Gifts Received, Land Stolen
Deuteronomy 16:1-11
Deuteronomy 16:1-11 (NRSV):
1 “When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess and you possess it and settle in it, 2 you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3 You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, ‘Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.’ 4 When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, 5 you shall make this response before the Lord your God: ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6 When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, 7 we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8 The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9 and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’ You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. 11 Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.
I think this text is fitting for today, with Thanksgiving approaching. Gifts from God, abundant harvest, sharing a meal with others, celebrating a bounty. These all seem like good things. But this land God gave them…was there anybody on this land? Is God giving them a gift God stole from others? Is Thanksgiving a holiday for celebrating the gifts we’ve received or the possessions we’ve taken?
I’m not here to pick on an ancient Jewish community, especially since there’s something happening here that transcends one historical group. People in and closer to our time, have found in this ancient saga a narrative that has energized colonialist efforts and land theft, from which people still suffer.
If I asked: what are you grateful for? What comes to mind? Maybe…people, places, experiences, possessions, abilities? Now if I said, only name things you are grateful for that don’t come at the expense of others. Things that don’t include, as part of their origin story, some degree of suffering for others, or that don’t reflect your privilege. That dinner? Who was overworked, or underpaid, so that you could eat it? Your children? Nice for you, but who didn’t get the medical care they needed, that your kid did? That hiking trail you love? You mean the one on stolen land?
I don’t mean to ruin your day, but I think we can handle these uncomfortable questions.
The solution is not to not be grateful, or to just have nothing, or to feel horrible about yourself. But maybe to consider, as you count your blessings, the story of those blessings. And maybe consider better language than “blessings”? For me, a “blessing” implies that God gave you something God didn’t give others–which might be fine if we’re talking about eye color but less fine if we’re talking about, say, financial security. I know “blessed” could just mean “I’m lucky” or “I have good things that I did not create or earn” or “I look at my life and feel really happy!” I guess “blessed” is just a problematic word for me, even if people mean well when they use it. Case in point…
“When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you…”
It’s texts like this that have formed the Biblical underpinnings of colonization, of the Doctrine of Discovery, of Manifest Destiny, even Christian nationalism–all ideas that speak to white European and American expansion, in the name of God, justified by the belief that they, too, had the freedom, the right, the divine command, to take over lands, cultures, and people. This…and I’m speaking not of ancient peoples but of my more recent ancestors and contemporaries…this is blasphemy. Blasphemy is using the name of God to get what you want, no matter the consequences. “We’re not taking the land, we’re…accepting a gift God has given us! Yeah, that’s the ticket!” I’m sure God loves being used in this way by self-serving and violent people.
Simon Joseph, a UCLA theology professor, writes: “Manifest destiny…was a religious mandate and justification for American dominance. Opportunism and an infectious naivete imagined inexhaustible Eden-like resources as God’s gift to the American experiment. However, this myth…was also used to legitimate Indigenous displacement, racial oppression, and religious triumphalism. It obscured the crimes of slavery and colonialism that betrayed the very ideals of liberty, equality, and justice upon which the new nation was founded. There is a bitter irony that a nation founded on the ideal of religious freedom came to actively deny that very same freedom to its Indigenous nations.”*
* https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/the-bible-and-manifest-destiny/
Manifest Destiny is related to the Calvinist doctrine of election, the belief that God chooses some for salvation and some for damnation. The Calvinist God is super high control. And being a colonizer, an enslaver, a Christian nationalist…is all about control. Why does it seem like people often turn the worst parts of themselves into their gods?
Kaitlin Curtice, a Christian and citizen of the Potawatami Nation, in her book Native, laments: “Perhaps human nature has always been to take from, dominate, and erase others. Perhaps that is something we cannot escape.”*
*Kaitlin B. Curtice, Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God, 141.
But while this scripture might energize colonialist efforts, is that all this text is about?
“‘When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt…he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
Faith traditions tell all kinds of stories.* Consider Christianity. We’ve got parables that teach us and call into question people’s default behaviors and attitudes. We’ve got action stories that teach us something about what matters or how to be, like the story of Jonah or Ruth or Peter and Cornelius. We’ve got myths, like the creation myth in Genesis–myth, not in the sense of “falsehood” but in a literary sense, a story that sets up a world. And we’ve got sagas, stories that kind of give people an identity, not just then, but now, as we take them to heart. And what we take to heart says a lot about us.
*See Terrence Tilley, Faith: What It Is and Isn’t for a good overview of faith stories.
So for example, white settlers have found meaning in the story of conquest, in the divine mandate to claim the land as their own. But many communities, like Black Americans and enslaved peoples, have found power in what comes before this, the Exodus saga, which forms the basis of liberation theology, a theology that takes many forms but is ultimately about God’s commitment to the oppressed and their ultimate liberation.
What comes before this entrance into this land, is the experience of enslavement, harsh treatment, forced labor, people crying out to be delivered from their affliction, toil, and oppression. The experience of being rescued, set free, and now given an opportunity to set up roots and create community in a place where they will be safe and thrive.
You can see how this might be part of a good story of liberation and care, given what came before. You can also see, looking more to the present, how “hurt people hurt people” or how, say, people left Britain in the name of freedom only to become conqueror and enslaver. I won’t diagnose these ancient people, because I don’t read these as historically precise stories but as sagas that shape identity and action. I’m concerned about the stories we focus on and how people repeat the harms of the past.
One more thing stands out: “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you.” This isn’t true harmony or pluralism, because one group is still centered, or privileged, I think. But is it closer? Is this a vision of the beloved community? Including Levites, insiders with limited privilege, no land allotment, their reward being their service to God (Deut 14:29)? And including aliens, outsiders, who actually might be those indigenous to that land, but since it’s “our” land now, they’re the aliens.
