By Colleen Tinker
They say that Thanksgiving is the most-travelled holiday of the year. Even though Christmas is perhaps the most sentimental holiday, Thanksgiving is the celebration that gets people on planes and freeways to eat turkey and pumpkin pie with family.
Since we left Adventism, our Thanksgiving table has expanded, and the menu has changed. We used to share mock turkey (made with soy chicken and asparagus juice for giving it “a turkey-like flavor”) with our Adventist family, if they were in town.
The menu began to change one year while Richard and I were discovering contextual Bible study with our Christian neighbors. Our Adventist parents, aunt, and cousins were coming to eat Thanksgiving dinner with us, and on the spur of a moment, we invited our neighbors to join us as well.
“I’ll cook a turkey breast if you come,” I promised after Bible study, and Thanksgiving has not been the same since.
Being a novice at preparing meat, I had no idea the giblets were tucked into the turkey breast in plastic bags. Furthermore, I badly miscalculated the time it would take that bird to be fully cooked.
Our family arrived, and when they realized their mock turkey was sharing molecules with a turkey breast in the oven, their Thanksgiving was ruined. Adding insult to injury, they had to wait for the turkey to be done, and the memory of them sitting side-by-side on the couch, arms folded, staring straight ahead, is emblazoned on my mind.
Since that fateful day, the holiday has changed for us. Now our table usually includes our own family as well as former Adventists who are alone on Thanksgiving. Our turkey has become a bacon-wrapped wonder, cooking slowly overnight in a low oven and filling the house with a fragrance that has made Richard call Thanksgiving his favorite morning of the year.
Looking down our table this Thanksgiving, I saw a most unlikely group of people whom only God could have put together. Sons, daughters, grandchildren, brothers and sisters in the Lord—25 people with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds who gathered to share food and fellowship. One former Adventist friend who lost his marriage when he left years ago comes every year and enjoys bacon and coffee with Richard before the rest arrive. Two more friends whose travel plans suddenly changed joined us at the last minute, and they were also able to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends
Food rules overturned
As Jesus introduced His disciples to the new covenant, He overturned their ideas about food. First, he explained to them that food did not make them unclean, that what made them unclean were the evil thoughts and intentions that came from their hearts. Food that went into their mouths, however, is eliminated, and it does not make a person unclean. “Thus,” Mark said, “He declared all foods clean” (Mk. 7:19).
This idea was paradigm-shattering to His Jewish disciples who had lived by the food laws that separated them from gentiles.
Later, on the eve of His death, Jesus gave His disciples the sign of the new covenant: the Lord’s Supper. He declared that the wine was the new covenant in His blood, and the bread was His body that was broken for them.
“Do this in remembrance of Me,” He told them as He gave them a meal as the sign of His finished work of atonement and of His promise to return for them.
A few short years later, Peter received a vision in which God told him to “kill and eat” a sheet-full of unclean animals. Horrified, Peter refused, but the Lord repeated the vision twice after the apostle’s initial rejection. Just hours later, Peter found himself escorted to the home of gentile Cornelius where he stayed for several days, preaching the gospel, eating their “unclean” food, and baptizing the first household of gentiles into the brand-new body of Christ.
When Jesus died and rose again, fulfilling the law, He broke down all the barriers that separated people from one another. In the body of Christ, fellowship is not determined by ethnicity; it is determined by the unity of the Holy Spirit.
Now when believers gather, they can enjoy table fellowship together without any concern that their shared food is unclean.
As Adventists we learned to ask if there was lard in the bean dip. We learned to dig through food we didn’t “know”, looking to see if it had pieces of meat hidden inside before eating it. We learned to read labels and to reject foods that had traces of unclean meat—even refusing Jell-O because of the source of the gelatin.
Jesus, however, has asked us to trust Him and to eat whatever is put before us without asking questions (1 Cor. 10:25, 27). Now we know that baking turkey and vegetarian casseroles together does not pollute the casseroles. Now we know that instead of defiling the turkey, bacon makes it better.
This Thanksgiving we thanked God for His faithfulness and provision, and we honored the Lord Jesus by sharing the table with people from all points of the spectrum—some who never knew the Adventist meat rules, some who no longer believe in vegetarianism but who still have aversions to meat, and some who have learned to eat meat by faith.
We had foods fit for the whole spectrum, but we were able to share fellowship together because of the Lord Jesus. He is the One who has broken the dividing wall between Jews and gentiles, and He is the One whose presence and whose Spirit unites us in Him around the Thanksgiving table.
- May 18–24, 2024 - May 16, 2024
- We Got Mail - May 16, 2024
- Should We Leave the “Isms”? - May 9, 2024