November 25, 2010 | Thanksgiving Day

Returning Thanks

Sarah A. Johnson
Minister for Congregational Care, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 130
Luke 17:11–19

One of them, when he realized that he was healed, turned around and came back, shouting his gratitude, glorifying God.

Luke 17:15−16
The Message

Lord, days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. As we pause this Thanksgiving Day, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments where your presence, like lightening, illuminates the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see that wherever we gaze the bush burns unconsumed and that we, clay touched by God, might reach out toward holiness and exclaim in wonder, “How filled with awe is this place, and we did not know it.”Amen.

When I was growing up, saying thanks was a regular part of my family’s daily routine. Every night we sat down to eat dinner together, and when we did, we always said grace. Plopping down at the table following my mother’s announcement that dinner was ready, we joined hands and mumbled the same “God is great, God is good” blessing before the meal. I’m not sure anybody knew how this particular blessing got chosen; it was just one of those things that seemed to have always been around.

Then one year, in an attempt to add a little variety to saying grace, my mother purchased a small book of new graces from which, each night, my sister and I could alternate choosing a grace for the family to say together.

It was a nice idea, really. It didn’t take long, however, before grace became a dreaded event. Sitting down to eat, my sister and I would start in on the argument over whose turn it was to choose the grace or who had claim over a particular grace that was off limits for the other, with the family grace time dissolving into somebody being sent to their room.

And if there wasn’t an argument, there was the waiting. The family waited in awkward hungry silence, the food on the plates growing cold, while my sister or I examined every page, choosing a grace with the deliberateness of a miner combing a bucket of rocks for a piece of gold.

One night, undoubtedly seeing years of tantrums and cold dinners stretching out before him, my father declared in exasperation that maybe it would be better if we just skipped the grace all together and get on with it.

My father partly won the battle. We gave up the new book of choosing graces but went back to joining hands and saying, “God is great, God is good.” It may not have been new, but it seemed important to say thank you.

Theologian Karl Barth was fond of saying that the basic human response to God is gratitude—not fear and trembling, not guilt and dread, but thanksgiving. “What else can we say to what God gives but to stammer praise?” Barth offered.

In our Gospel lesson from Luke we find the story of the leper who returns to say thank you. Jesus and company are traveling to Jerusalem “through the region between Samaria and Galilee.” The word Samaria is, of course, an automatic red flag. Observant Jews did not go anywhere near Samaria or Samaritans. Samaritans were a despised group thought to be culturally inferior as well as liturgical and theological heretics.

One thinks of the modern conflicts between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (which has gotten a little better, thanks be to God), Sunni and Shia in Islam, bitter fights between progressives and conservatives within each mainline domination. It is, sadly, not hard to imagine how hateful people of faith can be to one another. While Jesus’ message crossed well beyond the borders of maps and theologies, we have no reason to be smug about conflicts between Jews and Samaritans.

Walking through Samaria, Jesus and his disciples encounter ten lepers. It is hard to overestimate the pain and alienation of a person struggling with leprosy. Lepers suffered not just the physical discomfort of their disease but the social alienation and ostracism that came with it. Leprosy included various categories of skin diseases that today we would consider quite treatable but at the time required a person to be banished from their home, from the loving touch of their children, spouses, and their community. So feared was the disease that to cross the shadow of one with leprosy was to risk infection. Thus lepers were required to mark their appearance with torn clothes and announced their condition to anyone who approached, shouting, “Unclean! Unclean!” They lived alone, sometimes banding together as a small community of collective misery.

Seeing Jesus approaching, they call out to him, not to announce their uncleanliness but to ask Jesus to show them mercy, and Jesus does. Jesus tells them to “go and show themselves to the priests,” who in that day had the authority to declare lepers restored and allow a person to reenter normal society.

Believing that Jesus’ instructions to see the priests confirmed their healing, the ten lepers ran, skipped joyfully off in delight to reclaim their lives. As the ten disappeared down the road together, one leper stops in his tracks, turns around, and goes back, kneeling at Jesus’ feet and says thank you.

