Reckless Gratitude

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Psalm 92; Luke 17:11-19

September 9, 2012 • Portage First UMC

Recently I read about a bridal shower where the bride-to-be asked everyone to fill out an envelope with their address on it. Not an unreasonable request. But when the envelopes were collected, a generic “thank you” note was inserted in each one and they were put in the mail. No signature. No reference to any particular gift or expression of love. Just a generic “Thank you for sharing in our shower” note. No real gratitude (cf. Kalas, Longing to Pray, pg. 61). And I wonder—have we really gotten to the place where we think we don’t really have to say “thank you”? Have we lost the art of genuinely being grateful for what we have or what we have received? Because if we have, we’re in trouble. Gratitude is the oil the keeps the gears of life moving, as one author has put it. Gratitude is at the heart of true friendship and good relationships, and more than that, gratitude is something we need to do for our mental, spiritual and emotional well-being. “We say thank you not simply because the other person deserves the word but also because we need to say it” (Kalas 73). I wonder: are we suffering from a gratitude deficit?

So how often do we treat God like that bride-to-be treated her guests and family and friends? I don’t know about you, but it’s all too easy for me, in my own prayer life, to dive right into asking for what I want. Like a child at Christmastime, I rattle off my “wish list,” and all the things I would like God to do for me and for others, and if I do get around to saying “thank you,” I’ll often throw up some generic “thanks for this day, thanks for my family,” and so on. Sort of like we do at Thanksgiving tables when we hurry around and name some generic blessing because we’re in a rush to get to the turkey! If gratitude is the oil of friendship in human relationships, how much more is it needed in our friendship with God. When talking with God, are we as grateful as we are demanding?

This month, we are looking at the ways we talk with God, and how that ongoing conversation builds our relationship with our creator. Last week, we talked about our need for honest and candid prayer, how we can say exactly what is on our mind because God is being enough to handle it. This morning, we want to talk about gratitude, something we far too often overlook when we communicate with God. And to do that, we’re going to shortly turn to the psalms, the prayerbook of the Bible, but first I want to look at a well-known Gospel story that Luke records—a story that is far too often a mirror for our own lives.

Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem, as he often is in Luke’s Gospel, and this particular day, he’s in a village—we don’t know which village, but it’s on the border between Galilee and Samaria. Samaria, you might remember, was the place where those half-breeds, the Samaritans, lived. They were the folks whose ancestors had intermarried with foreigners and, to a good orthodox Jew, they were no longer true Jews. In fact, to avoid the risk of contamination, most would cross the Jordan River and travel on the other side to avoid going through Samaria. We know Jesus wasn’t like that, though, and on this day, he even enters this border town where there are ten lepers. Ten men with a serious skin disease that, most people thought, was passed from person to person by physical contact. Lepers were required to stay away from healthy people, to not come in contact with them, and to live outside the village. Many people saw the lepers as sinners; they were being punished for something with this disease. And so, they were removed from their families, from the community, from any semblance of normal life (cf. Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 198). Even when they see Jesus, Luke says they stand at a distance and cry out to him, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” (17:13).

That word, “pity,” means they were seeking help. They’re not just asking Jesus to feel sorry for them or their situation, as we might mean if we use that word. They believe Jesus can do something about their situation, he can make them better, even though they may not deserve it. “See our situation, Jesus,” they’re saying, “and make us well.” And what happens next is what Michael Card calls one of Jesus’ “unmiraculous miracles” (Card 198). There is no waving of the hands or any sort of special prayer said. There’s no bright light—in fact, Jesus doesn’t even touch them or tell them they are healed. If you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss the miracle altogether. All Jesus says is, “Go, show yourselves to the priests” (17:14). It was the priests’ job to declare whether or not they had been healed; they could not return home until the priest said so. And Luke says “as they went” they were healed (17:14). Actually, he says they were “cleansed,” which has to be with the whole person—body, mind and soul. This sort of cleansing is seen as a gift of God, not something that is earned (Green, The Gospel of Luke, pg. 624). It’s another part of the unmiraculous miracle. So on the way, they suddenly notice something different. They are whole again. I wonder…had they been sick so long that they had forgotten what it felt like to be healthy? Had they given up hope? Whatever is going through their minds, once they realize they are cleansed, they run all the faster toward the priests. As soon as they were seen by the priest, they could go home, see their families, get back to their life. And so they run toward the local priest.

