“Thanks Be to Godl”

Luke 17: 11 – 19                                                                                       

Makemie Memorial Presbyterian Church                                               

November 21, 2010
 

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria & Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”                                                                                                  

When Jesus saw them, he said to them, “Go & show yourselves to the priests.”

And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet & thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.

Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up & go on your way; your faith has made you well.

This ends our reading.


 

I grew up in a family which emphasized gratitude. Grace before meals, written thank you notes, hostess gifts, “please & thank you.” My mother raised us with the Bible in one hand & Emily Post’s Guide to Etiquette in the other. I have to admit there were days when Emily may have actually been the final authority which sometimes make me wonder why I ended up in seminary rather than the diplomatic corps. Yet gratitude is at the heart of both the gospel & good manners.

        With a family full of high achievers I sometimes am asked who gets to say grace at our reunions. Actually there is no jockeying for that role, no socking-it-out; we all simply revert to our childhood blessing which we say in unison at the dinner table:

“We thank you God for happy hearts,
For rain and sunny weather;
We thank you God for this our food
And that we are together.”
 

This morning I have a reverse thanksgiving story, while it was occurring my mind would wander to the scripture Lee just read, of the ten lepers; why some folks give thanks & others do not. So here is the saga of Bobbi Jo.

The other night around 7 pm we had been at Jaxon’s soccer game from 5:30 to 6:30, I was settling in to help with homework around the kitchen table, when a family showed up at the backdoor. The two parents, & three tiny children, an infant, a little more than an infant & a toddler. The back story proved to be umm, not true, along the lines of my grandmother is dying call this hospital & see. Staff at the hospital saying, “no, no patient by that name.”

But still, three little babies! The meat of the story was they needed a new battery for their car, some food & some gas. I explained that I had little to no access to funds at night & if they could wait until morning I would be in a better position to help. No, that wouldn’t work. So I said, “OK, give me a minute to think.”

I called Pastor Mark at Bates & he was getting ready to go into a finance meeting. He said, “I can run you down $20 bucks if you meet me in the middle in front of the courthouse.” I could. I gave the couple $20 for diapers. Then I called Sherwood McGrath the other church at the corner. Sherwood was at choir practice but his wife Cookie said, “I have a few dollars set aside for my lunch money tomorrow, I could give that.”

I declined her kind offer. And she said, “Sherwood will call you as soon as he gets home.”

In the meantime we go out to their car to go get gas & the car will not start. Bobbi Jo looks at me & says, “Do you have jumper cables?” I said, “No.” She said, “Go get your husband he can jump my car.” Her husband was standing right beside her when she said this. I said, “No, don’t think so. Besides we don’t have jumper cables.”

She said, “What will you do to start our car?”

I ran over to the sheriff’s office downstairs at the courthouse. Locked up tight. So my brain immediately jumped to the Snow Hill Police Dept.

I said, “I will call the town police & have them send an officer.”

“No” Bobbi Jo says, “I don’t like cops.”

“OK. What’s your idea?”

Officer Jenkins comes, jump starts their car but it won’t turn over because, wait for it, they are out of gas. I said to him, “What now?”

 Officer Jenkins says, “It’s pretty rare to get a vehicle with a dead battery & out of gas. “ As we’re all standing there in the courthouse parking lot, it starts to rain. The babies are crying in their car seats. Duck Inn has now closed. I ask is the other gas station still open. Yes. 

So I say, “I’ll go up to the gas station & see if they have gas cans.”

Everyone agrees. At the gas station a young woman is behind the counter. I ask, “Do you have gas cans?” She checks. No gas can. I explain the story. She suggests using an empty 2 liter soda bottle to transport gas.

I tell her, “I’m way too rule-bound to do that. But there were two young men outside when I drove up, do you know them?” She said, “yes.”

I said “they look pretty savvy to me. Do you think they could help?” She said, “oh yes.” So out I go to ask two guys loitering at the gas station in grung garb if they can help. They both immediately respond to my story. Saying, “We’ve got it covered.” And they do. They rinse a radiator can, fill it with gasoline. I ask if we will need a funnel. And Toby holds up the Mountain Dew bottle he had been drinking which is now cut to be a funnel. “Well done” I say, marveling at the ingeniousness of these two. We go back to the dead battery, gas empty car. Officer Jenkins is running the lights on the cruiser to entertain the babies. Toby & Stephen put in the gas. Officer Jenkins jumps the car. I follow them to the gas station & put in $50 worth of gas.

Sherwood calls, “Our helping hands mission will have a gift card for this family tomorrow. They can pick it up after 9 a.m. but I have a graveside service at 10 a.m. so they need to come before 10.”

I tell Bobbi Jo & husband this good news. Off they go. It’s now almost 9 p.m. I go into the gas station to rave about Toby & Stephen to the young woman behind the counter & as I’m going on at how grateful I am & how wonderful these two guys are, she points & they are standing behind me. I shake their hands.

The next morning at 10, I get a call from Sherwood. “They haven’t shown up.” Oh, heck. I apologize.

Then as I’m getting ready to leave at 11 walking out to the car, they pull up. “That church office is closed.” They said. They’re mad!

