Soul Force

My Cup Runneth Over

Rev. Paul Sprecher

Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org

November 21, 2010

Readings

Psalm 23, King James Version

^KJV The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul;

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:

for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;

Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:

And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Pilgrim Winslow, Rev. Jane Rzepka, A Small Heaven

Apparently Pilgrim Edward Winslow wrote the only eye- witness description of the first Thanksgiving. In his brief letter to a friend in England, Winslow described the joy, the celebration, and the carousing that followed the harvest of 1621. That first to-do seems to have been like "Harvest Home" back in England: "cakes and ale and hang the cost."

Pilgrim Winslow makes no mention of thanks!

Uh-oh. We find out that the religious component of Thanksgiving, and even the act of giving thanks, are later additions. Isn't that the way?

At any given time, we're busy with our cakes and ale and turkey feathers. It's only later, looking back, that we understand the gravity of our harsh winters, the fragility of daily life, the preciousness of hopes for years to come. We get through it, we celebrate, and then, finally, the thanksgiving comes.

Sailor's Paraphrase of the 23rd Psalm

The Lord is my pilot, I shall not drift.

He lighteth me across the dark waters. He steereth me in the deep channels.

He keepeth my log.

He guideth me beneath stars of his holiness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I sail 'mid the thunders and tempest of life,

I shall dread no anger, for thou art with me;

Thy love and thy care, they shelter me.

Thou preparest a harbour for me in the homeland of eternity.

Thou anointest the waves with oil, My ship rideth calmly.

Surely sunlight and starlight shall favour me on the voyage I take,

And I will rest in the port of God forever.

Sermon

Julian of Norwich – St. Julian in the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran traditions – is considered one of the greatest English mystics. She was born in 1342 and lived through the height of the Black Plague, when as many as one-third of all people then alive in Europe were cut down by that great and terrible bringer of death. During her lifetime there were also peasant revolts, all of which were understood in the popular theology of the day as signs of God’s wrath, bringing punishment on the wicked.

Julian experienced a series of visions of the divine while she was an anchoress – a kind of hermit engaged in contemplative prayer and living in a cell attached to a church – visions which she later wrote down with her own commentary in her Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love some twenty years after she received them. This is believed to be the first book written by a woman in the English language. Here’s one account of her theology:

Although she lived in a time of turmoil, Julian's theology was optimistic, speaking of God's love in terms of joy and compassion as opposed to law and duty. For Julian, suffering was not a punishment that God inflicted, as was the common understanding. She believed that God loved and wanted to save everyone. Because she believed that behind the reality of hell is yet a greater mystery of God's love, she has also been referred to in modern times as a proto-universalist, though she herself never actually claimed more than hope that all might be saved….

Julian saw no wrath in God. She believed wrath only existed in humans, but that God forgives us for this. She writes, “For I saw no wrath except on man’s side, and He forgives that in us, for wrath is nothing else but a perversity and an opposition to peace and to love”….

Julian’s theology was [also] controversial in regard to her belief in God as mother. In her fourteenth revelation, she writes of the Trinity in domestic terms and compares Jesus to a mother who is wise, loving, and merciful….

The saying, "…All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well", which Julian claimed to be said to her by God, reflects this theology. It is also one of the most individually famous lines in all of Catholic theological writing, and certainly one of the most well-known phrases of the literature of her era.[i]

It was precisely in the midst of both personal suffering and great suffering and turmoil in the world around her that Julian experienced her visions of divine love and tender care and for which she gave her thanks, and learned that “all manner of things shall be well.”

Thanksgiving has long been associated with times of great hardship. We all know the story of the First Thanksgiving, though of course it has been embellished over many years into a wonderful opportunity for children to learn about those who first established themselves in this part of our country. As Jane Rzepka pointed our in our reading this morning, at least some of the Pilgrims who participated in this day we glorify as the origin of our day of feasting may not have regarded it as a religious feast of Thanksgiving at all. Some of the embellishment of the holiday has also unfortunately minimized the role of the Native Americans who were so central to the very survival of that half of the colony that remained at the end of the first year in their new land. The Pilgrim’s remaining fifty-three members constituted far fewer than the roughly ninety Native Americans who attended the feast, and it was of course the latter who provided the bulk of the food, not the hardy but desperately needy Puritans. The women who had come so far with so much loss to build their refuge from religious persecution could have learned some lessons from the women from the tribe of Wampanoag who were provided for them. The Puritan women dutifully stood behind the tables until their men had eaten their fill before they in turn would eat, as was their custom. The women of the tribe sat down and ate with their men, neither serving them nor waiting for them to finish.[ii] Like Julian of Norwich, the Pilgrim’s hearty thanksgiving came at a time of extraordinary suffering, a thanksgiving for their very survival.