Or at least nine of them do. One of them stops in his tracks when he realizes he has been healed. Somehow, he notices that the leprosy is gone, so he stops and turns around. Now, Luke wants you to know this man was not a Jew; he is a Samaritan. He is a hated foreigner, and so Luke implies, then, that the other nine are Jews. They are, in their own minds, the faithful ones of God, better than this hated Samaritan, only associating with him because they all shared the same disease. And yet, it’s only the Samaritan who stops, turns around, and runs back to Jesus to thank him. The rest hurry back to their lives, but this man throws himself on the ground and thanks Jesus. The posture is one of worship, of prayer—laying prostrate on the ground, face in the dust, giving thanks. We saw that same image last week when Jesus is in Gethsemane, praying the most honest prayer—face down in the dust. And this prayer, while very honest, is not focused on asking for anything. It’s focused on thankfulness for what the man has already received. The word Luke uses to describe the man giving thanks is “eucharisteo”—eucharist, which is the same word many traditions use to describe holy communion. The Eucharist. The time we give thanks for God doing what was necessary to save us. This man has only one thing on his mind at this point, to give thanks for the healing he has received, for salvation from this wasting disease. God has done something marvelous in his life, and he rushes back to give thanks. But “where are the other nine?” Jesus asks, although he knows. They’ve taken the gift but ignored the giver. And so, to the Samaritan, Jesus says, “You have a new life—go live it.” “Your faith has made you well” (17:19). You can almost hear the smile in Jesus’ voice because the heart of Jesus is touched by a simple gesture of gratitude.

But we shouldn’t be surprised by that, because all throughout the Old Testament, and especially in the psalms, we hear God’s people praying prayers of gratitude. Psalm 92 is one example; we could give literally hundreds of examples of such prayer. Gratitude is a mark of a healthy prayer life. “Gratitude,” writes Ellsworth Kalas, “is a right estimate of our relationship with God, to others, and to life itself, because gratitude is the recognition that no one is a solitary achiever, no one has accumulated success or wealth unaided” (74). That’s what the Samaritan leper knew—he did not find healing himself. It came from Jesus. And that’s what the psalmists knew—what they had did not come from themselves. It all comes from God. We’ve subscribed to the American lie of the “self-made person,” but there is no such thing. To the proud Corinthians (much like us in many ways), Paul asks, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). In other words, why are you so proud of the things you didn’t really earn or do? Everything is a gift, and we are called to be people of gratitude, especially toward God.

So, we may sometimes give thanks in our prayers, but how specific are we in our gratitude? Don’t we tend to give thanks rather generally? “Thank you for this day. Thank you for everything. Bless everybody.” And so on. “We use the general because we’re lazy,” Ellsworth Kalas says (58). A lazy relationship is taken over by generalities. So we pray in general for our church, for our country, for people we know. And that enables us to get done with our prayers as quickly as possible. But the psalmists were not lazy in their prayers. They are specific. When it comes to confessing sin, they name the sin. When it comes to giving thanks, they name what they are thankful for. If you follow the readings this week, you’re going to read several “thanksgiving” psalms where the psalmist is thankful for this part of his life or that part. And the psalmist refuses to just spout generalities, or to repeat the same thing over and over again like we do. As I said last week, stick around the church long enough and you get good at “Christian-ese,” so much so you won’t even have to think too much about your prayers. You just repeat lofty phrases. You know, that’s what the Pharisee did in Luke 18, where he prays, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector” (Luke 18:11). Jesus says God the Father is not impressed by such prayers. Rather, we’re called to be grateful for specific things, and this engages our minds and our imaginations as well. Psalm 136, for instance: God, I thank you for the skies, for the sea, for the sun, for the way you rescued our people, for the way you led our people through the wilderness, for the kings that were swept out of our way (and he names them), for the food you give to every creature, and so on. Specificity in our gratitude engages us in the conversation with God and helps us connect more with the God who created us. Specificity helps us engage in reckless gratitude—because once you start giving thanks for the details in your life, you may find it hard to quit. What do we have that we didn’t receive? What do we have that we aren’t able to give God thanks for?

