Return and Give Thanks

13 October 2013

Luke 17:11-19

Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? (Luke17:18)

Today’s gospel story closes with praise for repentance—because, in a literary sense, repentance is returning. Repentance is turning around—to return is to repent. To return and give thanks is to repent of taking God’s gifts for granted.

“Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” I imagine Jesus saying this with a smile, because Jesus knew people. I think Jesus knew that the statistics on gratitude in this particular case study were pretty typical: “Study shows one in ten return to give thanks,” the first-century Huffington Post might have read. And, anyway, Jesus never asked for thanks. “The other nine, where are they?” One can presume they are off doing exactly what Jesus told them to do—go show yourselves to the priests. That would take some time. Enough time to go all the way into Jerusalem, to the temple. Enough time to wait in line to be seen. Enough time for a thorough examination. Enough time to acquire and prepare the appropriate sacrifice. The other nine would have to wait to be declared clean. (If you want to read more detail of what is required to be cleansed from leprosy, see Leviticus 14.)

But the one, the Samaritan, that one recognized that the source and power of cleansing came from God alone. He recognized that the one who made him clean was not in the temple in Jerusalem.  So he, or she, returned—turned around—to give thanks.

So often in the church we think of repentance as a prerequisite for salvation, but here is an example of repentance as a response to salvation…. First an encounter with Jesus, then a change of heart, then a change of direction. Grace first; then an offering of gratitude. Return and give thanks.

I don’t think Jesus attitude toward “the other nine” was scolding. I Jesus felt pity. I think Jesus felt the kind of sorrow that you feel for another when you see him or her so close to completion, then loss. There is a certain amount of our salvation that we work out for ourselves. The scriptures point the way. It is in the psalms of thanksgiving we hear the people of God retelling and reliving all God’s wondrous deeds… from generation to generation. In rehearsing the story of what God has done for us in the past we catch faith—a contagious faith! What we catch is the assurance that God will continue to bless us in the future as God has blessed us in the past. As in today’s psalm, 66, which we retold in the Call to Worship.  Repeating these psalms in exile gave the people the courage to invest in their new lives in Babylon, to seek the welfare of the city to which God sent them, to understand that their welfare was yoked to the welfare of their captors, which is also the spirit of the Old Testament lesson we read from the book of the prophet Jeremiah.

Sometimes the gospel is heard in strange places. The strangest, perhaps, being a short pop-psychology  website, “Soul Pancake,” which illustrates a recent study on the link between happiness and gratitude. Turns out, money can’t buy happiness; neither can it take happiness away; but what does contribute to our overall happiness is how much we express gratitude for what we have received. “Count your many blessings,” anyone? Old truth is confirmed in a new media.

I posted a link to this little video on  our weekly e-news. About 25 people actually clicked on the link, but for the sake of those who didn’t, or who don’t get the weekly e-news, I’ll sum it up for you. Psychologists have clinically proven that the greatest contributing factor to your happiness is how much gratitude you show. So to test out this theory, the guy in the lab coat first administers a baseline “happiness test.” Then the interview shifts gears. To the sound of meditative music, the test subjects are invited to think about the person in their lives who influenced them the most, and to spend a few minutes writing about that person. Then, the test subjects were encouraged to call the person who influenced them the most, and read the statement to that person. This is the really heartwarming part of the video so I hope you will take a moment to watch it next week. Anyway, after this conversation, the subjects are given another baseline happiness test. Those who were able to write something about someone, but for whatever reason weren’t able to speak to that person, they had a minimal increase in happiness. Those who were able to speak to the person to whom they were grateful, they had the next highest increase in happiness. But the greatest impact, the greatest upward shift in happiness level, was seen in those people who started out with the lowest scores. So, that means that if you are having a particularly blue period in your life, this little experiment may have the greatest effect on your happiness. What have you got to lose?

Some of you may have already done your homework. I suggested in the weekly news that you spend some time thinking about someone for whom you are grateful, and writing that person a thank you note. Then I invited you to bring that note to church to put in the plate as an offering of thanks. If you did that, good for you.

But if you didn’t do that, you still have a chance to participate in this test. There is a thank you note in your church bulletin today. Use it now. Think about the person who influenced you the most in life and write a thank you note to that person. God ahead, do it now, I’ll give you a few minutes.

If you have finished, put your offering of thanks in the offering plate today. If not, bring it to church next week, or mail it yourself. Let us know what kind of a response you get from this exercise. I can show you how to leave a comment on Facebook or the church Blog.

Now I’ll leave you with a thought that my psych professors instilled in me: Correlation is not necessarily causation. We don’t know which comes first, the gratitude or the happiness; or why this works. So now we have the freedom to surmise. I think once we begin to express our gratitude for what God has done for us through other people, then we free up something deep inside. We allow the conduits of grace to flow freely through us. God’s grace comes to us on its way to somebody else. Expressing our gratitude helps us to be mindful of the paths of mercy that flow into our own hearts and back out again.

