Giving thanks in perilous times

“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.” 

So began the proclamation establishing an annual day of national Thanksgiving. You might think you know the origins of these words, or you might be surprised to find out.

 It is true that the first thanksgiving feast on these shores was done by English settlers, the pilgrims. But they did it only once.

George Washington declared a day of Thanksgiving after the nation won its independence. But it was done only once and only in a few places.

Rather, the origins of an annual day of Thanksgiving came in a particularly horrific chapter of our nation’s history, and in a particularly awful month in that chapter.

 The date the proclamation was signed – Oct. 3, 1863 – was a bare three months after the Battle of Gettysburg, and a mere two weeks after another ferocious battle, at Chickamauga, Tennessee.

The idea for an annual observance of thanks came from Sarah Hale, a widow with five children who was penniless. She caught the attention of the President of the United States who agreed with her. Sarah Hale, by the way, went on to become an advocate for the education of girls and an famous author. You know her best as the author of “Mary had a little lamb.”

 In this, the darkest hours of our national existence, in midst of a terrible civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the proclamation she inspired implored the nation to count its blessings, and earnestly asked God to bind our wounds.

That our ancestors would pause to give thanks, in spite of everything they had experienced, was extraordinary. They set a selfless, generous for us. We too live in perilous times. With fires raging in Ferguson, with horrific violence in Iraq and Syria, with religious conflict in Israel-Palestine, and with the recent horrors that have come to light right here at the University of Virginia, it would be easy to slip into despair or slide into willful ignorance.

 We should do neither.

Instead, on this Thanksgiving, I believe it fitting and proper to once again pray for the healing of our nation and world; pray that violence will end everywhere; and pray that we will, with God’s grace, become instruments of healing, reconciliation and justice for all.

Like our ancestors, we must begin by giving thanks for our blessings: the food on our table tonight, the love of family and friends, and the work we are given to do that each of us might make a difference.

And so hear again this proclamation, from the pen of the great man who signed it:

“To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God…” 

 “No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they 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, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens, and I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, 

 “And 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.

 “In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.” 

Signed, Abraham Lincoln

Counting our blessings: The story of Thanksgiving

Here is my Thanksgiving Day sermon. May your table be full and may many blessings bring you peace and joy this day and forever.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have much to be thankful for today, beginning with all of you. Thank you for being here, for sharing with me in this journey of faith that brings us together here in this sacred place.

I have much to be thankful for today. For the love and companionship of Lori; for good health, a warm and comfortable home; food on the table; my family on the West Coast, and friends on both coasts and in between and all over the world.

All of us have much to be thankful for, beginning with this gift of life from God we share, this privilege to walk the earth with each other. I hope today you will pause, and as my grandmother used to say, count your blessings.

This day we call Thanksgiving is one of two secular holidays that are also sacred feast days in the Episcopal Church, the other being the Fourth of July.

You may not know the origins of Thanksgiving as an annual national holiday. Although the pilgrims took a day of thanks for their survival, that really is not the beginning of Thanksgiving as a national holiday.

Nor did it really begin with George Washington, who, it is true, declared a day of prayer and thanks for the nation having won its independence. President Washington’s declaration for Thanksgiving was observed in some places but not everywhere.

Thanksgiving as we know it began with Abraham Lincoln, who in 1863, in the midst of the worst calamity this nation has ever known, declared a national day of thanks that should be observed ever after on the fourth Thursday of November.

What is significant is that Lincoln declared Thanksgiving not in a time of national celebration, but in the midst of a terrible civil war that claimed more lives than all of our other wars combined.

Lincoln was urged to create this holiday by Sarah Hale, who was a single mother of five children, a widow and penniless. Sarah Hale urged Lincoln to declare a day of Thanksgiving hoping it might bring the nation a moment of healing.

By the way, Sarah Hale went on to become a champion for the education of girls, and a famous writer. You know her best as the author of “Mary had a Little Lamb.”

I think Lincoln knew what he was doing when he agreed with her by declaring a day of thanks: It is in those times when it looks bleakest that we are called to stop, to give thanks, to count our blessings. When we do, we might find our courage renewed, our spirit lifted, and we might see God walking next to us, holding us, embracing us, bringing us blessings, and lighting our path with hope.

Our nation is in one of those bleak times before the dawn. We remain engaged in two wars, with little prospect for peace in the coming year. The challenges abroad and here at home are large, indeed. Unemployment is the highest in a generation, and even if you have a job, I can safely bet everyone here knows someone who is out of a job or marginally employed.

Meanwhile, the government of our nation seems badly mired in the politics of fear and partisan polarization. We have a new president who is maneuvering with difficulty across the shoals of state. Whatever your politics, whatever your opinion on this issue or that, he deserves your fervent prayers.

And then pray for the world, and put feet to your prayers. Much of the world is in need of your compassion, in need of healing, in need of hope for a world not yet seen, and in need of action to make that hope real.

Today, let us begin by counting our blessings – all of our blessings, whatever they may be: in material wealth, or in talent and time, or in the love of family and friends. Let us count our blessings, and come to this table to share in the sacred bread and wine of our Holy Communion.

And then let us ask again how we can share our abundance, how we can make real the Lord’s Prayer “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
AMEN

A trip to Appomattox, a reminder of the consequences of war

Lori and I, and our house guest, Tony, took a road trip Friday. We were much in need of a day off, and realizing we have not done much to explore our new surroundings, we set out to rectify that situation.

Our tour guide for the day was Bill Bergen, a member of St. Paul's and an accomplished Civil War historian. We went to Appomattox Court House, the place where Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysess S. Grant in April 1865, drawing to a close the most lethal conflict in American history.

Bill described for us how Grant's army chased Lee's army westward, finally surrounding Lee at this obscure stage coach stop in the rolling piedmont of central Virginia. The final battle was sharp and short, and Lee gave up rather than face certain annihilation.

Grant and Lee met for 90 minutes in a small parlor inside a house in the town of Appomattox Court House. What they said is lost to history, but Grant offered a "parole" to the Confederate soldiers, allowing them to surrender their arms and flags on the promise they would fight no more, and then he let them go home.

Lee accepted, and the next day his army marched into town, unit-by-unit, stacking their guns and shrouding them with flags. It took seven hours to complete the disarmament of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.

The Appomattox Chamber of Commerce has long ago ballyhooed their town as the place "where the nation reunited," but it is really much more than that. The nation was reunited not as it had been before. Appomattox is where a terrible war ended, where slavery ended, and where Abraham Lincoln's vision triumphed "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Yet there is a sadness to this place. The sadness is in the graves of soldiers. The sadness is embedded in the historical markers that were attempts, long after the fact, to cast the war as a noble clash of noble principles. As Lincoln more aptly put it, "the prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully."

In fact, the war was a terrible miscalculation of Southern political leaders grossly underestimating their opponents, and a terrible miscalculation by Northern political leaders grossly underestimating the threat that they posed. The overheated political rhetoric of the time had real life consequences. Those who paid the price in blood were common soldiers and common people caught in the path of a horrific war through no fault of their own.

Here is the question for us: Can monuments like Appomattox better serve as reminders to us of the folly of resolving our differences by violence, either through arms or words? Can this terrible war long ago serve as a reminder to us that the overheated rhetoric of our own political conflicts has consequences? Can the ghosts in the soil of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Georgia, Missouri, the Carolinas, and across this great land remind us of the cost of a civil war and how we should pledge to never repeat it?

Postscript: My great-great grandfather, George W. Richardson, served in the Union Army in Memphis. He was the white chaplain to a black artillery regiment. He understood well the stakes of the war for his men and for the nation, and this is what he wrote in his journal about the end of the war:

About 4 o’clock in the afternoon of April 4th the news of the surrender of Lee and the fall of Richmond reached Memphis. The city was illuminated and guns were fired and there was wild joy among all the Union men. It meant that the hardships of the field were about at an end. It meant that the soldiers, after an honorable discharge, could return to their families, and to their peaceful occupations. It meant that the thousands of prisoners who had languished in military prisons or in prison pens would at once be liberated, and breathe the air of freedom once more. It meant that the principles for which our nation had contended for four years had at last triumphed, and that America would henceforth be “the land of the free and the home of the brave”. It meant that the four and a half million of men, women and children of African dessent [sic] would have a chance to become intelligent American citizens; and this class were very demonstrative in their joy.