It’s interesting and challenging to preach on Thanksgiving.
On one hand the message is clearly about remembering to be thankful and expressing that thanks and appreciation. But on the other hand there is always a tension in our culture and society that from a faith perspective reminds us to be mindful of just how much stuff we have and how we are required by faith to be good stewards of our life resources. It means appreciation and thankfulness as well as sharing.
Yet, as I acknowledge these to standard themes that are often promoted from the pulpit at this time of year, I can’t help but acknowledge that they are indeed standard themes and ALL of us have heard over and over and over … do we really have anything new to say about being thankful? Do we really need to state the obvious in our world today that we need to do a better job of sharing our wealth of stuff and money?
So what then are we to say about this thanksgiving theme and our readings that clearly remind us to be appreciative and grateful for this precious gift called life and all that it give us?
I could answer – I don’t know, and sit down … or I could follow the lead of a colleague in ministry who once stood before a congregation with a photo of a sports car and passed it to his assembled worshippers suggesting they reflect on things they covet in their lives …
I could do those things, but I think the M&P committee wouldn’t be very appreciative nor thankful of the calls they would get about it … So I won’t.
Instead, I want us to pause and think about which of the 10 lepers in our Gospel story we really would be …
Here are ten ordinary men, who are brought together through the happenstance of having developed this disease that leaves them outcast from their family, their friends, their community and the culture in which they live. They are left to fend for themselves while struggling with a disease that is debilitating and limiting … all the while their health is crashing because of circumstances entirely beyond their control.
With no income they can’t feed themselves adequately … with minimial or outright inadequate nutrition the disease worsens … and the spiral just speeds up … leaving these men outcasts, living outside of their communities, begging for scraps and being forced to live a perilous and very marginalized existence.
So, along comes this faith healer and teacher, who in the blink of an eye heals the ten … they are no longer diseased but clean … they no longer need to lurk on the margins of the community, but can after being announced as clean by the religious authorities, can return to their lives and their homes …
Which of the ten would be you be?
The one who remembered to come back and say – “thanks”, or the other nine who were so caught up in the excitement of getting their lives back that they hurried to find a priest so they could get back to their families and their circle of friends and their lives that had been wrenched from them?
It’s easy to condemn the nine as ungrateful … but that’s an oversimplification of the story and their experience.
Instead of condemning them, we have an opportunity to step into their lives for a moment and realize that in that instant as they were made whole and healed, they were able to reclaim something incredibly precious.
They could reclaim their lives.
Instead of condemning them, we need to pause and consider how hard it would be in that instant to turn around and go back to Jesus and say thanks. The pull would be to rush home and say “Look at me!! I’m clean and healthy and I’m home !!”
Our hearts that have ached for home would pull us there like a freight train.
The truly exceptional behaviour is the one who was able to pause and turn around and not only say thanks, but to stay and express that thanks.
If we were honest, in this scenario ALMOST all of us would rush home to reclaim what we’ve lost … some of us might remember to shout a hurried “thanks” over our shoulders as we raced down the road, but few of us would really take the time to express our appreciation until much later when we were sitting at home basking in what we had once been denied – then from our comfortable chair in the corner we MIGHT look around and say “oh yeah, thanks …”
And that is perhaps the point … remembering to be mindful and appreciative of what we have … living out our thanks, not just once a year but showing and celebrating that appreciation through a subtle reorienting of our lives and our faith.
The M&S fund of the United Church used to talk about an “attitude of gratitude”
It’s recognizing and truly APPRECIATING that we live in a world full of blessings and all the good stuff life has to offer, and we need to live and move through our days mindfully of that rather than failing to appreciate what we have.
It’s the old ‘the glass is half empty … no the glass is half full’ dichotomy.
We have a learned predisposition to see the glass half empty all the time. We’re good at seeing what we lack, rather than appreciating what we have.
I remember once sitting in having a beverage with one of the Manitoba MLA’s – the Manitoba equivalent to an MPP. We were talking about the pending election and I suggested that instead of promising tax cuts and defending the government’s actions in the past couple of years the Government should call the election and campaign by saying – “here’s what you pay in taxes … and here is where that tax money goes … here is what benefits you, here is what benefits your neighbours, and here is what benefits all of us …”
He laughed and said – “yeah but we want to be reelected. NO ONE will get reelected telling the people that they should be appreciative of where their tax dollars go …”
We then talked about the attitude of people and our seeming inability to see almost anything from a positive point of view … and really, that is the root of the challenge we face. We have a pretty good life, yet we find something to grumble about … it’s warm and sunny, but we WILL remind each other that it is gonna be miserable by the end of next week, and winter is only a month away … even in the church we will have a community of a few dozen talented, capable and dedicated people, but we’ll lament that there are so many empty pews and we don’t have the same attendance or participation that we did back in 1957 … whether we like it or not, we tend to be like Winnie the Pooh’s friend Eeyore more than we may want to admit.
So, thanksgiving – our readings – and shelf after shelf of books, dvds and other resources – serve as a reminder that we should find ways of living our lives more mindfully, and more aware of the importance of appreciating what we have.
And it starts simply and easily … tomorrow morning, sitting and watching the sunrise with a coffee or tea on the back deck (or the front depending on which way your house faces) is a good way of starting to re-appreciate life’s tiny miracles … taking time to notice – truly notice the wondrous things around us, from ducks and loons on a lake, to the breadth of colours in our autumn landscapes … take time to appreciate these wonders will leave us in a place of awe.
Years ago I read a commentary on the Old Testament – the Pentateuch that said the stories that formed the foundation of our faith – things like the flood, the battles and wars waged for the promised land, and the many happenings that marked the lives of the Patriarchs, are not about scaring us and rendering us terrified of God. Rather, these stories are about showing us in real and tangible ways the reasons for experiencing awe and wonder when we encounter God.
The involvement of Yahweh, in the lives of the people with names like Abraham, Lot, Isaac and Jacob, is not about fear and trembling, but awe and wonder … the world is an amazing place full of amazing things to see, to taste, to experience … and God wants us to experience them fully, and to appreciate them.
American writer and doctor Patch Adams once wrote “life is a precious, fragile and amazing gift, I can’t imagine why anyone would waste even a moment of it …”
Why indeed … the first step to not wasting it, is more fully appreciating it … and that means standing in a place of awe and wonder once in awhile and whispering the simple phrase – “thanks”
May it be so – thanks be to God … Let us pray …
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