MY TYPEWRITER* TALKS - FALL, 2022

by Reverend John L. Topolewski

*Typewriter is an anachronism. We still have such an instrument, an old manual version that requires focused finger strength and skill to use.. In its place, we have a computer and a word processing program. I have reclaimed a title from the past. While serving as a District Superintendent in the former Wyoming Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, it was the name of my contribution to the monthly District newsletter. I trust that you may find these ruminations to be of some value.

IN PLENTY OR IN HUNGER

Philippians 4:6-20

Thanksgiving will soon be upon us. For many Thanksgivings past, my wife Nancy’s family would have rutabaga on the Thanksgiving menu. Rutabaga would not be all that they ate; there would be the traditional Thanksgiving fare; but regardless who prepared the feast, there would surely be rutabaga. The funny part always was, that nobody in that extended family really liked rutabaga!

Rutabaga was on the menu. They ate it, not because they wanted to, or because they liked to; they ate it because it helped them to remember, and to give thanks.

You see, until about two decades ago, there were members of that extended family–Nancy’s grandmother and her sisters and brother–still alive, who were children in southern Germany during World War I. At the end of that war, the agricultural and economic resources of Germany were so depleted that starvation was not uncommon. In the little village of Derendingen, just outside Tübingen, Nancy’s grandmother and her family survived the winter of 1918-1919 by eating yellow turnips, something similar to our rutabaga, a vegetable ordinarily fed to pigs. During that terrible winter, it was the root vegetable that kept them alive.

Soon it will be Thanksgiving, and for many, many years, my wife’s family’s Thanksgiving feast included rutabaga. They ate rutabaga, and they remembered, and they gave thanks.

Thanksgiving comes naturally to us, for we have so much to be thankful for: food for our tables, sound industries and services for our employment, government ultimately responsible to the people, peace and prosperity.

Thanksgiving comes easily when the freezer is full, the computers are clicking, the voting booth is open, and the missiles are at rest in their berths.

Thanksgiving costs little, when the benefits received are so much greater than the value invested. So we often fill our worship with platitudes, truisms, and un-truisms, confusing Thanksgiving with the gift and failing to see its appropriateness in times of hunger and want.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he expresses his gratitude for their gift in support of his person and ministry. His affection for these people is such that he is willing to set aside his own constraints, in order to accept their offering (v. 15). In fact, their gift might well be a motivation for sending the epistle.

Paul is grateful, and his thanksgiving is real. Yet, his understanding of thanksgiving is tempered by reality: “. . . with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (v. 6).

Thanksgiving precedes the receipt of gifts. It has as its desire the peace of God and finds its truest expression in what is honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, excellent and worthy of praise. Thanksgiving is as much a posture as an act, as much an expression of anticipation as fulfillment, appropriate in times of both “. . . plenty and hunger, abundance and want” (v. 12).

I am thinking of the cornucopia which provides the focal point for our attention this season. The fruit, corn, grains and marrows are strewn almost carelessly across our altars. At home, a feast awaits. It is the bread of life. We will give God our thanks for it. Yet I cannot rid myself of the image of another altar, from another time, with its offering and prayer.

I am thinking of a museum–no, more than a museum; a tribute–at the entrance to the Piskariovskoye Memorial Cemetery outside the city of Saint Petersburg in Russia, where we visited in the summer of 1985. One million people died in what was then called Leningrad during the Nazi siege of 1942 to 1944, 675,000 by starvation. It is here that the victims of that tragedy are buried.

It is outside my history; I have nothing to compare it with, no experience of loss to equate it with. I am overwhelmed by such devastation on such a scale.

Amid the graves, in a small display case, I saw the offering: One hundred twenty-five grams of bread, the flour cut with sawdust; one small slice, the daily ration during the siege for non-workers and children. It was the bread of life. And they gave thanks to God for it.

A horn of plenty, a bowl of rutabaga, or a single slice of bread is worthy of our gratitude. May our thanksgiving never be limited to our abundance, or our gratitude defined by our plenty. In all and at all times, let us thank the Lord.