Thanksgiving:The Way it Should Be

Thanksgiving has rolled around again. It like all holidays has a way of repeating themselves year after year albeit each time is a new incarnation of the occasion the holiday represents. 

When I was a child Thanksgiving was a happy family holiday. It was the one day of the year when my mom would take out the best table cloth and set out our best dishes. There would be turkey and ham and mashed potatoes . . . plenty of mashed potatoes . . . . and desserts , . . . lots of deserts.  Everything was home cooked. No sir, no precooked or store-bought stuff at our table. 

Then it was gathering at one of our relatives homes where we kids (cousins) would entertain ourselves outside while the grownups spent the day inside talking, singing and finishing off the leftovers. Sometime during all the "goings on" we would start taking photos . . . out would come the old Brownie Box and we'd arrange ourselves in all sorts of family groupings for pictures. 

Then, sometime late in the evening we would all gather and share with each other that for which we were thankful since last we celebrated this holiday.  

There was thanksgiving for God's blessings and his meeting our needs for the previous year and how it encouraged our faith that He would do so in the coming year. There was thanksgiving for family . . .  both immediate and extended. Somewhere along the way we touched all the bases and then we'd finish up with someone offering a benedictory prayer after which we all drifted off to our own homes.  

The sharing of this gratitude with one another served a larger purpose . . . a purpose which I think has been lost in our modern times. It reinforced our commitment to family and it strengthened our sense of self-worth. It strengthened our sense of not only being the Appleby clan but also God's family. 

There were three holidays that we looked forward to above all others. One was Easter. That was a holiday where we focused on our Spiritual commitments and values. It was a time dedicated to attending public worship and then spending the day as family enjoying our shared faith. The other was this holiday, Thanksgiving, where as I said previously we expressed gratitude to God and one another for what we had experienced  since that last Thanksgiving on which we gathered. Lastly, there was Christmas. For us Christmas was both a spiritual and secular occasion.  Our focus was on the gift of God in Christ Jesus and the expressing of our own love for family through exchanging material gifts. 

I suppose the big difference between then and now is that we have to be reminded what the Holiday is about. For too many Thanksgiving in nothing more than the day before the real holiday . . . Black Friday. Now its buy you dinner already prepared, eat it in a hurry and head out to the stores. All I can say to this is, "It is wrong, wrong, wrong."  Have we become so materialistic and impersonal that we cannot have one day out of 365 where we are not thinking about things. 

Our mindset seems to be, "Lord help me get through this Thanksgiving thing so I can start my shopping for Christmas,"  We have succumbed to our lesser lights and caste off the real value that both holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) afforded us. Instead of expressing gratitude to God for family, heritage and provision we are scheming our Black Friday strategy. Instead of enjoying home and hearth we are doing battle with our neighbors over some item marked off 1/2 in some box store.    

Somehow I can't get past the fact that the way we as a society generally celebrate these holidays is an example of the Truth of God being turned into a lie. That somehow we have taken a string of divine pearls given to us by our forefathers and trampled them under foot.  

Sadly, the change in our holidays has been so gradual that we, like the frog in the pan of water being heated, didn't realize that it would end in death . . . death for the frog and death for the holiday. Today, all of our holidays are nothing more than merchandising opportunities devoid of real significance and meaning. 

I know I can't change that but I also know I don't have to participate in it. Thanksgiving for me will not be the kick-off for Christmas shopping. It will remain a time for remembering the blessings of God and family and expressing and sharing it with those whom I love. 

Call me old fashioned, call me stubborn, call me hard headed . . .  you'll not be wrong. I am all of those and more.  But as I said in a previous blog entry, "Some things are better the way we used to do it," and Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter are three of those things. 

So lets give thanks with a grateful heart for what the Lord has done in blessing our lives, our families, and our nation. These blessings are so undeserved and yet He, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, extended His holy hand and blessed us. For this we give thanks with a grateful heart in Jesus precious name.

Sometimes "The Way We Used to Do It" is the Best way to do it.

