Thanksgiving 2008

Well, I figured since I posted my Fourth of July sermon and my Halloween sermon, it's only fair that I push my Thanksgiving message on you. So, for any readers who still check out this blog, here you go:

Identity Crisis

At tables across the country tomorrow, families and friends will share meals--many of them pausing beforehand to name a list of things for which they are thankful. For lots of folks, expressing gratitude may be more difficult this year, with the increasingly stressful economy where it is right before holiday time. I read a news story this week reminding us that all the recent company bailouts--however you feel about them--are leaving the poor behind. By so many measures, the number of people dealing with poverty is increasing, and the news article expressed doubt that economic bailouts of corporations would get much help to those at the bottom.
Regardless, I believe we still have much for which to be thankful. I, for one, still feel much gratitude for the fact that the election season is over. And of course, the results of the presidential election carry an additional strange, hard-to-define meaning for those of us in the United Church of Christ. However we feel about the winner, it’s hard to deny that the news headline on the United Church of Christ website the next day held special relevance for us: “20-year UCC member elected U.S. President.” Before anyone gets uncomfortable, this isn’t about the winner of the presidential election, but it is about us.
As we gather this evening to express thanksgiving, we know that’s not the only reason we hold this service here at Pilgrim Church. The black and white Pilgrim costumes should be enough to give that away. Part of why we gather this night is to honor our unique heritage as the denominational descendants of the Pilgrims who founded the Plymouth Colony, our special tradition that includes the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, the rich history of Old South Church in Boston, a key role in the American Revolution and the early years of the Republic, the central event of the Amistad incident in our understanding of ourselves as a denomination, our historic commitments to the social causes of abolition and women’s empowerment, and even 200 years of existence as the dominant form of Christianity in New England from the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620 until the Irish potato famine of the 1840’s that first brought large numbers of Catholics to the United States. That period of church dominance included the time in which Congregationalism served as the official state church of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, and what became Maine.
Much has changed since that time. During my chaplain internship one summer in seminary, our group of students--which besides myself consisted of three Catholics and a Methodist--was assigned the task of preparing a worship service for the mid-summer retreat for chaplain interns in the St. Louis area. As we searched through ours, and each others’, denominational worship books for ideas, one of the Catholic students was looking through my UCC Book of Worship and laughed as she came across a line in one of the prayers: “Grant to the United Church of Christ a secure sense of our identity…” Coming from a Catholic perspective, she didn’t understand how a denomination wouldn’t have a sense of their own identity. How could we not know who we are?
That episode occurred in the summer of 2002. Much has also happened since that time. Looking back at just the few years since I graduated from seminary, we’ve seen the God Is Still Speaking initiative, our “Bouncer” commercial ads banned from the major TV networks, a controversial General Synod resolution supporting marriage equality, and the presidential campaign of Barack Obama that involved the only IRS investigation of an entire denomination, not to mention the very public media attention given to Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of our denomination’s largest church. After the networks declared Obama the winner on Election Night, I mentioned to a friend that if he continues to identify with the UCC, that means that the chairperson of the NAACP, the Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the chairperson of the Democratic Party, and now the President-Elect of the United States are all affiliated with the United Church of Christ. (Now, there’s a conspiracy for Fox News to look into.) In just the last six years, much has happened. Any folks who still claim to have never heard of the United Church of Christ clearly haven’t been paying attention to the world around them. Whether or not we’re comfortable with the public image of the UCC that has emerged, securing a sense of our identity does not seem to be a problem at the moment.
The question of identity is a funny thing. Identity can empower to overcome incredible obstacles, and it can also bind people to unhealthy and abusive situations. It creates bonds with the past, and also creates the temptation to stay stuck there. It can provide a vision behind which people can unite, and it can capture your mind along with your imagination, leading down a dark path we don’t see.
One of the clearest lessons of Christian history reveals the dangers of confusing our spiritual loyalty with the dominant culture. So much of the heart of the Gospel was sacrificed the day the Roman Emperor Constantine embraced the Christian faith. The struggle against powers and principalities became entirely spiritualized; surely Christians couldn’t be encouraged to defy a Christian Emperor. Even the early New England Congregationalists--despite their many honorable ventures--abused their powers as the culturally dominant force. Baptists were run out of Massachusetts because of their strange ways, groups of people were politically targeted as witches to execute in Salem, and of course, let’s not forget the increasingly hostile and bigoted attitudes the immigrant residents of New England showed the people who really had lived there for generations and who had been there first. (I always see more than a bit of irony anytime a non-Native American talks up immigration reform. I doubt the Pilgrims bothered to get proper work visas or green cards from the tribes on the Atlantic coast.)
The Book of Deuteronomy reminds us (in the New Revised Standard Version), “Take care that you do not forget the LORD your God, by failing to keep [God’s] commandments…When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness…Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth’” (8:11-17).
That idea is quite countercultural. Some might even call it un-American. These verses call us to account anytime we get all puffed up over our country’s tradition of rugged individualism, or our Puritan work ethic, or our marvel at American ingenuity, or our insistence on American exceptionalism. Yes, our ancestors worked hard. Yes, we work hard. But to think that’s the reason we have running water, DVD players, personal computers, video games, and cell phones while millions suffer in squalid poverty--that is an obscene way to talk about God. How can we possibly believe we deserve all our resources more than a starving child does? Is that how God works? Is that what the Bible tells us? Is that what it means to give thanks?
The truth is that the garbage that comes out of the mouths of the preachers of the prosperity gospel should sound much more offensive than any four letter word about some bodily function. The values that our society’s priorities reveal sure seem strange. When we are tempted to think that God has blessed us into prosperity, or power, or dominance, we would do well to remember Mary’s song from the Gospel of Luke, “’[God] has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. [God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; [God] has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty’” (vss. 51-53). When I see the incredible disparity of wealth between nations, I think we should probably stop asking God to bless America; God needs to bless some other countries for a while. How about God blessing Haiti, or the people of Cuba? The people of Iraq sure could use some of that blessing, and certainly so many in Sudan need God’s blessings more than we do. We see how Americans handle material blessings when the CEO’s of the “Big Three” automakers fly their private jets to Washington to ask for a bailout and even ride in their own limousines when traveling to and from the Capitol building. Our political leaders--from both major parties--may want to bless corporations like Citigroup, but God does not. While I believe it is true that God loves all, the stories we find repeatedly in scripture tell us that God does indeed take sides, and that God always takes the side of the oppressed, the outcast, the exploited, the displaced, the poor. In the Bible, God never takes the side of the powerful, the rich, those with earthly might, and those who assume they alone always possess God’s blessings.
Thanksgiving is quite a time to celebrate our identity, and indeed a time to give thanks to God. Our Christian identity includes a commitment never to accept a power structure as blessed by God in which suffering is permitted while those on top grow more prosperous; that’s what makes the Kingdom of God other than what we have now. And let us not fall into the trap of believing thanksgiving means we deserve the abundance we have. True thanksgiving calls us to see that all are God’s gifts, so that we may use them as part of God’s Mission. After all, it is God who liberates us; it was God who led us--and leads us still--through the great and terrible wilderness. Any blessings God grants are so that we may be a blessing to all, especially to those who appear to be without such blessing. That’s what giving thanks really means. Thanks be to God.