Fourth Presbyterian Church: A Light in the City

Sunday, October 9, 2022 | 10:00 a.m.

Thank You

Shannon Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 111
Luke 17:11–19

Until someone mentioned it to me this week, I did not realize that this story is the only one in all of Scripture in which someone thanks Jesus. Isn’t that hard to imagine? After everything Jesus does in his life and ministry, this is the only time any Gospel records someone saying thank you to him.

And that thank-you is expressed in a borderland kind of space. Luke is careful to point out that Jesus is traveling in a region between Samaria and Galilee. Now, according to first-century maps of Palestine, there is no region between Samaria and Galilee, so it makes us wonder just what Luke wants to communicate to us about Jesus’ journey. Seminary professor John Carroll posits that “the vagueness and ambiguity of the geographical references is suggestive. . . . Jesus is walking through a liminal zone, a place of transition, a place ‘between’ where neither Galilean nor Samaritan is at ‘home’” (John Carroll, Luke).

It is in this vague, ambiguous, liminal land where Jesus encounters these ten lepers. The fact that they made their own kind of home there probably should not surprise us, for as those who were not welcomed into any community due to their diseases, as those who were considered outcast and unclean, where else could they go? Now, Jesus could have gone anywhere else, but they could not. And Jesus did not. So when they see Jesus coming near, they cry out for mercy.

Jesus being Jesus both hears them and heals them. “Go,” he says. “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” He gives that instruction because, in those days, only a religious leader could confirm someone clean again. Only a religious leader could say on behalf of an entire community “Come on in. You are one of us again. Welcome home.”

Well, once they get that word from Jesus, the lepers do exactly as they are told, and while they are on their journey, they are indeed made clean. Nine of them continue to obediently follow Jesus’ instructions, but one of them cannot stop himself from turning around, running back, shouting praise, falling at Jesus’ feet, and saying, “Thank you. Thank you,” again and again. The verb used has the root of “doxa,” which is also the root of Doxology, the ancient song of praise and thanksgiving with which we begin worship every week. This tells us that the healed man was not just thanking Jesus but praising and thanking God, whom he assumed had worked through Jesus.

Watching this happen, Jesus looks around and wonders aloud where the other nine might be. “Why are you the only one who returned?” he asks. And then he states, “Get up and go again on your way; your faith has made you well.” Now, I must admit Jesus’ response had me a bit confused in my initial read of this story.

First, the other nine did not come back because they were doing as Jesus himself had instructed. But second, wasn’t that Samaritan leper already made well? Wasn’t that why he turned around in the first place? Through that healing he had already been given clear skin and a way back into community. So what else was Jesus doing with him at that moment?

I know I made you learn some Greek last Sunday, but please stick with me yet again. One more time, our NRSV doesn’t do the Greek justice. In verse 15, when the leper realizes he is clean, the verb used there refers to a physical healing, what we just discussed. Yet it is a different verb in verse 19. The verb used there is sozo, and translating sozo as “made well” is a bit anemic. It is most often translated as “saved.” To be saved. To be rescued. To be delivered. And always in a divine sense. Getting well from an illness is one thing. But truly getting well? Becoming whole? Feeling delivered and rescued? Being saved? That’s something altogether different.

Ten lepers have faith enough to ask Jesus to heal them, and he does. They were all healed. But only one is saved and made totally whole. The one that turns around to shout praise and gratitude, “Thank you. Thank you.” So this is one question that emerges from this text, isn’t it: What is it about gratitude that saves us? It’s got to be about more than just good manners, right?

A preacher friend of mine named Jenny tells a story that might help. Growing up, she lived near her very best friend named Courtney. Jenny proclaims that though she grew up with the Ten Commandments in her house, Courtney grew up with eleven. The eleventh commandment, decreed by Courtney’s mother, was “Thou shalt write thank-you notes.” You weren’t really thankful, her mother thought, and your gratitude was not properly expressed until you had written it down in a card and mailed it.

She believed this so fervently that any gifts her daughter received were allowed to be enjoyed the day they were given. But then, the next morning, all those gifts were taken hostage, only to be released from their captivity when thank-you notes were written, envelopes were sealed, and stamps were affixed. Once Courtney, encouraged by Jenny, protested to her mother, “But I already said thank you once!”

Courtney’s mom responded by sitting both girls down with pencils and notecards and said, “It’s more about connecting the dots, girls.” Looking back at that moment through the lens of this text, Jenny concludes Courtney’s mother understood something about what happened between Jesus and the grateful Samaritan leper.

The newly healed man desired to connect with the giver of his healing and to express his deep gratitude, turning back to Jesus and acknowledging the way they were now bound together. For that is what real gratitude does, doesn’t it? Gratitude turns us toward one another and binds us together. It also changes the way we see one another.

Allow me to illustrate with another story. A few years ago, a colleague told me about the time that he and his wife set up their Christmas tree with their small children. The two adults wrestled it into the living room while their kids bounced on the couch, unable to contain their excitement. The lights went up, and it was time to decorate. His job was to attach the hooks to each ornament and then gently hand it to one of the kids.

He called over his daughter and put a sparkly silver ball in her hands. And his daughter, with eyes opened wide, held it gently and whispered, “Thank you. This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.” With every single ornament she took from her father’s hands, she uttered the same words: “Thank you. This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

Well, about halfway through the ornaments, he decided to have a little fun with his children. So he grabbed one of their dirty little socks from the floor and stuck a hook through it. He handed it over to his daughter. “Thank you, Daddy,” she said. “This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.” And she hung it on the tree. Her mother said to her, “You just put your dirty sock on the tree. Are you even paying attention?” In response, that three-year-old child said, “But Mama, look — today everything is beautiful. The decorations are beautiful. My sock is beautiful. And you and Daddy are beautiful, too!”

