Sermon for Thanksgiving Service 2012
It seems that one tends to become nostalgic for things from their youth once they reach a certain age. I think I have reached that age. Growing up in the 60’s, the Ed Sullivan show and the Jackie Gleason show were our standard family television fare. Then there was my beloved Star Trek at the top of my list but when I think about TV in the mid 1960’s what I most dearly remember are the comedies, like Get Smart and F Troop.
Since we are honoring the holiday of Thanksgiving this evening, our thoughts often turn to the Native Americans who shared the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrim settlers back in 1621. On the TV show F Troop, the local tribe of Native Americans were known as the Heckawee tribe. According to legend, they acquired this unique tribal name because they were consistently getting lost and when ever they would greet somebody they would ask, “Where the heck are we?” and the name kind of stuck.
This sort of reminds me of my own tribal past. Story goes that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Why? because Moses, being a stubborn old man, did not want to stop to ask for directions.
But the question for tonight is not “Where are we?” I am sure that many of us here could take out our smart phones and using the GPS features determine the precise longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates of our location down to the centimeter and tell us where we are. We are here tonight at the First United Methodist Church of Port Saint Lucie. However, the more important question that we need to ask is, “Why are we here?”
In the communities I served in Ohio, Texas and Georgia, there was a very active interfaith ministerial group and an annual interfaith community Thanksgiving Service. I was very active in both the association and the service. But in 2000, when I first came to Port Saint Lucie, I found neither an interfaith ministerial association nor an annual interfaith community Thanksgiving service. The holiday of Thanksgiving is an American holiday rooted in our American history tied up with the early colonists who came here from England and President Abraham Lincoln who declared the first national holiday of Thanksgiving in the midst of the civil war. In addition, the idea of Thanksgiving is something that every religion shares. Whether Jew, Christian, Muslim or Hindu, no matter whether you pray to God, Jesus, Allah or Vishnu, giving thanks to Providence for our good fortune is an inherent and precious aspect of religious belief and practice. Given the history and the nature of the holiday of Thanksgiving, an interfaith community service makes sense and yet I found no such institution when I first began to serve as a rabbi in this community. Nature abhors a vacuum and I decided to fill it. I went across the street to the Calvary Worship Center and met with Pastor Tom Smith to plan and discuss and on Thanksgiving Day of that year, he and I conducted the First Interfaith Thanksgiving Service in Saint Lucie West. The following year we were able to expand the service and include Pastor George McIlrath and Father Victor Ulto who taught me that lasagna is a traditional food for Thanksgiving. Who knew? Over the following years, we have made sure to have an annual interfaith community service, which now includes churches such as St. Andrews Lutheran, St. Lucie Catholic, First United Methodist, Nativity Episcopal and Faith Congregational, and an association of ministers that meet once a month for breakfast and fellowship.
So why are we here? We are here because it is right to honor Thanksgiving in this way. We are here because this holiday demands an appreciation of our gifts and blessings. We are here because it is ethical and righteous to gather together and worship together and celebrate together. We are here because we are dedicated to the proposition that there is far more that unites us than divides us.
Seven score and nine years ago, about a month before delivering the Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln declared the first national celebration of the holiday of Thanksgiving. Sarah Hale, a women’s magazine editor, encouraged President Lincoln to make this proclamation and on October 3, 1863, he did so. This is an excerpt from that proclamation.
“It has seemed to me fit and proper that our gifts and blessngs from Almighty God should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our heavenly Father. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the prayers justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.”
As the last lines of his proclamation imply, President Lincoln intended this national day of Thanksgiving to be the beginning of national reconciliation and a reestablishment of unity, harmony and peace. Echoing the same theme he promoted at a speech given at the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention, which he began with a Biblical quote, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
It seems that in the wake of our most recent and most divisive and mean-spirited election campaign from the local political contests to the Presidential one, our house is divided. Once again, we have blue states and red states and not a United States as well as having blue districts and red districts within the states. I may be colorblind but I know that red and blue make purple. It is time to paint our counties, our states and our country purple. Eight years ago at the Democratic National Convention, then-Illinois State Senator Obama in his keynote address declared, “There isn’t a Liberal America. There isn’t a Conservative America. We are not red states and blue states. We are one people, one United States of America.” It is more urgent now for us to unify those divisions, tone down the bitter resentful speech, the rancorous and nasty rhetoric and work as one to heal our community, our country, and our world.
