One of our family’s favorite stories when the girls were young was Stone Soup. The fact that this simple fable has a lasting popularity and finds expression in a variety of languages and cultures around the world attests to its archetypal nature. It resonates with the human spirit at its core. You have undoubtedly heard some version of the story at some point.

 

A vagrant enters a village, and knocks on door after door, asking for a little food, only to be told there is none. Finding no one who would offer him even a morsel, he declares that he will make stone soup. As he goes about the task of setting up a pot in the town square, people peer out their windows and watch him as he builds a fire, pours in water, places a stone in the pot, and begins to stir.

 

A curious villager steps out to inquire about this stone soup, and the foreigner declares with excitement that this will be the best soup ever. He stops stirring to take a sip…says Hmmmm, it’s good…although a little salt and pepper might just be the touch.

 

“Well, I guess I could spare a little salt and pepper,” and so the villager runs back inside his home and fetches the spices. He then joins the chef with anticipation at the prospect of tasting this new recipe.

 

Not a few minutes later, another villager can’t stand it, and so she steps out to see what is going on. The exchange is something like the first, but as the foreigner sips the soup this time, he says…Yes, it’s good, but a few potatoes might just do the trick.

 

Well, I guess I could spare a few potatoes from my bin, and she quickly gets those and drops them in the caldron.

 

You see the pattern—and pretty soon, the soup’s recipe has gained carrots and cabbage and garlic and onions and even a little beef. Someone else offers some bread to go with meal.

 

And with a crowd of salivating villagers now around him, the vagrant declares that the soup is ready, and they all share a delightful meal of stone soup—the best soup they’ve ever had.

 

My friends, we gather here this morning, on this quintessentially American holiday—a holy day—set apart to give thanks and to share a meal, perhaps a foretaste of all that will follow for the rest of the day—more feasting, and family, and football. Much has been written about the origins of Thanksgiving Day—some say it began in the 1500s in Florida; others claim the more popular history: that this occasion has roots in the relationship between pilgrims in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and the indigenous people who helped create the first meal of Thanksgiving. Still others look to Abraham Lincoln who declared that a nation at war should give thanks for the blessings bestowed upon it by God, and he began the tradition of a national observance on the final Thursday in November—a tradition that every one of his successors continued until in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt and Congress declared Thanksgiving Day would be a holiday in this nation.

 

 

 

Whatever its origins, the practice of setting aside a day of intentional thanksgiving transcends national identity. It transcends cultural identity across the eons of human existence—we were created to give thanks…we were created to give—to share. Why? Because we were fashioned in the image of a Creator who has all along been about the work of giving—giving life to all that lives and moves and has being. And that identity—our core identity—that we are made in God’s image is what makes Thanksgiving Day so fitting a day to come together here, in this place, in this house of worship, and to engage God intentionally, as the Origin of origins, and say thanks.

 

You now, at its heart, that is what we do every week when we celebrate the Holy Eucharist here—it is a great thanksgiving, a meal in which the vagrant and villager, the native and the pilgrim, join together in sharing a meal—modest as it may seem at first glance…and yet as profoundly nourishing as any meal could possibly be.

 

We don’t have to look like one another to share this meal; we don’t have to agree politically; we don’t even have to necessarily like one another—because those are not the litmus tests by which we are granted entrance to the feast…anymore than they are for the meals that will follow in your homes later this day. We share a meal of thanksgiving because that is what families do. Because that is what people do when invited in peace to share…because that is what the People of God do in response to the one who created us, who redeems us, and who sustains us…

 

Ultimately, we don’t observe Thanksgiving Day because some pilgrims and Indians did also; ultimately, we don’t observe Thanksgiving Day because a president told us to; ultimately, we don’t even observe Thanksgiving Day because that is what we have always done… No, ultimately, we observe Thanksgiving Day because we were fashioned in the image of a Creator who has all along been about the work of giving. And that identity—our core identity—that we are made in God’s image is what makes Thanksgiving Day what it is.

 

And for that may God’s holy name be praised!