THANKSGIVING 2004

*Preached at Grace North Church November 21, 2004*

I must confess that I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Thanksgiving. Now, don't get me wrong, there are things I truly love about it: like the eating part, and the yams. You don't really get yams any other time of the year, and I think that's right up there with capitalized medicine and insufficient school funding as far as "things that are wrong with America."

This year I even tried my first slice of pumpkin pie, and I am amazed to report to you that I approve, and I think everyone should have some. I love how the smell of cooking turkey fills the house with tangible warmth, and how the jellied cranberries get in between your teeth. I love mashed potatoes, and if you promise not to tell the Vegetarian Meat Police, I will admit that every now and then this Vegetarian sneaks a little gravy for those potatoes.

So what's not to love about Thanksgiving? Well, there is the whole family bit. Now, I do love my family-every one of them are good, decent people. But I do feel like we come from different planets. My best guess is that I got switched at birth. I like to imagine that somewhere out there, there is another family who, when they return from a long day of rehearsals at the symphony hall, are wondering if that evangelical football fanatic drinking Budweiser on the couch is really THEIR son.

My people are from Oklahoma on both sides, fond of cowboy hats and hunting. Both sides are southern Baptists all the way back to the flood, and I must admit, it is difficult indeed to visit. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that I feel like I escaped the monster God worshipped by evangelicals, and every time I visit my folks, I feel like I am willingly re-entering the dreaded domain of that God. I become an instant henotheist, and once I board that plane for Alaska, I leave the loving God of liberal mainline Christianity behind, and enter the jurisdiction of the fundamentalist God who tramples down the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored, whatever that means.

Then there is the almost palpable disappointment I feel radiating from my parents. I didn't become a Baptist preacher, after all, and I am probably leading all of you straight into the gates of hell, according to them. It would be better if I tied a millstone around my neck and drown myself than lead all of you astray as a catholic priest, and my mother has said as much. I have no children and have made no money to speak of. I am as close to a failure as my parents can imagine without actually saying so. But they don't have to say so. I feel it.

And then there is the football. Mabry thanksgivings are all about pigskin. My brother-in-law used to play for the Miami Dolphins, and trophies and jerseys are ubiquitous in his home as well as my parents', and all of my nephews are being groomed to follow in their Dad's footsteps.

Needless to say, I feel like a fish out of water when I go to visit. I sometimes find myself wondering, "Who are these people, and why am I here?" It is a bit of an endurance test, and I usually return pretty shaken.

And yet, I go. Partly due to the fact that I feel obligated to visit at least once per year, but also because this is my family, and even if it does sometimes seem like we are from different planets, I love these Okie aliens, and will, with qualifications, enjoy my visit with them this coming week.

As I was researching the history of Thanksgiving for this sermon, I was struck by the story of another fish-out-of-water without whom we would probably not be talking about this holiday today. Although our experiences are very different indeed, he too left his community of comfort to celebrate the harvest with people who seemed insanely different from himself. And in spite of the fact that he suffered considerably at the hands of such people, he did not turn his back on them in their time of need. I am speaking of a Native American by the name of Tisquantum.

Tisquantum was of the Wampanoag nation, part of the Algonkian-speaking tribes that also included the Algonquins and Iroquois, and lived around modern-day Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The Wampanoags were a hospitable people who treated all visitors with respect. Whenever a traveler arrived unannounced at a Wampanoag home, he or she would be treated to whatever the family was eating, regardless of how lean the times may be.

Tisquantum grew up in a village called Patuxet (pa TUK et) which stood on the very same location upon which the city of Plymouth would later be built. In the very early 1600s, Tisquantum made the acquaintance of a shrewd English explorer named John Weymouth. Though it is uncertain how he did this, Weymouth convinced Tisquantum return to England with him. Tisquantum could not imagine the vast villages this stranger described, and hesitantly, he agreed. He was bowled over by England, teeming with people and industry. He learned to speak English well, and eventually assimilated the wonders he was being exposed to.

Weymouth was named a Captain, and when he returned to the New World, Tisquantum once again made the journey with him. Tisquantum wasn't sure what to make of the English, but his experiences had been largely positive, so he trusted them, which may have turned out to be a mistake. For soon he met another Englishman who was not as respectful or moral as Captain Weymouth. This new Englishman, whose name we do not have, was a slave trader, who raided Tisquantum's village, clapped Tisquantum and many of his family and friends in irons, and took them by force to the Caribbean. Once there they were sold to the Spanish.

Tisquantum spent years in captivity doing hard labor. One day he was befriended by a Franciscan priest, who took pity on him. He and the priest plotted an escape, and against all odds, Tisquantum successfully fled his captors. Later, he caught another ship to England. England was familiar, but he was a refugee, without money or really even the means to make a living in such a strange world. While he was trying to find his way he came across another Native American, a man named Samoset of the Wabanake (wab NAH key) tribe. Samoset had also come to England with an English explorer, and like Tisquantum, was ready to return home.

Tisquantum sought out the only person he knew in this strange world, Captain Weymouth. He eventually found him, and the good captain paid his friend's passage back to the New World. Together, Tisquantum and Samoset boarded a ship for home, and they landed in Patuxet in 1620.

They were horrified by what they found. Patuxet was a ghost town-or a ghost village, I suppose. It appeared that everyone had died, probably from a virus brought by the English, though the two Native adventurers did not know that. Perplexed and bewildered, they made their home in a neighboring village.

About a year later, the two friends were hunting near the beach at what used to be Patuxet. They were shocked to see people living in the village again! As they drew closer, they recognized them as English people. They kept their distance at first, and spent a few days observing their new neighbors.