In the Jewish mystical tradition known as Kabbalah, there is a concept known as Tikkun olam, a belief that we are put on this earth to heal this world, to fix it and make it better. We believe wholehearted in the promise and the possibility of this world. We believe optimistically in the inherent goodness of people. We believe that this world can be better but that it will only be better by us acting with justice and righteousness towards our fellow man. Let us not use religion as a means to divide us but as a path to unity and harmony.
Since the end of August, I have been teaching a World Religions class at Indian River State College. One incontrovertible reality is how similar all religions are in their basic premise and how similar they are in their ultimate goal; a better world brought on by better people. People who allow their actions to be guided, as Abraham Lincoln put it, “by the better angels of our nature.” As I study and as I teach these diverse religious and cultural traditions, I am constantly reminded by this universal and self-evident truth that far more unites us than divides us. And our presence here this evening reinforces and bears witness to this truth.
But if this truth only remains here with us tonight, if it only applies for this annual gathering of worship and thanksgiving then what good is it? This truth must go forth from here. We must carry this message outside these walls to our families and to our communities. We must heal those divisions, end the conflict and pursue justice, peace and harmony.
Why do the conflicts begin? What causes the bitterness and the rancor? What generates this negativity and nastiness? While it is thankfully not as deadly as the civil war we endured 150 years ago, it is portrayed and acted out like a war where neither side wants to give any ground and compromise is a very dirty word. In Hebrew, the word for war is milhamah. At the root of that word is the Hebrew word lehem, the same word used in the name of the city of Beit Lehem or as we know it better Bethlehem. Lehem is the Hebrew word for bread. Why would the Hebrew word for bread be at the heart of the Hebrew word for war? Because 9 times out of 10, war is being fought between those who have and those who have not. Seeing bread as a metaphor for food or fuel, land or water, riches or resources, power or influence, you can readily see the connection. War is all about injustice, whether perceived or actual. It boils down to a perceived sense of unfairness and deprivation. As Pope Paul the Sixth stated, “If you want peace, you have to work for justice.” As long as there is injustice or the perception of injustice, there can be no peace or harmony. As long as people are deprived of their daily bread, then we will continue to see divisiveness and conflict. And this is true on the local, national and global level. Look at any regional or local conflict and you will see injustice as the basis or the core of the conflict. As the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King pointed out, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Every year during the High Holidays, especially on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, synagogues across North America participate in what was once called Operation Isaiah. Operation Isaiah is a massive food drive where those attending synagogue on Yom Kippur, which is a day of fasting, bring dried or canned goods to be distributed to food banks and food pantries. It is incumbent upon us to make ourselves aware that the hungry and homeless experience the fast we endure for one day nearly every day of the year and it is up to us to provide for them. It has been called Operation Isaiah because of the passages in Isaiah chapter 58 where God, through the words of the prophet, chastises the Israelites for failing to properly observe the fast of the Day of Atonement. In verses 3 through 7, God scolds the Israelites for working on the fast day, striving and contending with each other and oppressing their workers. Isaiah tells the Israelites that God does not want this kind of fast. God desires a fast where people cease to fight and refrain from mean words and oppressive behavior. God wants people to celebrate the fast by sharing their bread with the hungry, providing homes for the homeless and clothes for the naked. If God desires this righteous, kind and generous behavior on fast days, how much the more so on feast days. How much the more so when we celebrate our abundant harvest should we share our riches and resources with those in need. How much the more so when we eat and drink to excess should we give food to the hungry and help to the homeless. How much the more so when we give thanks to God for all our gifts should we sacrifice a little and share our good fortune, our gifts and blessings, with those less fortunate. If the message of Thanksgiving is simply to gorge ourselves with turkey, stuffing and pie then we have done a great disservice to our founding fathers, our history and our community. By sharing our piece of bread, our piece of turkey, our piece of lasagna, our slice of pumpkin or pecan pie then we honor our ancestors, our religious traditions, and our community and help bring unity, harmony, peace and justice to our world.
