If you are a San Francisco Giants fan, 2010 will forever remain etched in your memory. Watching Buster Posey sprint out to the mound to embrace Brian Wilson after he threw the torturous last pitch past the Texas Rangers batter was sheer bliss. It would have been great for a Giants fan to read the description of each play silently rolling across their MLB app, but what turbo charged that 2010 clench was the collective of people joined together in celebration. There were enough people sporting orange and black in Texas to make some noise, but there were plenty fans watching in the Bay Area to make a spectacle. Our neighborhood was filled with the sounds of shouts, banging pots and pans, car horns-a-honking. Of course, 2012 and 2014 were also special in their own way, each with their own storyline. But 2010 stands out because it was the first championship won since moving to San Francisco.
The Warriors, in 2015, were largely dismissed as they made their way to the championship series, namely because they didn’t have a “big” as they took on Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Yet the Splash Brothers (Steph Curry and Klay Thompson), Andre Iguodala, and the timid, soft-spoken Draymond Green made up for their short stature with a different kind of approach – air strikes from the three-point range. It had been 40 years since they won the title, and when they did, the Bay Area erupted again as a collective whole.
We can certainly experience joy individually, but there is an amplification that is somehow greater than the sum of its parts when gratitude is shared in community. Early in the Christian movement, after Jesus was killed and yet experienced in a different way beyond the tomb, the community of faith met as the Passover Feast came to its conclusion:
All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.
A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity— all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved. – Acts 2:43-47 (NLT)
As Diana Butler Bass noted in her book, Grateful, the feasts/festivals of ancient Israel were unique in that they reversed the structure of the gifts and gratitude, tit for tat culture that dominated the Roman Empire: “In festivals,” Biblical scholar and professor Walter Brueggemann notes in his commentary on Deuteronomy, “Israel comes to a fresh realization that its freedom is not its own work, but is a gift gladly given by YHWH... Festival is the capacity to enter a way of life in which all other claims, pressures, and realities can be suspended.” In short, festivals – the great communal celebrations of gratitude – modeled an alternative community, one based in abundance and joy. Festivals are a microcosm of how life should be (107). Israel made their way to Jerusalem to practice life in a different way, and this was taken to a deeper level by the new community of faith trying to live into the Way taught and modeled by Jesus.
The Eucharist – a name used by some Christian traditions in reference to the Bread and Cup, Lord’s Supper, or Communion – was primarily an act of celebration that stood out in ancient times, as Bass notes:
The Eucharist does not really resemble pagan harvest celebrations. There, the emphasis is on pleasing the gods and imploring them to send more bread and wine next year. Rather, the Christian celebration echoes those ancient Hebrew festivals in which the Jews recognized and received God’s gifts of abundance and, with humility, returned gratefulness. No need to please or plead, for God’s gift is all of creation – and these gifts surround all people through all time. God does not need to be convinced to give or begged to send favor. But human beings need to be reminded that abundance is the nature of existence. The Jews went to Jerusalem two or three times a year to remember this and give thanks for it (Grateful, 113).
Further, the language used to describe the flow of such a remembrance served to shape the underlying understanding of God’s relationship with creation in a counter-cultural way:
When Jesus handed bread to his friends, he said, “Receive, feast” – receive, not take. To receive gifts and to give thanks is the story of faith. To shift the word removes any connotation of economic exchange and ownership and reaffirms that the Eucharist is a free gift. Grace and favor are for all, to all, and with the whole world. Receiving, not taking, is the very meaning of our shared humanity, and it is the thread of community... Giving thanks is the primary communal emotion of Christianity (Diana Butler Bass, Grateful, 114).
Taken together, we see Jewish people flooding Jerusalem to practice their different Way of being. The Jesus community stepped it up in potent ways with the Eucharist, celebrating the abundance of gifts lavishly bestowed on all creation by God without anything expected in return – gifts simply received. Further, because Jesus was radically inclusive, this table fellowship would witness a very strange collection of folks around the same table – people who would otherwise never dine together. This would become a marker of “The People of the Way” as it spread throughout the Roman Empire as it practiced and promoted equality and equity at a time when that was severely restricted culturally. To be clear, the growing community of faith brought together people of different social and economic classes, different ethnicities and backgrounds, different lifestyle choices, etc. They were attempting a classic American Thanksgiving Meal in cities all over the Empire. And they succeeded – although with significant bumps along the way.
Jesus, of course, modeled radical inclusion as he himself grew to understand the expansiveness of the love and grace of God. Rather than distance himself from people who were socially outcast for various reasons, he went to them. In short, wooed by the grace of God, he empathized with those who suffered. As Bass notes, “Ultimately, gratitude is an aspect of empathy. To ‘empathize’ means to ‘feel in[to] or with’ another, to understand and be with others emotionally. If you are thankful for something that cuts you off from others or sets people at odds, it may not be genuine gratitude. It may be an emotion birthed in fear or control. Gratitude connects us, even across racial, class, and national boundaries, allowing us to feel together. We reach out toward one another. We are elevated toward doing good. We might share the ‘frenzy’ of gratefulness, We might find ourselves serving others or dancing in the streets” (Grateful, 103). What do we witness in the Book of Acts, chronicling this new movement of faith born from the counter-cultural Jewish tradition? The realization of what Bass describes: a form of dancing in the streets that was so contagious that more and more people wanted a piece of it for themselves, finding themselves joining in the dance. The gratitude experienced widened the table and deepened the conversation to foster empathy – depth of shared experience that connects us to each other.
The vision of the past can be manifested today. As you gather this Thanksgiving, how can you foster empathy for each other? How can you encourage deeper, more vulnerable sharing and more fully engaged active listening? Perhaps when we get beneath the surface of shallow responses to “what are you grateful for” and ask for more, we might share more deeply and find that the folks around the table actually care. When we feel cared for – which happens when we are truly heard – we just might find ourselves overwhelmed with gratitude, naturally respecting and loving each other as equally beloved. May it be so.
Gathering Together in Thanksgiving
Take a moment to reflect on your life over the last 12 months. What challenges have you faced? What would make your highlight reel? Were there any “seasons of suck”? Paul encourages his audience to be thankful in all circumstances, which is not the same thing as being thankful FOR all circumstances. Considering your past year, what are you grateful for and why?
Need more ideas for starting deeper conversation regarding gratitude? Try the following from Gatitude.org.
Thanksgiving Blessing, by Adam Lee
As we come together to share this meal, let us first remember how it came to us and be thankful to the people who made it possible.
This food was born from the bounty of the Earth, in warm sunlight, rich earth, and cool rain.
May it nourish us, in body and mind, and provide us with the things that are good for living.
We are grateful to those who cultivated it, those who harvested it, those who brought it to us, and those who prepared it.
May its consumption bring about the pleasures of friendship, love, and good company.
And as we partake of this food in each other’s company, as what was once separate from all of us becomes part of each of us, may we also remember what we have in common and what brings us all together.
May this sharing of food foster peace and understanding among us, may it bring us to the recognition that we depend on each other for all the good we can ever hope to receive, and that all the good we can hope to accomplish rests in helping others in turn.
May it remind us that as we reach out to others to brighten their lives, so are our lives brightened in turn.