Worship Preview 11.24.24 "Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving"

FIRST UNITED  METHODIST 

Note – to give our volunteers a break and time with their families, there will not be a Feeding Families in His Name meal served this Wednesday, November 27th. We hope you have a happy Thanksgiving and we’ll be back to serve you 0n Dec. 4th.  Looking ahead, there will also not be FFiHN meals available on Dec. 25th (Christmas Day) or Jan. 1st (New Year’s Day.)

This Sunday: 10:30am – Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving. Rev. Christopher Eshelman preaching. Scriptures: Joel 2:21-27and 1st Thessalonians 5:12-28

Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians ends with a series of exhortations to “respect those who labor among you… admonish the idlers, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.”

We’ve talked quite a bit lately about overcoming evil with good and living by the golden rule, treating others as we’d like to be treated. Growing to know our neighbors well enough to understand how they’d like to be treated. A large part of our national self-understanding revolves around the story of the 1st Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims, colonist emerging from a very hard, and deadly, first year celebrating a successful harvest and sharing a meal with friendly “Indians” who have helped make their survival possible. Their celebration lasted several days in November of 1621 and began the tradition we will celebrate next Thursday. We tend to downplay how the initial friendship between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people played out, or the way the Pilgrims search for their own religious freedom didn’t extend to others. Since that first Thanksgiving, the celebratory aspects grew and it is a time when we recognize, celebrate, and partake of the abundance we enjoy here in the United States. Families and friends gather around turkey, potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole and cranberry sauce. We watch the Lions and Cowboys host their traditional NFL games and we rush headlong into Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season. 

Some of us lament how the acquisition of new stuff seems to overshadow our intentional thankfulness for all we already have – and we tend to think it didn’t used to be like that. I find it striking that, in one of the Peanuts cartoons I will show this week, Lucy is telling Charlie Brown about her family’s post-Thanksgiving plans to go “downtown and see all the Christmas decorations.” Charlie Brown responds “you’re too late, they’re starting to put things up for Easter.” That strip first ran  on November 30th, 1962!

Schulz ran a number of other Thanksgiving themed strips over the years, culminating in the 3rd major animated TV special. While not as beloved as the 1965 Christmas special or the Great Pumpkin from 1966  -  the Peanut’s gang gathering for a feast depicted in 1973’s “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” is an annual tradition – and one that sometimes sparks some controversy. The reason has to do with a bold decision Schulz made and stuck by – and how that character became a part of the animated special. 

In 1968, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, a school teacher named Harriet Glickman to Schulz, asking him to create a Black character for his popular comic strip as a means of helping to narrow the racial divide. After they exchanged a few letters, Schulz was convinced and on July 31, 1968, Franklin debuted in the comic strip. Schulz’s first strip with Franklin simply shows him at the beach, finding and returning Charlie Brown’s beach ball – nothing is said about Franklin being black, he’s just one of the kids – it is simple and subtle. Over the next few days worth of cartoons, Franklin and Charlie Brown get to know each other, discover a shared love of baseball, and we learn that Franklin goes to school with Peppermint Patty and Marcie.

But much of America was still resisting integrated beaches and schools. The company that syndicated Peanuts to newspapers objected to the idea of Franklin. In response, Schulz reportedly delivered a very simple ultimatum: “Either you run it the way I drew it, or I quit.”

Schulz won – and he stuck by Franklin, making him a regular character, playing on Peppermint Patty’s ball team and being very much just one of the kids. However, Franklin doesn’t have a particular personality quirk, unlike most of the kids. He’s not the lovable loser (Charlie Brown), the crabby, bossy one (Lucy), the musical prodigy (Schroeder), or the constantly dirty Pigpen. So, writing a scene in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving in which Franklin's chair breaks provided him with moment in the spotlight. 

The action works onscreen if the gag is shown with a clear view – thus, the placement of Franklin – alone on one side of the table, opposite the other kids -  makes it easier to animate the gag, but there also winds up being an implied segregation. Is Franklin really included? The answer has a lot has to do with how the viewer approaches and interprets things, much like how we think about the First Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims and the soon to be devastated Wampanoag people.

Both stories and their myriad interpretations continue to play out in our society. Still we are called to “test everything and hold fast to what is good.” To consider how others view and experience things. Sunday, as we continue our Giving Thanks series, celebrate God’s promises, and prepare for the beginning of the Christian Year with Advent, we’ll give some thought to how we tell our stories, and how we see, hear, and tell the stories of others with kindness, compassion, humility, respect, and love. 

If you do not already have a church home or it time for a change, we hope you will join us to rejoice and give thanks, 10:30am each Sunday here at First United Methodist, 301 S. National, as we seek to find our path and share our journey!

Upcoming Events: 

Christmas on the Bricks and our 2nd Annual Nativity Showcase are coming the first weekend in December. Come by the church at 301 S. National to pick up a registration form and enter your favorite nativity set in our display – or just mark your calendar to come by and see nativities from all over the world. The dis5play will be open 5-8pm Friday, Dec. 6th, 10am -2pm on Saturday, Dec. 7th, and new this year, Noon to 2pm after our worship service on Sunday, Dec. 8th.