I remind them that they were to be there two hours ago. “Oh, I had another appointment” Bobbi Jo says. I send them back over to Sherwood’s office, saying, “We’re done.” She nods her assent. Sherwood calls me at 11:30 saying they got their $50 gift card at Walmart & they told him, “It wasn’t enough.” Sherwood says he starts to apologize & then catches himself, thinking you know, between Debra, Mark & myself we came up with $120. Sherwood said they left but were angry that they hadn’t gotten a new battery for their car as well.

So I ask you where is the gratitude, the thanksgiving in this story?                   

We thank you God. Isn’t that simple? Yet for some reason as you & I & Bobbi Jo, whirl through busy & complicated lives, it’s not always that simple to get the words out. Our Gospel reading is perhaps an example. Ten lepers healed; we only hear of the gratitude of the one who turned back, praising God with a loud voice, fell down at Jesus’ feet & gave thanks.

The story is seasoned by the information that the one giving thanks is a Samaritan—code for dreaded foreigner—an unusual vehicle for teaching disciples the posture of thanksgiving. Yet why is it that our most profound lessons often come from unexpected people & places.

As we consider this passage about the lepers, we need to take care not to assume that the other nine were ungrateful wretches. We don’t know that. There are many ways to express gratitude, joy, wholeness; & surely each leper experienced those feelings. We don’t know the particular circumstances of each one healed. And in general the nine are following Jesus’ directions to be on their way to see a priest at the temple.

Episcopal priest Martin Bell in his story “Where Are the Nine” reflects: “Ten were cleansed & only one returned ... What shall I say now, that the real point is -- not that one returned but that ten were cleansed? You already know that. That condemnation is easier than investigation, that if we take time to investigate the reasons why people act as they do, we would find that they have to act the way they do & that such action in the light of the circumstances is quite understandable & totally forgivable & even completely reasonable & just as it should be? You already know that.

“What then shall I say?” Bell continues. “That it is good to give thanks? Yes. That it is understandable not to give thanks? Yes. That God does not heal people & then stand around just waiting for us to say thank you & then God gets angry & has hurt feelings if we don’t? No, no, nope.

“But what of the nine? They are on the way home, hiding in fear, refusing to believe, offended at what they call cheap grace, so happy they forgot, lost without their leprosy, unable to say thank you ever again, publishing the news of the Kingdom. Who knows where they are! The point is this: Jesus does. He knows where they are.”

I would add to Bell’s words: Jesus knows where they are & Jesus knows they are grateful.

 Or confused. Or preoccupied. Or empty. Or grieving. Or doubtful. Jesus always knows these things about us; knows things large & small, dark & light, sure & unsure. Jesus, our healer, knows, & aren’t we profoundly grateful to be so well known by the Holy?

Nonetheless, expressing gratitude is often more complicated than it first appears. More complicated even, than, “We thank you God for happy hearts.”

I believe gratitude is not so much a behavior as it is a grounding. Gratitude is not so much an act as an attitude, a frame of mind. Consider the words from First Thessalonians: “Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

 Give thanks in all circumstances. Not just when the leprosy is healed but also when you discover more chemo is needed. Not just when you exchange wedding vows but also when you exchange the damaging words of your first lovers’ quarrel. Not just when the unexpected promotion comes, but also when the unexpected layoff occurs. All circumstances.

Giving thanks in all circumstances because God knows where we are. God knows how we feel. God knows our next breath. How extraordinary to be so known, so loved, so healed. I believe we are most whole when we hold our stance of gratitude in the world knowing we are held by the Holy.

In some ways it may be the small stuff even more than the big stuff that makes us whole. The big stuff is just that, big, obvious, you’d be a fool not to be grateful. Big stuff like being healed of leprosy, like crawling out of a totaled car without a scratch, like finding a home that withstood the hurricane’s fury. Big stuff, very likely to lead us (like the Samaritan) to fall at Jesus’ feet in thanksgiving. And it is interesting that it is often the big stuff that finally awakens us to the small stuff.

The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “Only they who give thanks for little things receive the big things. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts God has in store for us because we do not give thanks for daily gifts.”
We thank you God for happy hearts, for rain & sunny weather.

It may be our ability to write life’s little thank you notes that keeps us grounded; to write, speak, live & pray life’s little thank you notes, both to God & to one another. And it’s not so much the form of our gratitude as it is the content. One leper spins & throws himself at the feet of Jesus shouting thanks. Others live out their gratitude in other ways no doubt, like Bobbi Jo, for aren’t we most changed by the healing mercies of daily life?

Gratitude emerges from a deep & holy place within us, & there are many expressions which are possible. While Emily Post would dictate an exact format to the thank you note, the Holy already knows where we are and where our hearts are. To be able to express our gratitude contributes to our wholeness, deepens our life, leads us to the Holy. God awaits, ah, not our ritual but our rejoicing.

Each night as you lie in bed, imagine that you, like the Samaritan, have fallen in thanksgiving at the feet of the Holy. Simply list five things for which you are grateful. And in the morning, before arising, in the same spirit & by the same Spirit list five more things. Cultivating a life of gratitude can be that simple, as simple as “we thank you God for happy hearts, & unhappy hearts, & beating hearts.” In all circumstances, thanks be to God.