Don’t you wonder if that might be part of the power of gratitude? Not only is true gratitude powerful enough to make you stop in your tracks, turn around, and seek out a connection with the giver, but it is also powerful enough to change the way we see one another. Gratitude unleashes in us a kind of holy imagination. A holy imagination that hangs a sock on a tree and says it’s beautiful.

A holy imagination that looks at an old stone baptismal font filled with ordinary water and sees a claiming by God and an entrance into the community of faith. A holy imagination that looks at a sanctuary filled with normal, broken people and sees them as beautiful saints who could indeed help God transform the world. True gratitude unleashes in us an awareness of nothing less than grace and connects us directly with the One who has given us everything, including each other.

Gratitude puts the reality of grace right in front of our eyes, and that becomes the lens through which we see everything and everyone else. And I believe that on our best days gratitude can change how we move through the world. I have seen that firsthand. I even think it can save us, including saving us from ourselves.

Jim Sommerville, an American Baptist preacher in Washington, D.C., made that point when he recounted a conversation he had with a church member. They, like us, were in the midst of stewardship season, the time during which we all decide how much of our resources we will give to God’s work through the church. The church member with whom he visited was one who always gave 10 percent of his family’s income. When Sommerville asked him how he always managed to do that, the man remarked that it was not always easy, especially in the beginning. “But,” he said, “my wife and I decided we still had to do it. After all, we were afraid what would happen if we didn’t.”

Jim was perplexed, because he was not a hellfire and damnation kind of preacher, and asked the man to clarify. “We were not afraid of what God would think,” the man stated. “Rather, we were afraid of what kind of people we would become if we stopped giving. We were afraid we would become ungrateful people. And we did not want to be that“ (Jim Sommerville, 2016, asermonforeverysunday.com ).

I wonder if this is something that one healed leper realized. I wonder if in that moment he experienced the way that gratitude could shape him into a totally different person, into someone who could see the whole world shimmering with the presence of Love, for to be honest, that is what many of you teach me on a regular basis. You teach me how life-changing and soul-saving the regular spiritual practice of gratitude can be.

And so I want to thank you. Thank you for showing up this morning here in person, especially on Marathon Sunday. Thank you for showing up this morning with our livestream—worshiping with us from Texas to Canada to New York to Florida to Oklahoma to California to Missouri and elsewhere, as we trust that God stiches us together as community regardless of where we are. Thank you for creating a house church at the Admiral and the Clare and at other retirement facilities across Chicagoland. Thank you all, here and online, for gathering together and setting aside all the other things you could have been doing. Thank you for making the effort to be rewoven together as a worshiping community.

Thank you, because in these vague, ambiguous, liminal days of “who is Fourth Church now?”, being in worship with you each week knits me back together, gives me courage, and makes another week of discernment and ministry possible. Thank you.

Thank you for ways you live your faith every single day. I see only a part of it, but what I see always impacts me. Thank you for serving meals every day of our Meals Ministry program but one during these last two-and-a-half COVID-19 years, for making sure that people had a warm meal and a kind welcome. Thank you for making prayer shawls. Thank you for telling our deacons how we can pray for you.

Thank you for tying the purple bows on Michigan Avenue as a public testimony against domestic violence. Thank you for bringing your babies and your teenagers to church and to Sunday School. Thank you for joining in worship even when your body is tired or it hurts.

Thank you for engaging in Bible study and small groups. Thank you for serving in leadership, especially now. Thank you for being a part of welcoming a new refugee family from the Ivory Coast/Cameroon — for cleaning and setting up the apartment in which they will begin a new life. Thank you for reaching out to each other as we try to reweave this congregation back together. Thank you for making music and wrapping up our words of praise in beauty. Thank you in advance for whatever pledge or monetary support you will give for our work together in 2023 — goodness knows we all need to be “all in” for this next year.

Thank you for your questions. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. Thank you for taking risks and trying new things and being adaptable as we find our way forward. Thank you for having a sense of humor and not letting any of us take ourselves too seriously. Thank you.

Every single one of you is salt and yeast and light for a weary world. In your paid work, in your volunteer work, and in your daily routine you live out the light of your baptism, and that matters. It matters to me. It matters to this city and this world. It matter deeply to our God. Thank you. Thank you for being yourselves, for being children of God, holy and beloved — nothing more, nothing less. To borrow the line from my friend’s daughter, “Thank you. You, the group project called Fourth Church, are one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever seen.”

That tenth Samaritan leper had it right. So did Jesus, of course. Being filled with gratitude and the full-throated expression of it can save our lives. It connects us with each other. It connects us with the One from whom all blessings flow. The world comes alive, and we do too, when gratitude shapes us, when it causes us to pause, turn back, and shout our praise.

Gratitude allows us to see the world and each other shimmering with love and light and possibility. It is the antidote to so much else we deal with in these vague, ambiguous, liminal kind of days. Gratitude is what will make us all whole and well, willing to keep following the one named Jesus on his way. So thank you. And thanks be to God. Amen.

Notes
This sermon is heavily influenced by the Reverend Jenny McDevitt, Pastor of Shandon Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina.