Thanks- Living Luke 17:11-17; Psalm 100 Many of my friends, even my most liturgically- minded friends those who know that the season of Christmas actually begins on Christmas Day and lasts until Epiphany on January 6 have confessed that this year, they have been listening to Christmas music all through the month of November. There are many homes in our neighborhood already adorned with Christmas lights, and a few trees twinkling from living room windows. The red cups have been out at Starbucks for weeks. Some American cities have already had their big tree lightings and accompanying Christmas parades. Stores are playing holiday music over their speaker systems, and Christmas decorations have taken over where one might have found useful household items just a month ago. But it s November 23. Christmas is over a month away; Advent has not yet begun. It s as if Thanksgiving is just slipping away if we didn t have turkeys to roast, if we didn t get the day off of work and school, we might miss it altogether. The line between Thanksgiving and Christmas or even the line between Halloween and Christmas has been getting thinner year after year, especially as retailers try to beat one another to the punch to capture consumer dollars. Now, the line between Thanksgiving and the next day, Black Friday, is even pretty muddled, with many retailers staying open on Thanksgiving day itself, and others opening at midnight so you can shop all night long, stop by Starbucks for a holiday beverage so you can stay awake on your way home, then sleep away your turkey and shopping while the leftover stuffing becomes concrete on the dirty dishes still in the sink. Never mind if you have family in town or friends with whom to be thankful surely they will be willing to experience the indigestion caused by turkey on the run, or by late- night, early- morning crowds at their local retailers if they want to spend time with you. And if you work in retail, well, perhaps you can celebrate Thanksgiving another day. Not Black Friday, of course, but soon enough. 1
It s not just those stores that are open on Thursday or in the middle of the night to take your money and convince you that you must have things that you really do not need (because they re bargains after all!): the line gets blurred by the list- making of our consumption in general. My own family is one in which we have always submitted wish lists for Christmas, and since my mom does not like crowds or shopping, and would never go to Target in the middle of the night on Black Friday, my family is requested to submit lists in well advance of Thanksgiving so that her Christmas shopping need not be hurried or frantic. I keep a running list of interesting items on my Amazon wish list year- round so I don t have to do a lot of work to make up a Christmas list during an already- hectic season. But I still fret over it. For what should I ask this year? I wonder. What if I forget about the thing that I really wanted most when I m making my list? What if there s something better that someone might get for me this year, and I ve wasted my chances by asking for lesser gifts? Retailers seem to be trying to make this easier on us not only can you make a virtual wish list on almost any website, but lately the reams of catalogs that have been arriving at my house come, not only with hundreds of glossy pages filled with plastic nonsense that no child needs, but they also come equipped with little blank check- boxes next to the photos of each toy, so that my children, whether or not they can read or write, can simply go through and indicate their preferences (or demands) by checking the boxes next to the photos that seem most enticing. There s no need to read a description of what an item actually is or does just take that Sharpie and check away. If you haven t already guessed it, I will confess to you that all of this bothers me. It bothers me because I think we cheapen Christmas a little more each year, trying to make it about stuff, about traditions that don t matter, about what we give others and get from them rather than the gift we ve received from God through grace. And it bothers me because Thanksgiving is getting lost in all the 2
shopping and list- making and decorating and carol- singing. And while Thanksgiving is not a liturgical holiday it is not a Christian holiday it is a distinctly American holiday, celebrated by people all over our nation who have no affiliation with the Christian Church and no loyalty to the Trinitarian God, and while we church- goers offer our thanksgiving to God year- round, the fact that we are squeezing out this special day grieves me. It s not because I love turkey and stuffing in fact, I would be just as happy with a taco or a lasagna on Thanksgiving as any of the traditional foods. But I think we need Thanksgiving as a holiday to remind us of who we are called to be in the world: not consumers, but servants; not those entitled, but those blessed; not Creators ourselves, but creatures in every sense, owing our very being to Another. Perhaps we should be glad that Thanksgiving weekend often falls on the first Sunday of Advent, because it has the potential to help us begin our waiting for Christ s arrival with the right mindset: not as those greedy for more, but as those grateful for the grace poured out day after day, wishing for more only in terms of righteousness, justice, and expansion of God s reign; we can begin the season of waiting with a reminder that the best gift has already been given. But we lose something if we launch ourselves right from the turkey on the table into our list- making, bargain- hunting, alter- ego selves. It s not that the holiday is the only time, or even the best time, for us to be thankful it s that the act of being thankful, of recognizing and articulating our gratitude, actually increases the blessing in our life it changes us. Gratitude has the capacity to make us whole, to make us well, in some sense, to save us. In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus has again been crossing boundaries and wandering where he probably shouldn t go. He runs into a group of ten, ten lepers, ten outcasts, ten who live on the 3
