11/19/2023: Choose Gratitude

Choose Gratitude

Luke 17:11-19

Rev. Loren McGrail

Holmdel Community United Church of Christ

 

“Gratitude is, however, more than just an emotion. It is also a disposition that can be chosen and cultivated, an outlook toward life that manifests itself in actions—it is an ethic.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks

 

     It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving, a good time to talk about gratitude and thankfulness. Each of you has a gratitude quote (see below). I invite you to turn to the person next to you and share your quotes. Take turns talking about what they mean or what you are grateful for today.

      As Jesus journeys to Jerusalem, he heals ten lepers and sends them on their way.  The lepers live in the shadows.  They subsist in a no-man’s-land.  According to the society of the day, they live in seclusion, keep their distance from people, wear torn clothes, and must announce their contagion in loud, humiliating cries: “Unclean!  Unclean!”

     So, when Jesus heals their skin disease, leprosy, he doesn’t just cure their bodies; he restores their identities. He enables their safe return to all that makes us fully human — family, community, companionship, and intimacy.  In healing their pock marked skin and numbed limbs, he releases them to feel again — to embrace and be embraced, to worship in community, to reclaim all the social and spiritual ties their disease steals from them. However, under Jewish Temple law, they must go to the Temple to be pronounced healed by the priests.

     According to Luke’s text, the tenth leper is a Samaritan, a “double other” marginalized by both illness and foreignness.  By the first century, there was great enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans. The two groups disagree about everything that matters; how to honor God, how to interpret the scriptures, and where and how to worship.  They also avoid social contact whenever possible.  

     Given this context, the Samaritan’s social ostracism would probably continue even after the local priests declare him clean of leprosy.

     So, Dear Ones, what does he do?  Once he realizes he has been cured, he pivots and returns back to Jesus to thank him not only for his skin’s healing but for being embraced for all of who he is — leper, foreigner, exile, other, a beloved child of God.

     Ten lepers are healed.  But only the one who has nowhere else to go, nothing left to lose, and everything in the world to gain, returns to Jesus. Only the one who can take nothing for granted falls in love.  Only the one who longs body and soul to find a home for his whole self, receives salvation. Only one returns to Jesus to express his gratitude, and he alone, of the ten, experiences then the full joy of salvation. Biblical scholar Leah Schade says, “It was his faith, pivoting on that fulcrum of gratitude, that mirrored the healing that Jesus had caused on the outside.”

     His faith which included a practice of thankfulness, blessed, and restored him. His healing was more than skin deep.

     Dear Ones, this Thanksgiving, in spite of all the troubles in the world, including raging wars, we are invited not to give thanks but to choose gratitude, as Bass says in her Thanksgiving Prayer, to see that we live in an infinitude circle of gratitude. That we all are “guests at a hospitable table around which gifts are passed and received. “

     I invite you to turn back to your conversation partner and share how you are going to choose gratefulness this Thanksgiving.

Dear Ones, this Thanksgiving, be like the 10^th leper, and pledge to make thanks, choose gratitude not only around your table but “the table of our nation. Around the table of the earth.”  

Love wholeheartedly, be surprised, give thanks and praise---then you will discover the fullness of your life.

                                                                                                                                     David Steindl-Rast

 

I cried because I had no shoes, then I met a man who had no feet.

                                                                                            Gandhi

 

When we focus on gratitude, the tide of disappointment goes out,

and the tide of love rushes in.                               Karen Armstrong

 

Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.            

                                                                                                                     Dali Lama

 

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith

be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome God.                     Maya Angelou

 

Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.

                                                                                                                          Dali Lama

 

What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.   

                                                                 Deepak Chopra

 

If you believe it will work out, you’ll see opportunities.

If you believe it won’t, you’ll see obstacles.

                                                                Wayne Dyer

 

In the noise of ideologies and agendas,

you gently whisper, O God;

In the cacophony of rhetoric and propaganda,

you gently whisper, O God;

In the madness of war, the chaos of power-games;

the crying of grief, the discordance of disease,

the crowding of poverty, the empty echo of wealthy isolation,

you whisper your words of love

to every broken heart,

you breathe your call of justice

to every heartless tyrant.

And we who have heard the gentle rhythm of your voice,

praise you for your quiet proclamation of grace,

and thank you for your gentle presence among us;

even as we offer ourselves to be quiet voices and muted lives

proclaiming in every moment

your whispers of love and justice.