Eucharist and Harvest Thanksgiving

This Sunday, many churches will be celebrating “harvest thanksgiving”, in conjunction with the civil Thanksgiving long weekend. I’m looking forward to a beautifully decorated church, with corn, gourds, pumpkins, and other signs of the harvest season. It’s one of the few Sundays of the year where we “bring the outside in”. And what an “outside” it has been this fall … I can’t remember anything like it for a number of years. The leaves have been amazing, the weather has been beautiful, and the mellow autumn sun is only now giving way to some crisp fall mornings. My favourite time of the year, to be sure.
When I was a kid, thanksgiving didn’t mean much to me. Fall brought three important events: back to school after a summer spent weeding the garden, halloween, and my birthday. Thanksgiving just wasn’t on my radar screen. But as I have grown older, and perhaps matured a bit in my faith, I have come to see thanksgiving (the attitude, not just the holiday) as central to Christian life. It is at the heart of all we do.
As a Sophian, I believe that each person is destined and called to be a priest. Not necessarily an “ordained” priest in the church, but a priest of life itself. When God put us in the Garden, She asked us to tend and keep it. Our first vocation as human beings is to be in relationship with the whole creation. And this includes praying for creation, blessing it, and offering the fruit of creation back to God, Who is its source. In this, we are not just gardeners, but priests as well. Greenpriests.
In the Anglican tradition, we use the term “eucharist” to describe the Lord’s Supper. Eucharist is a Greek word which means to give thanks. At the heart of the most sacred and holy ritual of the church, the deepest secret and key to it all is thanksgiving.
So this harvest thanksgiving, remember who you are: a greenpriest, giving thanks to the Creator for the many gifts of the earth. Thanks be to God.

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