“What happened to the other nine?” Jesus asks. “Were not ten made clean?” Then looking at the man bowed in humble thanksgiving at his feet, Jesus says something curious: “Your faith has made you well.” Some scholars suggest that it is better said, “Your faith has saved you,” implying that while belief in Jesus’ initial command healed all ten men physically, the one man’s response of gratitude and thanksgiving restored his life to wholeness.

It wasn’t the man’s particular brand of religion, his moral code, or his ten nonnegotiable theological beliefs that caused Jesus to pronounce his life saved, healed, and fully restored, but the leper’s ability to recognize a gift when he saw it and to return to say thank you.

It is to say that, by Jesus’ definition, faith and gratitude are intimately related, that faith without gratitude isn’t faith at all. The practice of returning thanks, that is literally stopping and turning around to say thank you, is the proper response to the gifts of God, and saying thank you brings a healing, a wholeness, to our lives regardless of the circumstances that we find ourselves in.

C. S. Lewis, as he explored his newfound faith, observed the Bible’s, particularly the Psalter’s, insistence that we praise and thank God. He observed the connection between gratitude and personal well-being. “I noticed how the humblest and at the same time most balanced minds praised most, while cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised the least. Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible,” Lewis mused.

There is evidence that Jesus and C. S. Lewis knew exactly what they were talking about. Several medical studies, including one by WebMD entitled “Boost Your Health with a Dose of Gratitude,” provide significant evidence that grateful people have an edge on overall health. WebMD cites thousands of years of philosophical and religious literature evidencing the health benefits of cultivating a life of gratitude.

It may be that grateful people take better care of themselves, but there is evidence that gratitude alone is a stress reducer, that grateful people are more hopeful, and that there are links between gratitude and a stronger immune system. So your mother was right when she made you call your Great Aunt Muriel and thank her for the underwear and tube socks.

For centuries, meditative and therapeutic prayer practices have involved the discipline of taking time at the end of each day, to look back at everything that happened, and to pause and give thanks over those moments that were particular gifts. Therapists call it cognitive reframing or the ability to allow gratitude to shape how we see our lives and restore inner health.

It is often true that our prayers of petition are a longer list than our prayers of gratitude. It is not that we shouldn’t call on God for help. We should. But perhaps extending our ability to say thank you might bring with it the recognition that our anger or frustration is not the most powerful tool we have for changing our lives or the lives of those around us.

This week I spent some time reading a new book by one of my former Princeton professors, Kenda Dean: Almost Christian (which if you are looking for something to read is a thoughtful reflection on the current state of the church from the perspective of youth ministry). I was struck by the final line jotted in the opening pages in which Dean acknowledges her family (husband and two children, a college-age son and a high school-age daughter): “I adore our life together, the four of us. God must laugh at us every day—but oh, God of grace: thank you.”

Writer Anne Lamont says that the only two prayers she ever prays are “Help me, Help me, Help me,” in the morning and “Thank you, Thank you, Thank you” at the end of the day. Maybe your family joins hands every night before dinner, pausing while the food gets cold, to say grace, or maybe you have another ritual altogether.

But either way, these practices shape our lives, our faith such that thanksgiving is not just a single day but a lifetime practice of returning to God.

The basic Christian response to God is gratitude: gratitude for the gift of life, gratitude for the dear people that God has given us to help us navigate the journey, to enrich our lives, and experience grace. The basic Christian response to God is gratitude to God for God’s love expressed in the person of Jesus Christ, which brings with it hopefulness and a sense of wholeness regardless of the circumstances that we find ourselves in.

Today, this Thanksgiving, you and I will gather around tables with friends, church community, and dysfunctional family members to return thanks. That is, literally to stop, to turn back to God, and say thank you.

Indeed, all thanks be to God. Alleluia. Amen.