Thanks

Photo by Eva Kosmas Flores

A Homily for Vespers on Thanksgiving Eve

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

You know the story. Pious, plucky Pilgrims set out upon the sea, praying for a new start within a New World. Here they want to practice their faith as they would see fit. Britain they found too repressive, whilst Holland proved overly lax. America held the hopes and dreams of Europe’s teeming masses, both spiritual and material: the landless proletariat yearning for full bellies, fertile land, and a wide open horizon of endless possibility. Once Columbus landed, there could be no holding them back. People would sacrifice anything to improve their families’ future.

It seemed almost providential, the way that the New World had cleared out. Waves of disease had decimated the precolumbian population. And at least some of those who had survived proved eager to make an alliance with any power that could sport gunpowder and steel. The English alone ended up with 13 Colonies, not to mention the Spanish, French, Swedes, and Dutch. We could’ve chosen any of them as our national origin myth. Yet in the centuries to follow, New England came to reign supreme. Post-Civil War, American history was Yankee.

We could do worse, of course. New England’s beauty remains evocative, its culture delightfully bookish, and that simple, pious, can-do spirit appeals to a nation as young as ours. I doubt that any of us would’ve enjoyed living under Puritan theocracy, but they calmed down pretty quickly. Prosperity will do that to you. Unfortunately, it can also make you greedy. The half-century-plus of peace and coöperation that marked the Pilgrims’ partnership with the Wampanoag fell apart in King Philip’s War, over—what else?—more land.

We also appreciate New Englanders’ penchant for democracy, dating back to the Mayflower Compact. Funny story there. See, one of the Pilgrims—who himself was not a Puritan, but one of the Strangers taken on to help fund the voyage and found the colony—had on an earlier voyage been shipwrecked in Bermuda. His name was Stephen Hopkins. On the island, Hopkins pointed out that the Captain had been in charge on the ship, and the Governor would be in charge in Virginia, but cast away on Bermuda neither one should really count. Instead, the stranded sailors ought to each have a vote.

Naturally they sentenced him to death, and Hopkins only escaped the noose by begging for his life. Shakespeare later lampooned this episode with a character named Stephano in The Tempest. Later Hopkins found himself on the Mayflower, again bound for Virginia. But when the Pilgrims ran out of beer they cast anchor instead in New England, beyond the bounds of their charter. Well, Hopkins wasn’t about to get hanged twice. He and the other Strangers insisted that proper authority be laid out in writing, in a democratic document now known as the Mayflower Compact.

Hopkins is easily my favorite of the Pilgrims.

Today we treat this traditional tale as problematic at best. It downplays the suffering caused by colonization, and whitewashes a Puritanism more sanctimonious than sacred. These were the witchfinders, after all. Indeed, America has always been a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde. We have striven to embody Enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality, and the brotherhood of man—to become the shining City on a Hill, which our Pilgrim forefathers hoped and prayed that we could be—even while denying the humanity of so many other peoples.

The United States has a terrible track record of enslaving Africans, breaking Native treaties, excluding Asian immigrants, scapegoating Jews, invading Mexico, and squeezing every drop of blood we can from out the veins of the poor. History has always been a horror. In every generation, we must learn from our mistakes and build upon our successes; to return to Lincoln’s better angels of our nature. We are called both to repent and to believe in absolution. In this, we are no different from any nation on the globe.

And yet—setting aside the buckled hat decorations and elementary school pageants—when I gather with my family to celebrate Thanksgiving, I’m not terribly concerned with either Plymouth or Patuxet. We come together around faith, family, friends, and food. I look forward to my brother-in-law’s Bloody Marys, to my wife’s homemade lefse, her uncle’s sausage stuffing, and to all those peerless pies. I think I speak for most of us, when I say that Thanksgiving in practice is far less about history than it is about the here-and-now.

We are grateful, we are thankful, to have enough and more to eat, to laugh with those we love, to reaffirm connection with our kith and kin, perhaps to watch a game and to remember times gone by. It can’t get any simpler than that, and it can’t get any better. This is why we have no great Thanksgiving movies, no 24-hour Thanksgiving music stations: because these simple, wonderful, bedrock truths resist commercialization or commodification. You can’t put a price on our basic human needs.

Of course, there will always be those who try. But true gratitude, blissful thanksgiving, acknowledges no law or lord save the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to Heaven. We have been given so much. We have so much to share. And all that we can offer in response to such abundance overflowing is our thanks. It’s quite countercultural, when you think about it. Pity the man who feels true gratitude yet knows no God to whom to direct it.

And so we return now, as always, to our Baptismal Font, to the Christ who meets us in Word and in Sacrament, confessing our sins, receiving His grace, opening our hands to the need of our neighbor, and forever giving thanks.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RDGStout/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsqiJiPAwfNS-nVhYeXkfOA

X: https://twitter.com/RDGStout

St Peter’s Lutheran

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064841583987

Website: https://www.stpetersnymills.org/

Donation: https://secure.myvanco.com/L-Z9EG/home

Nidaros Lutheran

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100074108479275

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026