And so, Psalm 92. It’s an authorless psalm; by that I mean it’s one of more than forty psalms whose author’s name is lost to history. We also don’t know when it was written. We don’t know the situation or the history. All we know is it is a psalm that was written to be sung on the Sabbath day. It’s a psalm for worship, for the community. So the psalmist begins, “It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name, O Most High” (92:1). What we read as “praise the Lord” is a word that has multiple meanings, which is why it may be written differently in your Bible. It can mean “praise,” or “give thanks,” or even “give confession.” All of that is wrapped up in community worship. But my favorite definition of this word is “to cast down.” “It is good to cast down before the Lord” is one way this verse might be read, and that brings to mind the image from the book of Revelation of the worship in heaven. Do you remember that? Revelation 4:10 tells us how the twenty-four elders stand before the throne of God and cast their crowns down in front of him. They give up their own authority and power to recognize God’s authority and power, to show their gratitude for all God has done in saving humanity. That’s the same image we have here at the beginning of Psalm 92—when we praise, when we give thanks, it’s a way of recognizing that God is God and we are not (cf. Williams, Communicator’s Commentary: Psalms 73-150, pg. 174). And the psalmist says such action is “good.” It’s to our benefit, our welfare, to recognize God’s authority in our lives by giving thanks.

So when is the right time to do that, to give thanks? The psalmist says we can do it “in the morning” and “at night” (92:2). In other words, give thanks all the time. Recognize God’s presence in everything. When you get up in the morning: “Thank you, God, for the good night’s sleep. Thank you for watching over me all night. Thank you for the ability to see, to hear, to move around.” As you shower: “Thank you for the privilege of clean safe water. I recognize that I am blessed by having something many in the world do not.” As you drive to work or to the coffee shop or to the next appointment: “Thank you, God, for this transportation. I recognize that only about nine percent of the world owns a car. I am blessed.” When you pay bills: “Thank you, God, that I am able to do this, that I have the resources to provide for myself and my family.” When you eat a meal: “Thank you, God, for this food, and help me never to take it for granted as I remember the many who are starving this very moment.” Probably that’s the moment, if there is any, we do approach gratitude, because many of us have been taught to pray before a meal. But how often do we hurry through it? How often do we skip it if we’re out in a restaurant? And do we really stop long enough to be truly grateful? And there are so many other things we can be grateful for. Even when we go to bed at night: “Thank you, God, for the gifts of friendship and companionship that I experienced today [you can even name those you spent time with]. Thank you for this bed that is so comfortable. Thank you for the peacefulness of the night.” I think you get the point. In the morning, at night, and every moment in between, the psalmist says, those are moments for gratitude, because everything we have comes from God.

Then, notice one way the psalmist suggests we offer thanks to God. He says, “It is good to…make music to your name, O Most High” (92:1). And then, in verse 3, he says to celebrate with the “the ten-stringed lyre and the melody of the harp” (92:3). Now, we can do a couple of things with that verse. We can become legalistic about it, and say that since this psalm only mentions the lyre and the harp, that’s all we should use to praise God, to give thanks. Or, we might loosen up a little bit and recognize that the psalms mention other instruments. Psalm 150, for instance, suggests that in addition to the harp and lyre we can use the trumpet, strings and pipe, and cymbals. We could compile a list of Biblical instruments and say those are the only ones God allows to be used in worship. But then, of course, we’d have to figure out what a “zither” is and how to play it, because Daniel specifically mentions that instrument (3:5-15). But then you’d have to throw out the piano, the organ and any soundtracks our choir/praise team uses—because none of those are mentioned in the Bible. One denomination, which throws out the Old Testament, doesn’t use any musical instruments because the New Testament doesn’t mention them. So all their singing is acapella. We could do that, or we could recognize that the psalmist is writing in a language that is understandable and contemporary to his time. The instruments and the way he suggests offering thanks and praise to God are ways his time would have understood, which should suggest to us the church’s continuing need to speak in ways and sing in ways that communicate to our world and our culture. The bigger point the psalmist is making is this: use whatever you have to give thanks to God. Sing in ways the culture will hear so they will know the goodness of our God. Reckless gratitude includes using every means we have to show our gratitude to a waiting world.

