Comprehensive Thankfulness
Luke 17:11-19[1]
Some of you may have groaned when I
read this story from Luke. It’s one of
those passages that gets beaten to death in the Church – especially this time
of year as we approach Thanksgiving. This
is the season when we celebrate God’s bounty.
Today we started collecting our Harvest Fund offering. If you’ve gone to the State Fair in the past
couple of days and walked through the produce areas, everyone’s showing off
what came from the growing season. But
perhaps this story from Luke has become a bit tiresome for you.
This story is used so often during this
time of year because it focuses almost explicitly on the theme of
thankfulness. The problem is, we hear
it so often that the story loses a little of its excitement. We expect the lepers to be healed by
Jesus. We aren’t surprised or
awe-struck by what happens. And we
aren’t particularly moved to be thankful.
It just seems, as we listen to this story once again, that the lepers
are getting their due.
Our reactions to this story will
mirror what will happen in millions of homes across America during the next
month and a half. You’ve heard me talk
about how grateful I am to have been the pastor here at Cane Creek. At the end of November, we’ll sit down with
family and friends and dig into turkey dinners. But the truth is, not many of us will feel a genuine sense of
gratitude. We aren’t all that grateful
because deep down inside, we figure we’re simply getting what we deserve. Most of us say it’s been a long year and most
of us will conclude that we’re simply getting what’s due to us.
Think about it this way. When you get your paycheck, what do you
do? Do you fall on the ground in front
of your employer and yell, “Hallelujah!
Thanks be to God!”? I doubt that
any of us do that. Or when you get your
Social Security check in the mail, do you cry out, “Praise the Lord!” Again, we probably don’t. Why?
Because when we get paid, most of us think we’re getting what we
deserve.
But why do we deserve something and
others don’t? Why did Jesus heal these
ten lepers when there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them running around
in ancient Palestine hoping for a miracle cure? The truth of the Gospel is that I don’t think deserving has
anything to do with it.
Despite our lack of gratitude in
many situations, the good news is that God is still willing to love us. Even when the nine lepers failed to go back
and thank Jesus, God didn’t revoke their healing. Even when we’re ungrateful for blessings and healings in our
lives, God still keeps on blessing.
It’s like the story about an old man
who was sitting on the banks of the Ganges River one morning when he saw a
scorpion floating by in the water. Now,
scorpions don’t swim and unless someone intervened, this scorpion would be dead
soon. So the old man reached down to
rescue the scorpion but it stung him. A
few moments later, the old man tried again but again he got stung causing a
great deal of pain and swelling in his hand.
A person walking by saw what was going on and yelled, “Hey, stupid old
man, what’s wrong with you? Only a fool
would risk his life for the sake of an ugly, stinging, ungrateful creature like
that.” And the old man calmly replied,
“My friend, just because it is the scorpion’s nature to sting, does not change
my nature to save.”
Despite our ungratefulness, despite
our foul temperaments, Jesus is still there for us. But Jesus’ hope, exemplified by the one leper who came back, is
that eventually we’ll come to appreciate what God has done for us and we’ll be
moved to show our thankfulness.
I’m a baseball fan in mourning right
now. My Los Angeles Angels got swept by
the Red Sox last weekend and now they’re out of the playoffs. Instead of being grateful that they were one
of the four teams from the American League who made it into the playoffs, I’m
feeling more that the season was a waste.
In 2002, the Angels won the World
Series. They beat the Yankees in the
first round. Then they beat the
Twins. And they even beat Barry Bonds
and the Giants in the World Series. I
have been an Angels’ fan since 1979, the year my former team, the Minnesota
Twins, traded their star player Rod Carew to the Angels. Since 1979 Angels’ fans have known nothing
but disappointment. In 1979, they won
the division but lost to the Orioles.
In 1982, they had the Brewers down 3-1 in the playoffs but lost. In 1986, they were one strike away from the
World Series but lost that game and eventually the series. So in 2002 when they made the playoffs as
the American League Wild Card, I was not getting my hopes up too high. Up until 2002, Angels’ fans would say,
“There’s always next year.” We would
savor every victory during the regular season and give thanks for it because we
knew there was not much hope in the playoffs.
I think this is a little what God
hopes we’ll do in life – give thanks at every opportunity because we don’t know
if there will be another one. Over the
past several weeks, I have been noticing many more things in this area that I’m
thankful for. Part of is that very
soon, I won’t get to see those sights with the same frequency.
We should give thanks for those
major healings and blessings but also for the little things. In all things, we can give thanks. But those two little words – give thanks –
can be oh so hard for us. I’m trying,
rather than focusing on my feelings of self-imposed deservedness, to focus on
God-given blessings with thankfulness.
Amen.
[1] This sermon has been adapted from an article in LectionAid,
Volume 10, Number 4, pp. 49-51. I
have added in some personal variations of the themes presented in the article.