a multifaith thanksgiving service

The fol­low­ing text was pre­pared by the Mont­clair Cler­gy Asso­ci­a­tion (the com­mit­tee con­sist­ed of The Rev­erend Sharon Yunker Deatz (then of Cen­tral Pres­by­ter­ian Church), The Rev­erend Archie Har­graves (then of Trin­i­ty Pres­by­ter­ian Church), and Rab­bi Mark Hurvitz (then of Con­gre­ga­tion B’nai Keshet). and first used in Mont­clair, New Jer­sey in 1987. Rev­erend Har­graves died in 2003. Rev­erend Deatz is retired and lives in Lawrenceville, NJ.

The poems and read­ings come from Amer­i­can Civ­il Reli­gion. I have not tried to find copy­right infor­ma­tion, though attri­bu­tion is here, and I think they are in the pub­lic domain.

Dif­fer­ent mem­bers of the Cler­gy Asso­ci­a­tion and lay mem­bers of asso­ci­at­ed con­gre­ga­tions read/led dif­fer­ent read­ings. Text in Ital­ics is for the con­gre­ga­tion to read together.

Note that there are no speech­es or ser­mons. This pre­vents the ser­vice from being “hijacked” by any mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty with a par­tic­u­lar axe to grind.

We were dis­ap­point­ed not to have texts from any Native Amer­i­can or East Asian com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sent­ed. There is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the ser­vice becom­ing too long, but it seemed to work for the com­mu­ni­ty at the time.

Gathering Song

Come, Ye Thankful People, Come

by Hen­ry Alford and George J. Elvey

Come, ye thank­ful peo­ple come,
Raise the song of har­vest home:
All is safe­ly gath­ered in,
Ere the win­ter storms begin.
God, our Mak­er, doth pro­vide
For our wants to be sup­plied:
Come to God’s own tem­ple, come,
Raise the song of har­vest home.

All the world is God’s own field,
Fruit unto God’s praise to yield:
Wheat and tares togeth­er sown,
Unto joy or sor­row grown.
First the blade, and then the ear,
Then the full corn shall appear:
Lord of har­vest, grant that we
Whole­some grain and pure may be.

For the Lord our God shall come,
And shall take this har­vest home:
From God’s field shall in that day
All offens­es purge away;
Give God’s angels charge at last
In the fire the tares to cast,
But the fruit­ful ears to store
In God’s gar­ner evermore.

Even so, Lord, quick­ly come
To Thy final har­vest home:
Gath­er Thou Thy peo­ple in,
Free from sor­row, free from sin;
There, for­ev­er puri­fied,
In Thy pres­ence to abide:
Come with all Thine angels, come,
Raise the glo­ri­ous har­vest home.

Reading from Psalm 92: 2–6, 13–16

It is good to give thanks to the Eternal,

And to sing prais­es to Your name, O Most High;

To declare Your lov­ingkind­ness in the morning,

And Your faith­ful­ness in the night seasons,

With an instru­ment of ten strings and with the psaltery;

With a solemn sound upon the harp.

For You, O God, have made me glad through Your work;

I will exult in the works of Your hands.

How great are Your works, O God!

Your thoughts are very deep.

The right­eous shall flour­ish like the palm tree;

And grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

Plant­ed in the house or the Creator,

They shall flour­ish in the courts of our God.

They shall still bring forth fruit in old age;

They shall be full of sap and richness;

To declare that Almighty God is upright,

My Rock, in Whom there is no unrighteousness.

  (Please rise)

Call to Worship:

 Reader:

Praise the Eter­nal, to Whom our praise is due!

 all respond:

Praise be the Eter­nal, to Whom our praise is due, now and forever!

  (Please be seated)

Prayer of Confession:

O God have mer­cy on us as we con­fess our error. You have called us to be stew­ards, but we squan­der Your gifts through glut­tony and greed. We lan­guish in some­thing less than the com­mit­ment to Your will and are hes­i­tant to seek rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. You beck­on, but we are reluc­tant to lis­ten to You speak. Have mer­cy on us, may Your right­eous­ness cleanse us from all of our errors. Amen.

Assurance of Pardon:

from Exodus 34:6–7a

The Eter­nal, the Eter­nal God is mer­ci­ful and gracious,

end­less­ly patient,

lov­ing and true,

show­ing mer­cy to thousands,

for­giv­ing our wrongdoing,

and grant­i­ng pardon.

Thanksgiving Prayer:

God of the Uni­verse, cre­ative Source of all being, from You come our bless­ings from day to day and from year to year. How great are Your love and kind­ness, O God! The tow­er­ing moun­tains and the shad­ed forests, the abun­dant streams and the fruit­ful earth tell of Your end­less bounty.

