Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 11, 2024

The Magic Words: Thank You

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Psalm 28:6–9
Matthew 20:1–16

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The Chicago Air and Water Show is this weekend. I suppose you know that. Since I live on Walton, I thought I should open a window, because several times I wondered if they were trying to land in my living room. The planes made me think of my dad, who as a young man got his pilot’s license. Single-engine Cessna. He loved to fly.

In 1967, Dad taught me that a Clete Boyer to Felix Millan to Felipe Alou double play was scored 5-4-3 and that was particularly sweet if it were against the Dodgers. In 1977 Dad taught me to change the oil every 3,000 miles. And when I was seven, he told me that the best way to catch a bird was to sprinkle salt on the bird’s tail. He lied about that.

He also told me to write thank-you notes in a timely fashion so that those you are thanking will remember what you are thanking them for.

It was a couple years ago now that I drove to Atlanta to thank him for all of that. He was dying, and we both knew it. We didn’t have a lot of time together, just a morning. But we didn’t need more, because all I needed to say was I love you and thank you. That day of thanksgiving was a day I will carry with me for as long as I can remember.

It was my mother who told me that “please” and “thank you” were the magic words. Not magic like abracadabra or hocus pocus. But they are words that hold a certain power. I think she was right about that.

I first met my friend Carla when she was in high school. She served on an Associate Pastor Nominating Committee for the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina. She was the youth representative. That committee called me to my first congregation out of seminary. Carla is now a pastor herself. She says in her family they have a ritual. Every evening when her family gathers around the table they give thanks.

She describes it this way:

“There we are with a table full of food, sometimes very good food. But what I’m feeling some nights as I sit at that table is [not grateful but] anxious about the day’s work and all that is left undone. I’m feeling exasperated that my children keep arguing about stuff I consider frivolous. I’m feeling inadequate to face the challenges that keep coming my way. But because it’s our custom, my family joins hands to pray over the meal.” And then she says, “As I lift my heart in [thanksgiving], only parts of my heart really make it there” (Carla Pratt Keyes, from her paper on Matthew 20:1–16 presented to the Moveable Feast, January 2013).

I bet you can understand that. I know I can.

The attitude of gratitude is, well, just that: an attitude. The difficult thing about any attitude is that attitudes ebb and flow, rise and fall. But this is what I have learned: in Christian faith, giving thanks is more of a practice than an attitude.

It is a practice of choosing to see the grace in the moment.

Michael J. Fox was first known to the world as Alex Keaton on the 1980s TV show Family Ties. He later starred in many movies, most successfully the Back to the Future series. He’s a funny guy. But he has a serious side to him. The last time I saw him on TV he was halting and shaking, head bobbing like battered by some invisible boxer, as he struggled with Parkinson’s Disease. He wrote a book about it, which amazingly is entitled Lucky Man. Fox describes Parkinson’s as a gift. He calls it a gift because, before he got sick, he spent his life focused on Michael J. Fox. But the illness shifted his focus. He began to look beyond himself and to begin participation in the healing of the world.

If I understand it, he’s not grateful for Parkinson’s. No one would be grateful for Parkinson’s. But for the first time, he figured out how to be grateful even on hard and disappointing days (Michael J. Fox, Lucky Man). That was the gift.

And he learned that gratitude is not simply a feeling; it’s a practice.

If you are like my friend Carla, or like me, and you find yourself at a table with good food, maybe even family gathered around, and you realize that you could be grateful, perhaps should be grateful, but somehow your heart is captured by the demands of the day and only parts, if any, of your heart feel grateful to God, well —

I could say you should do better.

I could say you need an attitude adjustment.

But I am not going to say that.

If you are like that sometimes, you are not alone. So, let’s pay attention to what Jesus says we might do about it.

Jesus tells a story about laborers in the vineyard. Like all the parables, this is a story about life in the promised day of God. It is a story about how we respond to the often-disrupting nature of God’s grace.

Jesus said workers were hired. They agreed at the time to work for the usual daily wage — a fair payment. They got that. But so did everyone else. Including those who had not worked nearly as long as those hired first. It wasn’t fair.

