THANKSGIVING DAY
A pilgrim’s hat, a turkey and the bust of an Indian. These are the items our son brought home from his preschool class this week. These treasures have been in the making for a week or so now, in preparation for this day. They were made, of course, to help the children of his class learn something about this history of this American holiday.
And these symbols do tell us that our American Thanksgiving is a unique celebration. But we have other symbols for this day.
Where else but in Amerca could we find as great a percentage of the population able to gather in families around butterball birds and all the caloric extras, to be topped off with two alka-seltzer?
Where else but in America could we push away from the dinner table to the easy chair in six short steps to watch not one, but two pro football games plus a college game. All that in one day!
Thanksgiving Day in the U. S. of A. is an American kind of holiday. It celebrates the earliest beginning of what we know as American life. It captures a religious spirit of the pilgrim settlers. We celebrate American style, as a symbol of our affluence, a symbol of our hero-worship, a symbol of the fact we have some problems with American family life.
Thanksgiving, American-style, does, of course, carry a religious note. It began with the colonial pilgrims on a religious note, and that part of it has managed to squeeze through the trappings and keep its head up all these 300-plus years.
It has long been a part of the American religious tradition that we teach it is good to give thanks for all your blessings, to bow your head like those early colonialists and say thank-you to God for food and shelter and clothing and protection and parents and children and all the things you consider important.
We have learned it in school. Presidents have given the whole idea their blessing. The astronauts do it. Saying thank-you to God is a good thing, we are told.
We are especially encouraged on this day to give thanks for being able to live in a democratic republic, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, under the red, white and blue, to give thanks for the blessings of freedom. And as Christians begin reciting the good gifts, it becomes natural to climax our thanksgiving with a rousing rendition of God Bless America. Well ... uhh.
It isn’t a question of whether we want his blessing. It’s a matter of trying to be true to our commitment to Jesus the Christ and true simultaneously to our role as citizens.
On this Thanksgiving Day, no one really knows for sure just what to do with our America. The dirtiest trick you can play on anyone is to get him to be the crystal ball-gazer who is willing to predict what he sees America doing and where he sees America going in the next few years.
Remembering that our country is actually a young nation, we are going through some severe growing pains. It is difficult for a Christian to always know where he’s at and when he is part of the pain.
There’s a whole swirl of voices roaring around us. If you sing God Bless America you’re a super-patriot. If you don’t sing it loud enough, you’re a pinko. If you criticize too much, you are suspect and possibly the target for a hard-hat. If you seem to enjoy life too much, you’re not aware, you’re not awake, not with it. If you say too many negative things, take your choice, love it or leave it. If you aren’t willing to carry a four-letter word on your protest sign, you’re soft, copping out, not cool. If you voted for Nixon, you’re against bussing which means you’re against blacks. If you voted for McGovern, you want to sink the whole ship.
We celebrate Thanksgiving against this cacaphony of conflicting noises. We ask: "What’s wrong with America? What’s right with America? What should I as Christian be thankful for in America? What should I be praying for when I ask God to bless America? What should I be thinking when we sing ‘God bless our native land, firm may she ever stand’?"
Firm in what way? Firm as the leader in military hardware? Firm as the #1 country capable of destroying anyone who dares to shoot first and dares to shoot back? Firm as the grossest producer of the gross national product? Firm in her stand for justice and equality for all the people on paper but for all the people except some who are red and some who are white and some who are poor and some who are black and some who are Polish and some who are Jewish?
There are many half-truths in the voices we hear clashing in our ears. But there is also the whole truth that our America is not yet the place we want it to be. That’s why we as Christian citizens on Thanksgiving Day cannot simply and blindly mumble a word of thank-you for the blessings of being American and why Christians cannot just sing God Bless America without stopping to ask what it means to be a Christian American.
Being committed to Jesus the Christ gives our citizenship an extra and important dimension. The Christian faith embraces the whole globe. We are first of all citizens of the world community and secondly citizens of our particular country.
Through Christ, God makes us concerned not only with the body count on our side of a war but also with the bodies and families of those who suffer and die on the other side. Through Christ, God makes us concerned not only with our America forging ahead and staying ahead but also with how we get ahead and who is being hurt in the process.
Through Christ, God makes us sensitive and alert to human injustice and discrimination, even when that inequality is being practiced by what it is often labelled a Christian nation.
In other words Christians have an allegiance and loyalty that begins with Jesus the Christ who stands as the Lord and King, Savior and Friend, and Hope of the people of the world. That first-love will at times require a Christian to speak and act against certain policies in his country which he sees as militating against the will and Word of God, because they work against the welfare of His created people.
On the other hand Christians also have an obligation to support their own country when it attempts to provide a free opportunity and healthy atmosphere for its people.
God bless America! Well ... uhh ... Everything is not all wrong with America. Everything is not all right either. As we give thanks today, let us not do it blindly but with care, picking out those things that as the people of God in Christ, we can be grateful for. Let us ask God to bless our native land, not to make us #1 in every category, but to make us #1 in trying to practice what we say on paper. Amen.