Loading...Sermon November 15, 2015
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, LSW
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen, Newport, PA
Pentecost XXV, Proper 28, Track 2
Audio including presentation by Mary Price
And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:24-25
Please be seated.
Today we are observing Native American Heritage Month or American Indian Heritage Month. As a child I had great fears about people who were Indians. Much of TV was about the wild west, which was full of dangers like quicksand, no water, and Indian attacks. Then there was the train ride at Hersheypark. We went there every summer. During part of the train ride, Indians attacked the train. Luckily, the sheriff was on board and fought them off. And my father said we had ancestors who went to Kentucky with Daniel Boone, but were killed by the Native peoples there.
And yet, there were other messages I received. My father and brothers belonged to a youth organization called the Indian Guides. It was a program of the YMCA and originally founded in the late 1920s by two men, one who was from the Ojibway Nation. It was a father-son program based upon qualities of American Indian culture, including dignity, patience, endurance, spirituality, feeling for the earth and concern for the family. //www.ymcachattanooga.org/ymcachattanooga.org/families/adventure-guides-history
There was the Indian School in the nearby town of Carlisle where Jim Thorpe had attended. And in fifth grade when I studied Pennsylvania history, I couldn’t reconcile the contradiction that William Penn founded Pennsylvania, because I knew there were people living here already. Here is some of what I wrote:
“Long, long ago before America was found there lived people on the island of America. There [sic] name was Indians. The land that was there belonged to them until white people came….” And “The white people kept on taking land from the Indians. The Indians were moved away from the land. The government [sic] put them into reservations…. Now the Indians are put into reservations. Some of the reservations we can see. We can see and learn things that the Indians did.”
As a child it made no sense how you could discover something where people already existed.
When I was 14, my family went on a trip to my birthplace in Ft. Smith Arkansas. I was only six weeks old when we moved from there and my parents wanted to show me my birthplace. While in Ft. Smith, my parents decided we’d take a trip to Tahlequah, Oklahoma. This town was built in 1838 as the capital of the Cherokee Nation upon the Cherokee peoples’ forced removal from the east…a removal known as the Trail of Tears, because of all of the death and disease that occurred as a result. Yes, every time I examine a $20 bill, with the image of Andrew Jackson on it, I remember the Trail of Tears.
In Tahlequah I saw buildings of brick, much like the home I lived in. There were schools. It looked like any modern town. At the Cherokee Heritage Center, I saw that the houses I assumed the people lived in were really lived in during the early history of the Cherokee nation.
In Tahlequah, I also saw the play which told the story of the Trail of Tears. At Thanksgiving time when we studied “Indians” in school, I never heard of the Trail of Tears. I didn’t know any “real” Indians. I guess I assumed they’d been killed because they attacked the settlers. At 14, I never really thought about or totally knew what had happened to annihilate much of the sovereign nations that had inhabited this land.
Today, out readings point to the birthpangs of a new world. What happens before this world comes sounds very scary and yet, we can relate, can’t we? We see the wars and rumors of wars. We see how our human family does not live together in peace. We can hardly believe how violent we are towards each other… both the everyday, almost ordinary, violence we inflict upon each other, as well as the violence that captures us through our news each day.
Who really knows what a new world will look like as it emerges? I imagine it is a world where we finally live in peace with each other. I imagine it is a world where we finally do truly love each other. Our reading from Hebrews gives us a clue, I believe, about our part in birthing this new world and making it a reality: We are to consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.
Provoke one another?? What an interesting choice of words. When we provoke, we can stimulate or urge one another and we can also annoy one another and make each other angry. Provoking to love and good deeds is about taking action with each other, maybe to the point of being considered a pest…maybe to the point of angering each other.
We have some interesting hymns today that Native peoples’ sang in some of the most horrific acts of violence perpetrated upon them. I believe those actions are ways they were and are provoking those who oppressed them and provoking us of the dominant culture, to love and to good deeds.
For instance, we will sing one verse of Amazing Grace in Cherokee. This is a beloved hymn by all of us. And it was sung by the Cherokee people as they were forcibly removed from their homes in an act we call the Trail of Tears. Heavens, can you imagine if we were forcibly removed from our homes like that? Yet, the people sung a hymn to God… Amazing Grace… on that awful journey. They were provoking us to love.
As I was looking for a You Tube of our processional hymn, Many and Great, I discovered more about its history. It was written for the Dakota or Eastern Sioux people. During the 1850s, there were many treaty violations by the US Government, which created great hunger and hardship for the people. By 1862, the situation escalated into a war between the Dakota and the United States Government. By December 1862, most of the Dakota had surrendered and 1,000 were in prison, most of them awaiting execution. Then President, Abraham Lincoln, reduced the number to 38, still the largest execution in United States history. A special scaffold was built in order that the 38 could be executed simultaneously. As the men were led to the gallows and the noose and hoods were placed upon their heads, they sang this hymn…
Many and great, O God, are you works
Maker of earth and sky
Your hands have set the heavens with stars;
Your fingers spread the mountains and plains.
Lo, at your word the waters were formed;
Deep seas obey your voice.
Grant unto us communion with you,
O star-abiding One.
Come unto us and dwell with us;
With you are found the gifts of life.
Bless us with life that has no end,
Eternal life with you.
These men, these Christian men, even though experiencing great hardship at the hands of a supposedly Christian nation, knew God. They knew God deeply. They knew the love of God deeply and with their last breaths, they sang praise to God and yearned for the life eternal.
It’s that kind of faith… that deep faith in the midst of terrible sorrow and grief… that provokes us to love. That testimony urges us to look at our own faith. It urges us to look at our own lives. How loving are we? How are we following what Jesus taught us? What are the good deeds that come out of our faith?
These are the questions we must ask ourselves. Personally and together, how are we provoking one another to love and good deeds?
Amen
And now Mary Price will tell us some more about the native peoples of our area.
