Expressing Gratitude

Expressing Gratitude

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7   Luke 17:11-19

Condoleeza Rice wrote this in her book “Walking in Faith”:

Although I never doubted the existence of God, I think like all people, I’ve had some ups and downs in my faith. When I first moved to California in 1981 to join the faculty at Stanford, there were a lot of years when I was not attending church regularly. I was traveling a lot. I was a specialist in international politics, so I was always traveling abroad. I was always in another time zone. One Sunday I was in the Lucky’s Supermarket not very far from my house — I will never forget — among the spices, and an African-American man walked up to me and said he was buying some things for his church picnic. And he said, “Do you play the piano by any chance?”

I said, “Yes.”  He said they were looking for someone to play the piano at church. It was a little African-American church right in the center of Palo Alto. A Baptist church. So I started playing for that church. That got me regularly back into churchgoing. I don’t play gospel very well — I play Brahms — and you know how black ministers will start a song and the musicians will pick it up? I had no idea what I was doing and so I called my mother, who had played for Baptist churches.

“Mother,” I said, “they just start. How am I supposed to do this?” She said, “Honey, play in C and they’ll come back to you.” And that’s true. If you play in C, people will come back. I tell that story because I thought to myself, “My goodness, God has a long reach.” I mean, in the Lucky’s Supermarket on a Sunday morning.



“People will come back.”  Many of us can relate to this, that we get out of the habit of church, we stop going or our faith takes a nosedive and we crash into the mundane world of shopping, laziness, or work.   But then “God has a long reach.”  Something causes us to turn around, to come back to walk in faith once again.  Our New Members, joining the church today, can probably relate to this – finding your way back into church after being away, and finding a new relationship with God.     Those who are celebrating marriage equality in our state this week are feeling what it means to be brought back into the light of acceptance and love.

Years ago I was in that situation.  I had finished two years of seminary at Yale Divinity School, but then dropped out. I wasn’t sure the ministry was for me.  I had begun to seriously meditate and was living in a meditation center, where I got up every day at 5am and did long silent retreats.  How can you do that and still be a minister – much less a Christian?   I knew inside that mindfulness and sitting still did not mean I was denying Christ, but I did feel I couldn’t do both.   Yet I found myself missing church – after spending years immersed in daily worship and study.  

I was a VISTA volunteer, working in inner city New Haven, CT; and I was working in a run down neighborhood.  There I would pass a weird, big-box of a church.  It was enormous, brick and scary looking, like an abandoned prison, with bars on grimy windows and huge oak doors.   I figured it was closed.  But one Sunday I decided to give it a try and surprise! it was open.   The church seated 1,500 people; but only about 40 were inside.  They were friendly, but eccentric – which made me feel right at home.  I enjoyed the quirky minister; I joined the choir; I got on committees; we started a soup kitchen – and I felt like I had found my way home.  It was from church that I was ordained a Christian minister years later.  God finds us a way to return back to faith.

Our scripture lesson this morning is all about coming back.  It is an odd story – almost like a joke – 10 lepers walk into a bar – or into a healing experience with Jesus.  Once they were healed, nine walked away and went to the priest to be examined, so that they can re-enter their lives after being excluded from society for many years.  It’s no wonder that they did not turn around to thank Jesus.  They were too excited about seeing their families, their communities, their friends, who had been unable to relate to them for so long.   They got caught up in the joy and excitement.  Interestingly, the scripture says that they were healed on the way, as they made the journey home.   That can happen to us too, when we find renewal and wholeness.  We make a pilgrimage back to our roots and to what we most love and value, and in returning, we find our souls cleansed and healed.   We get healed gradually, on the way.

But one leper had the presence of mind and heart to feel grateful.  He turned around after realizing he had been healed, and ran back to the one who had made him whole, bowed down and gave thanks.   Jesus was a bit miffed at first; after all there were ten who were healed and only one returned.  And then the one who returned was not even Jewish; he was a foreigner and a Samaritan.   Once again we find the gospel pushing boundaries, reminding us that all people are made in God’s image; all are capable of salvation and faith.   This Samaritan is blessed a second time by Jesus, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”   Now this leper has not only had his body healed of leprosy, he was healed within by faith, and blessed by his Savior.   His soul is now as clean as his body through faith and gratitude.  By returning in gratitude he renews his faith.  He finds his way back to a place of real inner joy and thanksgiving.