The new English people were in very rough shape indeed. They were living in makeshift shelters that were completely inappropriate for the harsh December weather. And their lean and gaunt appearance made it plain that they had little food.

Samoset and Tisquantum felt sorry for them, and decided the best thing to do was to simply be good Wampanoags and offer them hospitality. Imagine the shock of the English when two skin-covered savages walked into their village from the woods, saying, "Hey, how you doing?" in perfect English.

It was clear to Tisquantum that these folks were completely clueless as to how to eke out a living in this part of the world, and instead of returning to his village, he sent Samoset to give word of what was happening, and he made his home with the English. Over the next several months, he taught them how to hunt deer and beaver, what plants to cultivate and how to do it, how to build shelters that would be functional. He showed them which plants were dangerous, and which were beneficial. In fact, had it not been for Tisquantum, their goose would have been cooked, had they been fortunate enough to have a goose in the first place.

Though half of them perished that first year, with Tisquantum's help, they had a successful growing season, and were able to cure enough game to carry them through the next winter. Around the end of September, as soon as the crops were in, they let down their hair and celebrated the English Harvest festival as their friends back home would also be doing.

They wanted to thank their friends Samoset and Tisquantum for their unforeseen help, and they asked them to join them for their feast, and to bring their families along as well. Imagine the surprise of the English when the two showed up with their whole families-we're talking extended families-numbering some 90 people! The English panicked, thinking that an entire nation of Natives had descended upon them to eat up every morsel they had put away for the long winter ahead.

Fortunately, Tisquantum's chief caught a whiff of this panic and sent his people out to hunt some game. They returned with five deer, wild turkeys, fish, and lots of fresh vegetables and herbs. Although the English had invited the Wampanoags to be their guests, it was the food brought by the tribe that made up the lion's share of the feast.

If you have not guessed by now, these English people were the Pilgrims, those early Congregationalists who left England to escape those nasty Anglicans and their persecutions, not to mention those confusing prayer books. And Tisquantum was that Native American known by a simpler form of his name to the English, Squanto. When they sat down to eat, Captain Standish sat at one end of the table, and the chief of the Wampanoags sat at the other. This had to be uncomfortable for everyone involved, since the Native Americans had never before eaten at a table, and the English were unnerved by the bad manners employed by their guests: for with apparently no clue as to their social faux pas, the Wampanoag women sat at the table alongside the men. The English women, however, stood properly behind their men to wait upon them until the meal was over, and only then did the women themselves eat-as is the way of all good Congregationalists.

What an amazing man, this Tisquantum. Here was a man who had truly suffered at the hands of the English. He had been kidnapped, sold into slavery along with his family, risked life and limb in a daring escape, braved the high seas of the Atlantic not once but four times, only to return to a home village which had been completely wiped out by a European disease. In spite of all of this adversity, he found the inner strength to put his own misfortune aside and devote his time and energy to complete strangers, simply because they were in worse shape than he. They might have captured him and sold him once again into slavery. They might have shot him on the spot. He had no idea what they would do. But that didn't stop him from walking into their midst with a word of welcome on his lips.

I will be remembering Tisquantum's example as I board my own ship this week for Alaska. I will offer a welcome in the native tongue of my people, "Howdy!" and will patiently endure more televised football in one day than I shall subject myself to for the rest of the coming year.

Perhaps you, too, are headed for a foreign land to spend your holiday amongst people who are strange to you. Perhaps you are not as fortunate as I, and must face family members that are openly hostile. Either way, I submit to you that such visits are a prime opportunity for spiritual practice.

For such visits are like time away from the real world, and can become little dioramas, portraits of our lives in miniature which can throw things into stark relief for us if we have the eyes to see. We are always surrounded by people who are strange to us, and sometimes hostile. But if we can allow a place at the table for them, and still sit there ourselves with a whole heart, if we can hold the reality of our own wounding in one hand, and the awareness of how richly we have been blessed in the other, if we can embrace this paradox and still enjoy our yams, then my friend, we may not have arrived, but we are well on our way on the spiritual path.

Tisquantum was betrayed and sold into slavery by the English, and yet his heart was large enough to hold both the good and the bad in them, and was moved to come to their aid when they were the most vulnerable. Few of us have ever endured such hardship, yet we still struggle with the generosity of heart required to simply break bread with those who have both hurt us and loved us. I submit to you that both Thanksgiving and this Eucharistic feast we are about to celebrate here are both foreshadowings of the Banquet of Heaven, when we will be required to break bread with our sworn enemies. Think for a moment of the one person you most despise in the whole world-imagine that person sitting at the Thanksgiving table with you. Now imagine that they ask you to pass the yams. It occurs to you that this person might look far more attractive wearing those yams, so I ask, "What will you do?"

Not to worry, you don't need to answer that right now. This week we will have plenty of opportunity to practice. Let us pray

O patient and longsuffering God, how dare you invite everyone to your table! Don't you have the good sense to invite only the good people? And by that I mean, only the people that are nice to us? I mean, of course, those people we like; those who have not hurt us or been mean to us. But, I fear that this is becoming a very lonely feast indeed; in fact, you would probably not even be there, since most of us have felt hurt and angry at you, now and again. But pleasure can only turn into joy when it is shared. So, perhaps it IS better to simply invite everyone. Perhaps there will be a food fight. Perhaps there will be forgiveness. Perhaps there will be both. Perhaps we shall simply learn to love ourselves, our families, our world, and you in all our painful messiness. And if we are very lucky, perhaps we will even be grateful for them. Give us thankful hearts, O God, and bless us, whether we want it or not. Amen.