That’s the first lesson in this parable. Grace is unsettling in its generosity. The complainers got what they bargained for. More than that, they got what they needed.

They just didn’t get what they wanted, although it took them a while to discern what they wanted.

What they wanted was for things to be fair. I do too. But grace isn’t always fair. Rather, grace is always generous — which is cool when generosity comes our way. But it’s unsettling to see others receive grace they do not deserve.

God is like that.

This parable speaks of a generous, giving, gracious God.

They all got what they needed, deserving or not.

But some didn’t get what they wanted. But notice that the ones who complain didn’t complain at the beginning. They had made a deal. The boss honored the deal. They complained when they saw that he was generous to others. They complained when they began to compare. Comparison will steal your joy every time. Every time.

Peter Shaffer wrote the play Amadeus. The play narrates the jealousy and even hatred that existed between Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Salieri was a musical composer, and by most standards he was quite gifted. But Mozart was not most standards. Mozart was extraordinary. From the shadows cast by Mozart, Salieri referred to himself as the “Patron saint of mediocrities.” (Peter Shaffer, Amadeus, p. 95). At one point Salieri says to God,

Now for the first time I feel my emptiness as Adam felt his nakedness. Tonight at an inn somewhere in this city stands a giggling child who can put on paper, without actually setting down his billiard cue, casual notes which turn my most considered ones into lifeless scratches. Grazie, Signore! You gave me the desire to serve you — which most men do not have — then saw to it the service was shameful in the ears of the server. Grazie! You gave me the desire to praise you — which most men do not feel — then made me mute. Grazie! You put into me perception of the incomparable — which most men never know! — then ensured that I would know myself forever mediocre. (Shaffer, Amadeus, p. 46)

Rather than celebrating the gifts he had, Salieri covets the gifts he lacks. Comparison robs us of joy.

If it’s about competition with others, there is no end to my wants. There are people all over the TV and all over the Internet all begging you to compare your ordinary, run-of-the-mill life of mediocrity to their glorious and exotic and plastic-surgeried lives.

The workers compare and then complain.

The boss says, “Are you envious because I am generous?” That’s how it reads in the NRSV, the English translation. But a more literal reading of the phrase is this:

Is your eye evil because I am generous?

Reading the phrase more literally helps, I think.

Is your eye evil because I am generous?

The ancient wisdom suggests that gratitude or envy rests in what we see — no, more clearly in how we see what we see.

And how we see what we see is a practice, a choice.

Do you remember my friend Carla?

She confessed, “When I lift my heart in praise at that noisy, sometimes conflicted, stressed dinner table, only parts of my heart make it.”

When we don’t really feel grateful, why offer a prayer of thanksgiving? Some might say that’s hypocritical, but I suggest it is faithful. If she had not stopped in the midst of that chaos and offered prayers of thanksgiving, she might not have been thankful at all. What she chose to do was inject some gratitude in that ordinary moment.

Sometimes we express gratitude because we feel grateful, but what’s more common, I think, is the very act of expressing gratitude makes us more grateful.

What I have learned is that we may not always change our hearts, but we can change our behavior. And new behavior can change the heart.

At the last church I served, I followed a man who was a saint in shoes. He was a pastor of singular ministry, and he took me in like a son. He preached the best sermons and told the worst puns. Everyone called him Dr. Bob, and his parting words in any conversation were “Be of good cheer.”

Now he knew as well as anyone that not every day is cheery.

Not every circumstance feels beautiful.

But Dr. Bob knew what Jesus knew. The practice of gratitude makes us more grateful.

I pay attention to saying thank you, but not enough. But I have experienced this to be true: when I compare my life to others, it seldom makes me happier. But when I look for the good, when I see grace in my life — and grace is always in our lives — when I look for that and make that my practice, then I become more grateful.

I don’t know what your week will be like. Perhaps it will be a great week. Air Show, time with family, success at work. Or perhaps it will be doctor schedules, long nights, and anxieties.

You have had both. Whatever it is this time, look for grace, and give thanks for it. Even if your heart is heavy, give thanks. And maybe when we gather with God again next Sunday, we will all be a bit more grateful.

For gratitude and envy both begin with the eye — it’s how we see what we see. And that’s a choice.

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Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church