By Rev. Paul Graves
On Thanksgiving Day, will you ring a family member’s doorbell with some dis-ease in your heart? Or invite someone into your home with that same dis-ease? Or come to a community meal, wondering how welcome you will be there?
Perhaps you plan to avoid discussing any political or religious topics that might offend someone else at the table. Or will you bring bravado along with the green bean casserole?
A more central question might be: Will I offer, and be offered, undeserved love at the Thanksgiving table? We live in such a toxically divided nation for so many reasons. Not the least of which is a communication pattern that gives person A some twisted right to rudely dismiss person B if A disagrees with anything “unworthy” said by B.
Stomach acid can begin before the table is even set. Don’t let that be your experience! Consider the power of undeserved love.
To “deserve” anything is connected to “worth” or “being worthy”. There are always conditions of one kind or another when “worthiness” is in our minds and/or hearts.
But God’s Radical Hospitality, particularly embodied in Jesus, turns deserved love upside down! Undeserved love is the essence of God’s passion for all of creation, including humans. That isn’t easy for us to give – or receive – on any day, even a day of Thanksgiving.
Allow yourself some time for reflection as you prepare to sit at the table you find on Thursday. Two stories from the Gospels, one a Jesus story and the other a Jesus parable (Matt 20:1—16). And then Jonah.
Each story pushes us to consider “undeserved love”.
John 8:1-11 tells the infamous story of a woman caught in adultery. Let’s skip right to the undeserved love part. We usually focus on Jesus’ gracious response to the woman (my paraphrase): “Neither do I condemn you. Let God’s undeserved love for you strengthen you so you can begin a new life.”
What we often skip over is Jesus’ response to the men with stones in their hands. His love for them is also undeserved, and subversively stated (again, my paraphrase): “Let your own human mistakes shame you into realizing she deserves an undeserved second chance. You, too, deserve the same.”
The long parable in Matthew 20:1-16 weaves a clever story of workers in a vineyard who are paid the same wage by the landowner, regardless of how many hours they worked. Even the man who worked only one hour benefited from the owner’s full-wage generosity. But the other workers were angry, raging against that generosity.
Rightly so, especially if you fully believe in some form of “getting what you deserve.” So, I invite you to struggle – even a little bit – with the notion that you might not really be in charge of what you/we deserve.
If the landowner (or if the landowner symbolizes God for you) wants to be generous, why are we angry at how he spends his money? Why is it important that we get angry at God’s graciousness toward “the undeserving”?
Or consider Jonah’s outrage at God after Jonah preached repentance to the people of Nineveh – and they turned their lives around as a result. God’s undeserved love of those Ninevites was a last straw for Jonah!
Bring these wonderings to the Thanksgiving table. In your conversations with tablemates, how will you let your heart be shaped so undeserved love is somehow offered to a stubborn relative? How will you let your heart be shaped by someone who rejects his own chance to show you undeserved love?
I hope your heart is filled with undeserved gratitude and love that exceeds the food that feeds your body.
The Rev. Paul Graves is a retired elder member of the Pacific Northwest Conference of The United Methodist Church.
