A sermon preached by Rev. Henley, November 22, 2009.
A recent country and western song by Brad Paisley is “Welcome to the Future.” Do you know of him? That is rhetorical; you don’t have to raise your hand. I can say, maybe some of the men haven’t heard of him, but I know all the women have; he’s a handsome, young man!!
When I was ten years old
I remember thinkin’ how cool it would be
We were goin’ on an eight hour drive
If I could just watch TV
I’d have given anything to have my own Pac-Man game at home
I used to have to get a ride down to the arcade
Now I’ve got it on my phone
Hey, glory, glory, hallelujah
Welcome to the future
My grandpa was in World War II
He fought against the Japanese
He wrote a hundred letters to my grandma
Mailed ‘em from his base in the Philippines
I wish they could see this now
Where, they say, could change go
Cause I was on a video chat this morning
With a company in Tokyo
Hey, everyday is a revolution
Welcome to the future
Hey, look around it’s all so clear
Hey, wherever we were going, well we’re here
So many things I never thought I’d see,
Happening right in front of me
I had a friend in school
Running back on a football team
They burned a cross in his front yard
For asking out the homecoming queen
I thought about him today
And everybody who’s seen what he’s seen
From a woman on a bus
To a man with a dream
Hey, wake up Martin Luther
Welcome to the future
Hey, glory, glory, hallelujah
Welcome to the future
I got these words from YouTube, so they may not all have been exactly correct.
Nevertheless, what does Paisley’s song have to do with Thanksgiving? -- Give me a moment. I'll get to that in a moment.
When I was ten, my grandparents still lived in the house where their children grew up. When I was ten, I could still remember when they installed “running water” in the kitchen and added a bathroom. When I was ten, the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony were the first “Americans” to celebrate Thanksgiving in 1621. When I was ten, the Native Americans at their “harvest festival” were the heroes of the story because they helped the Pilgrims survive that first, devastating winter.
NOW, historians tell us, that the Spanish colonists in Texas celebrated harvest festivals in the 1500s.
NOW, Michael Gannon from the University of Florida tells us that a Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles celebrated a feast of thanksgiving with the Native Americans at St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, fifty-six years before the Pilgrims of Plymouth.
NOW historians tell us the French Calvinists celebrated thanksgiving at St. Augustine.
NOW we know Virginia colonists celebrated a harvest festival in 1607, fourteen years before the Pilgrims of Plymouth.
The Native Americans contributed to and was a vital part of many harvest festivals and Thanksgiving stories, providing seeds and other essentials which ensured the survival of these colonists—wherever they landed.
The story of the White People and the Red People doesn’t end there.
From The People Named the Chippewa, Narrative Histories [Gerald Vizenor]
The Ojibways affirm that long before they became aware of the white man’s presence on this continent, their coming was prophesied by one of their old men, whose great sanctity and oft-repeated fasts enabled him to commune with spirits and see far into the future. He prophesied that the white spirits would come in numbers like sand on the lake shore, and would sweep the red race from the hunting grounds which the Great Spirit had given them as an inheritance. It was prophesied that the consequence of the white man’s appearance would be … an ending of the world.
(William Whipple Warren, History of the Ojibway Nation)
We do not know whether this was a real prophetic vision, or, like the Hebrew prophets, a prophecy made after the story was lived. We do know that the “lived” story is more like the prophecy than the Thanksgiving story of the Pilgrims.
It was not very long after European colonist began flocking to this unspoiled land that the oppression started. And subjugation became official government policy when “The Indian Removal Act” was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson in 1830 [May 26, 1830]. The "removal" was to relocate all Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to the West of the Mississippi.
My message this morning is not to bring anguish or sorrow to our thoughts of celebration; it is to bring yet another perspective to our Thanksgiving.
After all, several Presidents and Congresses have made Thanksgiving an official holiday, which more Americans—as a whole—celebrate than any other holiday. Since George Washington, successive Presidents have all proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday except for 1816-1861. Congress and Abraham Lincoln revived the proclamation, and it has continued ever since. Every proclamation has been a religious one, thanking God, even those troublemaker deist Presidents who helped write the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
What I want us to recognize is that nations like people have dark stories, as well as, bright stories, and it is through the bleakest of times and the darkest of our stories that we have an opportunity to grow.
Yet, we cannot grow spiritually as a nation, until we recognize that everyone, not only those with homes, not only those with money, not only those with jobs, not only Christians, but everyone has the right to “dignity and justice for all.”
Dignity and justice for all
Not veryone in our nation had developed to that stage where “ALL” are recognized with dignity and justice. Go to YouTube or news blogs and look at the comments about Muslims by those who have a very limited vision of “dignity and justice” for all.
Does that mean, though, that we can’t be grateful, can’t be thankful for where we are?
Humankind has been thanking an unknowable, ineffable Creator, since we picked the first berries (I didn’t say apples) and since we trapped the first rabbit and plunged a stone spear into the first mammoth. We have been thanking an unknowable Creator, since we conquered each other to make empires. We have been thanking an indefinable, indescrible Creator since we could make a hearth to cook the first grain.
Look at Psalm 100, a psalm for “giving thanks.” The poetry of Psalms is well-over three thousand years old.
Acclaim YHWH with joy, all the earth!
…
Enter God’s gates with thanksgiving and the courts with praise!
Give thanks to God!
Bless God’s Name!
For YHWH is good; God’s steadfast love endures forever, and God’s faithfulness to all generations.
There is another Psalm, 126:5-6 [RSV] that tells us—in the midst of our weeping—we can have joy:
“May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy! [They]… that go… forth weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing their… sheaves with them...”
This Psalm teaches us that in the midst of tragedy, in our most challenged times, right in the middle of everything, we need gratitude. We need to be thankful.
As a nation, just like a person, we can become bitter and hopeless as a result of our dark, challenging times.
As a nation, just like a person, we need to appreciate what we have,
to find love where we thought there was none, and
to deepen our relationship with God
And like the young boy in Grandad's Prayers, the story we heard this morning, we know, prayer can always take us to God.
Let’s look at Brad Paisley’s song again,
He said this song had to be written. He could not have finished his last project until he wrote these words.
When he was ten, there were no dvd players or television for the kids on a long trip. No games to video games to play at home. There are now.
When he was in high school there was no or very little racial equality, that women and men of the country, one, Martin Luther King, gave his life – and one white man James Rabb gave his life— for the changes we have made, and are STILL trying to make.
When his grandpa was young the Japanese were our enemy, today Paisley sings to millions of Japanese
He is singing not about the future, not about the past, but about NOW, and no matter how it is today, it WILL be different tomorro.
Life changes,
Nations change, just as we change.
We live in a nation that has its dark side and its “beacon of light.”
We humans have always been grateful, grateful to God our Creator in the midst of dark culture and dark religion.
If we embrace the lessons of tragedy, we will find our gratitude for God’s love in the deepest, darkest nights.
So this Thanksgiving, let us be grateful for that which gives us joy and that which gives us pain. For in our whole lives, all of it, there is much for which to be grateful. As Paul tells us in Philippians 4, with prayer and thanksgiving, we … find God.
Hey, glory, glory, hallelujah,
Welcome to the future, it will be different tomorrow, let us be grateful today.