Sermon for Thanksgiving Day

A Somewhat Unconventional One


I have to confess that when I began preparation for this sermon I had somewhat hazy ideas about the evolution of the American national holiday of Thanksgiving, but I could never have ended a piece on the history of Thanksgiving that I found on a Web site with the resounding words: “Thanks to the Pilgrims, we have greater freedom in religion & government today”. As so often happens, a persecuted minority became persecutors almost as soon as they established authority over others, and the idea that the Puritans promoted “freedom of religion” is, to say the least, ludicrous.

Outside the Covenant
Innumerable ironies emerge as one considers the idealized version of that first Thanksgiving. That it was the harvest festival of the old England transplanted to New England and lasted three days seems historically accurate. The first irony is that it was made possible by the Indians whose land the new settlers had (to put it delicately) acquired. It was the Indians who taught these largely middles class, extremely narrow-minded academics how to farm in the new world. My historian wife gave me some details I didn’t know: the Separatists would not have made it through the first winter without substantial aid from the Indians; they would not have managed as farmers without significant help, for example, the practice of planting maize (corn) with a few small fish to act as fertilizer; they relied on help, too, to identify native plants that were edible and not dangerous. In spite of all this, it was not long before the majority asserted the very kind of theology that had made them such a pain in England. Indians were heathen, not part of the covenant and certainly not be included among the Saints who had come to found a “city set on the hill”, the New Jerusalem.

Still With Us
And a second irony is that while this early exclusivism did not by any means become the dominant element of the new nation, it has repeatedly re-appeared in our national life. The attempts of the Evangelical Christian Right have many echoes of the Pilgrim Fathers’ attitudes: rigid control of private and familial behavior; devaluation of other faiths; interpreting misfortune and sickness as divine judgment are but a few of the traits that indicate the parentage of the contemporary Religious right. However, the myth of the brave founders marched on: George Washington declared a national thanksgiving in 1789, though many opposed to it, thinking hardships of a few pilgrims did not warrant a national thanksgiving, and, of course, Thomas Jefferson scoffed at the idea. Still, finally, in 1863, Lincoln proclaimed the final Thursday in November to be kept as a national holiday.
This quick over-view of the early history of the Thanksgiving celebration leaves us with a rather bleak view, and suggests that the focus of our thanksgivings should be not so much on the institutionalized celebration of Thanksgiving Day, which, in any case, has lost much of its God-centered emphasis, overwhelmed by a fair amount of jingoism, the kind of “my country right or wrong” attitude, as on the elements in our contemporary life for which we can be ‘truly thankful’.

The (much maligned) Enlightenment
The modern historical method that presents for us this somewhat deflating picture also has a much more positive side: it does more than expose beloved myths as romantic fabrications. The way we now study history is part of a much wider movement that has, since the beginnings of modern science in the seventeenth century, revealed to us amazing new insights into the physical world. The move from knowledge based on assumptions (philosophers call it an a priori approach), to that based on observation and rigorous checking methods (an a posteriori approach) produced, firstly a new understanding of the universe in which we live, and, secondly, a whole new way of understanding the past which included the ability to read the bible with new eyes: we can hear the teaching of Jesus as it has been translated for us anew by the patient work of critical scholars in the last two centuries. They have revealed for us a man who was the very opposite of exclusive and whose teaching was often aimed at people who held precisely the views of the Pilgrim father and their successors.

As I look more closely at the two areas of science and history, I find more than enough to provide an out-pouring of thanks: for the Christian that giving of thanks is not merely the very human response to good fortune, a kind of psychological mechanism that reacts to good gifts in the face of the fragility of humanity. It is, rather an outpouring of thanks to God who we believe under-pins our whole universe and our individual lives and in whom we trust.

The Gifts of Science
For me personally, these two movements of the last centuries are central to my thanksgivings today, joining, perhaps, supreme thanks we all give for family and friendship at this time.