From this land so rich­ly blessed, we raise our voic­es in joy­ous thanks. To these shores, Your chil­dren have come from many lands to seek lib­er­ty and new hope. All have been pil­grims to this West­ern world. Though they did not always prac­tice the jus­tice they sought, here they found renewed pur­pose, increased strength, and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to out­grow old fears and super­sti­tions. For our coun­try, for its free­dom promised and attained, the rich­ness of its nat­ur­al bless­ing, and the grow­ing har­mo­ny of its cit­i­zens, we give hum­ble thanks.

O God of jus­tice and right, inspire all who dwell in our beloved land with loy­al­ty to the ideals of its founders. Give us wis­dom and strength to labor for its well-being, on the firm foun­da­tion of jus­tice and truth. Fill us with the spir­it of kind­ness, gen­eros­i­ty, and peace, so that this land may be a bea­con light to many peoples.

Thanksgiving

adapt­ed from Joseph Par­rish Thompson

This old­est fes­ti­val, dat­ing from the hero­ic age of Amer­i­ca, is the best expres­sion of our nation­al spirit.

It com­bines into one con­cep­tion pro­duc­tive enter­prise, domes­tic felic­i­ty, and reli­gious devotion.

Thanks­giv­ing Day rep­re­sents the fruits of indus­try turned to fam­i­ly fes­tiv­i­ty and sanc­ti­fied by prayer.

It was insti­tut­ed by men of cul­ture and women of refine­ment, who showed them­selves will­ing to suf­fer per­se­cu­tion, impris­on­ment, ban­ish­ment from the com­forts of an Eng­lish home, exile across the sea, cold, hunger, pesti­lence, and death for their principles.

Those prin­ci­ples are today the rich­est trea­sure and the bright­est hope for humanity.

They are the stuff of which heroes were made and by which a nation was nur­tured to its maturity.

These three prin­ci­ples are the lega­cy which that hero­ic age has bequeathed to us, its heirs: self-gov­ern­ment in the state, free­dom of reli­gion, good will toward humanity.

Let us cher­ish these prin­ci­ples, for in them lie the essence, the beau­ty, the strength of Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions, and the war­rant of their perpetuity.

Scripture Reading

Deuteronomy 8:1, 7–10

All the com­mand­ments which I com­mand you this day you shall be care­ful to do, that you may live and mul­ti­ply, and go in to pos­sess the land which the Eter­nal swore to give to your ancestors.

For the Eter­nal your God is bring­ing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of foun­tains and springs, flow­ing forth in val­leys and hills, a land of wheat and bar­ley, of vines and fig trees and pome­gran­ates, a land of olive trees and hon­ey, a land in which you will eat bread with­out scarci­ty, in which you will lack noth­ing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig cop­per. And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Eter­nal your God for the good land that has been giv­en to you.

Affirmation of Faith

based on Letter to the Romans 8:28, 31

We know that all things work togeth­er for good to those who love God, to them that are called to God’s purpose.

What shall we then say? If God be for us, who can be against us?

The New Colossus

by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame;
With con­quer­ing limbs astride from land to land
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the impris­oned light­ning, and her name
Moth­er of Exiles. From her bea­con-hand
Glows world-wide wel­come; her mild eyes com­mand
The air-bridged har­bor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your sto­ried pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your hud­dled mass­es yearn­ing to be free,
The wretched refuse of your teem­ing shore.
Send these, the home­less, tem­pest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the gold­en door!”

A Black Man Talks of Reaping

by Arna Bon­temps

I have sown beside all waters in my day.
I plant­ed deep, with­in my heart the fear
That wind or fowl would take the grain away.
I plant­ed safe against this stark, lean year.
I scat­tered seed enough to plant the land
In rows from Cana­da to Mex­i­co,
But for my reap­ing only what the hand
Can hold at once is all that I can show.

Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields
My broth­er’s son’s are gath­er­ing stalk and root,
Small won­der then my chil­dren glean in fields
They have not sown, and feed on bit­ter fruit.

How the Nation Can Best Show Its Gratitude

adapt­ed from Theodore Roo­sevelt

Once again the sea­son of the year has come when, in accor­dance with the cus­tom of our ances­tors for gen­er­a­tions past, we are called upon to give praise and thanks­giv­ing to God.

Dur­ing the past year, we have been free from famine, from pesti­lence, from war. We are at peace with all the rest of humanity

Our nat­ur­al resources are abun­dant, and we have been endowed with ade­quate knowl­edge to make good use of these resources.

Ours is the oppor­tu­ni­ty as a free peo­ple to devel­op to the fullest extent all our pow­ers of body, of mind, and of that which stands above both body and mind — of character.

