It was the day after Thanksgiving. A woman caught her husband weighing himself
on the scale. He was sucking in his
stomach. “That won’t help you, honey,” his wife said. “You know that won’t help.” Her husband replied: “Oh, it helps a lot; it’s the only way I
can see the numbers.”
I hope you’re ready for
Thanksgiving. And I’m not speaking only
about the food. Thanksgiving is such an
important holiday for us as Americans and for us as Christians. It’s a time to give thanks to God for our
nation and our freedoms, which we enjoy because of the sacrifice of the men and
women in our military, and to give thanks that the God we believe in is a God
whom we can trust, seek strength from, worship and serve. It is a time to think about what we have to
be thankful for. It is a day which
reminds us that thankfulness and happiness, happiness and being thankful, are
inseparable.
Of course, people are thankful
for different things. On Thanksgiving a
mom was outside one frigid morning shoveling snow from her driveway. A neighbor stopped by to say hi and asked her
why her husband wasn’t out there helping her shovel snow. The mom explained that one of them had to
stay inside to take care of the children, so they drew straws to see who would
go out and shovel. “Sorry about your
bad luck,” the neighbor said. The
mom looked up from her shoveling and said, “Oh, don’t be sorry. I won.”
Our nation celebrates
Thanksgiving Day this coming Thursday. Thanksgiving,
as an unofficial festival, began in 1622, when Governor William Bradford
summoned the survivors of the Mayflower to a meal to praise God for their first
harvest, the first tangible sign that their pilgrimage had divine approval.
President Abraham Lincoln, in 1863,
in the midst of a civil war that had torn this nation apart, issued a
proclamation. He wrote: “I invite my
fellow citizens in every part of the united States
The season of Thanksgiving offers
us the opportunity to examine our hearts and minds and to honestly reflect on
some important questions: Do I live a
thankful life? Do I have a thankful
heart? What am I truly thankful for? Being thankful is not natural to human
nature. It must be taught and caught. One of the first important lessons parents
teach their children is to say please and thank you. Being thankful is an attitude, a powerful and
positive attitude, that if learned, translates into enjoyment, fulfillment and
appreciation.
Our Gospel story for this morning
is about 10 lepers. Lepers were the most
revolting human beings of Jesus’ day. They
were repulsive to the eyes. Their mere
presence horrified people who feared they would be contaminated with the
dreaded disease. Lepers were socially
ostracized, cut off from friends, banned from their homes and from the temple, and
banished to live in remote valleys and caves.
They were literally the zombies, the walking dead of their day.
Luke tells us that Jesus is
making his way to Jerusalem
and as he approaches a village, ten lepers confront him. One leper would be bad enough, but ten
surrounding you would be terrifying. The story says: “Keeping their distance,
they cried out in desperation, ‘Jesus Master, have mercy on us.’” The law required that lepers keep their
distance from people. One authority
writes that when the wind was blowing toward the healthy person, the law stated
that lepers had to stand at least 50 yards away. The law specified that if a leper saw someone
approaching, they had to yell “unclean” three times to warn people and then
cross the road.
These lepers knew that Jesus was
no ordinary rabbi. They call him master
and appeal for Him to show mercy. They
fully believed the stories they had heard about Jesus’ power to heal. And out of compassion and by the divine power
within him, Jesus heals them.
Now if Jesus healed me of a
dreaded disease, a life-threatening illness I would be overjoyed. How about you? I would shout aloud: “Thank you God.” And yet though ten lepers were healed, only
one turned back to give thanks. “A
Samaritan, seeing that he was healed, turned back and with a loud voice
glorified God, fell down on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks.”
Jesus says: “Were not ten made
clean? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give God
praise except this foreigner?” You
can hear the sadness and disappointment in Jesus’ words. This story reminds us that all too often
human beings are not thankful. The
attitude of gratitude is the exception, rather than the rule.
Why was Jesus disappointed that
only one leper had returned to give thanks for his healing? Were his feelings hurt? I think so; Jesus was after-all fully human. But there is something larger going on in
this story than hurt feelings. Jesus was
deeply concerned about the human heart: our inner life, our interior life, the
condition of our soul. Jesus knew what a
person is like whose heart is thankless.
