My Troubled Thanksgiving

My Troubled Thanksgiving

“Thanks for the Lamb”

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            My heart is heavy while preparing for Thursday’s Thanksgiving celebrations. I will, like most Americans, on this Thanksgiving be eating turkey. But this year I will especially be thankful for the lamb. I will be praying, “Lord, thanks for the lamb.”

Photo of baby lamb used for non-commercial purposes only from Public Domain Photos

            I feel a burden this year because of the events of Ferguson. To quote a truth from Will Rogers with little humor intended I know only what I read and so I cannot comment directly on the events of Ferguson except to say that a lot of things I read and heard sounded only a little like what the Grand Jury heard. For many that will mean the things I have heard will be dismissed as discredited. For some it has the opposite meaning. For them it means that the Grand Jury faced a manipulation by the powers at be. The protests that became enflamed last night and spread to Oakland, New York City and other locations tell us two things. First it tells us that a sizable number of people believe the Grand Jury ended up a whitewash. Secondly and perhaps more importantly it tells us that Ferguson became representative of something bigger than just Ferguson.

            There are statistics that tell us that about 400 unarmed blacks die each year in altercations with law enforcement officials. The statistics are not maintained centrally, but are culled from localized jurisdictions. On average close to one unarmed black American dies each day in an altercation with law enforcement. Perhaps most of these shootings can be explained by the reality that a policeman often has the unenviable task of responding to perceived danger at a moment's notice. Nevertheless, the statistics describe a phenomenon that has aroused concern within the black community. Black parents often have talks with their male children, a facts of life talk regarding how police will respond to their blackness differently than they respond to a white kid. Whether this is the truth or just a partial sometimes truth, it is a perceived fear within the black community. In a situation like the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, there is present a mix of turbulent chemicals ready to ignite into a flame that engulfs and destroys. That in my mind is what happened at Ferguson. It was never only about Ferguson.

            An American thanksgiving is typically a national holiday more than a spiritual one. We have placed in it the story of the first shared meal between pilgrims and Native Americans. We tell a pleasant story of peace and diversity, and seldom dwell on how soon the European settlers in a new world began to expand across a continent determined to let nothing and no one stand in their way. We instead celebrate how America was founded on wonderful and glorious ideals. We often fail to remember how seldom it is that lofty ideals are fully embodied in flawed human beings. We imagine instead that somehow even if each of us has fallen short of the glory of God, surely our nation with its lofty ideals has somehow become a shining city set on the hill.

            At this thanksgiving I will remember we Americans compose a nation established around lofty ideals. But I will accept as true also that we share with all the nations and individuals of humanity a sharing in the power of corruption and self-delusion so common to mankind. We are prone to imagine that because we have lofty ideals we have risen to the pinnacle of human achievement but the reality is that our actuality is less accomplished than that to which our ideals aspire. I remember at this time the example of Thomas Jefferson; a man who wrote eloquently of the ideals of liberty and freedom and acted crassly in respect to slavery. He sometimes spoke against the evils of slavery. But he was a practical man whose plantation depended on slaves, and a poor financial manager who needed to sell off slaves he owned to keep his finances in order. He found that slaves could be like a crop offered for sale to those wanting slaves for their lands. He described to a friend how this method of using slaves would keep his farm profitable in difficult times. In some ways Jefferson was one of the most idealistic founders of our founding fathers, but he fell far short of his lofty principles. That is the problem I fear few of us, especially those of us who are white and conservative have ever taken seriously enough. We have imagined our land to be mostly in accord with the lofty principles we enshrine and hold the world accountable for maintaining. We have imagined ourselves an exception to the ills of a lesser humanity. We have not taken seriously that we Americans are also flawed people. We have lofty ideals that we wear as fine suits but so often our lofty ideals are a covering of our nakedness rather than our own transformed lives that embody the ideals we espouse. We may describe ourselves as hypocrites, or accept how we have fallen alongside those who have succumbed to humanity's common failings.

 

Jefferson: because our practices seldom match our ideals

 

            This Thanksgiving I am praying: “Lord, have mercy upon the people of our land, show us each our hurtful ways and mend us that we might become instruments of your reconciliation.” I am thankful for the Lamb of God which an artist pictured in a church long ago in the Belgian city of Ghent.

This is the Lamb for which I am thankful, which takes away the sins of the world

 

            I want more than simply to be forgiven. I want to be mended and taught on this lowly earth to repent. I thus remember this poem written by John Donne (1572-1631):

At the round earth’s imagin’d corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scatter’d bodies go:
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God and never taste death’s woe.

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For if above all these my sins abound,
‘Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there; here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good
As if thou’ hadst seal’d my pardon with thy blood.