November 19, 2006 Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost,
Thanksgiving Sunday,
Neighbors in Need Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 95; Joel 2:21-24; Matthew 6:25-33
The myth of the first Thanksgiving has been receiving some much-needed
correction in recent years. Books, History Channel programs and the education
center at Plymouth all are trying to portray the events of 1621 more accurately,
and to put them in perspective. This is good news for the truth, and it is good
news for Native Americans, because they are at last receiving payment on some
long overdue debts—debts of understanding and respect, gratitude and apology.
But for Americans of European descent, and really for all American
citizens of every ancestry, the correction of the myth is bad news, because yet
another pleasant dream of past innocence and simplicity is being tainted with
reality. We see the Native population now as more human and complex. And
here it is Thanksgiving, and we find ourselves reminded of the massive plagues
and genocide that our nation’s founders unleashed as they invaded another
people’s sovereign homeland.
The attempt to make the original Thanksgiving into a shrine of American
self-righteousness has been doomed to fail from the start. Denial has its uses—we
need to enter denial from time to time and forget our troubles—but if used as
anything more than an occasional emotional aspirin giving temporary relief, denial
can have long-term side effects that are damaging to the soul. It is healthier to
find a way to live with the truth—a way that allows us to see reasons for gratitude
even as we accept the negative aspects of life. But as Oscar Wilde said in An Ideal
Husband, “It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory and still to
love it.”
I heard the other day about a man who believed in God and gave God
thanks for the success and health he enjoyed. He felt God’s presence always with
him. Then he became sick with a chronic, debilitating disease. He prayed to God
to heal him and reverse this hardship and restore his good fortune. Time passed,
and his health did not improve. Finally, in bitterness, he declared that he no longer
believed in God. He was convinced that God did not exist.
The reason his faith failed him in his time of need was that he had created
in his mind an illusion of God that depended on a world without suffering, or at
least a world where suffering is always removed from the faithful. His image of
God depended on the denial of the daily suffering of millions of good people.
Even worse, it denied the real suffering of Jesus Christ. He failed to comprehend
a God who came to earth in Jesus not to remove all suffering, but to suffer with us
and show us the way through suffering to a life of joy and gratitude, love and
hope.
Many Christians seem to feel that Jesus calls them to be eternally cheerful
and never complain, as if suffering were too shameful to admit, or as if suffering
needed to be hidden to protect others’ sensibilities, or as if acknowledging
suffering would show a weak faith in God. They are forgetting the many Psalms
of lamentation in the Bible. They are forgetting that Jesus wept at the tomb of
Lazarus and bemoaned the corruption of Jerusalem and cried in anguish on the
cross. It is far better to face the truth and keep turning to God even if in anger or
confusion or grief, than to deny suffering and end up denying the existence of God
when suffering comes.
The truth of our beginning as a nation is that we invaded another people’s
land, killing hundreds of thousands through sickness and war.
This week we celebrate Thanksgiving as our invasion of the sovereign
nation of Iraq continues, where hundreds of thousands have died from sickness
and war because of us.
We celebrate Thanksgiving even as we are aware of the suffering of those
who are sick in our community, and those who have lost loved ones, and those
who are poor, and those who are lonely.
How can we be truly thankful in such a world if we do not exercise denial?
How can we be thankful without escaping into the old myth of American self-
righteousness?
Our hymns and scriptures today offer us two better ways, two healthy paths
to gratitude—one that looks to the future, and one that looks to the present and the
past.
Every year for the sake of tradition we sing “Come, Ye Thankful People
Come,” out of the Pilgrim Hymnal. By the time we get to the third and fourth
verses we find ourselves in a strange place for a Thanksgiving Hymn. Here is
what they say:
For the Lord our God shall come,
And shall take his harvest home:
From his field shall in that day
All offenses purge away,
Give his angels charge at last
In the fire the tares to cast,
But the fruitful ears to store
In his garner evermore.
Even so, Lord, quickly come
To thy final harvest home;
Gather thou thy people in,
Free from sorrow, free from sin;
There forever purified,
In they presence to abide;
Come, with all thine angels, come,
Raise the glorious harvest home.
