Thanksgiving homily: V-formation for a broken world

Deuteronomy 26:1-11, from the propers for the Feast of Thanksgiving...

Although I didn't use a manuscript, I said something like this at our ecumenical Thanksgiving Ebe service 

The other day I was standing in my kitchen looking out the sliding glass door, back across two acres of land. There I watched a mismatched flock of geese take flight, a lead goose with three followers on one side, but only one goose on the other. They were struggling a bit. But then I saw two more geese coming up from behind, flying as fast as they could to catch up with the others. 

I thought back to my childhood living in central Wisconsin near Horicon Marsh. Every fall migrating geese stop at the marsh to rest and refuel for their long journey south. The sky is full of multiple V formations of geese in flight. Visiting the marsh when its full of migrating geese is amazing. Thanksgiving time always brings back this childhood memory of a sky full of honking geese flying in V formations. 

It turns out that many species of migrating birds fly in V formation, not just geese. And there is a reason that migrating birds fly in a V. Flying in a V creates a current that enables birds to fly further with less effort. This happens because of the V shape and because the birds synch the flapping of their wings to work together to create this current, which minimizes the downdraft along the back of birds further down the formation. However the lead bird takes on the primary effort of the group. Being the lead bird is exhausting. Scientists have wondered why any bird would take that lead position. Their research showed that any one bird is only lead for a period of time, which then buys them time to fall back in the formation, essentially resting while in flight and regaining energy. The birds share the lead bird position. The research showed that in an hour long flight birds switched the lead position about every minute, or 57 times. No one bird led for more than about one minute before moving back and another bird taking over the lead. 

As we gather tonight to celebrate the feast day of Thanksgiving, I’m thinking about how we are called to work together to lift up the body of Christ in the world, or at least in this part of the world, the SE corner of Michigan. We live in a unique community, with a long history of people who have migrated here from other places in the world. 

My ancestors came to this country in the 1800’s. They travelled west of here, settling in northern Utah. They built homes on land that had been the traditional home land of the Shoshone. The Shoshone were a large tribe of indigenous people from California, through Nevada, northern Utah, southern Idaho, and Wyoming. My ancestors took the land without any regard to their impact on the migratory patterns of the Shoshone as they moved north to south from summer to winter. They took the land without any regard to their impact on hunting. They took the land because they believed that God had entitled them to it. 

All across this great country, European settlers took land from indigenous people. And Thanksgiving is a story that tells us that the indigenous people shared with those early settlers, shared food and land so that all could thrive and survive.

Our reading tonight from Deuteronomy gives us the idea that God gives land to people, land for them to inhabit and own, land that they have the right to take. This idea of God-given land fueled my ancestors when they settled on land that was traditionally Shoshone. What my ancestors failed to remember, however, is the last line of this reading - the God given land was intended to be shared by all, not possessed by one group exclusively. That there were numerous massacres of native people who were eventually forced to live on reservations, on virtually useless land, tells the story of domination of one group over another, instead of a sharing of land and resources, which is what that Thanksgiving myth describes. 

In a similar way, we gathered here tonight are called by God to share in the leadership and work of bringing God’s hopes and desires to a divided and broken world. We do this by living together, sharing our resources, sharing leadership, sharing and supporting one another. We do this by caring for others and responding to the pain around us. We are not in competition with one another, we are not trying to prove that one is better or more entitled than the other. We are all beloved of God. And this is true not only for Christians, but for all people. Our diversity reveals to us something about the nature of God. I believe that God reveals God’s self in and through all of creation. We are called to see God in one another and to honor all creation as an expression of God’s imagination and God’s creativity. Seeing God in one another, working together as God’s beloved, working to bring wholeness and wellbeing into the world is the reason and the purpose of our existence. And for that we give thanks tonight.