GIVING THANKS: A THANKSGIVING SERMON
Barry W. Szymanski
First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa
18 November 2012

Leader: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
People: It is right to give our thanks and praise.
Leader: Eternal God, holy and mighty, it is truly right and our greatest joy to give you thanks and praise;
People: And to worship you in every place where your glory abides.

[From “The Great Thanksgiving: B,” in Book of Common Worship (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 123.]

Let us pray as the Psalmist prayed:

Lord, we shall make a joyful noise to you, for we are people of the earth and we shall sing the glory of your name; and we give you glorious praise. We see how awesome are your deeds! We recognize your great power. All the earth worships you; all peoples sing praises to you, sing praises to your name. We come before you in thanksgiving and offer you our praises, for you are our Lord. Amen. [Adapted from Psalm 66]

Luke 17:11-19

Jesus Cleanses Ten Lepers

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’

SERMON

Thanksgiving is ‘The Great Day’ for us Congregationalists. On this holiday we observe the day when the Pilgrims publicly thanked God for their very lives, and food, and their new beginnings in this country.

Giving thanks is a prayer. Some prayers take place when we ask God for something. Some prayers occur when we just recognize God as God – a prayer of adoration. Other prayers happen when we thank God for what we receive.

By the way, simply attending church is a prayer. Singing is a prayer. Thinking of God is a prayer. Sometimes people try to narrow prayer to just formal prayer – but that is not the case. So, when you are enjoying your thanksgiving turkey, or ham, or sushi, and you include even the thought of thanks to God, you are praying.

It has been said that gratefulness is the heart of prayer. Gratefulness grows out of who we are in relation to God, for we confirm our absolute dependence upon God – and God’s mercy.

A theologian, David Steindl-Rast, wrote that: “To bless whatever there is, and for no other reason but simply because it is, that is what we are made for as human beings. Whether we understand this or not matters little. Whether we agree or disagree makes no difference. And in our heart of hearts we know it. Gratefulness is really about awareness, and our ability to see into things, discovering the grace that awaits us in everyday life. When we bless things simply because they are, we live life in its fullness.”

Another theologian, Henri Nouwen, said that the height of gratefulness is to live as a person “ . . . who can be constantly surprised and who can let an ‘inch of surprise become a mile of gratefulness.’” At their earliest ages we try to teach our children to say please and thank you. We want them to realize that the world does not owe them. And that what they receive is really a gift.

If we receive a thank you card, or a thank you email, that says, ‘thank you’, or we are grateful to you for…. or we really appreciated that you …. or we were excited to receive that gift from you, we feel good. And we send thank you notes to others, in order to make them feel good.

Thanksgiving Day is a formal day to say the same to our God – and do so publicly. It is one of our rare holidays when we can more easily mix God and current culture at the same time. And we do so at table with friends and relatives.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a modern day martyr, said that: "In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich."

I remember my Grandmother, Mary, who died decades ago, but her love and gratitude remain strong in my memory. I never heard her complain --- and she underwent a lot of hardship in her life. Her husband, my grandfather Peter, died when I was very young. To support herself she worked in the kitchen of a hotel in downtown Chicago -- the Hotel Sherman. When I was still in grade school my Aunt Betty suddenly died leaving two children and her husband, my Uncle Eddie. My cousin Jerry was in 3rd grade, and Marilyn, was in kindergarten.

After Betty’s death, my grandmother moved in with Eddie, Jerry and Marilyn and there she worked at making a home for them while continuing to work at the Hotel Sherman kitchen. My cousins Jerry and Marilyn would come to our house after school since our house was close and my Dad and Mom would take care of them until Uncle Eddie picked them up after he left work, and he took them home. By the time they arrived at their home, Grandma had come home from her job in downtown Chicago, and cooked supper for them. I never heard my grandmother, or my Mom or Dad, complain about taking care of my cousins. At the funerals of my grandmother, my Dad, and my mother, both Jerry and Marilyn spoke of the gratitude they had for them -- family who helped raise them alongside their father.

When Uncle Eddie became old, Marilyn and her husband built an apartment for him in their new home. My memories of my family are rich with care surrounding Betty’s two children. I treasure that family care I was part of. I remember how our family got together on Thanksgiving Day at my grandmother’s home with Eddie, and Jerry and Marilyn – and many other families, to celebrate and give thanks. Life was rich in thankfulness for Jesus also.

Matthew’s Gospel [11.25] records that: “Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.‘”

Mark [8.6] wrote that Jesus: “ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground; and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks Jesus broke the loaves and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed the loaves to the crowd.”

And Luke [22.19] records that Jesus, at the Last Supper: “took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘This is my body, which [I am giving] for you.”

In today’s Gospel reading, we learn that Jesus cleansed ten individuals who had leprosy. At that time lepers, or anyone with a skin disease, had to keep their distance from the rest of the population. Lepers either lived alone, or in small communities of misery. In this case, the lepers were respectful to Jesus and Luke tells us that they kept their distance from Jesus, but when they saw Jesus, they called out to him to get his attention. You can easily hear them shouting loudly to get the attention of Jesus. When Jesus turned to them, they asked Jesus to “have mercy” on them.

Jesus did cure them --- but not immediately. He gave them a task, which was to go to the priests at the Samaritan Temple and show themselves to the priests. The reason Jesus did so was so the priests would verify that they were no longer unclean.

