The Attitude Of Gratitude
Sermon
Where Gratitude Abounds
Gospel Sermons For Sundays After Pentecost (Last Third)
Whereas loving God and others may be the most important decision one will make in life, cultivating an attitude of gratitude is the best magnet for other worthy qualities one needs in one's earthly life. Let me explain.
I've learned from two good teachers and mentors, Paul Holmer and Henri Nouwen, that one cannot have an abiding attitude in one's life and have it in isolation. Why? Because attitudes love to flock together in families. Whereas it is true that, in any given week or month, one experiences a kaleidoscope of feelings, emotions, and attitudes, it is also true that one chooses a key attitude to abide in one's life. Once that decision is made, and an attitude takes residence in your life, very shortly thereafter, its kissin' cousins will come to roost with it. Of that, you can be certain.
In my own life, for a fair number of years, my key attitude was resentment. What I discovered that came with it were other unhealthy qualities/stances: 1) a basic mistrust of life; 2) a desire to get even with others; and 3) a commitment to make things work in my favor, for fear they wouldn't otherwise. Once Jesus Christ moved from being an idea to me to being my personal Lord and Savior, he brought with him into my heart and life the spiritual antonym of resentment, the worthy and esteemed attitude of gratitude. I discovered that gratitude's kissin' cousins include: 1) a basic trust of life, because of one's growing trust in God; 2) death to the desire to get even and its replacement with a desire to understand, in a Christian way, people's behavior and beliefs; and 3) a new and abiding commitment to move from being manipulative of people and events to seeking and discerning God's hidden purpose and gracious will in and through such matters.
All this serves as a healthy and helpful backdrop to the American theme of Thanksgiving. Historically, we know that our "Thanksgiving" roots go back to the year of 1621 when the surviving Pilgrims, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, gave heartfelt thanks to God for a very helpful harvest. They were very convinced that without God's help and the Indians' partnership, they would never have survived. I think this event, unlike other historic American events, speaks of a special kind of victory, not a military one, but an attitudinal one, one of gratitude over bitterness. And, it attributes the victory, not to a heroic human person, but to the living God and His Son Jesus Christ.
The scripture passage on Jesus' healing of the ten lepers reveals that for at least one former leper, the healing event was more than just skin-deep; his heart and life were converted, the chief evidence being his attitude of gratitude expressed to Jesus.
Which do Americans as a whole abound with the most: gratitude or entitlement? I've discovered over the years that genuine, abiding gratitude inspires a spirit and practice of generosity in a person toward others. Americans tend to be generous to themselves and to their immediate families, but they assume they should be on the receiving, not the giving, end of everything and everybody else. We have very little tithing in churches; people give with great calculation more than they give out of great gratitude. Hence, this scriptural, as well as our historic American, theme of thanksgiving is one we should endear ourselves to with a renewed depth of commitment.
In verses 11 through 13, we see Jesus traveling and his traveling is a means by which God works powerfully through him to heal ten persons from a dreaded disease. He still travels, through Holy Spirit pathways, to heal and to help others. But he seems most effective when vessels like you and me willingly become mission and ministry itineraries for Jesus, while we move from terrestrial task to terrestrial task.
Just as Jesus wanted the healing of the ten lepers to be more than a physical healing, one that also transformed heart, mind, and life direction, so also, in our daily lives, tasks, and professional responsibilities, Jesus would like to have permission to do something redemptive in and through us. A task done in a human life can have helpful spiritual ramifications and impact if the people involved are also spiritually minded and vessel-ready to serve Jesus at the same time. Think about it. And act on it.
In verse 14, his response was one of healing. But imagine ten persons, each an individual, and how the disease common to them probably fostered a sense of family among them on some level. Their traveling together bespeaks some level of common community. Any racial or economic differences were long since discarded. Furthermore, the fact that they made their request to Jesus "keeping their distance" reveals a rule of the day that lepers, when windward of healthy people, must be at least fifty yards from them.1 Imagine the pain of diseased persons who can no longer assume that they are a part of any larger human community.
In verses 15 and 16, we witness only one of the ten healed persons choosing to praise God and to thank Jesus. His gratitude for the blessing of healing motivated him to express his praise and to share his thanks. Are you in touch enough with a number of your blessings that you gratefully seek more of God's presence rather than less? In seeking out Christ, he was not only expressing his gratitude, but also indicating his willingness to enter into Christ's presence. We hope this was not based on a motive to stay nearby to selfishly reap more earthly blessings, but rather simply to enjoy the presence of the One who changed his life for the better.
"And he was a Samaritan." The Samaritans had become that expression of Judaism who had held reciprocal enmity with mainline Judaism. This person, who was shunned by many Jews and diseased by nature, was, like the other nine, a candidate for God's grace. The one outside the covenant was the one and only of the ten to be thoughtful enough to say "Thanks!"
In verses 17 and 18, the implication of the ingratitude of the nine is that, though they were by tradition the closest to understanding the covenant terms between God and His people of Israel, they were thoughtless and ungrateful. The "foreigner" outside and apart from the covenant tradition had a heart that was reachable and tender toward the person of Christ. That is, his healing stretched his heart to embrace and to thank Jesus Christ. The other ones' hearts chose to shrink and travel in an inner world of their own, being far more presumptuous than grateful. The desperate longing of the ten for healing revealed subsequent to their healing very different hearts of the one and the nine. These nine who wanted healing wanted their bodies dramatically changed but their hearts and wills to remain spiritually impoverished. They did not feel indebted; they somehow felt entitled.
Maybe that's part of the bottom line of this story: people who feel entitled have no room in their hearts for gratitude and a deeper life change. They merely want to improve their own life position, and they believe it's far more a right than a privilege. Their attitude of entitlement has a lot of unhealthy kissin' cousins, so many, in fact, that gratitude proves to be an outpost beyond recognizing, a kind of foreign word and language.
Why didn't God remove their healing, given such ingratitude? Maybe because their greatest disease, of a more spiritual nature, had yet to be faced and would prove a greater destroyer than even leprosy. Would they choose to be insensitive to this greater disease, or sometime, somehow, reckon with its implications? We don't know. But we do know that we need to choose to make a grateful response to this One who ever offers deeper and deeper levels of healing and help. Gratitude wakes us up to that fact; it is the concourse to entering God's more thorough healing and deliverance of our lives from all that diseases us.
To conclude, in verse 19, Jesus invites the grateful one to reenter life and to be aware that faith, a kissin' cousin of gratitude, will be a resource and guide to all that God will yet use to complete his life.
Let's not carry an attitude that instructs us to take God's blessings and run. To do so is to enter into all kinds of misunderstandings of life and to remain on the shallow side of things. To this One who has been so faithful to help and heal us, in a number of ways and on a number of levels, let's practice gratitude, which will, over time, bear the fruit of faithfulness on our parts.
To be grateful is to keep ourselves awake and sensitive to God's movement. Not to be grateful is to preoccupy ourselves solely with our own movement. Those early Pilgrims, on our nation's first Thanksgiving, undoubtedly cultivated a number of religious affections within themselves, none the least of which was gratitude. Gratitude keeps our focus on the Giver of gifts and resources, never on the gifts and resources themselves!
____________
1. William Barclay, Luke, Westminster Press, p. 218.
I've learned from two good teachers and mentors, Paul Holmer and Henri Nouwen, that one cannot have an abiding attitude in one's life and have it in isolation. Why? Because attitudes love to flock together in families. Whereas it is true that, in any given week or month, one experiences a kaleidoscope of feelings, emotions, and attitudes, it is also true that one chooses a key attitude to abide in one's life. Once that decision is made, and an attitude takes residence in your life, very shortly thereafter, its kissin' cousins will come to roost with it. Of that, you can be certain.
In my own life, for a fair number of years, my key attitude was resentment. What I discovered that came with it were other unhealthy qualities/stances: 1) a basic mistrust of life; 2) a desire to get even with others; and 3) a commitment to make things work in my favor, for fear they wouldn't otherwise. Once Jesus Christ moved from being an idea to me to being my personal Lord and Savior, he brought with him into my heart and life the spiritual antonym of resentment, the worthy and esteemed attitude of gratitude. I discovered that gratitude's kissin' cousins include: 1) a basic trust of life, because of one's growing trust in God; 2) death to the desire to get even and its replacement with a desire to understand, in a Christian way, people's behavior and beliefs; and 3) a new and abiding commitment to move from being manipulative of people and events to seeking and discerning God's hidden purpose and gracious will in and through such matters.
All this serves as a healthy and helpful backdrop to the American theme of Thanksgiving. Historically, we know that our "Thanksgiving" roots go back to the year of 1621 when the surviving Pilgrims, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, gave heartfelt thanks to God for a very helpful harvest. They were very convinced that without God's help and the Indians' partnership, they would never have survived. I think this event, unlike other historic American events, speaks of a special kind of victory, not a military one, but an attitudinal one, one of gratitude over bitterness. And, it attributes the victory, not to a heroic human person, but to the living God and His Son Jesus Christ.
The scripture passage on Jesus' healing of the ten lepers reveals that for at least one former leper, the healing event was more than just skin-deep; his heart and life were converted, the chief evidence being his attitude of gratitude expressed to Jesus.
Which do Americans as a whole abound with the most: gratitude or entitlement? I've discovered over the years that genuine, abiding gratitude inspires a spirit and practice of generosity in a person toward others. Americans tend to be generous to themselves and to their immediate families, but they assume they should be on the receiving, not the giving, end of everything and everybody else. We have very little tithing in churches; people give with great calculation more than they give out of great gratitude. Hence, this scriptural, as well as our historic American, theme of thanksgiving is one we should endear ourselves to with a renewed depth of commitment.
In verses 11 through 13, we see Jesus traveling and his traveling is a means by which God works powerfully through him to heal ten persons from a dreaded disease. He still travels, through Holy Spirit pathways, to heal and to help others. But he seems most effective when vessels like you and me willingly become mission and ministry itineraries for Jesus, while we move from terrestrial task to terrestrial task.
Just as Jesus wanted the healing of the ten lepers to be more than a physical healing, one that also transformed heart, mind, and life direction, so also, in our daily lives, tasks, and professional responsibilities, Jesus would like to have permission to do something redemptive in and through us. A task done in a human life can have helpful spiritual ramifications and impact if the people involved are also spiritually minded and vessel-ready to serve Jesus at the same time. Think about it. And act on it.
In verse 14, his response was one of healing. But imagine ten persons, each an individual, and how the disease common to them probably fostered a sense of family among them on some level. Their traveling together bespeaks some level of common community. Any racial or economic differences were long since discarded. Furthermore, the fact that they made their request to Jesus "keeping their distance" reveals a rule of the day that lepers, when windward of healthy people, must be at least fifty yards from them.1 Imagine the pain of diseased persons who can no longer assume that they are a part of any larger human community.
In verses 15 and 16, we witness only one of the ten healed persons choosing to praise God and to thank Jesus. His gratitude for the blessing of healing motivated him to express his praise and to share his thanks. Are you in touch enough with a number of your blessings that you gratefully seek more of God's presence rather than less? In seeking out Christ, he was not only expressing his gratitude, but also indicating his willingness to enter into Christ's presence. We hope this was not based on a motive to stay nearby to selfishly reap more earthly blessings, but rather simply to enjoy the presence of the One who changed his life for the better.
"And he was a Samaritan." The Samaritans had become that expression of Judaism who had held reciprocal enmity with mainline Judaism. This person, who was shunned by many Jews and diseased by nature, was, like the other nine, a candidate for God's grace. The one outside the covenant was the one and only of the ten to be thoughtful enough to say "Thanks!"
In verses 17 and 18, the implication of the ingratitude of the nine is that, though they were by tradition the closest to understanding the covenant terms between God and His people of Israel, they were thoughtless and ungrateful. The "foreigner" outside and apart from the covenant tradition had a heart that was reachable and tender toward the person of Christ. That is, his healing stretched his heart to embrace and to thank Jesus Christ. The other ones' hearts chose to shrink and travel in an inner world of their own, being far more presumptuous than grateful. The desperate longing of the ten for healing revealed subsequent to their healing very different hearts of the one and the nine. These nine who wanted healing wanted their bodies dramatically changed but their hearts and wills to remain spiritually impoverished. They did not feel indebted; they somehow felt entitled.
Maybe that's part of the bottom line of this story: people who feel entitled have no room in their hearts for gratitude and a deeper life change. They merely want to improve their own life position, and they believe it's far more a right than a privilege. Their attitude of entitlement has a lot of unhealthy kissin' cousins, so many, in fact, that gratitude proves to be an outpost beyond recognizing, a kind of foreign word and language.
Why didn't God remove their healing, given such ingratitude? Maybe because their greatest disease, of a more spiritual nature, had yet to be faced and would prove a greater destroyer than even leprosy. Would they choose to be insensitive to this greater disease, or sometime, somehow, reckon with its implications? We don't know. But we do know that we need to choose to make a grateful response to this One who ever offers deeper and deeper levels of healing and help. Gratitude wakes us up to that fact; it is the concourse to entering God's more thorough healing and deliverance of our lives from all that diseases us.
To conclude, in verse 19, Jesus invites the grateful one to reenter life and to be aware that faith, a kissin' cousin of gratitude, will be a resource and guide to all that God will yet use to complete his life.
Let's not carry an attitude that instructs us to take God's blessings and run. To do so is to enter into all kinds of misunderstandings of life and to remain on the shallow side of things. To this One who has been so faithful to help and heal us, in a number of ways and on a number of levels, let's practice gratitude, which will, over time, bear the fruit of faithfulness on our parts.
To be grateful is to keep ourselves awake and sensitive to God's movement. Not to be grateful is to preoccupy ourselves solely with our own movement. Those early Pilgrims, on our nation's first Thanksgiving, undoubtedly cultivated a number of religious affections within themselves, none the least of which was gratitude. Gratitude keeps our focus on the Giver of gifts and resources, never on the gifts and resources themselves!
____________
1. William Barclay, Luke, Westminster Press, p. 218.