With gratitude comes a deeper blessing.   With gratitude we discover  health of the soul.  With gratitude we return to an awareness of the glory, the beauty, the wonder of what is all around us – God’s grace and God’s glory. 

Gratitude is the love and appreciation of what is, in the now, rather than the vicious dissatisfaction about what is not in the past or future. In her book Radical Gratitude, Mary Jo Leddy says that “radical gratitude” recognizes what we have, rather than what we don’t. We awaken to another way of being, another kind of economy, the great economy of grace in which each person is of infinite value and worth. We stop measuring and comparing everything to everything else. We place our feet on the path of love and life. We pull our shoes out of the tar of covetousness and permanent dissatisfaction.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a comedienne, wrote:  “When I’m feeling dreary, annoyed and generally unimpressed by life, I imagine what it would be like to come back to this world for just a day, after having been dead for a while. I imagine how sentimental and excited I would feel about the very things I once found stupid, hateful or mundane. “Oh, there’s a light switch — I haven’t seen one in so long! I didn’t realize how much I missed light switches. Oh, oh, and look — the stairs up our front porch are still cracked. Hi, cracks!”


Gratitude opens our eyes to see with fresh vision.  

Let me share with you this story: “The Can-Opener Run” by a friend, Kate Dunn at 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church, who speaks of gratitude and those who returns to say ‘Thanks’:

Every night of the year, twelve men travel by van from a drop-in center for homeless adults to our church in the heart of midtown Manhattan. Every night, church members volunteer to serve as hosts in the congregation’s homeless shelter. They welcome the men, set out snacks, play cards or board games, watch TV, and stay overnight in the host room. This is a story about two men whose lives inter­sected at the homeless shelter, Joe and Marvin.

For many years, Joe worked as manager of the shelter. He trained and signed up shel­ter hosts, led orientation sessions for shelter guests, stocked the pantry, exchanged the linens, and was on call to address concerns of guests or hosts. He also encouraged the guests. He knew from personal experience the challenges of being homeless. He knew how hard it was to manage aspects of daily living: to find a place to bathe, to do laundry, to keep track of which faith community was serving meals that day and arrive on time to get food. He knew how hard it was to apply for a job when he didn’t have a home address to write down on a job application form.

And he knew how hard it was to keep a steady job when battling addiction. He knew what it felt like to be too ashamed to ask for help, too depressed to believe his life could ever be different, and too tired to do more than get through hour after hour on the streets. And he knew that life could change in miraculous ways. He wanted to share that good news.

One of Joe’s favorite parts of his job was the Can- Opener Run. Whenever a guest received word that he would be leaving the shelter to move into permanent housing, Joe would say: “It’s time for a Can-Opener Run.”

One day, Marvin, who had been a shelter guest for many months, showed up at church with the keys to his new home. Joe helped him empty out his locker and then took him shopping for household essentials: plates and cups, sheets and towels, pots and pans, and, of course, a can opener. 

         “Thank you, Joe,” Marvin said.

         “You don’t need to thank me,” Joe said.  “Thank the church and thank God.”

         Marvin admitted to Joe that he was anxious.  “I’ve been homeless a long time,” he said.  “This is going to be different.  I hope I can keep this apartment.  I hope I don’t mess up.”

         “You can do it,” Joe said. “If I can do it, anyone can do it.”

         “You were really homeless, Joe?” Marvin asked.  Joe didn’t keep his past a secret, but he didn’t always talk about it either.

         “For many years,” Joe said.  “But God didn’t give up on me. And finally, love lifted me up and here I am, with a home and a job, and important work to do.  I was so thankful for all those people that helped me that I knew I wanted to be one of them myself.  That’s why I am here.  And I’m telling you, you’ve come a long way, so don’t give up when it gets hard, because God’s not going to give up on you, no matter what.”

         One day a few weeks after Joe had said goodbye to Marvin, he received a card in the mail.   On the front, in big letters, were the words “Thank You!”  Inside were the words: “I love my new home.  Thank you, Joe.  Thank you, Church.  Thank you, God.  Marvin.”

         Joe carried that card around with him for days and showed it to many people.   “I know most people are thankful for how we try to help, but life gets busy when they leave here and we don’t hear from them.  I understand.  I don’t blame them.  I know what it’s like.  Maybe Marvin’s card means so much to me because I feel like it comes from him and from so many others who felt the same way, but didn’t find a way to say it.”  

Let’s find a way to express our gratitude, to act like the 10th leper, the one who returns, bows down before Jesus and say Thanks!  Amen.