An ungrateful heart is a cold heart, a callous heart. Jesus knew it was a form of spiritual death. Spiritually we might call it heart disease. Jesus' desire was for people to have a
thankful spirit, grounded in their faith in God. Jesus was saying that gratitude should be at
the core of one’s being. Jesus healed
the lepers to change their hearts so they would God the glory and praise.
When faith in God is lacking, we
focus primarily on ourselves: our needs, our fears, our disappointments, our
resentments, our desires, our missed opportunities, with no or little
appreciation of our blessings or the needs and hurts of those around us. A cold heart doesn’t have the ability to
appreciate beauty and wonder and generosity and surprises of grace. We become blind to the love from others
around us and we become blind to their needs and concerns.
We hear a lot about the attitude
of entitlement today. The greater our
sense of entitlement, that we deserve the things we want in life, that we have
the right to have the things we want in life, the smaller our sense of
gratitude. Like gratitude and happiness,
so gratitude and humility also are inseparable.
Our entitlement mindset has led to a proliferation of lawsuits in our
society, when we don't get something we want or believe we deserve, we sue
somebody.
Look inside yourself for a moment. Is your heart thankful? If the answer is yes, ask yourself why? Why are you a thankful person? Since thankfulness is not intrinsic to human
nature, what has formed your heart? I
suspect some important and influential role models helped to shape your heart. How has your faith helped to develop your
heart of gratitude? I suspect a growing
and maturing faith, infused by the Holy Spirit, has something to do with it.
Is your heart thankful? If the
answer is no, ask yourself why? If you
have an ungrateful heart, repent, tell God you are sorry, seek God’s
forgiveness and ask God to change your heart.
And God will. True faith says
thank you God for your grace. The words
of a contemporary praise song capture it well:
“Change my heart oh God Make it ever true, Change my heart oh God, May
I be like You. You are the potter I am the clay, Mold me and make me, This is
what I pray. Change my heart oh God, Make
it ever true, Change my heart oh God, May I be like You.” Yes, a growing, dynamic and genuine faith in
God has a way of stimulating and producing a grateful heart. When we have changed hearts, when we are no
longer ruled by pride and self-centeredness, we become more like Christ, more
Christ-like.
There is always something to be
thankful for. In the darkest of times,
there is always some light. In the
saddest of times, there are always lighter moments. In times of loneliness, there is always
someone you can call or someone who will surprise you. Why? It
is because of God’s grace.
A childhood friend of mine from San Diego , Bill Frost, we
called him Frosty, died a few days ago. He
lived in Flagstaff , AZ. Vietnam
veteran, serving in the infantry, and the war definitely took its toll on him
the rest of his life. In these later
years he developed a disease where the muscles in his legs were getting weaker,
he wore braces, but knew one day he would be in a wheel chair. We had not seen each other for over 30 years,
and got reacquainted about 5 years ago.
We regularly communicated through email, texting and even telephone
calls.
He often would say: “Al, I am grateful to God for my life. I can say this to you because as a minister
you understand. I just talked to a good
friend for over an hour whom I haven’t talked to for years. I am a happy guy.” He talked about his good fortune to have two
brothers and how close they were. He
would say: “You know Al, we are not as young as we used to be. We don’t know how much time we have left, so
we need to make the most of it and spend time with people who bring positive
energy. We need to do things we think
God wants us to do. I have just learned
to appreciate the little things, the small things, the surprises in life, like
getting reacquainted with old friends after years of being apart. Yes, I have problems but they could be worse. I thank God for so many good things in my
life.”
Bill embodied the spirit in the
letter of I Thessalonians 5:17 which says:
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all
circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
God's Spirit is at work in our
hearts and minds through faith, working to bring hope out of hopelessness, strength
out of weakness, wisdom out of foolishness, and gratitude out of ingratitude. I can personally testify to this holy work of
God in my own life over the years and yet I know I am still a work in progress. I deeply believe there is an unbreakable bond
between faith and thankfulness. Faith in
God inspires a thankful heart and a thankful heart strengthens and deepens
faith.
“One of them, when he saw that
he was healed, gave thanks to God with a loud voice.” My friends, let us too live lives of
thankfulness. Amen!
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