A Sermon Preached at The Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church November 24, 2013 By Rev. Jenny M. Rankin Clear in the Ancient Light: A Sermon for Thanksgiving It has been a week of iconic photographs and iconic words. A week of anniversaries John Kennedy s assassination, the Gettysburg Address. For me, this week has been filled with images How many times have I watched Jack Kennedy flash his wide smile, listened to the clips from his speeches, that Boston plus prep school accent so distinctive. A week of images and words-- Four score and seven years ago Did you have to memorize that when you were a child? Do those words give you a chill as they do to me? Four score and seven years ago (Can you say the words with me?) Our fathers brought forth on this continent A new nation Conceived in liberty And dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and on it rolls, The Gettysburg Address: 272 words, A benediction really, given after the main event, Edward Everett s 2 l/2 hour oration. It has been a week for remembrance with words and images of some of our nation s darkest times, side by side with images of heroism, of courage, of hope. I imagine some of you have been to Gettysburg, have seen with your own eyes, those acres of land, green fields, just stretching out before you Like the great expanse of fields above the Normandy beaches in France, there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide And when you are standing there It is chilling to realize You cannot see a tree, a knoll, a rock in sight. You imagine wave after wave of men advancing, Picked off, gunned down, And then another wave appears. And to Dallas I wonder if some of you have stood in that spot I have never been there myself. Perhaps you have gone, Seen the textbook factory The grassy knoll The street where the limousine wound its way That day in November so long ago. It has been a week of iconic words and images and now we come here Into this quiet, warm sacred place and enter into another iconic story, The story of the first Thanksgiving. * * * * * * *
When my children were small, As each holiday or holy day rolled round, I would go to the bookcase And pull out whatever books I had collected For that day. And so one year, round about this time, I went to the bookcase and pulled out a few books about Thanksgiving And sat down on the bed with my son Nicholas, Who must have been 7 or 8 at the time, To read stories about the Mayflower landing, the Pilgrims. We re learning about this in school he told me. Mmm, hmmm, that s nice, honey, I said, distracted, Not really paying attention to him, I kept on reading, John Alden, Miles Standish. No, he interrupts me, As if to say Mom, don t you know anything?! It s Miles Stanley, Mom! No, honey, I reply. I think it s Miles Standish Stanley, he barks Miles Stanley! (I m thinking to myself: Is that what you re learning in school?) That s what it says on Charlie Brown, Mom. On we go. To the Mayflower and the voyage, This little band leaving England Because they couldn t worship in the way they wanted That terrible journey, Storms, 100 of them sleeping on the floor, Crowded together in that part of the ship called tween decks That part of the ship where it is stuffy And there is seasickness and quarrelling Hard biscuits Salted meat No fruit to speak of Little water They were headed for Virginia, But the wind blew them off course, and on November 11, 1620, they landed on Cape Cod For a month They stayed on the ship, and made forays, back and forth to land, Looking for a sheltered place. And so it was in late December that they found a cove At a place called Plymouth. And now we are reading about that first winter
The snow Building the common house The fire The Great Sickness, as they called it, That came And stayed And took them, one by one. And we are there, Nick and I, reading, And I am thinking to myself That the story is more straight forward than when I was in school I remember ruddy faced pilgrims: Men with buckles on their shoes, Women with aprons and white caps. Always a cheerful scene, wasn t it, the way we learned it, Pilgrims and Indians, as we called them then. A cheerful scene, No hint of the conflict of cultures to come, The devastation that the colonists would bring to an ancient people Living on ancient land. We come to the part about the first winter And Nicholas turns to me, (This time I m paying attention) He looks me in the face and then just says simply, The people died, Mom. Later I learn that Governor William Bradford had kept a journal and that during that first winter he wrote: So they dyed sometimes 2 or 3 a day And of 100 and odd persons, scarce 50 remain. And of these, in the time of most distress, There was but 6 or 7 sound persons who, To their great commendations be it spoken, Spared no pains, night or day But with abundance of toile and hazard of their own health Fetched them woods, made them fires Drest their meat Washed their loathsome cloaths, cloated and uncloated them in a word, Did all the homely and necessary offices for them Which dainty and quesie stomaks cannot endure to here be named. It was a terrible winter, to be sure, And the pilgrims made it through By the grace of God, some would say, By the help of the Wampanoag Indians, others would say. These women and men who shared food And showed the newcomers how to plant corn. Without this help The new colony would almost certainly have perished From disease or starvation. But somehow it passed, that first winter. Spring came, And then summer. Crops were planted. They grew. Fall came.