Much has been giv­en us from on high, and much will right­ly be expect­ed of us in return.

Into our care these resources of nature have been entrust­ed, and we are not to be par­doned either if we squan­der and waste them, or yet if we leave them unde­vel­oped, for they must be made fruit­ful in our hands.

Ever through the ages, at all times and among all peo­ples, pros­per­i­ty has been fraught with dan­ger, and it behooves us to beseech the Giv­er of all things that we may not fall into love of ease and luxury.

That we may not lose our sense of moral respon­si­bil­i­ty, that we may not for­get our duty to God, and to our neighbor.

Our democ­ra­cy, based upon the prin­ci­ples of order­ly lib­er­ty, can be per­pet­u­at­ed only if, in the heart of its cit­i­zens, there dwells a keen sense of right­eous­ness and justice.

Let us pray that this spir­it of right­eous­ness and jus­tice may grow in the hearts of all of us. May our souls be ever inclined toward the virtues that tell for gen­tle­ness and ten­der­ness, for lov­ing-kind­ness and for­bear­ance, one toward another.

For only by love and patience, courage and for­ti­tude can either nation or indi­vid­ual rise to the lev­el of greatness.

Let us then as a peo­ple set our faces res­olute­ly against evil, and with broad char­i­ty, with kind­ness and good will toward all, but with unflinch­ing deter­mi­na­tion to smite down wrong, let us strive with all the strength that is giv­en us for right­eous­ness in pub­lic and in pri­vate life.

Hymn

America The Beautiful

by Katharine Lee Bates

O beau­ti­ful for spa­cious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For pur­ple moun­tain majesties,
Above the fruit­ed plain!

Amer­i­ca! Amer­i­ca! God shed Your grace on thee,
And crown thy good with broth­er­hood,
From sea to shin­ing sea.

O beau­ti­ful for heroes proved –
In lib­er­at­ing strife,
Who more than self their coun­try loved,
And mer­cy more than life!

Amer­i­ca! Amer­i­ca! May God thy gold refine,
Till all suc­cess be noble­ness,
And every grain divine.

Gratitude for the Diversity of American Culture

adapt­ed from Louis Adamic

On this day of nation­al thanks­giv­ing, we are grate­ful to God not only for those ben­e­fits that have come to us from this land and from our expe­ri­ence in its set­tle­ment and devel­op­ment but also for the gifts that the set­tlers in this coun­try brought with them from the lands of their ori­gin. For we are the chil­dren of all the old nations, bound togeth­er by all that is good in many heritages.

Those who have here sought a haven and refuge, from the first set­tlers in Jamestown and in Ply­mouth to the last shipload of immi­grants, came not emp­ty-hand­ed but bear­ing cul­tur­al gifts.

We are grate­ful for the gifts brought to this coun­try by the stur­dy stock that came from old England –

For their gift of the lan­guage that we all speak and that unites all of us, for their gift of civic lib­er­ty, and for the free­dom of wor­ship that they plant­ed and fos­tered in this blessed land.

But not from Eng­land alone stem those bless­ings that make us thank You for hav­ing cast our lot in this blessed land.

The pat­tern of Amer­i­ca is a blend of cul­ture from many lands, woven of threads from many cor­ners of the world.

Diver­si­ty itself is the pat­tern of Amer­i­ca, the very stuff and col­or of its fabric.

To reap the full ben­e­fits of that diver­si­ty we should seek to know more about the expe­ri­ences, and qual­i­ties, hopes, and achieve­ments of the many kinds of peo­ple who have made America.

Not until wave after wave of these facts sweeps over us will the true qual­i­ty of our Amer­i­can life ring in the Amer­i­can atmos­phere, the Amer­i­can consciousness.

Only then will all Amer­i­cans feel them­selves at one with the builders of Amer­i­ca in the past and with each oth­er in the present, drawn togeth­er knit togeth­er by a com­mon stake in America.

Then all over the coun­try, from the Atlantic to the Pacif­ic, from the Cana­di­an to the Mex­i­can bor­der, Swedish Amer­i­cans, Russ­ian, Ger­man, Ital­ian, Irish, Black, French, His­pan­ic, Asian, and Czech Amer­i­cans will feel the same warmth and pride in their old yel­low­ing let­ters and doc­u­ments which is felt by those descend­ed from the pas­sen­gers of the Mayflower.

Then will they all feel them­selves at home in the his­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, in that inter­play, that diver­si­ty that is America.

The cul­tur­al atmos­phere of the Unit­ed States will then mean new and broad­er ways of see­ing our neigh­bors and freer and more gen­er­ous ways of behav­ing toward them.

