This coming Thursday is Thanksgiving. It’s the one day out of the entire year dedicated to giving thanks for all the blessings that we enjoy. We can trace the holiday all the way back to the 1620s when the Pilgrims first landed in Massachusetts. George Washington proclaimed the first national day of thanksgiving in 1789; and it became a national holiday in 1863, by proclamation of Abraham Lincoln. The original thanksgiving celebrations were religious celebrations. Oh, the Pilgrims may have feasted with their Native American friends in gratitude for a bountiful harvest; but all that feasting occurred after they gathered to worship in services that probably lasted for several hours. George Washington certainly saw it as a religious day. He called on his countrymen to acknowledge “with grateful hearts the many… favors of Almighty God.” But these days, Thanksgiving isn’t very religious at all. Most people don’t spend the day sitting in a church pew; they’re in a recliner watching TV. Many do say grace before they stuff themselves with turkey, candied sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie; but the closest that other folks get to giving thanks is exclaiming, “Thank God my football team won!” What happened? When did we stop giving thanks for what we have and start taking it all for granted? How did we get so far away from the original intent of this holiday?
Maybe this morning’s story
from the gospel of Luke (17:11-19) can shed some light on the problem. It’s one
of the few stories in the gospels that deals with gratitude – and the lack of
it. It’s a very short story.
Jesus encounters 10 lepers, men whose illness is so feared that they have been
expelled from society. They live alone, or with other lepers. They aren’t even
permitted to approach Jesus, but must stand far away from him and shout, “Jesus,
master, have pity on us.” Of course, Jesus does
have pity on them. “Go show yourselves to the priests,” he says. That’s what
people did if they were healed of leprosy – they would go to the priest to
prove that their leprosy was gone. Only then could they go back to their home
and family. The men follow Jesus’ instructions; and as they go on their way,
they are healed! Their bleeding sores, their crusty scabs, their white, dying
skin – all of it disappeared, and their flesh became clean and fresh and
healthy. But only one came back to
say “thank you” to Jesus. Only one –
and he was a Samaritan. None of the nine Jews who were healed came back. They didn’t
even give him a thumbs-up and holler, “Way to go, Jesus! You da man!” No, all
Jesus saw of them were their backs disappearing from view as they hurried off.
It’s not what we expect, is
it? The Samaritan – the one who shouldn’t have anything to do with a Jewish
Messiah – he’s the only one who showed any gratitude! I’ve often wondered why
that was the case. Is it possible that those nine Jews felt that they were entitled to be healed? After all, they
were expecting a Messiah who would solve all the problems that any Jew ever had.
That’s what they had been taught from their childhood – that when the Messiah
came, he would fix everything that was wrong. The Samaritan had been taught
something, too. He had been taught that no Jew cared anything about a Samaritan. He hadn’t grown up waiting for a
Messiah to swoop down and make everything better. Far from it! When a Samaritan
encountered a Jew, he wasn’t helped; he was usually spit upon! That Samaritan
didn’t feel entitled to anything, especially
from a Jewish Messiah.
If those nine Jews felt
entitled to be healed, then it makes perfect sense that they didn’t come back
to say “thank you.” After all, we don’t show gratitude for what we’re entitled
to have, do we? We say, “Thank you” to the server at Tim Horton’s when she
hands us coffee and a donut at the drive-through window because we’re polite; but
if we don’t get that breakfast, we’ll
probably go into the store and raise a fuss about it. After all, we’ve paid for
that coffee, and we’re entitled to it. But people today seem to feel entitled
to lots of things that they aren’t really entitled to at all. People get angry
when traffic on I-75 is heavy, because they think they’re entitled to drive all
the way to work without any problems. They complain when prices go up, because
they think that they’re entitled to low prices on everything from tee shirts to
canned corn. And they certainly feel entitled to buy anything that they want on
Black Friday! What else can explain fist fights at Wal-Mart over the last
Tickle Me Elmo doll? We feel entitled; and people who feel entitled don’t say
“thank you.” Instead, they say, “You only bought a 15 pound turkey? There won’t
be enough leftovers for sandwiches!”
Gratitude is as scarce as
turkey’s teeth these days. But gratitude is one of the foundations of our
Christian life. If we lose the capacity to feel gratitude, we lose the engine
that drives our generosity! It’s no accident that here at Nashville UCC, we
receive a collection for the FISH food pantry on the Sunday before
Thanksgiving. Because we are thankful for what we have, we want to share with
others who don’t have as much as we do. We want to show our gratitude through
our actions.
I saw a short video recently
that made me realize vividly the power of gratitude. The video begins with a
view of a man sitting on a blanket on the sidewalk in front of a public
building, perhaps a courthouse. His clothing is clean but threadbare. His eyes
aren’t focusing on anything. In front of him sits an empty coffee can. People
walk by him. Some are alone; while others are in groups, chatting together
happily. A few slow down to drop a coin or two in his coffee can. Now we can
see that there is a hand-written sign sitting next to him. It says, “I’m blind.
Please help.” An attractive woman in black pumps walks by, then stops and
returns to him. She gives him nothing, and she says nothing. Instead, she picks
up his sign, turns it over, and writes something on the back in black marker.
As she is writing, the blind man touches her shoes with his fingertips,
striving to identify her. She replaces his sign with the one she wrote, then
turns and walks away. Almost immediately, people begin to drop coins on the
blanket and into the coffee can – not one coin at a time, but handfuls of them.
They even drop in dollar bills! The donations are so abundant that the can
quickly fills up, to the astonishment of the blind man. Somewhat later, the
woman in black pumps walks by again. She stops; and as the blind man hesitantly
touches her shoes, he recognizes her as the woman who wrote something on his
sign. “What did you do to my sign?” he asks. She leans down and puts a gentle
hand on his shoulder. “I wrote the same,” she says, “but in different words.”
As the video comes to a close, we see the new sign that has inspired so much
generosity. It now reads, “It’s a beautiful day; and I can’t see it.”
Friends, how can we not show
gratitude when we realize that everything we have is a gift? The ability to enjoy the world
around us; our friends and family who show us so much love; the ability to work at
something meaningful; and the freedom to pursue whatever brings us happiness: these
are all gifts of God. And, of course, the greatest gift of all is salvation –
adoption into God’s family through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, and made real to us by the Holy Spirit. We have so much to be grateful
for!
So these are my Thanksgiving
hopes for all of you. On Thursday, I hope that you enjoy a wonderful meal. I
hope that you eat turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie until you can’t hold any
more. I hope that you enjoy the company of family and friends. I hope that you
can relax, take a nap, and enjoy the parades and the football games on TV. But
as you do all these things, I hope that you also do that one thing that matters
most of all. I hope that you give thanks to God for all the blessings that you enjoy!
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