The lore of American thanksgiving is about settlers and indigenous people eating together right? However, it’s not clear that such lore, even if it captures an idyllic moment in time, accurately represents the relationship between indigenous folks and settlers, given the violence, dispossession, and violation of treaties that followed. Almost 250 years later, according to the Potawatomi Nation website, the Thanksgiving holiday was instituted, during the Civil War, as propaganda to essentially say “no hard feelings” to indigenous folks after mass executions and war against the Dakota people.*
* https://www.potawatomi.org/blog/2020/11/25/the-true-dark-history-of-thanksgiving/
I’m not proposing we cancel Thanksgiving, but I am listening to those inviting us to decolonize it. Laura Tesch, a member of the Bad River Band of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) people, writes: “Beyond the settler myths taught in school lies everyone's responsibility to unlearn the revisionist stories that continue to be perpetuated and relearn, heal, and reconnect with the values of resilience, reciprocity, and respect for all living things.”*
* https://www.healthinharmony.org/news/reclaiming-thanksgiving
Is there a place for a kind of thanksgiving that goes beyond the gratitude of taking stock of what we have but that also leads toward justice and true harmony? Gratitude is not just a feeling, but a posture of curiosity we take toward the world, and a readiness to learn and relearn. Gratitude can connect us and reconnect us with others. Gratitude can facilitate resilience, allowing us to endure hard things, as we consider what good things we’re holding onto or trying to bring into being. Gratitude can lead to reciprocity and create cultures of giving and mutual aid. Gratitude can lead to respect for others, helping us see people in all their radiant beauty, all their goodness, the gift they are to the world.
What if a posture of gratitude rather than a mission of conquest had guided settlers? What if, to use an example both comical and tragic, the settlers, who unlike the natives, didn’t really bathe, for cultural reasons, and smelled awful to the natives, had accepted the good hygiene advice the natives gave them, which might have also limited the spread of diseases against which indigenous peoples had no immunity?* What if natives had been seen as a gift, rather than as threat or obstacle? Who in our world and life are we struggling to see as the gift they are?
* https://www.potawatomi.org/blog/2020/11/25/the-true-dark-history-of-thanksgiving/
Positively, maybe this passage from Deuteronomy reminds us that even things we feel like we’ve created or earned are enabled by others, because we are embedded in a web of life, and everything, including life itself, is a gift. Maybe this scripture can give hope to oppressed communities, like this enslaved ancient community, and all the disenfranchised since, that liberation and positive change are possible. Maybe this passage can remind us that God sees suffering and wants it to stop. Or that there are abundant resources on earth–not limitless, but abundant–if we let it be so.
Maybe it reminds us that our gratitude can be more than an individual experience but a communal practice, where we notice the good things we have, together. The alien, among us, might not have what they need, and since they are part of the “we” maybe we don’t say “thank you that we are safe” or “thank you that we are provided for” when the “we” is not safe, or provided for. Gratitude can be the spark of justice.
Mia Henry, a Black educator, speaks to the intersection of gratitude and justice. She writes: “Since showing appreciation is inherently about recognizing each other’s value, and doing so requires time, practicing gratitude moves us away from individualism and urgency (two realities of white supremacy culture) and toward creating the anti-oppressive, interdependent communities we want and deserve.”*
* https://miahenry.medium.com/8-ways-to-show-gratitude-in-our-justice-work-e94a2e36b44d
Robin Wall Kimmerer also speaks to the connection between gratitude and justice. Kimmerer, a citizen of the Potawatomi nation, a botanist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass–something of a favorite around here–writes that: “while expressing gratitude seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary idea. In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness, but the economy needs emptiness.”*
* Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, 111.
This scripture could inspire gratitude. But, it could also reinforce a sense of entitlement, that whatever I want can be mine, no matter the cost to human and non-human life. Or it could tell us that the world and its "infinite" resources are ours for the taking, extracting, and consuming. The land is flowing with milk and honey, after all! Unless we destroy that land, or hoard all the milk and honey, and then become possessive, violent, and destructive, if we fear our surplus of milk and honey are being taken from us.
I think there are a lot of valid ways to practice gratitude. My suggestion, at least for today, is that we focus not as much on the things–but on people. Who in your life needs to be celebrated? Who can you praise or thank today? Who has played some part in the story of how the things you have came to you? How are you happier or safer because of what someone else has done or is doing and who are those people?
Letting people know “you make a difference, I see you,” seems essential for a growing, deepening community and for people working together for some common goal.
In other words, think of gratitude not simply as an opportunity to privately say “thank you” to God or the universe, but as a practice that reveals our interconnectedness and directs our mind and heart toward others. How can I let my joy or relief guide me toward the people and the land to which I am indebted? Who can we thank, who can we celebrate? Including ourselves! There is a place for giving yourself a gold star, especially if that’s something you don’t do enough. And if celebrating yourself helps you recognize what you bring to the whole and share your fabulous self with others, then I think we’re finding the intersection of gratitude and justice, of thanksgiving and true harmony.
Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec, in her book Becoming Kin, writes that “being a settler or colonizer is not something you are, it is something you do. It describes your relationship to this land and the people in it….If you are going to stop being a settler and start being kin, that’s where we start. With what you do.” *
* Patty Krawec, Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimaging Our Future, 178-79.
We’ve got a lot to be grateful for. And we’ve got a lot of work to do. It seems that gratitude and justice are intertwined. That’s what I’m hearing from the voices of the colonized. I hope we can continue to find that connection point: how to grow in gratitude as we simultaneously grow peace and justice in the world.
Queries:
How can we simultaneously deepen our practice of gratitude and justice?
Who in my life or world am I celebrating today?
Whose gifts to my life or world have I overlooked?
What difference does gratitude make?
What is harmony, in practice?