Sermon: Rev. Mark Sandlin Presbyterian Church of the Covenant - www.athinkingchurch.org Music: Bruce Piephoff

The battle for the soul of America rages on, now focusing on Thanksgiving. On the one hand are those who offer the image of peace and harmony between Europeans and Indigenous people, on the other those who remind us of the savagery of the Europeans as they sought to exterminate the inhabitants of the land. Which is it?

God, there are days we do not feel grateful. When we are anxious or angry. When we feel alone. When we see and know injustice. When we do not understand what is happening in the world, or with our neighbors.

Thanksgiving is a holiday filled not only with the joy of sharing, but also with contradiction and irony.

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Jesus didn’t give us dogma; he didn’t give us anything we had to believe. Rather, he gave us instructions for how to live an ethical life; a holy and whole life. He offered us a spirituality of actions and attributes: gratitude, yes... and love, compassion, forgiveness, kindness, a sense of faith in something. When these emotions arise unbidden, we are expressing our pure nature, our Christ Consciousness. In this way, the light within is not a metaphor, it’s an embodied spirituality.

It was our Indigenous compassion for the suffering of other human beings that led to what is today called Thanksgiving Day. After a brief interlude of 54 years of peace with the Pilgrims, the rest of the 500-year colonization process of the Indigenous peoples across the Americas included physical and cultural genocide, and were vicious, cruel, violent, and deliberately carried out to “kill the Indian and save the child.” This phrase refers to the process of completely assimilating Indigenous children so that no trace of the “Indian” was left. This was the purpose of the “Indian” boarding schools in both Canada and the United States.

Thanksgiving fits neatly into the “sacred feast” of the sort of the Hebrew Passover feast. Thanksgiving ties us to American history, family history, and religious devotion while denying actual history, especially as it relates to the relationship between Native Americans and the northern European invaders who stole their land and tried to extinguish their culture while killing off most of their population. Americans need to come to an honest awareness of our history, both the parts we can be proud of and the parts that call for confession and penance. The past does not have to be prelude. We can choose to help create a greater America.

Is it that time of year already? Thanksgiving is on the horizon, and Christmas is coming...how are you feeling? Overwhelmed? Resolute? Confused? Curious?

Expressing gratitude is a skill that all tiny little people must learn in order to develop into well-rounded human beings. Indeed, scientists insist that being grateful is a prerequisite of happiness. Happy humans it seems, are humans who embody gratitude. But there is more to gratitude than simply saying thank-you. I remember learning that gratitude includes more than simply expressing our thanks. It happened when I was about sixteen and actually noticed the beauty of a sunset and for the first time I realized that I was part of something so much bigger than myself.

The Christian writer G. K. Chesterton had the right idea when he said we need to get in the habit of "taking things with gratitude and not taking things for granted." Gratitude puts everything in a fresh perspective; it enables us to see the many blessings all around us. And the more ways we find to give thanks, the more things we find to be grateful for. Giving thanks takes practice, however. We get better at it over time. Gratitude is one of the key markers of the spiritual life we include in the Alphabet of Spiritual Literacy. It is essential if we are to read the sacred significance of our daily lives.

It might sound strange, but Muppets are necessary for me at this time in my life, because they remind me there is hope. You see, there are places in my mind and heart – doorways really – full of such sorrow that I do not want to enter. Yet these doors get blown open over and over again with each trauma, whether it is personal, national or global. Our relentless erosion of life, in all its forms, such as in Aleppo, Standing Rock, our President-elect, my own wounds – all point to this wearing away of life, and right now wearing away my ability to be hopeful.

***“Get woke” and “Stay woke” refers to being aware of what’s going on around you in regards to racism and social injustice issues. “Woke” is the past tense of “wake,” and it refers to waking up to what's going on around us.

As we gather to celebrate Thanksgiving this week in the USA we should not forget that our “well governed” nation has reason to be ashamed of our tolerance of poverty.