© 2022 Evan D. Garner
Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 20:50.
Have you ever started your own business? You need to have a vision and a plan and money and lawyers and more money. My father started a hospital systems company when I was in middle school, and I thought the coolest part was the little embosser for the corporate seal that the attorney gave my dad when he signed all the paperwork. All that hard work and money and risk from my father, and that was my favorite part.
Do you remember seeing at a restaurant or another business that framed first dollar that the owners made? A source of pride. A testament to hard work. A reminder of where they’ve been. A statement of gratitude. I don’t see it as much anymore—probably because nobody uses cash these days—but I always get a little sentimental when I see a large, thriving, decades-old business that still has its first dollar framed upon the wall—that hasn’t forgotten where it came from.
Imagine starting your own restaurant. Developing a few recipes in your home kitchen that your friends and neighbors love. Hearing them say, “You ought to do this for living.” Returning to the idea over and over, unable to let it go. Dreaming about how much more you’d enjoy that than your current job. Finally getting serious about it. Scouting out a location. Taking out a loan. Assembling a kitchen. Buying all the supplies. Getting a business license. Hiring a few employees. Passing a health inspection. Testing it out among some close friends. Tweaking a few things. And then, at long last, with your marriage on thin ice and all your savings gone, opening to the public.
Your first paying customer. Hands you some cash. You take one dollar out of what he hands you and glue it onto the mat that is set in the frame that you already had ready for this moment. You put the framed dollar on the wall while your spouse takes a picture with an iPhone. And then, before you have any time to celebrate, in walks your priest. He looks at you and smiles and says how glad he is that this day has finally come. And then, without warning, he walks over to the wall behind the register, takes the framed dollar bill off the wall, says something about first fruits belonging to God, and then walks out, taking your first dollar with him.
For my sake and the sake of our stewardship efforts at St. Paul’s, I hope that story sounds ridiculous. But that’s pretty much what Moses tells the people of Israel to do when they get to the land that flows with milk and honey: “When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.” Not the second fruits. Not next year’s harvest. Not what’s left over after you fill your pantry for the winter. But the first produce of your land you will give back to God.
It almost feels like a punch in the gut—like Don Fanucci, the extortionist from Godfather II, showing up and demanding his cut. After escaping slavery in Egypt. After wandering through the wilderness for forty years. After surviving fire and drought and plague and famine. After crossing the Jordan and conquering the peoples who inhabited the land before they arrived. After learning how to grow crops in a new land. After tilling and planting and weeding and nurturing the plants. Finally, the very first harvest comes in, and God wants his cut. Or does he?
The Israelites’ first Thanksgiving is recorded as a highly prescribed affair. You take the first fruits in a basket to the place where God has chosen to dwell. You go to the priest and hand him the basket and make a solemn declaration of your intent. The basket is then set before God’s altar, and then you have short speech to make: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…The LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction…The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand…The LORD brought us into this place and gave us this land…so now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me.” And then, after finishing your speech, you take the full bounty that God has given you, and you share it with the Levites and foreign residents—those who do not have any farmland of their own—and together you celebrate all that God has done for you.
God doesn’t want our harvest. God wants us to know how much God loves us—loves us enough to give us everything we have. We ritualize thanksgiving in order to remember where it all came from. We roast our turkeys and bake our pies and come to church so that we won’t forget. If we didn’t set aside particular ways to give thanks for all the blessings we have received, we might just begin to think that we were the only ones responsible for our bounty. We might believe that all of this belongs to us—that it doesn’t belong to anyone else—that there’s no reason for us to share what we have with others.
When I was in seminary in England, I signed up to lead Morning Prayer in the chapel on Thanksgiving Day, which, over there, is just the fourth Thursday in November. My classmates scoffed at the idea that Americans would set aside a day on the calendar in order to give thanks. “Shouldn’t we be thankful every day?” they asked. Of course we should. But gratitude takes practice. And sometimes we need a prescribed excuse to get started. So why not start now?
Habitual thanksgiving prevents misplaced credit. Developing a practice of looking outside ourselves—of being thankful to God, to friends and family, to coworkers and shop keepers, to unseen farmers and migrant workers, to truck drivers and warehouse employees, to kindergarten teachers and cafeteria workers, to medical technicians and housekeepers—helps us remember how much we are loved. So many other people have helped us get to this point. A few of them are people whose names we remember, but far more of them have stories that are not told in classrooms or at dinner tables. But God has held all of us together in order to get us where we are. Everything we have is a sign of God’s abundant love for us. Today is a day to give thanks so that tomorrow we will still remember.
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