margins of society. They know that they should keep their distance from Jesus, and they do, shouting to him, Jesus, master, have pity on us. Trained by experience to expect little, they probably shouted to Jesus without much thought, assuming that he would ignore them, like all the others, and go on his way. Maybe they were asking for alms, since they had to beg to support themselves. Jesus didn t give them any money, and Jesus didn t touch them, like he had touched a leper earlier in Luke s gospel. But he did see them, perhaps in a way they hadn t been seen in years. Maybe Jesus saw their potential, their future, their hearts, the image of God in which they had been created. And while he didn t touch them, he gave them a command: Go, show yourselves to the priests. There s no reason for them to go to the priests unless something has changed, so by giving this command Jesus implies healing, and the text tells us that as they went, they were healed. As they went, their skin lesions covered over with fresh, new skin, and for the first time in forever, they were able to see their own potential, their future, as people and not just as outcasts. As they traveled, they were cleansed, given new life, a new start. Then one disobeys Jesus command, turning around and coming back to say thank you. He s a Samaritan, and apparently he s been so overwhelmed by gratitude, he cannot help but express it. The others haven t done anything wrong: they re doing exactly as they were told, and we can presume that they are healed, just like this grateful Samaritan. But the one who turned back was blessed a second time. Jesus tells him to rise and go on his way, and says, your faith has made you well. But the word here for made you well is the Greek sozo, which means not just made well, but made whole, and even saved. Your faith has saved you, Jesus tells him, even though all the others were healed, too. And I think the reason this one grateful Samaritan gets the double blessing is not because Jesus liked him the best, or because he was rewarded for using his manners, but because recognizing 4
your blessings and giving thanks for them is a blessing in and of itself. There is something powerful about not only receiving a blessing, but naming it and giving thanks for it. 1 Maybe it s one of those meals, when everything is delicious, but it s not even about the food: it s about the company and the warmth in the room and the love and laughter shared around the table and time seems to stop for a few minutes in the midst of the regular chaos. And you lean over to the person next to you or perhaps you raise a glass and just say, This is great: the food, the atmosphere, all of you I m so thankful. And in naming it and giving thanks, the blessing is somehow multiplied. You re blessed a second time. Something inside you changes for the better. Or maybe you ve hiked to a beautiful vista, and as you look at the scenery all around you, smell the fresh mountain air, and feel the tired satisfaction in your muscles, you lean over to your companion and say, This is so beautiful I m so glad I get to share it with you. Again, the blessing is multiplied; you ve been blessed again, and something within you has awakened. Thanksgiving comes from recognizing the blessing and naming it seeing it and saying it not just knowing it somewhere deep inside or thinking about it or feeling a general sense of gratitude. Thanksgiving isn t about being generally thankful for the things we re generally thankful for. It s about looking with new eyes and seeing more than we usually see, then articulating it in some way, actually putting it into words. When we name our gratitude, it pulls us into something bigger than ourselves and joins us to the font of blessing itself. 2 Gratitude frees us from fear, releases us from anxiety, gives us courage to do more than we could ever have imagined. We cannot be afraid or anxious when we are grateful the two do not co- exist. 1 This idea is thanks to David Lose s commentary, Second Blessing, posted on workingpreacher.org on 10/7/2013. 2 ibid. 5
So that s what the nine lepers missed: they didn t do anything wrong; they were still healed from leprosy. But the one who came back, who saw the blessing and named it with gratitude, was not only healed but made whole. It was the thanksgiving that gave him life abundant. It was the thanksgiving that saved him. We have an opportunity today to begin our Thanksgiving holiday a little early, to give it the time and space it deserves before we launch into the chaos of consumption that has become the Christmas season. So I encourage you, over the next few minutes, to recognize and articulate the blessing in your life: the regulars, the things that are obvious like family and home and friends, but also the little things, the unexpected blessings, the riches we often complain about, the people that challenge us. Choose one or two of these blessings and write it down on the leaf you got when you came in there should be pens in the slots with the hymnals in front of you and during the offertory this morning, instead of passing the plates around, the offering plates will be in the front of the sanctuary, and you re invited to come forward as you re able, to drop your offering in the plate, and then to place your thankful leaf on our Thanksgiving tree. Name your blessings, articulate your gratitude, and see if it doesn t begin to make you whole. Let us pray Oh, God, you have healed us from so many things. You have blessed us in so many ways. And yet, we often go about complaining about tiny inconveniences: the line in the grocery is too long, the battery life on our smartphones is too short, we have too many invitations and can t possibly accept them all. Help us to really see the blessings in our lives: open our eyes. And then help us to name our gratitude, understanding that the Thanksgiving just might give us new life, that our thanksgiving might become thanks- living. Thank you for your love, for your grace, for the joy we find in this place. Amen. Rev. Elizabeth Ingram Schindler Faith United Methodist Church Issaquah, WA November 23, 2014 6