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"Love
is the spirit of this church and service its law"
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Sermon, 2003 "Giving Thanks" In the New Testament, the Gospel of Luke contains a story about giving thanks. In it Jesus was on a journey to Jerusalem and passed along between Samaria and Galilee. And when he entered a village along the way he came across 10 lepers who stayed at a distance from him but called out to him for mercy. He told them them to go show themselves to the priests. And as they were going they were made clean. One of them realizing that he had been healed went back to Jesus and thanked him. Jesus said – weren’t there ten of you? Where are the other nine? Is the only one to come back and say thanks – this foreigner? I think Jesus had a pretty good question – why didn’t the other nine say thanks? Or more to the point – why don’t we say thanks? Why aren’t we thankful? I have been able to think of 6 reasons – maybe you can think of others. 1) In the story it says – one noticed he was cured and came back. So maybe the other nine didn’t notice. Sometimes we don’t notice the things others do for us. We just take them for granted. Sometimes it’s because people do things behind the scenes and don’t call attention to themselves. There are plenty of people here who contribute in ways that the rest of us don’t know about. We often don’t know who makes coffee or cleans up afterwards. We don’t know: that there is a member of this church who comes in and puts the recycling out, that there is a member of the church who makes sure we have supplies of paper towels and toilet paper, the there are members who step up to do electrical work when necessary. And unless you have taught in our church school you probably don’t know how hard our teachers work. You can pretty much be sure that if something happens here at church that there is a member taking care of it. I bet we each have people in our lives who work behind the scenes and rarely get thanked. 2) Or maybe some of the lepers were so excited about being cured that they went off to show their friends or family. I know that when I was ordained many of my New Jersey colleagues came to my ordination service. Although it was an unusual thing to do I also invited many of my relatives because my parents wanted me to. I think because I never had a wedding this was the big deal party that all should attend. Because I was so involved with my relatives at the reception I forgot to go and thank the colleagues who had attended that day. Maybe you too forget to be thankful or to acknowledge it because you get busy or distracted. 3) Or maybe the lepers thought it was Jesus job to cure them. I wonder how often we think to say thank you to all the people who work in service work. How thankless are their jobs. Many of the service workers we interact with do not get paid a living wage and yet they are expected to be cheerful and polite no matter how rude a customer they are dealing with. They must take an awful lot of abuse. I know they are usually not for responsible for the problems they must handle nor do they have the power to change store business policies. And yet I have heard people say all kinds of things to the people who take returns. The people who answer the phones and take our complaints are not the cause of the error and yet they are often spoken to quite rudely. How often do we think to thank the people who wait on us, make our beds and clean up after us for their help? Or more to the point – to what extent are we actually thankful? 4) Maybe the lepers didn’t know who to thank – maybe they said a prayer to God or offered a sacrifice at the temple. Maybe there are times that we don’t say thanks because we don’t know who to thank. I have a set of nieces and nephews that I rarely see and so I usually send presents to them by mail. Once when my niece was very young I sent her a dress and I am told that when someone asked her where she got such a pretty dress, she said that the mailman gave it to her. I think this is one of our real difficulties these days. We are so interdependent on others and yet we don’t know who they are. Who makes our clothes? Who grows our food and who prepares it? When I was a child my mother made my clothes – although I wasn’t thankful, I knew who to thank. Yesterday, I unpacked a box of turtlenecks and blouses and discovered they were made in India, Peru and Costa Rica. When we don’t know who to thank how can we acknowledge our thanks? How do I thank the people who worked to make these clothes? Actually, next week I will speak more about this. 5) Maybe when the lepers thought to say thank you – too much time had passed, perhaps they went to the priest and then they got showing people in town and then their families and then they thought it is too late now, or maybe Jesus had already left the village and it would have taken too much effort to track him down. Sometimes we are ashamed that we haven’t thanked someone and so we don’t. When I first moved into my house a neighbor stopped by and brought me a loaf of bread. I thanked her for bringing it but never got a round to going personally to her house to thank her or even sending a note. Six months later I saw her at the movies and it reminded me that I had neglected to thank her properly. The next week when I saw her working outside her house – I went over and apologized for being thoughtless and told her how much I had appreciated her kindness. It’s probably never too late to say thank you. 6) Maybe they didn’t say thank you because they weren’t thankful. Maybe leprosy was the aberration and what they thought was they should be was normal. Maybe we don’t say thank you because we are not thankful. I wasn’t thankful my mother made my clothes because I would have liked to have clothes that looked like the other children. My mother was a good seamstress – I wasn’t embarrassed just envious – we didn’t have enough money to shop in the local store. Some of what happens in life is unpleasant and difficult and it is hard to be thankful for such experiences. Who is thankful for being grounded by parents or for someone telling you that you are making a mess of your life or being irresponsible. It is also difficult to be mindfully thankful for the absence of pain in our lives. Do you ever arrive home from work and exuberantly say- “Boy am I thankful today, no car wrecks, my office bldg did not collapse, and I didn’t even choke to death on my lunch.” It is easy to get caught up in the irritations of life and work and the business of it all. Those things seem to color our views about everything and leave us little time for the reflection it might take to be thankful. I’d like us to take time this morning to do two things – First think about what we are thankful for and second if there is someone we would like to thank – to write them a note. I offer these reflections to stimulate your own - I
give thanks for ..... I give thanks for .......
Food I give thanks for
Places of rest and renewal I give thanks for .....
the many shades of brown on a fall cornfield I give thanks for .....
faces smiling back at me on Sunday morning I give thanks for ..... a
sense of humor I give thanks for .....
My dog Doodle I give thanks for .....
Children I give thanks for .....
Adult People I give thanks for .....
friends I give thanks for my parents .....
who live their beliefs I
give thanks for all the little miracles that make it possible to get
through each and every day and of which I am so blissfully ignorant. I give thanks for .....
the extravagances of life I give thanks for .....
Life And I my wish this morning is that you too find that your life is filled with myriad things for which to give thanks. And that you do! Amen and may it be so. |
