Help THANKS wow* 1/21/18 RUMC

Help THANKS wow*

1/21/18 RUMC

As the little boy received a cookie from grandma, mom prompted, what’s the magic word? You know what she meant. We have all said it to our kids at one time or another. The little boy looked grandma right in the eye and lovingly said, ABRACADABRA!

Certainly, A magic word, but not THE magic word

What magic word did the mother want to hear? <<<thank you>>>

Abracadabra doesn’t make Anne Lamott’s list of essential prayer, but thanks does.

Last week we talked about the fact that praying HEEEEEELP should be our natural instinct, but because pride or shame or doubt, we don’t pray for help as often as we should. Did you take time to grab on to you prayer knot and pray for help either for yourself or for someone else this week? I hope so.

Today we move to thanks. Now “thanks” is just a short cut version for “O GRACIOUS GOD ALMIGHTY OF THE UNIVERSE WHO DESERVES ALL THANKS AND PRAISE AND ADORATION AND HONOR AND GLORY… WE YOUR UNDESERVIG CREATURES HUMBLY RAISE OUR THANKFUL HEARTS TO YOU GRATEFUL RESPONSE TO YOUR INFINITE GENEROSITY.” Did you get all of that? <<<>>> that’s OK we can abbreviate it to “thanks!”

Let’s take a look at our story for today. You will find it on page__________ of your pew bibles or in Luke 17:11-19 of your Bibles if you brought your own today.

Luke begins by locating the story in an interesting region. The border between Galilee and Samaria. Nazareth and Capernaum and the sea of Galilee are in the region of Galilee. To the south is Judea where Jerusalem and Bethlehem are located. Between them, however lies the land we call Samaria. That’s where the hated Samaritans lived.

              .

Samaritans worshipped the same God, but believed that the proper place to worship was Mount Nebo, of course the Jews believed mount Zion. Kind of like arguing over whether we should worship sitting on the right side of the sanctuary, or the left. But there’s more.

The Samaritans had intermarried, so not only were they perverting the worship of God, they were part gentile. For Jesus to be walking the borderlands between them was like walking the fence line that separated the Hatfields and McCoys. As Jesus is approaching a village, he is met by ten people who had leprosy.

Leprosy was a category of illnesses. The thing they had common. They were all disturbing to look at. In addition to the medical problem there was an emotional recoil, and since the diseases were thought to be a direct result of sin there was the religious issue of being unclean. With the medical. Emotional and religious elements combined, the lepers were doomed to a life on the fringes of society on the fringes of the city, and the temple.

If a leper was approaching a crowded area, they had to shout “Unclean!” to warn the people that they were coming. If they wanted to get someone’s attention to ask for a handout, they had to shout from a distance, so as not to contaminate the person. That’s what these ten lepers do when they see Jesus. Keeping their distance, they shout to him, asking for mercy.

They had no hope of being cured, but they had hope that Jesus and the disciples would have some spare cash. They didn’t ask for a miracle, they didn’t look for a miracle, but that’s what they got. Jesus told them to go show themselves to the priests, which was the Biblically mandated way to prove that you no longer had leprosy, which was almost unheard of.

On the way to the priests, they were healed. Not immediately, but on the way. I don’t know how far they had gone, but one came back to say “O GRACIOUS GOD ALMIGHTY OF THE UNIVERSE …” No that’s not it. He came back to say “thanks.” More than that he came back making a ruckus and throwing himself at Jesus feet. He was so grateful he didn’t care what kinds of laws he was breaking.

Then the real bombshell… he was a Samaritan. Most of the people around Jesus would have been asking why he came back, after all he was just a Samaritan and even worse, apparently, he didn’t care about the laws or ritual cleanliness. He obviously had not yet been declared clean by the priests.

But Jesus had a better question: why didn’t the other nine do the same?

