Growing
up, we had big Thanksgivings.  It was the holiday set aside for my
mother’s side of the family, and she is one of 5 siblings who have a
combined 11 offspring.  The holiday moved around between their
houses, with 20-30 of us gathered however we would fit.  There was
definitely a kid’s table, and I was always at it.  It was loud,
chaotic, and intense.  As a child that meant a lot of play, a lot of
playmates, and a lot of fun.  I’m told there were also a lot of
dishes.  Because it was the only time we got together, there were
Christmas presents too, and because it was the only time we got
together, there was plenty of family drama too.

I loved
those big Thanksgivings.

My
first year of seminary, in California, I decided not to fly home for
the short break.  Instead a dear friend from college – also from
the northeast, also living in California, came down to be with me.
The two of us stayed in pajamas all day, read for pleasure, and ate
what we wanted when we wanted to.  There was no turkey, because she
was vegetarian.  I was happy to cook.  She was happy to clean up.  We
grazed on pies, side dishes, laughter, and books all day.  

That
was the day I learned that holidays don’t have to be stressful.

This
year, a lot fewer people are going to have the big, loud, messy
Thanksgivings.  I hope this year more people will have surprisingly
lovely small, quiet, unstressful ones.

However,
I know there is a lot of real grief in being separated from those we
love.  This has already been a difficult year, and coming into the
holiday season, it is especially difficult.  When we stopped having
in person worship in March, I wasn’t able to REALLY believe we’d have
to do Easter from our homes.  You may remember that we decided to
“just wait until we could be in person” to do the Easter
photoshow.  (Submissions are still being received on that basis.)

As time
went on, I became aware we weren’t going to get back together before
I went out on Family Leave, and started to hope to be together for
Homecoming.  

Now it
is November, we aren’t having worship in person again in 2020, and
people are figuring out how to celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, and
New Years over zoom.  Christmas worship planning involves a lot of
pre-recording.  The church’s advent wreath is staying upstairs this
year, while the amazing Altar Guild made us at home ones so we can
wait in hope together … but apart.

Now it
is Thanksgiving week and giving thanks has gotten a lot more
complicated than we’d like.

I’m not
sure we identify with the leper who gave thanks nor the lepers who
don’t.  As a society at least, I think we feel like the lepers who
weren’t healed, the ones not in the story, the ones who didn’t happen
to meet Jesus that day.

Or, in
the metaphor of the Hebrew Bible Lesson, it doesn’t feel like we are
living in the goodness of the Promised Land.  Perhaps it feels like
we’re still wandering in the desert, perhaps like we’re still living
in oppression in Egypt.  Maybe like we lost the promise and are in
exile.

The
opening words of Psalm 137 may meet us in this moment:

By the
rivers of Babylon—
   there we sat down and there
we wept
   when we remembered Zion.
On the
willows there
   we hung up our harps.
For
there our captors
   asked us for songs,
and our
tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
   ‘Sing us
one of the songs of Zion!’

How
could we sing the Lord’s song
   in a foreign
land?

How can we sing praises
when things are so HARD?

How can we celebrate
Thanksgiving when fear, death, and destruction surround us?

Sure, we can participate in
Advent, and name how much we NEED God, and how much we are WAITING
for things to be better.

But, how can we celebrate
God’s breaking-into-the-world (Christmas) when we are still in the
yearning?

And, dear ones, if you are
overwhelmed, sad, grieving, weary, lonesome, annoyed, or exhausted, I
don’t think you are over-reacting.  Things are HARD, and there is no
end in sight.

By the rivers of Babylon
(which, it is clear, are the WRONG Rivers, they are not the River
Jordan), there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered.

These words may be a model
for us.  It is OK to sit in grief and remember what was.  It is OK to
be horrified by what is.  It is OK to not like any of this, at all,
and be angry to be stuck in it.  It is OK, even to be sad that “at
least the exiles got to cry TOGETHER, we have to cry apart.”  

That’s fair.

It cheapens gratitude to be
forced into it, and it cheapens gratitude to come to it without also
naming the things that are broken and hard and awful.  It cheapens
gratitude to tell ourselves that others have it worse, so we don’t
get to be sad or mad.  It isn’t a competition.  The pandemic is
allowed to be hard for everyone.

So, this is my proposal, my
suggestion, my “means of grace for this week.”  I invite you to
take an HOUR to sit down with your accumulated grief from this year.
You may want to write it out as a long list, you may want to journal
it, you may want to draw it, or paint it, or play it on the piano,
walk it out, or just sit with it.  Do this on or by Wednesday.  If
you can’t get an hour, take 6 minutes.  If you complete and hour and
you aren’t done, give yourself more time.

But, BE WITH your grief.
Let it live and breath and exist.  I know for some of us, it is scary
and it feels like we will break if you even start to let it out, but
you won’t.  You are stronger than you think and you are held up by
the God of Love.  (How else would you have made it this far?)

Then, and only then, I
invite you to spend some time on Thanksgiving reflecting on what you
are grateful for.  Ideally, I’d say give this an hour as well, but
maybe only 6 minutes can be found, and maybe it will take all day.
Don’t skip this part though.  Some of the things we are grateful for
are sly – and if we don’t look for them, we might miss them.  This
process won’t work unless you can name your grief, but it also won’t
work if you ONLY name your grief.

I know and trust that God
is with us, that God is doing amazing things, that God is at work to
make things better.  But I don’t believe in cheap grace.  We can’t
pretend the hard away, and we can’t keep pushing through it.  We may
be a resurrection people, but that requires acknowledging the things
of death first.

THEN we get to notice the
amazing power of life.

So, I wish you a wonderful,
if unusual Thanksgiving.  And, because of that I wish you an hour to
grieve and an hour to be grateful.  May you feel God’s presence in
both times of prayerful reflection.  Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady