This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.
Readings
The first reading this morning is from Mourt’s Relation, a journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, written in 1622. This reading gives the story of the first Thanksgiving celebration in the words of one of the Pilgrims who was actually there [source of this version].
“You shall understand, that in this little time, that a few of us have been here, we have built seven dwelling-houses, and four for the use of the plantation, and have made preparation for divers others. We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six acres of barley and peas, and according to the manner of the Indians, we manured our ground with herrings or rather shads, which we have in great abundance, and take with great ease at our doors. Our corn did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown, they came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom.
“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after have a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the company almost a week, at which time amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”
Instead of the usual second reading this morning, we’ll have a story instead: the old story of Thanksgiving. This is a story that you already know. But even though you’ve heard it about a million times, we tell it every year anyway, to remind ourselves why we celebrate Thanksgiving.
The story begins in England. In England in those days, every town had only one church, and it was called the Church of England. You had to belong to that church, like it or not. It’s not like it is here today, where families get to choose which church they want to go to — back then, there were no other churches to choose from! But a small group of people decided they could no longer believe the things that were said and believed in the Church of England.
When they tried to form their own church in England, they got in trouble. They moved to Holland, where they were free to practice their own religion, but they felt odd living in someone else’s country. Then they heard about a new land across the ocean called America, a place where they could have their own church, where they could live the way they wanted to. They found a ship called the Mayflower, and made plans to sail to America. These are the people we call the Pilgrims.
After a long, difficult trip across a stormy sea, the Pilgrims finally came to the new land, which they called New England. But the voyage took much longer than they had hoped, and by the time they got to New England, it was already December. Already December — it was already winter! — and they had to build houses, and find food, and try to make themselves comfortable for a long, cold winter.
It got very cold very soon. The Pilgrims had almost nothing to eat. The first winter that the Pilgrims spent here in New England was so long and cold and hard, that some of the Pilgrims began to sicken and die. Fortunately, the people who were already living in this new land — we call them the Indians — were very generous. When the Indians saw how badly the Pilgrims were faring, they shared their food so at least the Pilgrims wouldn’t starve to death. Half the Pilgrims died in that first winter, yet without the help of the Indians, many more would have died.
After that first winter, things went much better for the Pilgrims. Spring came, and the Pilgrims were able to build real houses for themselves. They planted crops, and most of the crops did pretty well. The Pilgrims went hunting and fishing, and they found lots of game and caught lots of fish.
By the time fall came around again, the Pilgrims found that they were living fairly comfortably. To celebrate their good fortune, they decided to have a harvest celebration. They went out hunting, and killed some turkeys to eat at their celebration. They grilled fish, and ate pumpkin pie, and we’re pretty sure they had lobster, wild grapes and maybe some dried fruit, and venison. However, they probably did not call their holiday “thanksgiving,” because for them a thanksgiving celebration was something you did in church. At that first celebration, they did not go to church.
Their harvest celebration lasted for several days, with all kinds of food, and games, and other recreation. The Indian king Massasoit and some of his followers heard the Pilgrims celebrating, and dropped by to see what was going on. In a spirit of generosity, the fifty Pilgrims invited all ninety Indians to stay for dinner. Imagine inviting ninety guests over to your house for Thanksgiving! More than that, in those days only the Pilgrim women prepared and cooked meals, but there were only four Pilgrim women old enough to help with the cooking — four women to cook food for a hundred and forty people!
The Indians appreciated the generosity of the Pilgrims, but they also realized that there probably wasn’t going to be quite enough food to go around. So the Indians went hunting for a few hours, and brought back lots more game to be roasted and shared at the harvest celebration. At last all the food was cooked, and everyone sat down to eat together: men and women, adults and children, Indians and Pilgrims.
That’s how the story of Thanksgiving goes. As you know, the Pilgrims called their first town “Plymouth,” and as you know, they also started a church in the town of Plymouth. But did you know that a hundred and eighty years later, that church became a Unitarian church? That church in Plymouth is now a Unitarian Universalist church. So it is that we Unitarian Universalists have a very important connection with the Pilgrims, and a special connection with Thanksgiving.
SERMON — Giving thanks — to whom?
In a way, this sermon is the second in a series of sermons on Unitarian Universalist views on God, in which we will address the question: If Thanksgiving is for giving thanks, to whom do we give thanks?
For it is indeed time to celebrate Thanksgiving once again. Needless to say, those of us who are religious liberals know how to celebrate Thanksgiving; yet liberal religion can also lead to a certain amount of tension at Thanksgiving time. For example:– Of course we make the traditional turkey with stuffing and all the trimmings; yet many religious liberal families have at least one person who is a vegetarian or vegan as part of their spiritual practice, which means that we also have to have the traditional tofu with all the trimmings. Oh, and by the way, the vegetarians can’t eat the stuffing or the gravy either, because of the meat in them; which can cause further confusion in the kitchen, and a certain tension at the dining table.
Or perhaps the vegetarians and vegans in your household bow to peer pressure on Thanksgiving, which can lead to a different kind of tension: for them. I was a vegetarian for maybe fifteen years, because in college I read the book Diet for a Small Planet and learned that it took six pounds of grain to produce one pound of turkey, which meant that every time you ate a pound of turkey you were stealing five pounds of food from the mouths of starving people around the world. Being a good religious liberal, I immediately stopped eating meat, in order to save the world. Except at Thanksgiving. After a couple of years of being a vegetarian, I got sick of fending off the turkey, and I’d just quietly eat what was put on my plate. Feeling guilty the whole time: I’m taking food out of the mouths of starving people!
Turkey’s not the only food that can cause tension; other traditional Thanksgiving foods like mashed potatoes, winter squash, and turnips can lead to tension, too. In my household, part of our spiritual practice is to eat locally-grown food as much as possible, to remind us that we are rooted in the local ecosystem. But at Thanksgiving, we often run short of time and have to compromise our principles by buying at least some of our vegetables at the supermarket, which at this time of year generally means buying vegetables trucked or flown in from thousands of miles away. I have little doubt that Carol and I will find ourselves at one of the big supermarkets along Route 6 at eight o’clock this Wednesday evening; I will hold up a butternut squash, and Carol will hiss, “That was flown all the way from California, it might as well be soaked in diesel fuel”; and we’ll both feel horribly guilty. But we’ll buy it anyway, and eat it, and probably imagine that we taste the diesel fuel.
Tension also arises for many religious liberal families when it is time to say grace before the meal. I grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, and we never said grace before meals the rest of the year. At Thanksgiving, however, Mom or my aunt Martha or someone else would tell us kids, before we started eating, that we all had to say grace together. In our household it could be a little awkward, saying grace. Sometimes we just held hands and had a moment of silence, which I liked best. The awkwardness went on until the year our oldest cousin, Nancy, joined the youth group in her Unitarian Universalist church. “I’ll say grace,” she said that year. “I’ll say the grace we use in youth group. ‘Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub, yay, God!'” We laughed, but it worked for us, and it reduced the tension around saying grace.
If your family includes rabid atheists, or those who follow more conservative religious paths, there can be even more tension. But even entirely Unitarian Universalist families that say grace before dinner every day can still feel a little tension at that moment. Why? Because in our culture, to say grace most often implies that we are giving thanks to a traditional Christian god. But we have such high standards for ourselves, we won’t settle for an unquestioned acceptance of traditional religious concepts. The Unitarian Universalist Christians do not have a traditional conception of God, and may not be willing to settle for the traditional understanding of saying grace; certainly the religious humanists, the pagans, the Transcendentalists, the pantheists and panentheists, and all the other Unitarian Universalist theological varieties, will not settle for a traditional understanding of saying grace. If we are giving thanks when we say grace, we would like to know to whom, or to what, exactly, we are giving thanks.
That is the question I’d like to explore with you this morning. If Thanksgiving means giving thanks, to whom are we giving thanks? –or to what are we giving thanks? We will not find one answer to this question; nor will we have time to explore all possible answers; it may be that there are as many answers to this question as there are people in this room. Yet let us outline a few responses to this question, as a beginning to deeper understanding.
Let’s start with those of you who are Unitarian Universalist Christians. If you’re a Unitarian Universalist Christian, it should be obvious that you give thanks to God — that’s God spelled capital-G, Oh, D-as-in-dog. It’s spelled the same way, but to the Unitarian Universalist Christian God probably does not look much like the orthodox Christian God. Because of our Unitarian heritage most of us don’t see Jesus as God; and because of our Universalist heritage we can affirm universal salvation for all beings (meaning that there is no such thing as hell). That idea of universal salvation comes about because the God of the Unitarian Universalist Christian is a loving God. This loving God, who will never damn us to eternal torment, is also a God who is active in our lives by helping us to create justice in the world — for what is justice, but an expression of radical love? The story of Jesus is important to Unitarian Universalist Christians, not because it tells that Jesus is God, but because it shows how God is concerned to help the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the downtrodden people of the world. And the story of Jesus shows us how God can provide personal support to those people who, like Jesus, advocate for the poor and the oppressed. If you are a Unitarian Universalist Christian, you are not giving thanks to a bearded man in a white robe up in the sky: you give thanks for the love, and for the vision of justice that God brings.
Next, let us turn to the Unitarian Universalist pagans. Unitarian Universalist pagans are a diverse bunch. For some Unitarian Universalist pagans the divine is manifested in multiple goddesses and gods, and for others there is a single Goddess. Yet even when there is a single Goddess, she manifests herself in more than one guise; for example, as three different stages of life: Maiden, Matron, and Crone. You don’t have to interpret this literally: the phases of the Goddess or the various goddesses and gods can represent different aspects of ourselves, such as the different stages of life represented by maiden, matron, and crone; or different aspects of the world around us, such as the seasons or the phases of the moon. This rests on good psychological common sense: you don’t have to take the goddesses and gods entirely literally; as Carl Jung pointed out, various goddesses and gods can serve as concrete personifications of abstract qualities like love and strength and wisdom and shared power.
In addition to embodying good psychological common sense, Unitarian Universalist paganism is explicitly feminist, and it is explicitly ecological. If you’re a feminist, paganism lets you say “Goddess” instead of struggling with that masculine pronoun for God. If you’re an environmentalist, paganism offers a religious outlook that find divinity in Nature, meaning there’s a religious reason for not wrecking the natural world. If you are a Unitarian Universalist pagan, you can offer thanks for the true equality of men and women, girls and boys; and you can offer thanks for the wonder and beauty of Nature.
A third major group among us is the Unitarian Universalist humanists. Humanists have no need for some transcendent being or deity, no need for God or Goddess, or gods and goddesses; humanists find no need to believe in supernatural beings that can’t be proven to exist. Unlike some humanists, Unitarian Universalists still think of themselves as religious; and as religious humanists, they see that religion can be an enormous force for good in the world. Religion offers a moral framework that can tap into the accumulated wisdom of the human race; divorced from ancient creeds and beliefs, a religious community can seek together for human answers to human questions. If you are a Unitarian Universalist humanist, you might offer thanks for the miracle of evolution, the gift of life, and the human community which is capable of doing good (if we work at it). But you don’t have to offer thanks to a being or personification; you can just be thankful.
If we had the time this morning, I could go on and talk about other Unitarian Universalist theologies: pantheism and deism and Transcendentalism and existentialism, and many other kinds of “isms.” We don’t have time; our potluck Thanksgiving lunch awaits us.
But remember this: the lovely thing about being a Unitarian Universalist is that we can draw inspiration from all these “isms.” We can give thanks for the God of justice and love; we don’t have to believe in such a god, but it’s a good concept if we would but truly live up to it! We can give thanks for the wonder and beauty of Nature and for the interconnected web of life; even if you see nothing transcendent in them, we’d die without an ecosystem, so why not give thanks for it! We can be thankful for the miracle of evolution, the gift of life, and the human community which is slowly learning how to do more and more good; even those who believe in God or the Goddess can also give thanks for evolution and human community.
We Unitarian Universalists should give thanks for the diversity of our theological viewpoints. This diversity can create tension in our life together as a religious community; but it is a good tension, one which furthers our quest for truth and goodness. Whether pagan, Christian, humanist, undecided, or none of the above, we recognize that no one of us will ever have the absolute answer. We have such high ideals for ourselves, we Unitarian Universalists; we worry about having theological tension; but the only way we can remove the tension is when we finally attain to ultimate truth, a day which may never come. In the mean time, the tension is good; the tension keeps us from being complacent; the tension keeps us moving ever onwards in the search for truth and goodness.
Someday perhaps we’ll get all the way to truth and goodness, and I like to think that day will come:– a day when there is no more poverty, no more injustice, no more racism, no more war, a day when every state recognizes same sex marriage as legal, a day when the prisons are empty because crime has ended. Someday, maybe we’ll get there; then we’ll really have something to be thankful for. In the mean time, let us give thanks for our high ideals for ourselves — and let us give thanks for the tension those high ideals create in this gathered community.