"Brad went to seminary at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. He wanted an ecumenical kind of school and at CDSP you could take courses with the Methodists, the Jesuits, every denomination. He loved going there and found Berkeley fascinating." (Carol Hall)
Thanksgiving Day is the only holiday I know of that has three equal faces: one historical, one secular and the third Scriptural. The historical side of this day, perhaps the most well-known of American holidays, is the Pilgrim face. There probably isn't a person in these United States of America who does not know the familiar and homey story about the early American Pilgrims who barely survived the first winter in their "new England" and then celebrated their first summer harvest with a feast which included their new neighbors, native American Indians. In the midst of a time of misery and struggles, they took time out to thank God for the blessings of freedom in a new world.
The whole idea of this kind of annual thanksgiving for freedom with gatherings for dinner somehow caught on in the American psyche and has been celebrated regularly ever since.
Indeed, it is one of the least controversial holidays in our calendar and crosses all racial and religious barriers with ease. In one form or another, nearly everyone in this country will sit down at home or at a restaurant, in prison or in an outreach mission, and eat dinner together as free Americans, remembering their history and Pilgrim ancestors, no matter what their racial or religious origins might be. And it may be the only time in the year that many people will hear a grace and give thanks to God before eating.
The secular side of Thanksgiving is the national holiday set aside by Congress as time away from work and business as usual. The first secular holiday was established by George Washington in 1789 after the adoption of the National Constitution. This was a controversial move and newspaper editorials complained that states should proclaim their own Thanksgiving holidays.
It wasn't until 1827 that Thanksgiving Day as we know it was proclaimed by Congress as the third Thursday of November for all states. The person who settled the issue was Sarah Hale who, along with writing convincing editorials to thirty states, also wrote the familiar poem, "Mary Had a Little Lamb." In 1943 Congress issued its final resolution that Thanksgiving Day would be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the new year.
I suppose the most familiar face of this second side of our holiday would be the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade which marches down the main street of New York City (as well as many other cities) to the delight of us all. We Americans do love our parades...which is another story.
The third side of our national Thanksgiving Day celebration reaches back well beyond the Pilgrim years and into our earliest religious roots some three thousand two hundred years ago. Its face is Scriptural and reflects God's word to His people to give thanks for the many blessings of our life.
This religious face is best captured in our reading from Deuteronomy. It represents a time in the history of the Hebrew nation very much like the time in history of our early American Pilgrims. After suffering and struggling in the desert for forty years to reach the Promised Land of Israel, they had finally made it to their home of milk and honey. And so they gathered together to celebrate, but even more important, to remember who gave them their freedom and their blessings. Hear again Moses' powerful words on what might have been the first international Thanksgiving Day:
"This entire commandment that I command you today you must diligently observe, so that you may live and increase, and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
"Therefore, keep the commandments of the Lord your God, by walking in His ways and by fearing Him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land He has given you." (Deuteronomy 1-3; 6-10)
What is unique about our national American Thanksgiving Day is that all three sides are focused on gatherings of people. The historical remembrance is celebrated around the Pilgrim dinner table, the secular side with parades and the third side of our holiday is most appropriately celebrated in worship as the people of God gather in churches and synagogues throughout this country to give God thanks. Though the least attended of the three faces of Thanksgiving, it is, our Scripture tells us, the bottom line. And isn't that the truth! Amen.
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