Sermonstudio

In the letter to the people at Philippi, Paul wanted us to think on things that are beautiful, pure, and excellent. He wanted to teach us asset-based thinking. He wanted to teach us the art of appreciative inquiry. He wanted to limit criticism and the culture of complaint. Paul wanted us to be thankful.

Oddly, being thankful does not come naturally to us.

We stayed at our best friend's house while taking our daughter on a college visit. We forgot to send a thank-you note. We had a wonderful time -- good food, clean sheets, great talk. But still we forgot to send a thank-you note. How we forgot that this particular friend stands on formality I'll never know! We had spent dozens of thanksgivings together when our group of six maintained a regular practice with each other. Her note always showed up two days after the feast. Regularly. Nice vellum stationery. Sometimes monogrammed, sometimes not. She was the kind of person who spent time buying her stationery and never forgot a thank-you note.

I had become the kind of person who got too busy to send thank-you notes. I had also become the kind of person who forgot who my friends really are. I had forgotten to think on the good things. I'll blame email. I am so programmed by its speed that sometimes I go home and enter my password in the microwave. I have a list of fifteen phone numbers to contact my family of five. My reason for not staying in touch with certain friends is that they don't have email addresses. When I make calls from home, sometimes I add a nine to get the outside line. Sometimes, when I like a poem or joke someone sends me, I send it to my so-called friends.

Well, this particular very real friend did me a great favor. She lambasted me for not sending her a thank-you note, by email of course. She felt unappreciated. She felt like I had forgotten who she was -- and I had. In the process of forgetting her, I had forgotten a piece of me. I had forgotten to think on the excellent things, the things that matter.

The story of the lepers comes to mind to team with the epistle to the Philippians. There are two points about this story of the lepers that really matter. One is that only one remembers to send the thank-you note. The rest, to their own great peril, forget. Secondly, the one who remembers is the leper of the lepers. He is a Samaritan. The nine are Jews. He was in all likelihood part of the great pack of lepers who stood at the city gate. No one wanted them because they were contagious. If the lepers stood outside the gate, this leper stood outside the group that stood at the gate.

His return to Jesus is amazing, then, on two counts: He is the outsider of the outsiders and yet is the only one who knows what his healing means. The rest are cured; he is healed. What Jesus says to him is that this faith he finds, deep within himself, has made him well. Jesus might also say that his capacity to be grateful has made him spiritually well. His capacity to think on the fine things is the source of his healing.

What I covet for us today is that we find out how to become the one who turns back to how we can remember our thank-you notes -- how we can have the kind of faith that makes us well.

Gratitude is not a should. It is not a will. It is not a willpower. Gratitude is a grace. When we become the one who turned back, we experience the gratitude we are always trying to experience.

I know what it's like. "I have everything, why don't I feel good?" "I have so much more than others, why don't I act grateful?" Something happens to the nine that keep them from turning back to give thanks. Please don't blame them. Have you ever wanted to just get rid of a sore in your mouth? On the day it leaves, do you give thanks? I doubt it. You just go on. Have you ever just wanted to be over the flu, over the cancer, over the chemo, over the it that you are experiencing today? Over it so you could go on ... and get back to regular maintenance of the email.

Be careful here. Whatever it is we are trying to get over is our life. Life is interruptions. Life is the thing we're trying to get over. It is this grand haste toward a life that will come that prohibits gratitude. Where in the world do we think we are going? So many of us bop about like the sandpiper, edging the waves, looking for more food, fast, fast, fast. We forget the thank-you notes in more ways than the merely social.

In the grand rush to a better life, we forget the life we have. We forget what the great and difficult French woman, Collette, said, surely with a twinkle in her eye, "All we can control is what we hold in our arms, while we hold it." Did not the tenth leper follow her advice? He held his healing in his arms. He held it tight. He took it back to Jesus. He experienced gratitude. He experienced the great holding on to life. Did the people at Philippi take Paul's advice seriously? Did they bother to focus on the fine things?

The gratitude that comes by grace, again, is not willed. "I should be more grateful." It is not a should. The gratitude that comes by grace, is not a matter of willpower. By the power of God, I will send more thank-you notes. Instead, the gratitude that comes by grace is one that comes from looking up, looking out, and looking around.

One Friday night, our church was a beehive of activity. A dinner of rice and beans was being prepared in the kitchen for a youth group that was staying over night. Anthony and Mark and Mary were putting a rehearsal dinner together in the courtyard. At about 3:30, I looked up from my desk and its piles of unanswered/ unanswerables and saw the cold, brown tables on which so much of our life here is lived. I saw that the winter light was on its way, too. Next time I looked up, I saw white tablecloths. Then the candles came out. Then the magenta and white orchids, followed by the burnt orange and red miniature calla lilies. The light continued to envelop the activity and the courtyard. I walked down the hall. The rest of the staff was noticing the same thing I was noticing. A few joined me with tears in their eyes.

Something very beautiful was happening. People were making a feast for a friend. People were making a feast for strangers. People were making a feast. People were making these feasts inside a kind of burnt yellow light that could not have come from any one but God. Really, who can do twilight the way God does twilight? Especially the November kind that both starts early and ends late, that lets us live inside its radiance as though we were glowing, too. The light and the people and the feast were enchanting the courtyard. Now I don't want to get sappy, but to be given the grace to experience joy outside my window, in our church's courtyard, is a form of returning that happens in the story of the healed and lonely leper. We return to joy. We return to gratitude. We no longer know how to be indifferent. Indeed, we wonder how we could ever look at life indifferently again. There it is, the feast, the life, the light, and the people. Friends remembering friends. It's right outside all of our windows, not just mine. The fine things are always there, hoping that we will have the sense to notice them.

They will be at your table on Thursday, too.

There is a great little book called 30 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do Before Turning 30 by Siobhan Adcock. These skills include how to wrap a present, use a full place setting properly, hold your liquor, whistle with your fingers, fold a fitted sheet, and write superior thank-you notes. Ah. If you want to understand what happens in the story of the ten lepers, learn this skill. Learn how to write superb thank-you notes, not just to your friends but also to God.

Let's go now to God. God, in Jesus, in this story, was ignored. Nine forgot. One did not. Jesus has one of his rare moments of pique. "Were there not nine who were healed?" Why did only one return? When we refuse the grace that gives us gratitude, we do offend Jesus' generosity.

I daresay we offend that generosity in more ways than one.

Consider how we do health care in our land. Let me try to approach the matter of prescription drugs lightly. There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that we have put the entire church's endowment in health care stocks. The fact that they may have risen by thirty percent in the last few weeks has no affect on us here. We wouldn't think of making a profit off the healing of leprosy. Why are some people making profit off of other people's leprosy? Because we have refused the grace for gratitude: We think that our healing depends on us and our economies and our profits and our machinations. We have not looked out our window to see the light, the feast, and the friends. We have not been overcome enough with gratitude and run to our God and praised with a loud voice. With all you have given us, mighty God, how dare we let greed prevail?

In greed, we seek for more. In gratitude, we know there is enough to go around. There is enough for everyone. In this grace, we move toward each other. In a life based on greed, we think there is not enough. We think we know best. We think we must protect ourselves and not the lepers at the gate. The outsiders -- even though sometimes the outsiders are extraordinarily grateful people -- are to be kept outside. When gratitude and praise overtake you, you forget to be afraid. You become able to trust. You have time for the finer things and for the thank-you notes because you are overflowing with joy and gladness.

We are graced with gratitude when we look outside our window and find friends making feasts for friends -- which will happen all week long.

We can be the one who comes back. We can be the one who returns. We can be the one who thinks on the finer things.