So, for the next twenty-one years, until she died in 2007, the whole family went out every year to one of our two favorite restaurants that had Thanksgiving buffets, and we had a wonderful time.

The Thanksgiving three weeks after my grandma died, each segment of the family decided to do our own thing. My brother and his family stayed home in Virginia, my uncle and aunt stayed home in Kentucky, my in-laws stayed home in Tennessee, and my parents and I and my husband and new baby went to a state park in Indiana and ate Chinese food (except the baby).

Whether that could have become our new tradition I do not know, because my mom died only eight months after her mom did, and once again we had to start over. My in-laws and my husband announced they would take over cooking duties. (No one trusts me near a stove.) And so, for the first time since the late 1980s, I once more experienced the “traditional” Thanksgiving preparations. For the last sixteen years my in-laws and husband have cooked, and those family members still living have assembled, and we’ve laid out the spread at our house—on my grandmother’s china.

The Episcopal Church has its own set of readings for Thanksgiving Day, and if you came to them expecting “traditional” Thanksgiving coziness they may surprise you. For the Old Testament, we have Joel 2:21-27, where we are promised abundance and reminded that this abundance is to “repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you” (Joel 2:25). For the epistle, we have 1 Timothy 2:1-7, which enjoins us to pray and give thanks for those who have authority over us but also reiterates the place of God as authority over all earthly powers. And then we have this Gospel lesson. On a day we usually take as one to celebrate the goodness of harvest time, Jesus tells us that it’s not the harvests and the cozy warm feelings and our own hard work we can depend upon—it’s him. “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matthew 6:26).

National days of thanksgiving—the one in the US is no exception—often have their roots in stories of deliverance from war and escape from famine. After all, thanksgiving is generally for something. I wish I could have back the years that the locust has eaten, and that we could all gather around my grandma’s table once more, so long ago and far away now. But I do know my mother had the right idea, and her voice echoes across the decades. Thanksgiving is not about what we have done. It’s about what we have been saved from, and Who we follow. For that, pumpkin pie or no pumpkin pie, I give eternal thanks.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Store Your Treasure in Heaven, Not on Earth (Matthew 6:19-34).