Traveling in Place

Sarah Hale's Thanksgiving

You’ve heard about the Pilgrims and the Indians, you know about turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. You’re probably aware that Abraham Lincoln was the first to declare a national
Thanksgiving holiday. But you may never have heard of Sarah Josepha Hale, even though she, more than any single individual, is responsible for how we observe the traditional American thanksgiving.

Hale was a poet, novelist, and magazine editor who composed a collection of children’s rhymes including “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” She lived a long life in New Hampshire and loved writing about the glories of New England. She was proud of the New England tradition of fall thanksgiving observances that had their roots in early colonial history. In 1846, Hale began a very public campaign for a national observance of thanksgiving. Her pleas fell mostly on deaf ears in the nation’s capital until the Civil War, when President Lincoln was moved by her suggestion that a national Thanksgiving Day would serve as a call for unity. (This year marks the 150^th anniversary of Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day proclamation.)

So we have Hale to thank for our annual holiday. But, perhaps just as importantly, it was Hale’s version of “the first Thanksgiving” in 1621 that took hold in the American imagination. Since thanksgiving celebrations began in Massachusetts Bay colony as early as 1623, it is reasonable to assume that the tradition originated at Plymouth, but Hale was the first to make a direct connection between American thanksgiving observances and the story of the pilgrims and Indians sharing a meal at Plymouth. In fact, she was the first to use the term “pilgrim” to describe the English settlers. Her romanticized narrative even included the menu: turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie (all traditional New England dishes). Hale’s story, which entered school textbooks within five years after its publication in 1865, set the table for the American Thanksgiving dinner, but her description bore little resemblance to the first-hand account written by Edward Winslow, the “pilgrim” who chronicled the adventures of the religious separatists who settled Plymouth.

What Lincoln Really Meant

Four score and seventy years ago, a war-weary president delivered a brief but enduring speech at the dedication of the Soldiers National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Today, Martha and I are in Gettysburg to mark the 150^th anniversary of Lincoln’s immortal address. This morning, we attended a ceremony that included music by the U.S. Marine Band and remarks by several dignitaries, including two senators, a governor, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, and noted historian James McPherson. We witnessed the naturalization of sixteen new citizens of the U.S. who were given the oath of citizenship by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. We heard the Gettysburg Address recited by Jim Getty, a long-time Lincoln re-enactor whose voice is heard in National Park videos.

Among other excursions, we visited the David Wills house, where Lincoln stayed the night of November 18 and where he completed his remarks to be delivered the next day. David Wills was a young attorney appointed by Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin to oversee the establishment and dedication of the cemetery.

Plenty has been written about November 19, 1863, and how Lincoln’s speech was intended as little more than a rhetorical afterthought following Edward Everett’s keynote address, which lasted two hours and was well received. Lincoln was asked to make “a few appropriate remarks.” He delivered a total of ten sentences. Afterward, Everett, who had been one of Lincoln’s political opponents, congratulated the President by saying he hoped he “came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.”

This evening, I’m pondering Lincoln’s only departure from his prepared remarks.

Towards Desiring Only God

Today, a friend shared with me this prayer composed by Thomas Merton.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

There are seasons of life when God makes our way plain. But the longer I am alive, the more I understand that mature faith is continued trust in God when the way is not plain. Sometimes, all we have is our desire to serve, and we receive only enough direction to take one step at a time.

There is a conspiracy in our goal-oriented, success-driven culture to equate faith with clarity of purpose and direction. This effort twists Christianity into a “prosperity gospel” or a program of self-actualization. For many, the notion that faith and obscurity could ever go hand-in-hand is unacceptable, and Merton’s honest admission, “I have no idea where I am going,” sounds like failure. But genuine trust in God does not require a clear path. The Way, after all, is more than a road leading to a destination. It is not merely a means to an end. The Way is the Truth and the Life. Christ doesn’t show us the way; Christ is the Way. If the journey is the destination, then it is most fully experienced, not as a sprint to the finish line, but as a series of prayerful, reflective steps.

I well remember times when my life seemed to open up before me like a wide vista from the top of a bald mountain. I may yet experience such moments again, but I know that most of life is lived in the place where Merton offered his prayer. Even so, I cannot say that his prayer has truly become mine. His words do not constitute a plea but a confession. They express a quality of faith that has moved beyond the need for questions to be answered and problems to be solved. All other yearnings have been quelled by the one overarching desire to be with God. I’m not quite there yet, as much as I’d like to be.

I guess the best I can honestly confess is that I desire to desire only God, and I believe that desire pleases God.  

©2013 by J. Mark Lawson

The Open Table

Years ago when I was in seminary, a disheveled, disorganized, and mostly uninspiring professor of Old Testament made a comment during a seminar that has always stuck with me. “Ultimately,” he said, “the message of the Hebrew Bible is that there really is such a thing as a free lunch.”

Keep in mind he was talking about the Old Testament – not the New Testament that we associate with God’s grace and compassion and unconditional love, but the part of the Bible that is often (and unfairly) identified with God’s wrath and judgment. My professor pointed out to us in his dry but penetrating way that God kept giving and giving to Israel. In the Exodus, the Ten Commandments, the Promised Land, prophets, teachers, and countless signs of his presence, God continually lavished grace upon them. But they kept getting into trouble because they couldn’t accept the gift.

Of course, the Israelites are prototypes of God’s people in every age. Society hammers into us the cynical belief that there is no such thing as a free lunch; that anything worth having must be bought or earned. Hence, the offer of God’s grace is difficult to accept. It seems too good to be true.

But it is true. Yes, everything costs something. But a gift is paid for by the giver, not the recipient. In Christ, God paid the whole price for us. And God just keeps giving. God spreads a banquet for us and invites us to eat our fill. Yet, because we don’t believe that anything is free, we do not come to the table, leaving God to lament, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” (Isaiah 55:2)

Nothing is more central to the gospel than the invitation to God’s grace, symbolized most dramatically in the table that is at the center of our worship. I am grateful that I have served nearly two decades at a church whose table has always been open. We offer the signs of God’s grace to all who are willing to receive them, just as Jesus broke bread with the thousands who gathered on the hillside to hear him teach. I’m additionally grateful that, two years ago this week, we began the practice of celebrating communion at every Sabbath service (as well as most special services). Now, when I attend a church service at which communion is not offered, I leave feeling hungry, or at least not quite satisfied. Other members of our congregation have had the same experience, and when they come back to us, they make a point of telling me how grateful they are that we serve communion every week at both Sunday worship services.

Because it’s so hard to believe there is such a thing as a free lunch, it is paramount that we keep inviting people to God’s table, no strings attached. That’s why our table is open to all and open all the time.

©2013 by J. Mark Lawson