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.
