Tag: “Many and Great O God Are Thy Things”

The U.S.-Dakota War Remembered by Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church (Part III)

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church‘s October 7, 2012, worship service remembered the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. This post reviews the last of the three parts of that service–Responding to the Word.[1]

We first sang a Hymn that was new to me, “You know the Way” in the Dakota language. The words originally in German by martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer were translated into the English language in the bulletin: “God, gather and turn my thoughts to you. With you there is light. You do not forget me. With you there is help and patience. I do not understand your ways, but you know the way for me.”

Jon Romer

For the Offertory a traditional Ojibwe song, “Gegiwabimin mino waa” or “I will see you again another day” was played on the Native American flute by Jon Romer. Emphasizing there is no word or phrase for a final goodbye in their language, the song is sung by the Ojibwe women as the men leave the village to hunt with the expectation that the men will return and everyone will sit down to feast together. For us it says that when we leave this world, there is no final goodbye. We will one day all sit and feast together once again.

Rev. Dr. Stephen Robertson

For the Lord’s Table on World Communion Sunday,[2] the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving was offered by Westminster Associate Pastor, Rev. Dr. Stephen Robertson. It included these words:

  • “We give you thanks, O God, For you have made us in your image, female and male, black, brown, red and white, gay and straight. You set us in the world to love and serve you and to live in peace and justice with your whole creation. Although we have failed to live according to your way, you continue to call us back to you.”
  • “In Jesus, you showed us love for all, and you led the way to a new community in which the last would be first, justice would be realized, and peace would abound. Jesus proclaimed the good news of the reign of God. Yet we rebelled against his message.”
  • “But death cannot defeat life, nor can many waters quench love. You raised Christ from death, conquering the powers of this world, not through might, but through grace.”
  • “We pray that Christ’s Spirit will be in us as we feast at this, his table. Sacred and living Spirit, descend upon us. Fill us with your presence.”
  • “Move also upon these gifts of bread and cup, that they may become the bread of life and the cup of salvation. United forever through your Spirit and this table, may our feet walk the path of justice, May our hearts tear down the walls of division, and may our tongues cry out, ‘Peace on earth.’”

Rev. Robertson then led the congregation in the unison recitation of the Lord’s Prayer:[3]

  • “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Your name. Thy Kingdom come. They will be done. On earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil. For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever. Amen.”

As the church elders distributed the bread and grape juice of communion, the Choir’s Mary Monson, mezzo soprano, and J. D. Shaffer, tenor, sang “Morning Song,” which combines the melody of “Amazing Grace” with a Native American melody. It was sung in ancient Teehahnahmah and Cherokee languages, which was translated into English as follows: “I am of the great Spirit. It is so. God’s son paid for us. Then to heaven he went after paying for us. But he said, when he rose: ‘I’ll come again’ he said when he spoke. All the earth will end when he comes. All will see him all over the earth. All the good people living he will come after. Heaven always in peace they will live.” The piece was arranged by James E. Green, who has Cherokee heritage.

The Closing Hymn was “Many and Great, O God Are Thy Things” (No. 271 in the Presbyterian Hymnal). As Rev. Timothy Hart-Andersen had mentioned in his sermon, this hymn was written in the 1840’s by the Dakota congregation in Lac Qui Parle, Minnesota and was sung by the 38 Dakota men – Presbyterians, many of them –as they mounted the gallows in Mankato on December 26, 1862. The last verse is the following:

  • “Grant unto us communion with Thee,
    Thou star abiding One;
    Come unto us and dwell with us;
    With Thee are found the gifts of life,
    Bless us with life that has no end,
    Eternal life with Thee.”

The Postlude was the Choir’s repetition of “Heleluyan,” which was the Processional Hymn at the start of the service.

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[1] Other posts set forth the first two parts of the service: Preparing for the Word and Listening for the Word as well as the theological underpinnings for the order of worship. The following materials about this service are on the web: the bulletin, a video and the texts of the sermons. Another post provided a summary of the War.

[2] World Communion Sunday is celebrated on the first Sunday in October throughout the U.S. It is a project of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, which has been the leading force for ecumenical cooperation among Christians in this country. The NCC’s member faith groups — from a wide spectrum of Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, Evangelical, historic African American and Living Peace churches — include 45 million persons in more than 100,000 local congregations in communities across the nation.

[3] By the way, the front of the October 7th worship bulletin set forth the Lord’s Prayer in the Dakota language as translated in the 1830’s by Presbyterian brothers Gideon and Samuel Pond, who established the first Christian congregation in the Minnesota Territory on the shores of Lake Calhoun In today’s Minneapolis.