It will mean a new sol­i­dar­i­ty, irre­spec­tive of back­ground, one that lets peo­ple remain themselves.

It will bring into full play the healthy simul­ta­ne­ous ten­sion and fusion of stub­born cre­ative dif­fer­ences, chal­leng­ing all groups and indi­vid­u­als to vie with one anoth­er in con­tribut­ing from their own life to the good of all.

Open our eyes, O God, that we may see Your image in all and accept humbly and grate­ful­ly the gifts that each race, creed. and nation­al­i­ty brings to our Amer­i­can life.

Offering

[A col­lec­tion was made for a local food pantry or oth­er char­i­ta­ble organization.]

Offertory Anthem

[The Offer­to­ry Anthem was some­thing of a “clas­si­cal” nature, i.e. not from a faith-group’s hym­nal. After the ush­ers have com­plet­ed tak­ing up the offer­ing all rise as the offer­ing is brought forward.]

Hymn

We Gather Together

We gath­er togeth­er to ask God’s bless­ing
Who chas­tens and has­tens God’s will to make known;
The wicked oppress­ing now cease from dis­tress­ing.
Sing prais­es to Thy name; Thou for­get not Thine own.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us join­ing,
Ordain­ing, main­tain­ing Your reign divine,
So from the begin­ning the fight we were win­ning;
Thou, God were at our side, all glo­ry be Thine.

We all do extol Thee, Thou leader tri­umphant,
And pray that Thou still our defend­er wilt be.
Let Thy con­gre­ga­tion escape tribu­la­tion,
Thy name be ever praised! O God, make us free!

Litany of Joy and Humility

We live in a grand and awful time when human­i­ty stands on the bor­der of a promised time when God’s peo­ple are sum­moned to obe­di­ence and faith­ful­ness to pre­serve God’s cre­ation, to stand with the poor and oppressed every­where, and to stand togeth­er as the peo­ple of the earth.

With con­fes­sion and with humil­i­ty we repent of our blind­ness to the divi­sion and war in our own hearts and our land, our obses­sion with mon­ey and our pur­suit of pow­er, our irra­tional belief in secu­ri­ty through weapon­ry, and our wor­ship of sec­u­lar gods.

We are called to be obe­di­ent to the Eter­nal our God, the cre­ator of all human­i­ty and the uni­verse, who loves the whole world, and who invites us to be stew­ards of the earth and ser­vants of God’s peo­ple, to be co-work­ers in a new Creation.

Let us be peace­mak­ers. Let us be called the chil­dren of God, speak­ing bold­ly with moral con­vic­tion, to the nation and to the world, build­ing, with God’s grace, a new moral order in the world com­mu­ni­ty; and act­ing now for world peace, an enter­prise of jus­tice, an out­come of love.

Closing Prayer:

O You who are our Cre­ator and who sus­tains our life by Your boun­ties, You who have blessed our land with all man­ner of wealth, bless Your peo­ple also with the spir­it of humil­i­ty. Let us not, in the pride of pos­ses­sion, for­get that we but hold all this wealth in trust and that only when we are faith­ful to that trust and use our wealth with wis­dom, jus­tice, and gen­eros­i­ty can it yield us true hap­pi­ness. Teach us that the joy of cre­ation far sur­pass­es that of acqui­si­tion, that there is more secu­ri­ty in mutu­al help­ful­ness than in self­ish hoard­ing, and that to earn the love and grat­i­tude of our com­pa­tri­ots affords a deep­er sat­is­fac­tion than to force their fear, ser­vil­i­ty, and envy. We thank You, O God, for all Your gifts, but above all, we thank You for the gift of Your spir­it, for only by it can we learn to use Your gifts for our blessing.

So may it be.

Hymn

God Bless America

by Irv­ing Berlin

God bless Amer­i­ca
Land that I Love
Stand beside he
And guide her
Through the night
With a light from above.

From the moun­tains
To the prairies
To the oceans
White with foam
God bless Amer­i­ca
My home sweet home;

God bless Amer­i­ca
My home sweet home.

(Please rise and hold hands)

Benediction:

based on Numbers 6: 24–26

May our behav­ior toward each oth­er express the gen­tle­ness of bless­ing and care.

May we feel the gra­cious­ness of the exquis­ite won­ders of creation.

May the holi­ness of cre­ation rise up to greet us and grant us the whole­ness, the com­plete­ness of peace.

Web Edi­tion pre­pared by MemHeh Pro­duc­tions pre­vi­ous­ly updat­ed Novem­ber 13, 2013, most recent­ly updat­ed Octo­ber 5, 2023 by Mark Hurvitz.