I don't take a lot of risks, to be totally honest with you. Like a lot of folks, I suppose, I much prefer to be in the "safe zone", where people affirm me and say how wonderful they think I am. So, putting this out there is just a little scary.
One of the hardest things for me to do year-in and year-out is preach on those annual holidays, like Thanksgiving, or Mother's / Father's Day, or Fourth of July, etc. In fact, one year I decided I wasn't going to preach on Mother's Day. About 2 weeks later during the greeting time of the service, one of our great grandmothers (not here, at a different church) said to me in a stern tone, "I missed your Mother's Day sermon." Thinking she meant she was disappointed to have been elsewhere that Sunday, I thought back quickly to two weeks prior and recalled that I hadn't preached a Mother's Day sermon that Sunday. "That's what I mean!" she said tersely. Gee whiz - and during the greeting time, two weeks later!
But Thanksgiving is coming, and therefore, the Sunday-before-Thanksgiving is coming even sooner! And I figure I better have something to say about it - lest I hear otherwise. But I find it increasingly difficult to preach on Thanksgiving without this pesky thought running around in my head: I don't think Native Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. European Americans do, but I don't think Native Americans do, at least not in the same way.
I don't mean to rain on the Thanksgiving Day Parade, but I would think that Native Americans with a sense of their heritage would lament the oft dishonest and brutal chain of events that led to the establishment of "independent sovereign Indian nations" within the boarders of the truly independent and sovereign nation of the United States of America. Don't mistake me for an ungrateful, whining, unpatriotic American citizen driven to "biting the hand that feeds me" through criticism of the systems that contribute to the lifestyle I enjoy. I am deeply grateful for the life I have - and to those who have sacrificed so much that I may have it. I just feel increasingly guilty that it has come at the expense of the freedom and lives of others, others who were here on this land long before my ancestors. And therein lies the rub.
So, as I am approaching this coming Sunday, I'm struggling with what to say. I want to say uplifting, positive, inspiring kinds of things that people will take with them to their Thanksgiving tables later in the week, but I also can't stand the thought of saying a bunch of predictable stuff about freedom, feasts, and abundance in a land of plenty blessed by the hand of God with this "existential angst" lurking behind it all. Then, it occurred to me (just this morning as I was praying about all this actually), "What if Thanksgiving this year focused on the gift of reconciliation or healing, instead of the common, predictable themes?" Not a guilt-laden attempt to atone for generations of abuse and mistreatment on the part of European settlers and governments who laid claim to the lands of the Western hemisphere (remember, there were others in on this, too), but rather, an honest, heartfelt recognition that our ancestors could have done things in ways that reflected more favorably on their Judeo-Christian heritage, combined with some sort of validation of the peoples who inhabited these lands so long ago and their values and lifestyles. Call me naive, but I think we all could experience an element of healing in this.
Our Bishop, Elaine Stanovsky, has done some very good work reaching out to various Native American leaders with the 150th annual remembrance of the Sand Creek Massacre coming up next November (2014). I would love for Ft. Collins First United Methodist Church to be meaningfully engaged in what takes place next year between these native peoples and representatives of United Methodism in the area. But I don't think I can wait until then to lift up the possibility that healing - in so many of our relationships - may have as central a place in our Thanksgiving feasts and festivities as the stuffed turkey on the table.
I don't know. You think people are going to be mad at me?
See you in Church (I hope),
Steve
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