THE UNINVITED GUESTS AT THE THANKSGIVING TABLE

     It is a familiar ritual, I would imagine, for almost all of us. A late November day, the sun low in the sky, perhaps eclipsed by scudding rain clouds; a few tenacious oak leaves cling to almost stripped bare branches, the smell of long-dormant home fireplaces alight once again wafting through the neighborhood. Inside, all is warm and snug, the extended family gathered together once again around the table, a turkey waiting to be carved, luscious red cranberry sauce, mounds of mashed potatoes, gravy, all the fixings. It is good to have the family together again, good to be around the table, good to give thanks for the blessings of the past year – the new baby, the marriage, the success at school, the victories in athletics. It took some work, but all are squeezed in around the table, there is room for no more. And there is happy conversation, and the kids are trying to be polite, and there is happy conversation, and the adults are trying to be polite. And then it is over and you are outside breathing the cool night air and ready to head home, and a huge part of you is thinking “what a nice time”, and a huge part of you is saying “Got through that one.”

            Because you remember the uninvited guests at the table. The ones that wouldn’t let you fully enjoy the celebrations, the ones that hovered at the edge of your consciousness even as you complimented Aunt May on her gravy, and asked Billy about hockey practice, and made sure not to talk politics because it always sends Uncle Frank around the bend. The uninvited guests that won’t be kept out, that crowd in and around the table. You know who they are: death, cancer, job loss, a feeling of failure, a sense of low-esteem, anger, bitterness, worries about terrorism and war. You don’t talk about them, not tonight, this is a happy time, for Pete’s sake,  its Thanksgiving. And maybe, you say to yourself, you are the only one who is aware of the presence of these uninvited guests.

            You likely have heard many a sermon on the importance of gratitude, of living a life of thanks, of giving thanks each day for the blessings of this life.. It is a valuable lesson – but I wonder if there is something more to the life of thanksgiving than giving thanks for the good stuff.  I wonder about those uninvited guests at the table – what would happen, do you suppose, if we were to acknowledge, not ignore them, if we were to welcome them, rather than pretend they weren’t there?

Experience tells us that there can, indeed, be a connection between lament and thanksgiving. For we know that those with the most in life, with a surplus of possessions and health and all the trappings of the good life, can be some of the least thankful among us. Often those with what we would consider to be much can lead bitter and discontented lives. Conversely, those who have suffered much can often have the keenest sense of gratitude. It is a paradox expressed by the one who can say, “Now that my house has burned down, I can see the moon rise.” It is the strange wisdom voiced by the cancer patient: “Having this disease has been a wake-up call to me, and now I find a fullness of life I never knew before, and I live each day for the gift that it is.”

            Maybe an image of would help. In Enterprise, Alabama, there is a statue its citizens erected in 1919. It is a classic Greek statue, a woman draped in Grecian clothing and holding in her upraised arms a certain object. It is not a torch, or a book, or a flag. It is a bug – a boll weevil.

            It seems that Enterprise used to be a commercially successful town with a one crop economy – cotton. When boll weevils found their way into the deep South in the early 1900s, the entire crop was wiped out. Facing economic ruin, the farmers had to try something else that was immune to the boll weevil, and most of them hit upon peanuts.

            The upshot was amazing – not only did the peanuts grow, but the farmers flourished like never before. And it was all because of the dreaded boll weevil. In gratitude the townsfolk erected what is perhaps the world’s only monument to a bug; it bears this inscription: “In profound appreciation of the boll weevil and what it has done as the herald of prosperity, this monument was erected by the citizens of Enterprise, Coffee County, Alabama, in the year of our Lord 1919.”

            Lament and thanksgiving, all bound up together.  Sorrow and joy, despair and hope, the family and the uninvited guests all welcome, together, around the table.

            We all have uninvited guests around the table. Pretending that they are not there just doesn’t work, it doesn’t even allow us that few hours of escape we had hoped for when we decided to put on the happy face for just this one day.

           Maybe this year, maybe tomorrow, maybe each day, we ought to try a new approach,. Maybe we ought to risk making room at the table for these uninvited guests, maybe even graciously welcoming them.  And if we did, perhaps we would find that they are not so scary after all; and if we did, then maybe we could truly open our hearts in thanksgiving to the One who promises to us, in all our brokeness, that we shall be healed; and if we did, maybe we could honestly say to ourselves and to each other, “Happy Thanksgiving”.