“Grace and Gratitude”
A Sermon Preached by the
Rev. Jean Niven Lenk
Thanksgiving/Pledge Sunday, November 20, 2011
First Congregational Church of Stoughton, United Church of Christ
Exodus 15:1-2
This coming week, we celebrate the time-honored traditions and predictable events that surround Thanksgiving.
We know that this is, by far, the busiest travel period of the year as people board planes, trains and automobiles to be with their loved ones for the holiday.
We know that Thursday morning, long-standing high school rivalries will be played out on the football field.
We know that on “Black Friday,” retail stores will be opening at ungodly hours to kick off the Christmas shopping season.
We know that a week from tomorrow, “Cyber Monday,” will be the biggest online shopping day of the year.
And we know that, sometime during this coming week, we will hear again the origins of this most American of holidays.
How in 1620 the Pilgrims, fleeing religious persecution, arrived at Plymouth aboard the Mayflower from England by way of Holland.
How that first winter was long and harsh, claiming many lives.
How an English-speaking native named Squanto taught them how to plant the corn and use fish as fertilizer.
How, in gratitude for their blessings, the Pilgrims sat down to a feast with the Indians to give thanks to God.
And how the Pilgrims saw their flight to religious freedom in a new land as an echoing of the biblical story of the ancient Hebrews’ exodus from Egyptian bondage.
Are you surprised by that last statement -- that the most secular of American holidays has been connected to the pre-eminent story of the Old Testament? It’s true -- while the person we associate with Thanksgiving is Governor William Bradford, it is the fingerprints of Moses that are all over our Butterball turkeys.
The story of Pharaoh oppressing the Hebrew people resonated with the Pilgrims. Their pastor, John Robinson, described them as the chosen people, casting off the yoke of their pharaoh, King James. In escaping religious persecution in the old world for religious freedom in a new one, they too had to cross a tumultuous sea, arrive in an untested wilderness, and create a new “Promised Land.”
But the similarities don’t stop there.
In the verses from this morning’s scripture lesson from Exodus, after Moses and the Hebrew people escaped from the Egyptians and were safely on the opposite shore of the Red Sea, they broke into a song of praise and thanksgiving to God: “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the Lord is my strength and my might… I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him…” Moses and the ancient Hebrews knew that it was God who had led them safely out of Egyptian bondage, and it was to God that they directed their thanksgiving. The grace of God inspired their gratitude.
Similarly, when the Pilgrims got to Cape Cod, the first thing they did was to get down on their knees and thank God for safely bringing them across their own Red Sea. They knew it was God who had guided and accompanied them on the escape from religious persecution and across the Atlantic to Plymouth. And it was to God that they directed their thankfulness. The grace of God inspired their gratitude.
And they did not stop giving thanks to God.
That first winter in Plymouth almost destroyed their colony; only 50 of the original 103 lived through it, and the survivors were weak and sickly. But with Squanto’s help, and the grace of God, they survived. And so they paused for a feast to express their gratitude to the Indians who saved them, and to the God, from whom they knew all their blessings flowed. Grace and gratitude.
As we enter Thanksgiving Week 2011, many of us can draw inspiration and hope from both the Exodus and Pilgrim stories. Are you facing hardship as you endure a winter of your soul? Do you feel weak and powerless in the face of formidable foes and dominant forces? Are you crossing a tumultuous sea in your life? This year, it may be difficult for some of us to get our hearts and minds into an attitude of gratitude.
If that is the case, then listen to William Bradford’s description[i] of the Pilgrim’s enduring courage and faith in the face of overwhelming hardship: “… all great and honorable action are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courage. It was granted the dangers were great, but not desperate; the difficulties were many, but not invincible. For though there were many of them likely, yet they were not certain; it might be sundry of the things feared might never befall; others by provident care and the use of good means, might in a great measure be prevented; and all of them, through the help of God, by fortitude and patience, might either be born, or overcome.”
Moses and the Israelites knew it when they landed on the opposite shore of the Red Sea. The Pilgrims knew it when they arrived in Plymouth harbor. Ours is a gracious God who will see us through the difficulties and challenges of life, out of the grip of that which binds and constricts us, across the rough seas of life, to new beginnings, a new world, a promised land. That’s the grace of God. In response, let us offer to God our gratitude. Amen.
