The Long, Long Journey

Thanksgiving is coming. We think about turkey, about sweet potatoes, about pumpkin pie, about Pilgrims.

We think about how the Pilgrims were fleeing from a country that had made style of worship a political issue. We think about the great fights that were going on at this time in Europe between Catholic and Protestant, the fights in England between the High Church of England and the dour Puritans. As the Crown changed, the acceptable religion changed. Imagine being put into jail because you believed in praise bands and they were outlawed. Or five years later they were required by law and choirs were outlawed. And it all gets confusing, for the Pilgrims were none of the above. They were neither Catholic, nor Anglican Church of England, nor Puritan. They were Separatists, a tiny group with no political power, but only a half-dozen or so small congregations in their denomination.

We know that they left England in 1609 and moved to the very tolerant country of Holland. Just like the Israelites who crossed the Red Sea, they had crossed the English Channel. And they were happy, for they could worship as they thought best. Just as Moses and Miriam sang (Exodus 15),

“I will sing to the LORD,
for he is highly exalted.
But after a few years, they saw that their children were becoming Dutch – and they did not want that. They were English and they wanted to stay English. They faced a problem much like the Amish do in Ohio today. But because they were so small, and because they remembered the problems that happened to the Israelites who settled next to the Canaanites, they chose a different solution – they decided to move as a group - to Virginia, where a new colony was getting started.

“The LORD is my strength and my defense;
he has become my salvation.
You know that they sailed from Holland to England, where they picked up remnants of another congregation, and that they started for America in two small ships in September, very late in the year for such a journey. And when the Speedwell sprung a leak and the two ships were forced to return to England, they decided to crowd everyone on the tiny Mayflower and continue onward to Virginia.

Well, as we know, God made the winds blow them farther north than they expected and they found themselves off of Cape Cod in early December, in the snow, where they landed, explored a bit, and finally found a clearing and built a small village of tiny huts for the winter. And they began to die from cold, from starvation, and from scurvy sickness because they did not know about the necessity of consuming Vitamin C in their diet, and they had no preserved fruits. It had been a long journey from England, and most of the Pilgrims died that winter. More than 4 out of 5 Pilgrims died that winter.

And once in a while in this story, we remember a guy we remember as “Squanto”.

You remember Squanto. He was the Native American Indian who walked out of the woods one day in March of 1621, after that first terrible winter had killed most of the Pilgrims. He was the guy who taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn, by putting minnows in the hills with the corn seeds during planting. He spoke English!

Did you ever wonder how it came to be that an Indian in that country spoke English? And did you ever wonder why he chose to help the Pilgrims, instead of simply letting them die like most of his countrymen were willing to do? Have you ever wondered where God was in all of this?

Let me tell you his miraculous story today. It is another story of a journey – a long, long journey, much longer than that of the Israelites or the Pilgrims. Many parts, we don’t know for certain, but this appears to be what happened, as far as I can piece it together.

He was born around 1590. In those days, many Europeans ships were coming to fish off the coast of New England. After fishing, they would often dry and salt their catches on the beaches and trade for furs and food with the Indians, who in those days were very numerous in Massachusetts.

In 1604, when Squanto was about 14, he voluntarily sailed with an English vessel that came calling, to England, where he lived for a few years.

Enter Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame. Smith met Squanto and took him back to Newfoundland, in Canada to assist with a new colony there. There, Squanto learned the problems with establishing English colonies in the New World. He learned how much trouble the English had with the winter – and the lack of fruit – and growing food. He saw mistakes made and he saw what fixed the mistakes.

Who among the gods
is like you, LORD?
Who is like you—
majestic in holiness,
awesome in glory,
working wonders?

Smith got the bright idea of using Squanto to set up trading relationships with his village back in Massachusetts. So Smith arranged for Squanto and Captain John Hunt to visit the Cape Code area.

In 1614, when Hunt and Squanto reached the area, Hunt lured about 27 Native American men on board his ship (including Squanto) and kidnapped them. He sailed to Malaga, Spain, where he began to sell the men as slaves. One story tells us that a group of Dominican friars found out what was going on and broke up the slave selling, taking the men (including Squanto) into their monastery. There, Squanto became a Christian.

“The LORD is my strength and my defense;
he has become my salvation.
After a couple of years, Squanto was able to leave Spain and catch a ship for London, where he lived for a few years with a man named John Slaney. Squanto was Slaney’s servant and walking, talking, museum piece.

Meanwhile, in America, things were happening.

When Squanto was born, there were over 100,000 Indians who lived in New England, perhaps as many as a million. His village had over 2000 people. Europeans had thought about establishing colonies there, but there were far too many people already living there. However, that all changed when a French ship wrecked at Cape Cod in 1616. There were five survivors of the wreck – and one had smallpox, which spread to the locals who rescued them. Within three years, the population of Massachusetts had dropped to about 10,000 Indians. Entire villages had been destroyed, including one large town that formerly had over 20,000 inhabitants. Southeastern Massachusetts lost almost all its inhabitants in the great plague.