Once we begin to express our gratitude we begin to think, “What can I do, to repay all that I have been given?” We repay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to us (John Buchan, quote found in Edinburgh on the sidewalk of Writer’s Court). Thank God and sing praise, and go forth and give someone else a reason to be grateful to you. Amen.

Discerning the Body

6 October 2013

1 Cor 11:20-34; Mark 14:22-25

             The night that Jesus took the bread and blest it and broke it, and made it a remembrance of his life and ministry, that was to be his last night in Jerusalem. Jesus did not need a miraculous ability to see into the future in order to know what fate awaited him. It was the week that we have come to call Holy, the Last Week of Jesus’ life before death and resurrection. It began with the parade into Jerusalem, which we reenact every Palm Sunday when we wave palm branches and shout “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes!” The week continued with Jesus clearing the temple courtyard on a Monday morning, disrupting the holiday commerce as Pilgrims came from the known ends of the earth and points between, to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem.

            My house shall be a house of prayer for all people and you have made it a den of thieves, Jesus said. And “they” began to look for a way to kill him. “They” being “the religious authorities.” Though Jesus had many followers who lived in the margins of life-- tax collectors and sinners—among the powerful families of Jerusalem Jesus had few if any friends.

            So he knew what was coming. It was time for his mountaintop speech.

            He took bread, and after giving thanks, he broke it into pieces and gave it to them, saying, “Take; this is my body.” He lifted up the cup, and after giving thanks, gave it to them and they all drank of it, and he said, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

            And then he went out to the Garden, to pray and meet his fate. That night he was betrayed, that night he was arrested, that night he suffered. The next day he was crucified.

            Jesus died, but the church was born. Holy Communion, the sharing of bread and wine in remembrance of Jesus, became and remains a primary identity-forming sacrament of the church. “A primary identity-forming sacrament” is a fancy way of saying that this simple meal reminds us who and whose we are. The other primary identity forming sacrament is Baptism.

            Baptism is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Once you are baptized you are baptized forever, you do not need to be baptized again, the church decided long ago. But Holy Communion is repeatable, and it was, until relatively recently-- the last 500 years or so—repeated daily. It is the common meal that sustained the shared ministries of the church, the common meal that fed all the people.

            When the church was newborn, when we were still a reform movement in Judaism, the first Christians would go to synagogue together to learn the scriptures and pray, and then they would gather in each other’s homes for the breaking of the bread. They shared all things in common, the book of acts tells us. No one claimed private ownership of anything but as many as had lands and properties they weren’t using sold them, and laid the proceeds at the disciple’s feet, and these were distributed to all as any had need.

            But, it could last, could it? Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth indicates that there was trouble, early on. In the case at hand, some people were arriving early for the meal and eating it all up. They were behaving badly, having their fill of bread and getting drunk on the wine, while others went hungry and thirsty. This is not the way to remember Jesus!

            From this incident in Corinth we get the idea of “discernment.” Hear this verse again: Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. (28-29)

            Sometimes this verse has been used to defend whatever the religious authorities of the day define as “orthodoxy,” a word which has the same root as your orthodontist. The Orthodontist wants to make your teeth straight, and uniform, and more like everyone else’s. That’s a good thing. Orthodoxy is about straightening out your thoughts and beliefs so they are more like everyone else’s. This is not so great. Because this leads to the suppression of great minds, which may appear unsettled to those who have ordinary but orthodox minds themselves.

            In the past, this little verse about “discernment” has been the crux of arguments between Roman Catholic Orthodoxy and Lutheran Orthodoxy and Reformed Orthodoxy, about whether or not any of us are properly discerning the body of Christ in the bread. But such an argument reveals an ignorance of the context of the scripture. The folks in Corinth did not fail to discern Jesus in the bread. They failed to discern the body of Christ in the church. Which would explain why Paul devoted the entire next chapter of the letter to the theme of the unity of the church as one body, the body of Christ.

            We properly discern the body of Christ when we recognize how much we depend on each other. We properly discern the body of Christ when we grieve the absence from the table of any of God’s children. We properly discern the body of Christ when we do whatever we can to make a place at this table for all of God’s children, young or old, rich or poor, male or female.

            We properly discern the body of Christ when we are more concerned for others than for ourselves, and we are ready to go hungry, if need be, so that others can eat.

            Then the miracle occurs, for the measure you give will be the measure you get, “[a] good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.(Luke 6:38)” Then people will see the presence of the risen Christ in you. Thanks be to God! Amen.

(Dedicated to the confirmation class of 2015.)