THANKS AND THANKS LUKE 17:11-19
Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves so thanks for nothing.
With that offering of a grace, cult figure Bart Simpson speaks for much of our contemporary culture. For we find so often today that our world is committed to endorsing our independence rather than our dependence on God, so much so that ‘Thankyou’ seems to be becoming an alien word.
A story is old of a woman at an airport departure lounge. Faced with a delay she sat down to read a book. After a while, a man sat down next to her. After a few minutes the woman reached down to the bag of cookies that she had bought and ate one. To her horrror, the man took one as well. And so it went on. Every time she took a cookie so did he. Not surprisingly she found herself getting ever more angry but whilst her face betrayed her rage, she never said a word. Eventually there was only one cookie left. Now to make things worse, the man beat her to it before with a smile breaking it in two, eating one half himself and giving the other half to the woman. At that moment, the man’s flight was called and so he set off, giving her one last smile. In return the woman produced her least friendly frown. With the cookie thief safely out of the way, the woman used the vacated space to stretch out - and at that moment she felt her hand brush against her unopened bag of cookies. She had been the cookie thief. The man had been generous. And now it was too late to thank him.
A missed opportunity to express gratitude can be seen in this morning’s Gospel Reading. Ten men were lepers. This meant not just that they suffered from a terrible disease which in its most extreme form as Hansen’s disease destroys the nerves in fingers and toes but that they also suffered from exclusion from society as those who were unclean. A community of need so great that distinction between Jews and Samaritans became important, led them to banded together to cry out to Jesus for help and pity. Not that this distinction is ignored by Luke. You see, the Samaritans were hardly popular amongst the Jewish community. After all, they were regarded as those who had ceased to be Jews in a meaningful way. They may have had their origins in the tribes of Israel. But after the Assyrians had overrun the North of Israel eight centuries before Christ, those citizens who were not killed or taken into permanent exile, found their cities in Samaria settled by foreigners of other faiths. Gradually the Jews and these foreigners intermingled in way that brought a racist reaction from some as well as an abhorrence that their religion had become compromised. In the years that followed, Jews and Samaritans snubbed each other and the Samaritans went so far as to set up a rival centre of worship to Jerusalem at Mount Gerazim. Even in the childhood of Jesus, the Samaritans used the remains of dead animals to desecrate the Temple in Jerusalem. And so perhaps the naming of one of the lepers in this border community as a Samaritan is not without significance.
And that significance comes out in the story of reactions to the healing of these lepers. Nine of them did precisely what Jesus told them to do. They went on their way to see the priest to get verification for their healing. They went off so that they could speedily rejoin society. But the Samaritan did something different. Having set off like the others, he turns around. Why? Because he sees in his healing the work of God and he knows that he needs to give thanks to God and praise God. For in a real sense the wholeness that was now his, is about discerning the presence of God within our lives, even in those things we consider ordinary, and that same wholeness means being grateful for the ways in which God blesses us. This is what it is to be truly human.
It is a bit like the story of the evangelist Harry Ironside who in a crowded restaurant bowed his head to pray before eating a meal. The other man at the table asked him if he had a headache. “No” replied Ironside. So the man asked him if something was wrong with his food. Ironside replied, “Ni, I was simply thanking God as I always do before I eat.” “Oh” replied the man in true Bart Simpson mode, “ you’re one of those are you? Well I want you to know that I never give thanks. I earn my money by the sweat of my brow and I don’t have to give thanks to anybody when I eat. I just start right in.” Ironside’s immortal response was, “Yes, you’re just like my dog. That’s what he does too!”
At that is a matter for Harvest. In our society of self dependence, are we becoming blind to the gifts of God, instead seeing man as the giver of all things. I like a statement by William Sloan Coffin who in America has been a powerful voice against injustices. Yet reflecting on the changing situation of his declining health, he says;
I am less intentional than attentional. I am more attentive to family and friends and to nature’s beauty. Although still outraged by callous behaviour, particularly in high places, I feel more often serene, grateful for God’s gift of life. For the compassions that fail not, I find myself saying daily to my loving Maker, ‘I can no other answer than thanks and thanks and thanks.
And that is at the heart of Harvest Thanksgiving. Too often we marginalise God in our world. Yet at Harvest we are reminded that to be truly human we need to say Thanks and Thanks and Thanks. And then seeing how we are blessed by the generous gifts of God to be like the Samaritan to use the wholeness God gives us to work for justice and the fair use of the resources of our world.
But may we do so with appreciation. A man was once chased by a tiger. He ran and ran until he came to a sheer cliff. As the tiger neared him, he grabbed a rope hanging over the cliff and climbed out of the tiger’s reach. Looking up, he saw the tiger above just longing to eat him. Below he saw a drop of some 500 feet. What could he do. Just then he saw a rare sight, a bright red strawberry growing out on the side of the cliff. He reached out his hand grabbed the strawberry and popped it into his mouth. So good was it’s taste that he exclaimed, “That was the best strawberry I have ever tasted.”
In a dire predicament he appreciated something that was good. We may not be chased by tigers but we too need to appreciate the good gifts that we so often take for granted and whilst not minimising all that we owe to human graft, be grateful to the God who is at the heart of all the good things we enjoy, and who continues to bless us from the generous heart of Divine love.