It was Abraham Lincoln who firmly established our modern Thanksgiving as an annual occasion for thankfulness on a Thursday in late November. His declaration of a day of Thanksgiving in 1863 fell in a year of extraordinary losses on both sides of the Civil War, a year that saw the mass slaughter of so many at Gettysburg and Lincoln’s immortal address on the field of battle which became their burial ground. I was also a year of hope, a year that began with Lincoln’s epochal Emancipation Proclamation, the means by which slavery was at last abolished for the bulk of African Americans, all of those then living in states still in rebellion. Despite the enormous losses of that year, Lincoln could still write this in his Thanksgiving proclamation:

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, … peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict….

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.[iii]

Again, it was in great and almost overwhelming hardship that a time was declared for giving thanks, for remembering blessings even in the midst of sorrow and strife.

Our modern focus on Thanksgiving as a day of excessive indulgence just before the onslaught of the frenzy of shopping for Christmas can perhaps be traced to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision, prompted in part by the founder of Macy’s department store, to move the holiday to one week before the last Thursday of the month in order to provide an opportunity for an extra week of Christmas shopping, thus hoping to stimulate the economy and continue the recovery from the Great Depression.

How easily we can forget the extraordinary challenges and reversals that have nevertheless called forth a spirit of true thanksgiving at this season. How easily we take our prosperity and bounty for granted, forgetting that it is precisely in the midst of adversity that we can remember and celebrate what truly matters – the love surrounding us if only we would respond to it, the glories of this earth which is given us to enjoy and to care for, our very lives which we have been given for this brief but precious span of years.

Forrest Church offers this mantra by which he was able to walk through the valley of the shadow of his own death without fearing evil:

Be who you are;

Want what you have;

Do what you can.

By giving thanks for all we have and all we are – in bad times and good, in despair and hope, in poverty and prosperity – we can truly give thanks for the fullness of our lives rather than its limitations. So it is that we share, helping today to pack bounty for those in our own community who lack food this holiday season, and helping all this season to seek justice and plenty for those who suffer from loss and oppression by welcoming them as guests at our own tables.

Meg Barnhouse, currently serving as interim minister to our Unitarian Universalist congregation in Princeton, New Jersey, was deeply touched if perplexed by Julian of Norwich’s ability to say that “all will be well” in the midst of such sorrow and suffering. Her song of that title expresses well our theme for this morning. She imagines a dialog with Julian in which she holds up all the suffering we can at times undergo, saying:

"Julian, do you not know, do you not know about sorrow? Do you not know about pain? Do you not know about hunger? Do you not know, do you not know about shame?"

And "Julian, do you not know, do you not know about loneliness? Do you not know about disease? Do you not know about cruelty?" I said, “Julian, it's too much. It brought me to my knees."

She said, "No one does not know, does not know about sorrow; and does not know about pain. No one does not know about hunger and no one does not know about shame."

She said, "No one does not know, does not know about loneliness and no one does not know about disease. No one does not know about cruelty. I know, it's too much. It brought me to my knees, where I heard:

'All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well.'”[iv]

It is in the midst of adversity that we learn to trust, that we find faith, that we can truly give thanks. This Thanksgiving, try find yourself in that true ground of giving thanks, and in remembering that place, find your self where you can truly say, despite any despair, “I give thanks, for all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”

As Forrest Church reminds us “By wanting what we have, doing what we can, and being who we are, our cup will be forever half full, not half empty. Do these same things with reverence, humbled by awe, and our cup runneth over.”[v]

May it be so, and Amen.