Today we pick up the history of Israel with the birth of Samuel, who will be both the last judge and the one who anoints Israel’s first king, Saul, and then David after him. And yet the key player in this drama of national significance is a woman, Hannah, who when we first meet her appears to have slim chances for advancing to any such greatness.

Hannah, married to Elkanah, is childless, apparently unable to conceive. She is not Elkanah’s only wife – he is also married to Penninah, who has borne several sons and daughters, and who taunts Hannah for her inability to bear children. In a society where a woman’s value was bound up with her ability to bear children – and thereby confer upon the male “immortality” in the sense that he would live on through the offspring – Hannah’s barrenness was devastating to her. And so Hannah takes her case to God, praying that God will bless her with a child. Her prayers are answered – she bears a son, whom she names Samuel. And now she prays again…

I believe that one of the things that makes the Thanksgiving celebration resonate with us as it does is this sharing across cultural boundaries, this recognition of a common humanity, this coming together of people despite their differences. Essential to the American celebration of thanksgiving is something more than the joy of surviving through the perils of that first winter and the starving time to follow, and something more than the celebration of an abundant harvest – though each of these, on its own, certainly was an occasion worthy of giving thanks. But there is something more that is essential to the American celebration of Thanksgiving, and, I believe, of thanksgiving in general, and that something more is symbolized by Massasoit sending his warriors out to hunt for deer to bring to the feast, by the Pilgrims sharing of their precious harvest with the Native Americans who had taught them how to grow crops in this new land, and above all by these different peoples sitting down together with each peacefully and in concord.

Perhaps this is why I have found my enjoyment of the Thanksgiving holiday somewhat diminished over the past few years, ever since some of the Wampanoags and their allies have taken to protesting the Thanksgiving parade up in Plymouth. I know my initial reaction was somewhat along the lines of “Why are they trying to spoil something which is as American as pumpkin pie?”, and “Why are they trying to get in the way of Thanksgiving.” Was this political correctness run amok? I know I should have been able to just put these "antics" aside, and yet I found, strangely, that they were getting in the way of my enjoyment of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Today is Thanksgiving Sunday, a day on which we usually center ourselves in thanksgiving, getting our heads right about why we set aside a day each year for a national celebration of feasting and family and yes, even football. Today’s reading suggested by the Revised Common Lectionary, that three-year cycle of readings which the wider church encourages local pastors to wrestle with each Sunday, initially seemed a strange choice – we typically associate thanksgiving with the bounty of creation, harvest festivals, bringing in the sheaves and all that, none of which is present in this prayer by Hannah. And yet, as I dug into it deeper and deeper, this passage suggested a dimension to thanksgiving which my previous understandings lacked, and it moved me to a deeper appreciation for what really makes thanksgiving as full as it can be. And it has helped me see that what those protesters up in Plymouth were all about was restoring the fullness of meaning to the Thanksgiving holiday, not detracting from it, but setting it on firmer foundations. But before we get back to them, let’s see what Hannah’s song of thanksgiving has to teach us.

I think many of us can resonate with Hannah’s joy, a joy that leads her to sing a prayer of thanksgiving for the birth of her son. For many of those blessed by being able to bring a new child into this world (and let us not forget that there are many as well who have not, for whatever reason, had this experience) – for many of those blessed by being able to bring a new child into this world, the occasion is looked back on as one of the highlights of their life, a moment of wonder and joy and awe unequalled by anything before or since. I know I can remember the joy and amazement at the birth of all four of my children, and the gratitude that I was able to be present on each occasion, not confined to pacing a waiting room as was the custom for men of previous generations. And so of course I am not surprised that after years and years of inability to bear a child, Hannah rejoices when Samuel is born.

But if we look closer at Hannah’s song of joy and thanksgiving, we see that it is more than a song of personal thanks, more than a quiet lullaby to her little son. It is also a victory song for the Holy One of Israel, an anthem to the God who reverses the injustice which characterizes so much of the world as we know it, who breaks open a future of new life and new possibilities.

In the theological mind-set of the Old Testament, barrenness is a metaphor for the lack of a future, not only for Hannah, but for Israel. Hannah’s pregnancy, an amazing gift from God, is a gift not only to her, but to all of Israel, for Samuel will go on to be the man who helps Israel establish a monarchy; Samuel will be the one who will help Israel move from the period of the Judges, when the people only did what was right in their own eyes, to en era when they would be led by and accountable to something greater than themselves. Hannah sings a song of joy and of thanksgiving and of justice, for she recognizes that her God is a God who is committed to solidarity with the needy, who works to dismantle the earthly powers which oppress, monopolize, hoard, and dominate. Hannah’s song of joy and thanksgiving and justice has illuminated for me why I have found that those protestors up in Plymouth diminished my enjoyment of the Thanksgiving holiday. For if justice is a key component of thanksgiving, if the God to whom we offer up our thanks seeks not only abundance for us but also justice for all, then the chipping away of our beloved myth of the harmony of that first Thanksgiving must impact our enjoyment of it. We want to believe that these earliest European immigrants to this land were just and fair in all their ways with the Native American peoples living here, we want to paint that picture of harmony and concord, because we recognize, deep down, that without justice thanksgiving is a sham. So we cling tenaciously to the memory of the one day which may have represented the pinnacle of amity between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans, we cherish this high point of cooperation and compassion between these two differing peoples, perhaps in the unconscious hope that if we repeat it often enough it will in fact actually have been the case.

But in fact, as these Plymouth protestors draw to our attention, the harmony and the concord which may have marked that first Thanksgiving had shallow roots and failed to last. The colonization of New England by the Pilgrims and those who followed led to an insatiable desire to seize the land enjoyed by the Native Americans since time immemorial; conflict between these different peoples erupted into bloody war; as early as 1675 Plymouth began shipping Native Americans away as slaves, and by 1676 Plymouth formalized the process of removing potentially dangerous men by determining that no male over the age of 14 could reside in the colony.

So does this mean I cannot enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday? No, to the contrary, I have come to realize that far from shattering my enjoyment and appreciation of the Thanksgiving holiday, the realization that thanksgiving is bound up with justice enhances that apprehension. I can hold up our national celebration of that first Thanksgiving Day as an ideal to be emulated, as a moment when we, Pilgrim and Native American alike, were at our best, when justice and sharing and a sense of community that transcended historical and cultural differences were more than just words, they were reality. That we failed in the coming decades to live up to that ideal does not detract from it, does not invalidate it as ideal, only encourages us, in our time, to do better.

And the good news for us is that we know we can do better, because we have done so in the past, and because, as Hannah reminds us, we have a God who works for justice, who dismantles the powers which oppress, who promises us a better world.

Let us pray. O for a world, O God of liberation, justice and joy, where all your people might rejoice together, giving thanks for shared abundance, for justice unbound, for your reign of peace comes in its fullness. Amen.