Sermon: ThanksLiving

 

10:30 am, Sun, Oct 9, 2022 - J G White / FBC Amherst

(Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Luke 17:11-19)

 

I hope you are feeling great today! Though, your day may not have started wonderfully. I heard there are two ways to awake in the morning. As you open your eyes and stretch, you might say: ‘Good morning, Lord.” Or, you think, “Good Lord, it’s morning!”

A friend of mine, who is no Christian, who is no practitioner of any religion, does have some spiritual disciplines. Like, starting each day by being thankful. He writes in a little book ten things to be grateful for, and does it again the next day. He trained himself to be thankful, and now that he has weathered a year of cancer treatments and is back running ultra marathons, he is more grateful, for more and more things.

I think I could say he is thanks-living. He truly appreciates every single day.

Gratitude has its waves of popularity. Every once in a while, there is a trend to keep a gratitude journal, or at least start each day (or end it) by listing ‘ten things you’re thankful for.’ Or some such activity.

Today’s Gospel story is of the ‘ten lepers’ who were healed by Jesus, once upon a time. It seems to become a lesson in expressing thanks.

11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

 

Leviticus 13 has instructions for people who come down with a disease. They are to be examined by the priests, who can see what they have and what’s to be done. Jewish priest and physician were one in the same, it seems. These ten men knew they were diseased, and ritually unclean. As Leviticus 13 says, 45 “The person who has the defiling disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ 46 He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.

(Keep your finger in Leviticus, we will be in the next chapter in a moment.) Suffice it to say, there is a long tradition in Judaism of how to respond to illnesses. And when you were not well, there were things for you to do, and not to do, all listed in your scriptures. It seemed all closely connected with your spiritual state – your sins and lack of ‘holiness.’

So, when Jesus says to these ten fellows, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” they knew what this might mean. Mighty they be healed? When a cleansing had taken place, there was a whole procedure laid out, in what we call Leviticus chapter 14.

1 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “This shall be the rule for the person with a defiling skin disease at the time of his cleansing: “He shall be brought to the priest; 3 the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall make an examination. If the disease is healed in the defiled person, 4 the priest shall command that two living clean birds and cedarwood and crimson yarn and hyssop be brought for the one who is to be cleansed. 5 The priest shall ...then do a whole bunch of ceremonies, involving a series of animal sacrifices, shaving of hair, bathing, anointing with oil, and so forth, over the course of eight days, typical of ancient Judaism.

What would you do to get healed? And to say thanks for how you came through something? Many of you know – you’ve been through it, or someone near and dear to you has. Maybe you are here today, thanks to some blessed help, and even a few miracles.

Anyway, those ten skin-diseased fellows: as they went, they were made clean. Bigger than the gifts of food that we enjoy, are the reasons we have to give thanks that we are alive, still alive, after death and destruction had threatened.

Those big answers to big prayers can bring out our big gratitude. Yet, there will also be thanks in the midst of trouble. As the New Testament tells us, give thanks, whatever happens. (1 Thss 5:18) We still have questions when some things don’t happen.

I read about healing with our staff this week, from the writings of Frederick Beuchner. If your prayer isn’t answered, this may mean more about you and your prayer than it does about God. Don’t try too hard to feel religious, to generate some healing power of your own. Think of yourself rather (if you have to think of yourself at all) as a rather small-gauge, clogged-up pipe that a little of God’s power may be able to filter through if you can just stay loose enough. Tell the one you’re praying for to stay loose too.

If God doesn’t seem to be giving you what you ask, maybe he’s giving you something else.

[Wishful Thinking, 1973, pp. 36-37]

We peeked back into the days of Jeremiah, again. And there, in the time of the exile of the people in the land of those who conquered them, the prophet tells them to live. To settle in for a while, even though they were forcibly taken from their homes and their land. Live, build homes, plant crops, marry off your children. Live, even though this is not what you’d wanted. Underneath: be grateful for what you’ve got, and be a blessing.

A young pastor was visiting in his local nursing home, along with a deacon. A person he visited said they should go see someone else, down the hall. (Spencer Boersma, Feb 13, 2019:) So, she phoned her, and the lady was up for us visiting. As we walked down the hall, I suspected this would be a difficult turn in an otherwise mundane pastoral visit.

We stepped into a room with this middle-aged lady. I tried not to stare. Bedridden, her limbs were terribly, inhumanly swollen. “Come in, don’t be alarmed,” she said with a beaming, bright smile. I was surprised. She was in wonderful spirits.

We inquired what her condition was. She had a rare lymphatic infection, that has left her bedridden, functionally paralyzed. Every day, day in and day out, she had to receive a steady drip of strong antibiotics. But also, steadily, day by day, the infection grew immune to the antibiotics. The very thing that was saving her, was also the very thing slowly killing her. Day by day the inflection slowly but surely was winning.

And yet, to my amazement, I have never met a happier person.

She proceeded to tell me that at the beginning, she was bitter and resentful. She prayed angrily that she would be healed, and of course, while she still does pray for that now, something changed in her disposition.

“What changed?” I asked.

“I realized that Jesus was enough. Everyday, I get to thank God for another day, and I know he is with me. He listens to me and is my friend. That is enough for me.”

She told me that she saw her condition as a calling to be Jesus’ presence here in the nursing home, to the nurses and other patients, who in her mind needed hope and healing more than her.

This person knew the gift of eternal life. She knew the gift of his presence. While she still prayed for healing, that was enough.

Sounds to me that this woman, miraculously, was thanksliving.

But now, let me get to the finale of this healing story from the life of Jesus. Famously, one of the ten says thanks to Jesus. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. So… the moral of the story is: give thanks to Jesus?

Wait a minute. This is the one fellow, of the ten, who did not do what Jesus instructed. Christ said, ‘go to the priest.’ This one fellow did not. But he did the right thing. Jesus asked, “Where are the other nine? 18 Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” He was a Samaritan.

I won’t go into this whole thing at length now, but just remember, that for the Jews, Samaritans were not good. They were foreigners who’d gone astray and had gotten their religion wrong. Don’t even associate with them!

So, this guy had good reason not to go to the Jewish priest: he wasn’t even, technically, Jewish. And coming back to Jesus to praise God, there on the street, was a right thing to do, so it seems.

ThanksLiving: complete, day to day gratitude – when the need arises – is about everything. The spontaneous expressions of thanks, and the ceremonies of the Faith.

There is life in the natural, personal ways we appreciate the gifts we are given. What you do, what I do, when a blessing comes along, is unique. Alongside this are the ways we learn to share our thankfulness. The shared actions that bring us together. A song. A prayer. A gathering. I like both: how we thank on our own and how we can be grateful together.

I hear about cancer patients who share the experience of ringing a bell when they have their final treatment. That celebration is a tiny ritual some of you’ve had, in common with so many others. I know marathon runners who all share the exhausting thrill of running across the finish line. Likewise, our Christianity has shared ceremonies for giving thanks. As well as for saying ‘help us,” or “please guide us now,” or “I’ve got faith!” or “we trust You.”

Thank you, for sharing gratitude today. Just by being together in this room. You’ve brought your blessings to one another here, before the face of Almighty God. And the smiling Face shines upon us again. Keep living: thanksliving.