I have been attending Baptist churches since I was a young child and today I had an experience during worship that I have never encountered before.  Now I know that we attend church to have those “never before” experiences with the Lord’s people and His presence but this one really was a surprise of a different kind. 

To be certain it took place during what should always be a most hollowed and solemn observance . . .  The observation of the Lord’s Supper. For those who are not aware, the Lord’s Supper is in Baptist churches a symbolic activity. . . . it a sense it is a metaphorical not metaphysical experience.

 For us, Baptist, the Lord’s Supper (Communion) is where we create a living picture through action which reminds us of the Lord Jesus’ sacrificial death. The elements bread and wine (grape juice for Baptist since prohibition) represent his body and his shed blood as he died for our sin. It conveys no special grace or spiritual endowment but serves as a reminder of what the Lord has done for us. It can and should be a spiritually rewarding experience.

Now while the meaning of the Lord’s Supper has not changed over the centuries among Baptist the means whereby we observe it certainly has evolved. In the early days Baptist were literalist in the way we observed the Lord’s Supper. Baptist in past centuries would literally take a loaf of unleavened bread, break off a piece and pass it around the group where the rest of the congregants could break off their own piece of bread. For centuries this was the way we did it. However, eventually we did start precrumbling the bread and offering it in small bite size pieces to make sure there was enough to go around. 

However, when it came to the wine, we remained literalist in the strictest sense. Jesus passed his chalice around and so Baptist used a single chalice from which all would drink. Then, probably due more to modern science than anything else, this single cup idea began to change. Some churches (more liberal  minded) started using individual cups while others (more conservatively minded) continued to use the single cup. The theological argument against the individual cups was that the practice corrupted the ordinance. Jesus did not use many cups but one signifying his dying once for sin Of course the use of an individual cups could just as easily been said to represent the fact that He shed his blood for all people. However, that would have opened a larger argument between the Calvinist and the Armenianist. I suspect the most common argument for the single cup was the fact that Jesus used a single cup andthe fact that he said he would not share it again until He did so in the Kingom.

I think the use of individual cups prevailed because the non-dippers (snuff) and non tobacco chewers of the 1800's just got tired of the tobacco juice being left behind in the wine and on the cup. So in my mind while the single cup appeals to me spiritually, the use of individual cups gets my attention hygienically. 

I was OK with the change in the way we accessed the bread that represents the body of Christ and the wine that represents His shed blood because it didn’t change my focus during the ceremony on the meaning of that in which we are engaged . . . the Lord’s Supper as He instituted it. I was still able to focus on the ordinance, its meaning and my spiritual condition at the time without beiing distracted by the containers that delivered he elements to me.

But today, I had a new experience regarding the Lord's Supper.  I suppose was inevitable  . . . . after all I'd head about these cups many years ago.Today as I observed the Lord’s supper I received both elements (bread and wine) in a self-contained hermeneutically sealed cup. I must say right up front that I didn’t like it. At first I couldn’t think of any theological reason to object. After all, we were still remembering Christ sacrificial death. I just knew, I didn’t like it.  

Then we began to observe the ordinance and I discovered several problems. First, my wife could not get her container opened so while the pastor spoke I was busy trying to open the little sealed up cup so we could eat the styrofoam wafer and drink the BHT laced grape juice. I'm not even sure the wafer was bread . . . it seemed to me to be more like a thin rice cake or a slice of the little filler under the cap of a bottle of Alka-Selcer. Then we went through the same battle with the grape juice. To tell you the truth I thought I was opening my ketchup at Burger King.

Suddenly, it dawned on me about what was wrong with this approach. The problem is not with the elements themself or which how the ceremony was performed. The problem is that it forces us to focus on the instrument by which the elements were delivered and not on the elements and their meaning. I couldn’t focus on the ordinance for struggling with the container and the struggle other people were having.  

 I think I am going to relegate these things to “nice try” but no thanks. I’ll just stick with either of the old fashioned ways of observing the Lord’s Supper mentioned above.  

Sometimes, the way we used to do it is the best way.