I want to talk about the first Thanksgiving, the first physical Thanksgiving--and it’s not what you think.

One of the intriguing things about people who have made a major impact on history is that they tend to be very complex, and parts of who they are seems to struggle against what seems to be normal in other human beings. I’m thinking about a leader in history who was considered one of the most spiritual leaders of our nation and yet was not really a member of any church. Nor did he hold orthodox beliefs about Christianity. He was prone to major fits of depression and had a terrible home life. Many people considered him a devil; very few people saw the greatness that other generations identified.  I think that is true of some of the greatest people in history.  It is rare that the people living at the time see the greatness of controversial leaders.   It has been said that this man was so homely that he would never have been elected to public office in a media driven age like ours.  At the time the he was a leader this country was in the midst of a cultural war.  The man that I am speaking of is Abraham Lincoln.

 Was it the times that pulled Abraham Lincoln to greatness or was the providence of God that provided us with a leader of his stature?  During his presidency our country was at war with itself, and within the midst of that war was great tragedy. I remind people that war is always a terrible thing; there is no romanticizing it. War is about humans taking the lives of humans. It’s brutal and it’s terrifying. During the Civil War more people died of disease, amputations and bad medicine than ever died on the battlefield. There was an excruciating loss of America’s innocence in that war. Americans have always been very positive thinkers.  That war forced us to face the fact that we were mortal humans too, and our flaws were exposed to the world. 

It was on October 3^rd in 1863 that President Abraham Lincoln set a proclamation about the first Thanksgiving. In that proclamation we see the greatness of Lincoln. He could pack great meaning into a very few words.  As I have read that proclamation over and over this week, I've noticed his knowledge of what we were as a nation and his ability to speak to us as a nation at a crucial time. One of the features of Abraham Lincoln’s address is his address to providence, and that was one of the unique things about our culture as Americans. The true greatness of this nation came from its ability to understand that God is bigger than any one narrow definition of God. The ability of this nation to flourish was because of our system in which each religious denomination could go on its own and freely preach its beliefs without any one denomination being able to control a secular government. And so as Lincoln offers this proclamation of Thanksgiving, he appeals not to some secular God, not to a Jewish God or a Methodist God or a Presbyterian God, but to providence, a God who is bigger than any particular belief about God.

It’s ironic that he was calling for a day of Thanksgiving when this country was in the midst of great turmoil and self-destruction. He begins by offering a word of thanks to God for the year’s bountiful harvest. He thanks God for those tangible gifts of food and he asks for God’s forgiveness for the act of war. He acknowledges the sinfulness of human beings that drives us to the point of killing each other.  Even in his acknowledgement of the tragedy of war, he acknowledges the justice of the cause of those who would liberate the people who had been treated like cattle for 200 years of American history. He understood the hypocrisy of a nation that espoused freedom while a whole segment of its population was held in slavery. In the 1770’s, less than 100 years before the Civil War, leaders struggled with the issue of slavery.  Hardly a leader from slave holding states at the Constitutional Convention thought that slavery was not wrong. It was left to a future generation to deal with that tragedy of hypocrisy.  But in that tragedy we also observe the elasticity to struggle within ourselves and eventually find the right thing to do.

And so we find that first official Thanksgiving ironically at a time of turmoil and tragedy. Thankful?  Why then? And yet it was so. For a country that was less than 100 years old, Lincoln was grappling with myths or stories of which we are as people. One November in the 1620’s, a group of radical Protestants showed up on the shores of New England. It was not the best time of year to show up in New England. They made it through that first brutal winter, and, by the fall of the following year, only four adult women were still alive. If the Puritan’s had been having a Thanksgiving celebration that November day, they wouldn’t have been eating; they would have been in church praying all day.  But the truth is that this meal of Thanksgiving, which was celebrated after that first year, speaks much about which we are as Americans. Two different divergent cultures.  Native Americans with their indigenous beliefs who had been so good to the Pilgrims.  If it had not been for them, the newcomers would not have survived that first year. Native Americans had come there to help celebrate the fact that people were still alive. I want to make an important historical comment at this point. The Pilgrims were a just people. They dealt fairly with the Native Americans whom they came to know. When they traded land and bought land, they didn’t cheat the Indians. They worked out agreements with them that stated if a Pilgrim did something unlawful to a Native American; the injured person was treated with justice. Even in the difference in religion there was a great deal of respect between the Pilgrims and those Native Americans. Those who came later managed to muck that one up.

I don’t want to destroy your romantic ideas about Thanksgiving, but I want to share a few things about what was at that first Thanksgiving meal. There was no pumpkin pie, no sweet potatoes, and no domestic turkey. Mr. Atkins must have been around at that time because eighty percent of the meal was meat. Why was that? Because that was what was available. There weren’t many vegetables. They ate wild venison and wild turkey. Fish was abundant. We also see people who had crossed an ocean because they had a vision of the way that God had called them to live. They were willing to risk everything to create that vision.  Almost 250 years later, in 1863, there existed a nation that was a hodgepodge of many different people from many different places.  A mighty republic with the ability to argue and disagree about religion and politics and yet uphold the freedom of choice for its people.

We find ourselves here in 2003. Our nation is at war again. We say the official war is over, but any of you who have a loved one in the Middle East knows there is still war.  We pray for the safety of our military, the places where they find themselves and where people have been uprooted. Again we find our nation in the middle of a cultural war. People are divided on their opinions about many things.  We’ve always been in a cultural war in this country. What makes us the great people that we are is that we have the freedom to form an opinion, express it with passion, and yet to find unity in all those differences. Our President was over in London last week and got a sound trashing from the people of that country. The thing that impressed me was that people were able to strongly disagree with him in the thousands, and yet he returned home safely.  That is how democracy works. We can disagree all we want, but we respect the laws that keep us united.

And yes, we will be thankful. Just as in the time of Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation, we have had a bumper crop this year too. All the grocery stores are full of food. We Americans, though we may worry about a shaky economy, we live in relative prosperity, We still hold on to those freedoms that mean so much to us.

Yes indeed, we have much to be thankful for.  Jesus said that he was the bread of life. Remember when we share that meal on Thanksgiving Day that providence is still with us not only as a nation, but also as a world.  We of the Christian faith know that our lives are centered in the bread of heaven. All that matters to us comes not from our desire for material gain, nor even for our desires to be in control. All things come from God above to us, from Jesus our Christ.  On him we consume God’s grace, not only this Thanksgiving, but also everyday.

Let’s bow our heads now for a word of prayer.