The rest of the psalm is an outpouring from verse 4. There, the psalmist sings, “You make me glad by your deeds, Lord; I sing for joy at what your hands have done” (92:4). And in the following verses, the psalmist gives thanks for what God has done. God has destroyed the evildoers and the wicked (92:7). God has scattered their enemies (92:9). God has blessed the psalmist—having oil poured over you was a sign of blessing or being anointed by God (92:10). God has defeated the enemies (quite a different viewpoint than was in last week’s psalm) and more than that, God has made the righteous to flourish (92:11-15). All of that, all of those specific reasons for gratitude can be summed up in one sentence: the psalmist is grateful for what God has done for them to provide salvation, to bring hope to their lives. For the psalmist, as for the Scriptures in general, you don’t separate what God does from who God is. Because God is loving, God saves his people. Because God is good, God destroys the evil. Who God is is what God does (cf. VanGemeren, “Psalms,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 5, pg. 604), and so the resounding chorus of the psalm (and of the Bible beyond the psalms) is this: “Thank you, God, for the ways you have worked to save us from those things that threaten us.”

Sometimes, though, being people of gratitude involves confession of the ways we have failed to live gratefully, of the places we have taken God’s goodness for granted, like the nine lepers who ran on did. This week, on Tuesday, we will remember a Tuesday morning some eleven years ago. We’ll remember where we were when the planes hit the towers and the Pentagon, when the plane went down in Pennsylvania. I’ll remember picking Christopher up at school that day and being grateful to be able to hold onto him, even though he had no idea what was happening. For many of us, that day shook us to the core and caused us to realize how ungrateful we had been for the many blessings God has given us. I think that’s one reason churches were full that following Sunday. People were reminded of the need to be grateful to God for everything. But, I wonder if, in eleven years, we have really learned anything. Have we learned gratitude? Or have we, as it seems to be, slipped back into the mentality that everything is owed to me? You see, while that day eleven years ago caused us to reflect on the things we have, I’m not sure we went deep enough. Did we ever really confess our reliance on things and our selfishness and greed—really the things that brought us to that day? Despite the proclamations of the TV preachers about the reasons for the attacks, I think we came to realize it was our arrogance, our hubris, our loss of a moral compass that caused others to hate us, to attack us. I don’t believe and have never believed that 9/11 was some form of God’s punishment, but I do believe it should have been a reminder of our need to examine our lives and to live gratefully rather than to demand more and more and more. Sometimes gratitude calls us to confession, to realize our neglect of the poor (those Jesus cared deeply about), to confess our loss of faith and our shallowness of spirit. As Dr. Kalas puts it, “I can never know the wondrous specifics of God’s grace except as I face up to the specific facts of my sins that make grace both necessary and amazing” (Kalas 64). Grateful prayer ought to reach to the very core of who we are.

So how do we live gratefully? Simply put: fill your day with gratitude. When I wake up in the morning, after yanking the iPod off the alarm so it doesn’t go off again, I lay there for a moment in the silence and I pray a prayer that goes something like this: “God, thank you for this day. Thank you for my wife, who is better to me than I deserve. Thank you for my kids who so often show me what love looks like. And thank you for whatever chance I have to serve you today.” And then, throughout the day, I’m trying to live more gratefully, where rather than complaining that I don’t have this I can give thanks that I do have that. It’s so easy in our world to slip into envy and jealousy, where we constantly want something more, something else. And yet, the psalms (and the story of the lepers) call us to give thanks for what we have and for those unexpected and unearned moments of grace that surprise us. And at night, I pray a pretty short prayer, because I’m not a night owl and I usually fall asleep pretty quickly. So I often pray something as simple as, “Thank you, Lord, for this day, the good and the bad, and thank you for being with me throughout all of it.” Reckless gratitude is a matter of opening our eyes, being aware of the ways we can be and need to be thankful throughout our days, and turning those moments into prayer.

So how will you give thanks? How will you practice reckless gratitude? Will you be among the nine who take what you can from Jesus and run on with your life? Or will you be the one who stops and gives thanks to Jesus for all he has done? And what will you give thanks for? This morning, we have an opportunity to do just that. Along the back of the sanctuary this morning is our Wall of Gratitude, and in just a few moments, we’re going to give you the chance to go to that wall and write a word or two of something you’re grateful for today, right now. Just a word or two. We’re going to leave the wall up for a couple of weeks and you can feel free to add to it in the weeks to come, or when you’re by here during the week. My prayer is that as we see what others are grateful for, it will inspire our prayers of gratitude. So, this will be our prayer this morning, a prayer of gratitude, a prayer of the congregation, because “it is good to give thanks to the Lord” (92:1). Amen.