"A Sermon for Thanksgiving Sunday"

A couple of nights ago, David and I were walking through the parking lot at LAX, and we noticed a large Cadillac SUV with a memorable license plate. It read, THK U GD, using just a few well-chosen letters to make the message fit. The sparing use of letters, however, was the only minimalist aspect to this display of wealth and gratitude. That huge SUV was a mighty hint at the prosperity the driver clearly enjoyed.

It gave us pause about our own car situation. "I guess God thought I deserved a Honda Accord," remarked David. And I've been waiting five months for my Prius. What does that say about God's opinion of me?

Here we are on Thanksgiving Sunday, ready to reflect on the meaning of gratitude and its role in our lives. The first Thanksgiving still echoes today, but it is an uneasy reminder of how harsh the Pilgrim's lives were then, and how they could not have survived without the help of the Native people. The facts only serve to remind us further that we thanked the Native people for their help by wiping them out, first with disease and then with war, setting patterns of exploitation and oppression that still haunt us today.

Some years I am able to tease out from our unflattering history a few glimmers of hope and glory. But this year when I opened my Thanksgiving file, I found only notes about the growing gap between rich and the poor, the obscene salaries our country's CEO's take home, and articles about preachers of prosperity.It's time to get serious about what this observance means to us.

For most Americans, Thanksgiving is a time to reflect in gratitude for all that we have. We gather around a table, replete with food and drink, in the company of family and friends. There is appreciation for this abundance, as there should be; there is even spiritual discipline in the expression of gratitude for all that we have. "If the only prayer you say in your whole life is 'thank you,' that would suffice," wrote Christian mystic Meister Eckhart.

But this year, as I think about Thanksgiving, I have to ask myself whether it really is enough. Is our expression of Thanksgiving simply a tally of all that we have acquired? As I sit down with my friends this holiday, concerned only with eating too much and waiting for my elusive Prius, I'll be thinking about that license plate. THK U GD.

Religion has had a cozy relationship with gratitude and acquisition recently. Just this week I watched a TV program that featured a popular New York preacher, Reverend Ike, who allowed himself to be interviewed sitting on a bright red throne decorated with the insignia of a crown. "Jesus was a capitalist," Reverend Ike explained. To be a Christian is to use the faith to gain prosperity, even great wealth, as Reverend Ike has done.

This version of the gospel has many followers. In "The New Yorker" article from which I read earlier, pastor Creflo A. Dollar has inspired thousands of people with his "prosperity theology." His church, World Changers International, promises to change the world - your world, that is, not our poor, beleaguered, fractious, war-torn world - and that is good enough for some people.

It's understandable. People are so overwhelmed by the complexities of their own lives they can't imagine taking on the problems of the rest of the world. The middle-class people who attend services at World Changers International face worsening economic conditions every day. If you can afford to send your child to college and pay your credit card bill each month, you are fortunate. That is something to be thankful for. The management expert Peter F. Drucker noted that the World Changers phenomenon exemplifies a current trend in religion, an approach to spirituality that has launched hugely successful mega-churches. In telling contrast to the declining mainline Protestant churches, the contemporary mega-church has targeted personal spiritual development, not community social service, as its priority, Drucker says. "The New Yorker" writer adds, it goes about it the "same way successful corporations focused on maximizing shareholder value." And it doesn't give its money away.

Another preacher of the "prosperity gospel," Orange County evangelist Paul Crouch, has run into some trouble with that management philosophy. Self-interest is not spirituality. The "Los Angeles Times" reported in September that Crouch, who heads up Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world's largest Christian TV ministry, has been called on to step down from leadership and allow an investigation into TBN financial practices. At issue, according to the "Times," is the fact that "the network takes in far more money than it spends and provided a $425,000 settlement to a former employee who said he had a homosexual encounter with Paul Crouch," a married man.

And yet TBN viewers still tune in, motivated, according to the TBN website, by "faith in God, love of family, and patriotic pride." "These are the values," the "TBN Story" relates, "Americans consider most precious. Values that have been attacked and ridiculed by our pop culture and news and entertainment media. Yet," it continues, "the American people still cherish our nation's core values."

This Thanksgiving, I ask you, what are your core values? THK U GD, I've got my new car and plenty of money? Pray and grow rich? Or is there another vision for the people, one that calls us out of ourselves and into a sense of connection and responsibility for all of God's creation? This year, before I bow my head at my friends' table, thankful for them and for my family, my livelihood, and my life, I am going to spend some time thinking about how this sense of gratitude can serve someone other than myself. I am not a wealthy person, but I have plenty for which to say, THK U GD. What shall I do with my thanks? What can I do to help close the gap between those who have too much and those who have too little?

According to the "Los Angeles Times," and widely reported everywhere, "life has grown ever lusher at the top of the corporate food chain, [while] it's increasingly precarious for those farther down. As income for top executives shot up, average American workers' salaries have barely kept pace with inflation - and many are finding their jobs, health coverage and retirement prospects in jeopardy." I'm going to let that injustice intrude on my Thanksgiving this year, let it eat away at me, even. It's worthy of a little heartburn. It's not that hard to understand. For even we Americans, graced with privileges the rest of the world can only dream of, know what it's like to be a paycheck away from financial disaster.

Whatever abundance we may enjoy in our lives, we know our gratitude is not enough. Why would God want one person to have a big new car and so much else, while others starve, through no fault of their own? Not the God of our Universalist tradition. That God offered salvation to everyone, whatever their station or the state of their souls.

It's not enough to pray for our own prosperity. It's not enough to say, as Reverend Ike once did, "the best thing you can do for the poor is not to be one of them." And it's not Thanksgiving unless we are willing to consider how to help others be as comfortable as we are. What will we do with our thanks? The followers of "prosperity theology" are correct in this sense: gratitude is a powerful emotion, a motivational force, and a core value of any faith. Our prayers of thanksgiving come from a deep source. And that is why dedicating them to a car's vanity plate is sacrilege.

Everything we have is connected to the well-being of others. Whether that be the labor that goes into making the bread, as we heard in today's story; or the love on which our lives depend; the ingredients for any Thanksgiving are already held in common. And they are meant to be shared.

Something is terribly wrong in a world in which some people do not have enough to live. The prosperity and abundance that we enjoy did not come to us because we enjoy God's favor. We haven't earned anyone's favor until we learn how to use the gifts we have for the good of all people. What will we do with our thanks this year? Use that gratitude not only to remind ourselves of our own well-being, but to work for the well-being of all people, everywhere. Let our gratitude be a force for justice, to bring people together, making the world a true reflection of our true connection with one another, equally deserving of the good things in life, with each one able to give and to give thanks, as we were meant to do.

References used to prepare this sermon: "Pray and Grow Rich," by Kelefa Sanneh, in The New Yorker, October 11, 2004; "Watchdog Group Wants TBN Leaders to Step Aside," by William Lobdell, "Los Angeles Times," September 29, 2004; Trinity Broadcasting Network website www.tbn.org; "Rise of the Corporate Plutocrats," by Vince Beiser, "Los Angeles Times Magazine," October 17, 2004.