The chiefs of Edom will be terrified,
the leaders of Moab will be seized with trembling,
the people of Canaan will melt away;
terror and dread will fall on them.
By the power of your arm
they will be as still as a stone—
until your people pass by, LORD,
until the people you bought pass by.
You will bring them in and plant them
on the mountain of your inheritance—
the place, LORD, you made for your dwelling,
the sanctuary, Lord, your hands established.
Squanto once again came back to America with another English captain, Capt. John Dermer, in the late spring of 1620. This time, after arriving in Massachusetts, Squanto and Dermer discovered that Squanto’s home village was gone. Completely. 2000 people had died. There were skeletons all over the place. The homes were still there, the grain was still where they had stashed the corn. But stillness. A great stillness. No one remained alive.

Imagine coming home to discover that all of your home town and state were wiped out by plague! Homes empty. Bones glistening in the sun where people had died and not been buried. Weeds growing over everything. Food still in pantry cupboards.

Squanto was devastated. After all his journeys, crossing the ocean repeatedly, he had arrived home and there was no home to come to. He must have hurt deeply. But despite this, God was not through with Squanto. God had a plan and a purpose for Squanto.

Squanto spent the summer and fall living with a neighboring village, the most powerful one remaining in the area. He became friendly with the chief of the village and with other villages in New England.

In early December, members of the tribe watched Englishmen and women land and settle close to Squanto’s old village. The English had a bad winter. They did not have enough food, nor the right kinds of food.

And so, in March of the next spring, after a hard winter that killed all but one of the women and all but 19 of the men, when everyone was sick and starving, when there was serious question whether or not the strength could be found to even begin farming - imagine the blessings when Squanto, speaking fluent cultured English from his years in England, understanding the problems of colony planting from his time in Newfoundland, and understanding Christianity from his time with the Dominicans, walked out of the woods to teach the Pilgrims how to survive and to help negotiate a peace treaty with the Massachusetts Indians that lasted for 50 years. He even brought them a basket of eels – something many Englishmen were used to eating - as a present and taught the Pilgrims how to catch eels in abundance.

In your unfailing love you will lead
the people you have redeemed.
In your strength you will guide them
to your holy dwelling.

For you see, God had been involved all along.

· He had cleared the way for the Pilgrims by decimating the previous inhabitants.

· He had provided a clearing – Squanto’s old village - with good land ready for planting corn. Those of us that have lived in Marietta, OH know the story of how the first corn crop at Marietta failed because it took too long to clear the huge trees, and the crop failed for lack of sunlight.

· God had provided a stock of seed corn and seed beans in the old village.

· God had provided a teacher, with the perfect background.

· God had also provided an interpreter who had the connections to be a diplomat.

· God had used Captain Hunt, the would-be slaver.

· God had used Captain John Smith from Jamestown.

· God had used the Dominicans in Spain.

· God used unknown sailors who gave Squanto passage from Spain to England.

· God used John Slaney, at whose home Squanto lived for those years in England.

And God used even the smallpox germ. You see, we know that the land was already cleared and vacant when the Pilgrims arrived – we see that. But do we also see that the tragedy which took Squanto’s friends and family from him also set him free to serve God completely and gave him a purpose for all those wanderings? Just as our tragedies can set us free to serve God completely and give us purpose?

Well, we know the story of the next few hundred years. We know how the Pilgrims were soon overshadowed by a huge number of Puritans who moved to America. We know how New England became the most populous part of America – and the part that led the rebellion against England. We know how the descendants of those rebels eventually went back to Europe and saved England in a huge, devastating war with Germany. Twice.

And we know that the descendants of those Pilgrims and Puritans spread throughout the colonies, preaching and teaching and making America a Christian nation. It was a descendent of those people, by the name of Jonathan Edwards, who preached a great sermon in Connecticut which was written down that caused people to wail and moan and beg for God’s mercy. A man back in England, John Wesley, heard about the sermon and asked why the church in England couldn’t be half as excited about the salvation of God and so he began a movement that eventually became the Methodist Church. And those Methodists and their German-speaking friends, the Evangelical Brethren established small churches in nice little hollows between the hills in West Virginia, one of which is the place we are meeting at today. And someone heard this story today and historians of the future will record that he or she did great things on behalf of the same God who brought Miriam and Moses through the water, who brought the Pilgrims over the water, and who brought Squanto into the village of Plymouth in March of 1621.

“The LORD reigns
for ever and ever.”
As for Squanto, he lived with the Pilgrims for about a year and a half. Then, while on a trade mission with the Pilgrims to the Rhode Island area, he died of a fever, most likely the same disease that had killed the other members of his village a few years earlier. Captain John Bradford, head of the colony, wrote that Squanto asked that prayers be said to the God of the English to allow Squanto into the English Heaven as he lay dying.

But Squanto did not die until a year after the Pilgrims celebrated their great thanksgiving feast – which they shared with their new friends, the Native American Indians and their joint friend, Squanto. Each person in the colony now had three bushels of corn to survive the next winter. A week of wild birds could be shot in a day. They now knew which plants were edible and which were poisonous. And they had a peace treaty with their neighbors, a peace treaty that lasted 50 years. They had much to be thankful for.