According to the dictates of that time, once the lepers were certified as clean, people would allow them to return to society. They obeyed Jesus, and Luke records, as they walked toward the Temple, the lepers were made clean.

There is the obvious in this story: The story shows the power of Jesus. The story shows that they called Jesus, ‘Master’. However there is another important lesson: as the story continues, we learn that only one, only one, of the lepers who was cured, turned around to go back to Jesus.

This ‘turning around’ is key – because it was more than just a physical turning around for that one leper -- a great deal more occurred. I will get to that in a few minutes. Luke tells us that while the leper was returning to go back to Jesus the leper was praising God with a loud voice. When he arrived in front of Jesus, full of gratitude, the leper went face down before Jesus’ at his feet to thank him.

Picture this man who was previously unclean with a horrible skin disease now prostrate directly in front of Jesus. Now, think of the human Jesus who saw this man lying on the ground at his feet. Jesus remembered him as one of the men he cured of leprosy. Now imagine the look on Jesus’ face when he looked around for the other nine lepers. They were not there.

Then Jesus asked his companions: ‘Weren’t ten made clean? Where are the other nine? Why aren’t they returning and giving praise to God? Only this foreigner from Samaria returned! Why?’ Luke tells us that Jesus told the cured leper to get up and go on with his life, and that his faith made him well.

What is the difference from being cured of leprosy – and being made well? Jesus told the leper from Samaria was not only was his leprosy healed, but his whole being as well. The other nine lepers apparently just accepted their being cured as a matter of fact --- or a matter of right? Maybe they thought they were owed to be cured? Or that the magic of Jesus worked well for them -- because the cure could not have been miraculous for that would mean that God intervened, and they should then praise God. There was a divine intervention in his condition.

Perhaps, they thought, it was just their lucky day. What about Jesus’ statement to the one leper that his faith had made him well. The faith we are talking about here is not simply religious denomination faith.

Remember that the leper was a Samaritan. He was not a Jerusalem Jew. The Samaritans did not worship at the Jerusalem Temple. There were major religious differences between those Samaritan lepers and the Rabbi Jesus. Does this call your attention to today’s religious differences?

And Luke does not record that Jesus told the one leper he had to start to praise only the Jerusalem God --- or to start going to Temple in Jerusalem. No, when Jesus spoke of that one leper’s faith, he was defining the relationship that the leper had with God: a relationship of praise and of thanksgiving – a relationship of adoration of God who is God, and the gratefulness of a mere human being.

When that one leper ‘turned around’ he redirected his life, and he grasped a deeper realization of faith in who God was, and who he, the leper, was. What Jesus told the one leper was that ‘his faith made him well.’ Jesus wanted everyone around him to hear his comment because Jesus knew that the one leper was more than healed of a skin disease. Jesus saw that the one leper was made whole: a complete person!

What Jesus wanted for all ten lepers was for them to realize God’s hand in their healing, as they returned to society: he expected a totality of wellness of all ten lepers. But that didn’t happen, for only one praised God.

The writer Anne Lamott’s morning prayer is simply: ‘God, today, help me, help me, help me.’ Anne’s evening prayer is often just as humble: ‘God, for this day, thank you, thank you, thank you.’ What do we have to be thankful for? For God’s mercy. For the incarnation.

For revelation --- not just scripture, but the revelation of God’s will, and His loving grace. We thank God for friendship. We thank God for our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. For our spouses. For our relatives, and friends. We thank God for our homes. And we thank God for the health he has given to us, whatever that stage of health may be.

We thank God for a great country, a country significantly different from so many in this world, where there is freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, and freedom of vote. We thank God for what we have received in life, whatever it may be. We thank God for the beauty of nature. We thank God for abundance of food, and material things. We thank God for the ability to pursue knowledge, and the availability to seek out truth. We thank God for the arts, and music, painting, photography, and dance.

When people review the history of the Pilgrims on their first Thanksgiving Day, many do not understand that the Pilgrims had anything to be thankful for. Many Pilgrims had died. Many were sick. They were in a new and dangerous country.

But they were a grateful people. God was integral in their lives. That is why we are in church today – just like the early Pilgrims, and my cousins Jerry and Marilyn, and the one leper – to give thanks and praise to God.

Amen.

LET US PRAY:

Lord God, We pray to implant your Word in us, the Word of scripture, and your Word made flesh, and your Holy Spirit. We pray that your church be made strong, and increase love within our midst, so love may be increased in our community, our state, our nation, this world. We pray that we be given your strength so that your light and your truth be intensified throughout your Kingdom. We pray that we be guided and protected by your Holy Spirit as we work for your Will to be done. We pray that your love and light shine within our homes. We pray that we keep in covenant with you and with our neighbors. We pray for all civil authority: our President and members of Congress, our Governor and State Legislatures, and our Judges and all involved in civil government so they may maintain society, so we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in your name. We pray for all in trouble, want, sickness, anguish, the dying, the suffering, so they be comforted with your Holy Spirit. We pray that we be delivered from all harm and danger to our souls. Preserve us from falsity, so we may know you. We pray for success so that we may praise you in every way. We pray for our church leaders, our staff, our volunteers, and our members. We make our prayer knowing full well the blessings we have received, and we thank you with all of our hearts, as we, like the leper from Samaria, place ourselves at Jesus’ feet, and praise you, our God, for we know that all you have given us is a gift, and, Lord God, may Jesus turn to us, and direct us, as we go about our daily lives, to live in faith, and to be made well in body, and well in heart, and well in soul. Amen.