The crops were harvested, put away for the next winter. By November time, Governor Bradford wrote, They were Safely gathered in Before the winter storms begin. And it was then, that the women and men and children Who had sailed across the sea from England And had survived the cold and the Great Sickness And were battling the grief of losing their family and friends, It was then that they sat down to eat and to give thanks. And I thought this week, how easy it would have been so easy for them to do otherwise. For them to do nothing at all Just eking out their days Crawling through to the next and the next Grinding through the chores, the grimness, the cold Trying to hold onto a scrap of courage, A vestige of hope. They sat down together and ate and gave thanks. It would have been easy to do otherwise. That s true for us as well. Isn t it? Giving thanks. We know we should do it, we re supposed to do it But it isn t always easy to do. We tend to focus more on what is lacking in our lives Than what is present. I remember words from my Unitarian Universalist colleague, The Rev. Victoria Weinstein, a minister out in Minnesota And one of our most gifted of writers and sermonizers. At my house at supper, she writes, We perform the most unholy and untidy little liturgy you can imagine,. The table grace we do does not look like religion; It looks like a hungry, tattered family At the end of a tattered day, Sometimes at the end of its rope. We scramble to find the matches, To clear and set the table, To dislodge the cats And scrape our chairs into place. We clatter in, Then get up to wash somebody s hands, Then finally sit down. We light the candles, Reach for each other s hands, Close our eyes And sit in silence for as long as the youngest among us can stand it
Which is generally up to as high as she can count Then on most nights we sing something..... The smell of the food becomes real. The sound of our breath And the feel of our damp sticky hands, these are real...... And..... where we may go that night or tomorrow fades away for a time, And we are infused and time is infused, and something wells up. Something like gratitude wells up.... The whole thing lasts From candle to song About two minutes but the echo, the wake of it, lasts longer. We are trying (all of us, in all our houses) to be aware..... We are trying to remember our true and real life. We are trying to touch that, to call it up...... We are trying to remember What we love And what to do And how to be ourselves, good gifts. I love what she says about the hungry tattered family At the end of a tattered day, at the end of its rope How many of us have felt that way May be feeling that way this Thanksgiving I thought about that tattered family And I thought about the Pilgrims Another hungry and tattered and really rather desperate kind of family, I saw in that iconic story of the first Thanksgiving A kind of tenacity, a kind of ferocity That I had never seen before. Usually we think of feasting when we re happy, When things are OK, when all is well, But those pilgrims weren t doing so well As my seven year old son said to me simply the people died, Mom Half of them had died, and so many of them children, They were grieving, those pilgrims They were tired, so tired, and grieving and just trying to hang on, They were weary as they came around that table, They were scared as they came around that table, They were sad as they came around that table And you know what, sometimes we are too. They came. They cooked. They sat. They ate. They drank. They danced. In the face of all that Life was bringing to them, That was what they chose to do. I imagine there were some of them tempted to go another way
(As sometimes we, too, are tempted) To go the way of depression To go the way of cynicism-- They were tempted. But they made another choice, A deliberate, faith-filled, radical choice. In the face of all life was bringing to them They knew what they needed to do. To stop and eat and drink and delight in all that was there. All that was left. All that remained. They were a religious people and this was a religious choice. * * * * I don t know who will be gathering around your table on Thursday Or if you will gather at all But it occurs to me that we aren t all that different from those first celebrants-- The myth of the ruddy faced pilgrims is just that, a myth And the myth of the perfect family is just that, a myth. Whatever is in our lives, it will all be there this week Gratitude, worry, struggles, hope, new beginnings, endings. Joy in watching grandchildren grow, worry over parents getting older. Whatever is in our lives, it will all be there, Just as it was for the pilgrims, And so I take comfort in their tenacity, in their courage, It feeds me-- I carry their story with me, Let their tenacity infuse me, Their courage sparks mine, And I listen to these words of the poet Wendell Berry Harvest over, writes the poet Wendell Berry Geese appear high over us, pass and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, Holds them to their way, Clear in the ancient faith: What we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, But to be quiet in heart and in eye clear What we need is here. ************************* This Thanksgiving, whoever we are, however we gather However untidy and unholy, tattered, ragged-- Let us pray, Not for new earth or heaven, But to be quiet in heart and in eye clear What we need is here.