This sermon was preached at Gammaton Harvest Festival on September 11th 2005
With that offering of a grace, cult figure Bart Simpson speaks for much of our contemporary culture. For we find so often today that our world is committed to endorsing our independence rather than our dependence on God, so much so that ‘Thankyou’ seems to be becoming an alien word.
A story is old of a woman at an airport departure lounge. Faced with a delay she sat down to read a book. After a while, a man sat down next to her. After a few minutes the woman reached down to the bag of cookies that she had bought and ate one. To her horrror, the man took one as well. And so it went on. Every time she took a cookie so did he. Not surprisingly she found herself getting ever more angry but whilst her face betrayed her rage, she never said a word. Eventually there was only one cookie left. Now to make things worse, the man beat her to it before with a smile breaking it in two, eating one half himself and giving the other half to the woman. At that moment, the man’s flight was called and so he set off, giving her one last smile. In return the woman produced her least friendly frown. With the cookie thief safely out of the way, the woman used the vacated space to stretch out - and at that moment she felt her hand brush against her unopened bag of cookies. She had been the cookie thief. The man had been generous. And now it was too late to thank him.
A missed opportunity to express gratitude can be seen in this morning’s Gospel Reading. Ten men were lepers. This meant not just that they suffered from a terrible disease which in its most extreme form as Hansen’s disease destroys the nerves in fingers and toes but that they also suffered from exclusion from society as those who were unclean. A community of need so great that distinction between Jews and Samaritans became important, led them to banded together to cry out to Jesus for help and pity. Not that this distinction is ignored by Luke. You see, the Samaritans were hardly popular amongst the Jewish community. After all, they were regarded as those who had ceased to be Jews in a meaningful way. They may have had their origins in the tribes of Israel. But after the Assyrians had overrun the North of Israel eight centuries before Christ, those citizens who were not killed or taken into permanent exile, found their cities in Samaria settled by foreigners of other faiths. Gradually the Jews and these foreigners intermingled in way that brought a racist reaction from some as well as an abhorrence that their religion had become compromised. In the years that followed, Jews and Samaritans snubbed each other and the Samaritans went so far as to set up a rival centre of worship to Jerusalem at Mount Gerazim. Even in the childhood of Jesus, the Samaritans used the remains of dead animals to desecrate the Temple in Jerusalem. And so perhaps the naming of one of the lepers in this border community as a Samaritan is not without significance.
And that significance comes out in the story of reactions to the healing of these lepers. Nine of them did precisely what Jesus told them to do. They went on their way to see the priest to get verification for their healing. They went off so that they could speedily rejoin society. But the Samaritan did something different. Having set off like the others, he turns around. Why? Because he sees in his healing the work of God and he knows that he needs to give thanks to God and praise God. For in a real sense the wholeness that was now his, is about discerning the presence of God within our lives, even in those things we consider ordinary, and that same wholeness means being grateful for the ways in which God blesses us. This is what it is to be truly human.
It is a bit like the story of the evangelist Harry Ironside who in a crowded restaurant bowed his head to pray before eating a meal. The other man at the table asked him if he had a headache. “No” replied Ironside. So the man asked him if something was wrong with his food. Ironside replied, “Ni, I was simply thanking God as I always do before I eat.” “Oh” replied the man in true Bart Simpson mode, “ you’re one of those are you? Well I want you to know that I never give thanks. I earn my money by the sweat of my brow and I don’t have to give thanks to anybody when I eat. I just start right in.” Ironside’s immortal response was, “Yes, you’re just like my dog. That’s what he does too!”
At that is a matter for Harvest. In our society of self dependence, are we becoming blind to the gifts of God, instead seeing man as the giver of all things. I like a statement by William Sloan Coffin who in America has been a powerful voice against injustices. Yet reflecting on the changing situation of his declining health, he says;
I am less intentional than attentional. I am more attentive to family and friends and to nature’s beauty. Although still outraged by callous behaviour, particularly in high places, I feel more often serene, grateful for God’s gift of life. For the compassions that fail not, I find myself saying daily to my loving Maker, ‘I can no other answer than thanks and thanks and thanks.
And that is at the heart of Harvest Thanksgiving. Too often we marginalise God in our world. Yet at Harvest we are reminded that to be truly human we need to say Thanks and Thanks and Thanks. And then seeing how we are blessed by the generous gifts of God to be like the Samaritan to use the wholeness God gives us to work for justice and the fair use of the resources of our world.
But may we do so with appreciation. A man was once chased by a tiger. He ran and ran until he came to a sheer cliff. As the tiger neared him, he grabbed a rope hanging over the cliff and climbed out of the tiger’s reach. Looking up, he saw the tiger above just longing to eat him. Below he saw a drop of some 500 feet. What could he do. Just then he saw a rare sight, a bright red strawberry growing out on the side of the cliff. He reached out his hand grabbed the strawberry and popped it into his mouth. So good was it’s taste that he exclaimed, “That was the best strawberry I have ever tasted.”
In a dire predicament he appreciated something that was good. We may not be chased by tigers but we too need to appreciate the good gifts that we so often take for granted and whilst not minimising all that we owe to human graft, be grateful to the God who is at the heart of all the good things we enjoy, and who continues to bless us from the generous heart of Divine love.
This sermon was preached at Gammaton Harvest Festival on September 11th 2005
posted by Rev Paul Martin at 1:43 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home