The U.S.-Dakota War Remembered by Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church (Part II)

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church at its October 7, 2012, worship service remembered the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.[1] This post will review the central part of this very moving service–Listening for the Word.[2]

The Scripture reading for the day was Numbers 15: 37-41 from the Hebrew Bible:

  • “The Lord said to Moses: Speak to the Israelites, and tell them to make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and to put a blue cord on the fringe at each corner. You have the fringe so that, when you see it, you will remember all the commandments of the Lord and do them, and not follow the lust of your own heart and your own eyes. So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and you shall be holy to your God. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the Lord your God.”

This reading was followed by a solo rendition of a traditional Ojibwe “Song of Love” honoring the gift of love among all people.

REv. Dr. Timothy Hart-Andersen

Rev. Dr. Timothy Hart-Andersen, Westminster’s Senior Pastor, presented the first sermon –“What Is the Role of the Church: To Remember.” This sermon started with the previous Biblical text. Hart-Andersen said:

  • “The Hebrew people were born of memory. Each generation was taught the stories of those who had gone before. Parents told children how their ancestors had been enslaved in Egypt, how Moses led them out of bondage, how God saved them. Over the ages they told their stories – and they remembered themselves into being. As we learn in the text from Numbers this morning the fringe that men wear even today serves as a reminder of their past, lest the people forget. Judaism clings to its stories because they are the lifeblood of the people.”
  • “The Christian Church is not all that different. The Church is the place where the Jesus story is told, where we hear the story of God’s people. That story can be full of light and hope, of goodness and grace, but sometimes it’s hard to hear, sometimes full of pain and sorrow. Sometimes it doesn’t seem as if it will ever come out right.”
  • “The church ceases to be the church when it loses its memory. That may be one of the problems facing the church in America today. We don’t remember why we need God, why we need redemption, why we need each other. We have fed ourselves so long on the myth of self-sufficiency that we no longer need the power of religious tradition to sustain us. The story doesn’t matter much anymore.”
  • “Today we remember the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. It started when the U.S. reneged on yet another treaty promise, leaving the native people destitute. A group of Dakota warriors killed several white settlers, leading to a declaration of war by Chief Little Crow. After six weeks the Dakota were defeated. Thousands were held in disease-riddled camps, including women and children; over 300 warriors were sentenced to die – some in trials lasting a mere five minutes. President Lincoln commuted most of the sentences, but in December, 1862, the largest mass execution in U.S. history took place in Mankato, when 38 Dakota men were hung. The Dakota were expelled from Minnesota and hundreds more died on the march to reservations in the west.”
  • “Presbyterian missionaries played a key role in 19th century Minnesota. The first Christian congregation in the Territory was established by Presbyterian brothers Gideon and Samuel Pond on the shores of Lake Calhoun. They put the Lord’s Prayer into Dakota . . . . Presbyterian missionary Stephen Riggs wrote the first Dakota dictionary. Presbyterian doctor Thomas Williamson oversaw the first translation of the Bible into Dakota. Presbyterian missionaries went with the Dakota when they were banished from their homes.”
  • “But however enlightened our forebears in the church may have been, they – and that means we – were part of ending the Dakota way of life.”
  • “In the 1840’s the native congregation in Lac Qui Parle wrote the Dakota hymn, Many and Great, O God, Are Thy Things, No. 271 in our hymnal. The 38 Dakota men – Presbyterians, many of them – sang the hymn as they mounted the gallows in Mankato on December 26, 1862. We will close our worship this morning singing that same hymn. Listen, especially, to the words of the last verse and imagine the Dakota preparing to die.”
  • “The church is in the memory business. We’re a community formed by the story of God and the stories of God’s people. Sometimes the memories are hard to hear, the stories painful to share. Sometimes they seem unresolved.”
  • “Black Elk, a Lakota Holy Man born in 1863, described the people of the earth as being a ‘hoop,’ an unbroken circle bound together in a sacred way. Toward the end of his life, Black Elk said, ‘The nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.’ (Black Elk Speaks, John Neihardt, ed. [Albany: SUNY Press, 2008], p. 218)”[3]
  • “Our call as the church is to repair the hoop, to join the work of God in making whole the peoples of the earth, and it starts right here at home.”
Jim Bear Jacobs

The second of the day’s sermons was delivered by Jim Bear Jacobs, a member of the Turtle Clan of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation. The following are excerpts from his sermon:

  • “It is good for us to speak today about memory. For today we have much to remember. It is with memory that we can recall the stories that are released into any given space. You see memory is integral to the art of storytelling. And my friends today we are surrounded by story.”
  • “It ought not escape our attention that tomorrow [October 8th] many all over this nation of ours will celebrate Columbus Day. This is part of the story that is released upon this land. . . . [This] year let us commit to active engagement with the story that has disseminated its way down into every aspect of American Indian life. When words like ‘discovery’ and ‘new world’ are thoughtlessly used, it is a reminder that the epicenter for knowledge has been and is still White Euro-America. And every year [when] we again celebrate Columbus the discoverer we reinforce in the spirit of American Indian children that unless a white man knows that you exist, you in fact do not yet exist.”
  • “This year in the State of Minnesota we engage the story of the US-Dakota war. 150 years ago in 1862 on the brink of starvation a small group of Dakota warriors had reached a devastating breaking point. Given the choice between fighting for the stores of food that were literally rotting away in the warehouse of the reservation agent, or watching their loved ones slowly decline into death, they made what they thought was the more honorable choice. What followed was six weeks of violent fighting that left around 800 dead and decimated the towns of western Minnesota.”
  • “After the fighting what followed for the Dakota were forced marches, concentration camps, bounties and mass executions. The Dakota creation narrative is centered around the convergence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers [near the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport], and in 1863 with one stroke of a pen in Washington D.C. it became illegal to be Dakota in the State of Minnesota. As a result of that legislation, there are now far more Dakota living in exile outside of Minnesota than live within the borders of their homeland.”
  • “Likewise as we move toward the season of Thanksgiving, we are surrounded by the story of American colonization and settlement. The history books of our childhood tell us of the amicable relationship between the tribal nations of the east coast and the newly arrived seekers of religious freedom. If only it were that simple. You see, for the American Indians this small struggling group of new neighbors signaled the beginning of a wave of change that would sweep over this entire country and leave a devastating scar upon this land and her people. And it pains me to have to admit that because the church was swept up in the power and imperialism of the day, a lion’s share of the culpability lies at our doorstep.”
  • “This morning I greeted you not in the Mohican language but in the Lenape language. So why does a proud Mohican greet you in Lenape and not Mohican. It is because in the wake of Christian missionary work the Mohican language lies dormant in the graveyard of a Lutheran boarding school. We as members of Christ’s body inherit a generational history that is blemished with devastating atrocities committed in the name of our beloved Savior.”
  • “We have all heard it said that time heals all wounds. If this were true for the Native American we would not have the highest suicide rate, the highest high-school dropout rate, or the highest substance abuse rate. In the western way of thinking time may heal wounds if the wound is superficial. But these wounds are not superficial, they are deep, they are fresh and they bleed anew every time a bottle is picked up, or one of our own seeing no hope for a better future puts an end to his or her own life. Because these stories affect every American Indian, the resulting wounds also affect every American Indian. Time cannot heal these wounds because American Indians have little concern for time. For us these stories do not exist in time, they exist in space. As long as we walk upon this land and in this space our chronological distance from these events and stories is irrelevant. It is a heavy burden that every American Indian carries. We must forgive that which is unforgiveable in order to heal and ensure our own survival.”
  • “This morning we gather in another space and engage in a different story. Today we gather around the Lord’s Table and partake in the story of His sacrificial death. In his first letter to the Corinthians the Apostle Paul warns us against abuses of the Lord’s Table. Within the context that we, the church, are the body of Christ, he tells [us] that when we come together to partake, we are to discern the body lest we drink judgment upon ourselves.”
  • “The “Lord’s Table is a universal table, and we eat and drink as one part of a global body. Today we partake with affluent aristocracy, and we partake with sweatshop laborers. This morning we partake with presidents and kings, and we partake with a small group of Dakota ministers. . . . I said earlier that the American Indian carries the heavy burden of having to forgive the unforgiveable. Likewise the church also carries a heavy burden. Lest we drink judgment upon ourselves, we must discern what is justice for the entirety of this body.”
  • “In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus states that before one is to bring any offering before God, he must go to his brother and be reconciled. With this statement Jesus establishes reconciliation as the first step in the act of worship. Without reconciliation there can be no legitimate worship. Reconciliation is a difficult word for the American Indian. It seems to imply that there is a point in history when there was conciliation. That point in American or church history simply does not exist. So if we as a church speak of reconciliation, let us do so in the context that we desire to go back to the way [the] Creator intended humanity to live. And let us commit to come together and forge new stories that will also be released into this space so that future generations when speaking of reconciliation can remember well the good works that began here.”

[1] Prior posts set forth a summary of the War, a contemporary white settler’s comments on the War and this year’s commemoration of the War.

[2]. A prior post reviewed the initial part of the service–Preparing for the Word. A subsequent post will discuss the last part of that service– Responding to the Word. The following materials about this service are available online: a video, the bulletin and the texts of the sermons. The theological underpinnings for Westminster’s order of worship were reviewed in a prior post.

[3] Earlier that day in an adult education class, Jim Bear Jacobs said that in Indian culture life is lived in a circle or a Sacred Hoop and that death is seen as a return to the Creator/Spirit.