Kory Wilcoxson says we shouldn’t be so hard on the other 9. They probably all had legitimate reasons. He suggests, “for example, the first was so happy he was healed that he simply forgot. The second was just following orders. He was determined to do what he was told by carrying out Jesus’ command to see the priest. The third was too busy rushing off to be reunited with family and friends and to share the good news of his healing with others. The fourth leper, after years of suffering, felt he deserved something good to happen to him, and saw no need to offer thanks for it. The fifth was so overwhelmed by the miracle itself that he didn’t pay attention to one who provided it. The sixth just knew there was a logical explanation for the healing, and that Jesus had nothing to do with it. The seventh leper? He was just plain frightened by what happened and frightened of Jesus. The eighth was secretly offended because Jesus took away his identity, and he didn’t know how to live life without leprosy. As for the ninth leper, his life had been full of such misery and disrespect that he stopped saying, “Thank you” to anyone a long time ago. In our own lives, we can usually come up with at least nine different reasons why we don’t stop and say, ‘Thank you.’ “

Can you relate to any of those? I can at least from time to time. O try to be a grateful person, but it is easy to succumb to the illusion that when something good happens to us, that we worked hard and earned it anyway… why would we go back to say thank you? Or it is just the return on our investment of time in the church. Or Finally something good happened, it’s about time. Those are probably my problems, how about you? I’ll bet I’m not the only one that fits in better with the 9 than with the one. What are your reasons for forgetting to say thank you.

Too often we are like the little kid at Christmas who opens each gift, looks at it a few seconds, and then tosses it aside, ready for the next present. Do we treat God’s blessings that way?

Perhaps we need to just stop today. Stop and step back to look at our lives and world. Let’s take a minute to look at Our jobs, our health, our family, our possessions, our crops, the sunshine. the food provided by creation and if you are like me, you’ll realize that our tiny little gratitude is dwarfed by the magnitude of God’s grace.

Do we have to be thankful? Well, no it is not required anywhere. But if it were required, it would not be true thankfulness. Thankfulness grows from an attitude of gratitude, which flows from an awareness of how blessed we really are.

So, the place to start is being aware. Being ware of some of the blessings God has given us. Start with life, and health, and family and friends, and church and the miraculous ability to hear his word proclaimed. How about instead of complaining about all the traffic and instead give thanks for having transportation? Or instead of impatiently tapping our foot and silently berating the slow clerk, to pause in the long line at the grocery to give thanks for the abundance of food we have. Or to take a moment while paying a medical bill for the skill of the doctors and nurses who care for us. Or instead of being frustrated that the dishes pile up, how about being thankful that we have food to make the dishes dirty.

Awareness if the place to start… just beginning to restore our sight to the blessing that surround us every single day. Forcing ourselves to say thank you to even those things we think are a little silly.

Then gratitude begins to grow in our hearts. The habit of seeing the blessings and giving thanks will begin to grow into an attitude of gratitude. Our hearts only get there, however, if our brains go back over and over again the blessings we have received. Only if our lips practice saying Thank You over and over again.

Ann Lamot writes

“Gratitude runs the gamut from shaking your head and saying, “Thanks, wow, I appreciate it so much,” for your continued health, or a good day at work, or the first blooms of daisies in the public park, to saying, “Thanks, that’s a relief,” when it’s not the transmission, or an abscess, or an audit notice from the IRS. “Thanks” can be the recognition that you have been blessed mildly, or with a feeling as intense as despair at the miracle of having been spared. You say Thank you thank you thank you thank- you: My wife is going to live. We get to stay in this house. They found my son: he’s in jail, but he’s alive; we know where he is and he’s safe for tonight.” 

Finally, gratitude in our hearts begins to show up in our behavior. The doxology, which is a hymn of thanksgiving, that we sing every week, begins to leak into our daily lives, and we find ourselves spontaneously breaking out in “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” And eventually… after our heads become aware, and our hearts become grateful, our spirits become a living doxology to the God who deserves our praise and thanks.

Let’s return to our story for a minute. The Leper is bowing

“Rise and go, your faith has made you well.”

There is more here than meets the eye. On the way to the priest the leper was cleansed. But Jesus declared him well… whole… Completely healed and restored to the image God intended him to be.

10 were cleansed, but only one was make whole or made well… how? By being that living doxology. By living gratitude. By saying thanks, he was not only cleansed, but completely healed.

Take out your prayer knot. The yarn I gave you last week. I want you to fold it in half and then come about ½ way between the middle and the knot you tied last week. And I want you to tie two knots nest to each other. The one knot represented tying a knot in the end of our rope and hanging on. These two represent the double blessing; one the original blessing and two the blessing that comes from living a of giving thanks for a blessing and being blessed even more by having an attitude of gratitude… by simply saying thank you. Go home and say thank you over rand over this week. He a living doxology.

Largely inspired by a sermon by Kory Wilcoxson  found at http://www.crestwoodchristian.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/2-Thanks.pdf

On weeks like this, I am grateful to colleagues who share their who share their work on line.  I only pray that someday a colleague will find homiletic inspiration in something I post here.