It is hard to know where to start in giving thanks for the work of the great army of patient, and often persecuted scientists: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Darwin, Lister, Pasteur, Heisenberg. Some of these scientists have enabled us to look out into far space or into the microscopic structures of nature; others have applied scientific results to medicine and the understanding of our environment. They have removed, at least for more fortunate parts of the world the absolute dread that was connected with the word “hospital” right up until the middle of the 19th century. Missing out innumerable others we might end with Watson and Crick who made possible the whole contemporary knowledge of genetics with its promise of alleviating much human suffering.

The Insights of Historical Biblical Study
Although there are elements in the scientific developments of the last two centuries that the contemporary religious conservatives reject, - notoriously, on the theoretical level Darwin’s conclusions, and on the practical, genetic research, - on the whole they embrace modernity. They expect painless dentistry, and organize vast TV networks that use the most up-to-date electronic technology.
It is in the other area where I want most to give thanks that the successors of the Pilgrim Fathers can find no reason so to do. I give thanks for the patient and, often, laborious work of scholars who have enabled us to see Jesus more clearly. If you have ever seen a great painting after careful and expert restoration, you will get the idea. In one area above all others, our understanding has been enlightened: we now know that Jesus was not an excluder, that he did not say that only Christians were acceptable to God: on the contrary, he welcomed above all others the outcast and despised of society.
So much more could be said, but I will give just one more illustration of how we have been enabled to see new perspectives in the scriptures, perspectives given us given by careful historical research, and it is one that is most appropriate for Thanksgiving Day. Bible scholar Virginia Ramey Mollenkott found many kinds of families in the Bible. In each instance, she wrote, “the Biblically based family value is to value family”. Where there is love, commitment, and the will to be a family, there is family. And there, in the midst, is God, to whom we all give thanks for our families.

Our Father
The excellent paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer in the New Zealand Prayer Book seems to me to sum up many of the insights of which I have spoken: it is inclusive, it recognizes the mystery of the Godhead and it speaks of a commonwealth very different from the Township of Plimouth of 1621. It suggests a move from the attitude that the “dogma is the datum” to an attempt to hear anew the things that Jesus is saying to us in the power of the Spirit.

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

[Let] The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
[Let] The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever. AMEN.

All Saints – Here or There?

More than once I have arrived in church on the Sunday in the octave of Advent, having spent no little time in preparing a sermon based on the readings for Proper 25 or whatever number we have got toward the end of the Pentecost season, only to be reminded that the Prayer Book allows the use of the All Saints Day readings, (P.B. p.15 under “principal feasts”). This year I remembered in good time, checked the insert and noted that it used the first set of readings given in the Lectionary on p. 925. It then struck me that I had never been presented with the Second set of readings and wondered who made the choice. The only answer seems to be that it is the firm that publishes the insert that goes into the parish bulletin.

Alternate Readings:

Set I: Ecclesiasticus 44: 1-10,13-14
Revelation 7:2-4,9-17
Matthew 5:1-12

Set II Eccles: 2: (1-6) 7-11
Ephesians 1: (11-14)15-23
Luke 6:20-26 (27-36)

I then thought it might be interesting to compare the two sets: the comparison suggested that two rather different points of view about what a saint is were being presented, something that should warn us not to assume that the N.T. is a monolithic set of documents all saying the same thing about God, Jesus and us.
Both alternatives have a lesson from Ben Sirach, (Ecclesiasticus), not, of course Old Testament, but full of interesting Hellenized Judaic themes. There are no very striking differences between the two readings, though it might be that Set II emphasizes to some degree the living of a saintly life, facing the testing that reveals trust in God.
The second lessons, though, give us a clear contrast: the Set I reading from Revelation paints an imaginary scenario of the heavenly realm: saints are super-human figures pictured as doing obeisance to the Emperor (people literally did have to touch their foreheads to the ground when approaching the Emperor). In the alternate reading from the Letter to Ephesus, the saints are contemporary Christians, living in the here-and-now, sharing a hope that the Rule of God (as in the “Our Father” prayer) will be perfected soon.