We do not often go to a fire-and-brimstone place in this congregation, and
it is the last place we would associate with giving thanks. So why does this classic
Thanksgiving hymn take us there? It does so because in a world full of sorrow
and sin, one way to reach a feeling of gratitude is to hope in a future that will be
“free from sorrow, free from sin.”
We might not talk about being cast in the fire to be purified, but we do talk
about trying to fulfill the ideals of Christ teachings as purely as possible. We talk
about building the ideal society, the beloved community here on Earth, God’s
realm of justice and mercy and peace. We have our dreams of a better world that
we not only imagine but work toward. This gives us hope, and hope inspires us to
give thanks to God as the source of that hope.
We do not have to be pure pie-in-the-sky, dreaming of a future life, in order
to give thanks, any more than we have to be in denial. Jesus taught us to trust that
God will provide “all our wants to be supplied.” God’s creation will sustain us.
“Strive first for the realm of God and it righteousness and all these other things
will be given to you as well,” he said. Strive forward toward that greater hope and
you will find plenty of what you need and love—things to give thanks for in this
life.
The prophet Joel wrote at a time of terrible suffering, when the Jewish
homeland had been invaded and the people carried off into captivity. But he says,
“Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things! Do
not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the
tree bears its fruit…O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God;
for God has given the early rain…and the later rain as before.”
We can give thanks if we look to the realm of God and strive for that ideal
future, but we can also give thanks by looking at the truth of our past and present
and all the gifts of love God has given us.
Joel expresses this beautifully out of his suffering, but even more beautiful
to me is the traditional “Thanksgiving Speech” spoken before important gatherings
of the Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy. I try to read this every Thanksgiving. I
wish I had the time to read it all to you, but here is how it began when Chief Irving
Powless Sr. gave it extemporaneously in October of 1984:
I want to greet you and to ask that we put our minds together as
one and thank the Creator that we who have gathered here are
all well. It is now my duty to give thanks…The Creator has
planned it this way—that every time we meet, whether day or
night, no matter how few we are, we give thanks to Him for
what He has given us. The Creator created the Earth, our
Mother Earth, and gave her many duties, among them the duty
to care for us, His people. He put things upon Mother Earth for
the benefit of all. And as we travel around today we see that
our Mother Earth is still doing her duty, and for that we are
very grateful. So let us put our minds together as one and give
thanks. And let it be that way.
The speech then goes on to list a dozen or so of those things that support us,
things like the grass and berry bushes and sugar maple trees and animals and wind
and rain and sun and moon and more. The speech talks about how each of these
has its duty, and how we see that again this year they each have done their duty
and produced what we needed. Each section ends, “So let us put our minds
together as one and give thanks. And let it be that way.”
The speech then concludes with this paragraph:
When the Creator created us, He used a part of His heart in
each one of us. And He wants his heart to return to Him. So
each day and each night He sends down His love to us. And
He asks that we carry out the duties that we were directed to
perform. And for this we are very grateful. So let us put our
minds together as one and try to be the people that He wants
us to be. And let it be that way…
I could end right there with that beautiful voice of gratitude coming from
the Native American people who still suffer because of what happened before and
after the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving. But instead I will end with another important
and distinctive voice—the voice of Alexxandra Shuman, a seventeen year old girl
who lives in Vermont. Alexxandra has suffered from severe clinical depression
for years. She wrote about her struggle for the National Public Radio program,
This I Believe. You may have heard it on VPR this past Tuesday. Here is how she
ended her essay:
William Blake summed up what I believe people need to
realize to be truly happy in life. He said, “ The essentials to
happiness are something to love, something to do, and
something to hope for.” People need the love of family and
friends more than anything. People need work that makes
them feel that they are making a difference in the world.
People need to trust that more good will come in the future,
so they can continue to live for “now” instead of constantly
worrying about the bad that could come. And most
importantly, people need to know that happiness is not
something that happens overnight. I believe happiness is love
and hope.
Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 11/19/2006