It’s the week of Thanksgiving.  Personally my favorite food holiday because I am ALL about my Great Aunt Alice’s sausage Stuffing!  And the memories of spending the whole weekend with my cousins and eating as much as we wanted are happy ones.

In my household we celebrate Sweats-giving – where everyone gets new sweatpants and we all cook our favorite holiday dishes together, while listening to Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie.  Then that Sunday afternoon we get our Christmas tree.

But Thanksgiving is also a deeply problematic holiday.

I was taught as a child that the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and Indians helped them survive the winter by teaching them about native foods, like corn and squash.  Sometimes we made construction paper pilgrim hats and feathered headdresses.  Sometimes we made a construction paper cornucopia and filled it with paper fruits and veggies, to celebrate the “First Thanksgiving” when the settlers held a big dinner with the Wampanoag tribe to celebrate having survived the first year.  And we’ve been celebrating Thanksgiving in America ever since!

The problem is, none of that actually happened like that.

The Mayflower did land in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  And they did hold a 3 day feast in 1621 that was attended by members of the Wampanoag tribe, however the tribal members only attended because the settlers were having such a wild party that they were shooting guns in celebration and since Ousamequin, leader of the Wampanoag Tribe had agreed to a mutual-defense pact, they showed up to help defend the settlers.  Once this misunderstanding was cleared up the tribal members did stay for the feast, but they were not actually invited.

There were also several other Thanksgivings celebrated by various colonies, however, since they were primarily dour Puritains, they celebrated with 1-3 days of prayer and fasting, not a good meal.

In 1789 President Washington did declare Oct 3 a day of Thanksgiving and prayer for “giving the American people the opportunity to create a Constitution to preserve their hard won freedoms.” (Thanksgiving: From Local Harvests to National Holiday, Smithsonian Institution ) 

Most of the credit for our annual Thanksgiving feast goes to Sarah Josepha Hale, Editor of Ladies Magazine and Godey’s Lady’s Book, who campaigned for an annual Thanksgiving holiday in her magazines by publishing articles and holiday recipes, and in letters to politicians as a way of combating the divisions in the country by coming together to celebrate a day of peace and unity. 

(https://www.masshist.org/beehiveblog/2023/11/our-national-thanksgiving/ )

But is wasn’t until 1863, inspired by the Union victory at Gettysburg, that President Lincoln proclaimed that November 26th would be a national Thanksgiving Day, to be observed every year on the fourth Thursday of November.

So the Pilgrims didn’t invite the Wampanoag tribe, and the reason for the national holiday has a lot more to do with the United State’s ugly history of slavery and colonization than it does with gratitude. 

So for the rest of this sermon time, I want us to Center Native voices by engaging with the First Nations Version of Luke 1: 67 – 79.  

• Listen to how Native Americans name people.
• Listen to how Native Americans talk about God.
• Listen with ears that remember the genocide of Tribal children in Methodist run Indian Boarding schools.
• Listen with ears that remember broken treaties, missing women, and reservations that don’t have clean drinking water because our Federal Government is still breaking treaties.
• Listen, and read along if that helps you listen, for one word or phrase that stands out to you.  Just a word or a phrase, for now… we’ll move into some discussion later.

Luke 1:67-79 First Nations Version

67 Then, with a glad heart, Creator Will Remember (Zechariah) spoke these words the Holy Spirit was giving him to say.

68 “All blessings to the Great Spirit of the tribes of Wrestles with Creator (Israel)! For he has come to rescue his people from a great captivity.  69-70 Just as the prophets foretold long ago in the land of our ancestor Much Loved One (David), he has lifted up his coup stick to show his great power to help us,  71 to rescue us from the arrows of our enemies and all who look down upon us with hate.” 

He lifted trembling hands to the sky and cried out.

72-73 “He has given to us the same pity he has shown our ancestors and remembered the promise he made in the great peace treaty with Father of Many Nations (Abraham). 74-75 He has come to free us from the fear of our enemies, so we can walk all our days in his sacred and right ways.” 

Then he turned to his newborn son, and from deep in his spirit he spoke these words of blessing to him.

76 “And you, my son, will be a prophet from the One Above Us All. You will make a clear path for the coming of the Great Chief, 77 to show his people that he will heal our broken ways by cleansing us from our bad hearts and releasing us from our wrongdoings.  78 Because Creator is kind and gentle, he will come to us as the sunrise from above, 79 to shine on the ones who sit in darkness and in the land of death’s shadow, to guide our feet on the good path of peace.”

The First Nations Version is available at many fine booksellers, including Powell’s Books, so you don’t need to break your Amazon boycott to get your own copy of this beautiful transliteration of the New Testament.