Matthew, Luke and Thomas

In both sets, the Gospel centers on the teaching of Jesus, known in Matthew as the Beatitudes, and in Luke as the Sermon on the Plain, and, again, there is a big difference between those two versions of Jesus's words. Luke’s version is, one might say, down to earth. It is those who are hungry who are blessed, whereas in Matthew it is “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” who are blessed.
In general, I think it is true to say that our view of saints tends to be colored by the readings of Set I so that we think in ‘other worldly’ terms rather than about the present demands of the rule of God.
There are, moreover, good reasons for thinking that Luke’s version of the Beatitudes is nearer to Jesus’ original teaching, not the least being that the Gospel of Thomas has a saying (69b) that agrees with Luke against Matthew.

The Saints who are in Corinth

Much in the NT reminds us that sainthood is something to do with the here and now. When Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth, he addresses his words to, "the saints who live in Corinth", and if we read of the goings on in that church, we may wonder about our normal definition of sainthood. The reputation of Corinth was so bad that a term was coined to describe someone corrupted by excess: “Corinthianised”.

As we listen to the words of the beatitudes and to St Paul in I Cor. 13 where he gives us a blue-print of the Christian character, we get the picture of the person who is presented to us in the life and teaching of Jesus. Thus, in our baptism, it is said that "we put on Christ", or that we are joined to him. Clearly, this does not effect a total and immediate change in our lives, but it does give us the potential, to become what it is that God wants us to be: we do not have to wait for some future state to become saints; that is what we are called to be working at right now.

An Inclusive Church

That there are many who respond to and share the love of God who are not be found in our congregations must be a foundation of any inclusive church: God finds those who will respond to his love in places that we might not think proper, but God's love is greater than our human measuring of it. At the present time in our society, this is a point that cannot be too strongly emphasized. One of the foundations of the conservative Christian right is a firm statement that God accepts only those who are Christians, perhaps, even, ‘born again Christians’ (hard luck most Episcopalians!) and other world religions are at best comforting myths, and at worst, demonic. In the face of this ideological stance, we must insist that this is not the overall view of the NT; indeed, it is not the only view in the OT, though it is, without doubt, the predominant one, and it is the Hebrew texts that are most exclusive in language that are most often used in fundamentalist circles.

Present and Future

My conclusion after meditating on the two sets of readings was that they do, in fact, reflect a development in the idea of sainthood that began towards the very end of the New Testament period and went on to the full-blown doctrines and practices of the Mediaeval church, via the very understandable practice of things like the Eucharist celebrated in a third century cave where a Martyr was buried. The development of the cult of saints could not have happened without the ascendancy of a Neoplatonic notion of an immortal soul. This is a notion almost entirely absent from the New Testament, (though often obscured by the translation of psyche (nephesh) by soul rather than ‘life’ or ‘self’), but found in the very earliest Patristic writings.
The New Testament is, of course, not without a clear future perspective, but apart from the Book of Revelation, its writers are noticeably reticent about the details of life after the resurrection of the saints. Paul speaks of the dead as “asleep in Christ”, (I Thess. 4.14ff; I Cor. 15.51), awaiting the resurrection at the eschaton. The Deutero-Pauline letters, on the other hand, seem to imply a sharing already of the resurrection, perhaps of a spiritual kind? (Col. 2.12). One of the Nag Hammidi Treatises, goes much further:
We are drawn to heaven by him, like beams by the sun, not being restrained by anything. This is the spiritual resurrection which swallows up the psychic in the same way as the fleshly.

It may well be this clearly Gnostic teaching that had already elicited a rebuttal in 2 Tim.2.16, where false teachers hold “that the resurrection is already past”. Even this development of a ‘spiritual’ resurrection does not supply any detailed scenario of heaven, and the general tenor of the New Testament is minimalist about what happens after death. The Book of Revelation gives us pictures and metaphors, but it is important to remember that they are just pictures: a royal court or an unending church service, for example. Neither of these images is in any way appealing, I would think, to those who have thrown off monarchy, and become quite fidgety if a service lasts much more than sixty minutes.

When next I have to preach on All Saints Sunday, I am going to insist that whatever the Insert in the program for the day has, I am going to use Set II of the assigned readings.