University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

LIVING BY GRATITUDE

Luke 17:11-19

A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time            October 14, 2007

I should acknowledge up front that this story of the healing of the ten lepers is one of my favorite Biblical stories. Across thirty-some years of regular preaching, I suppose I have preached on this text more than on any text other than, say, the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, which is the assigned reading for every Christmas Eve. And the reason, I believe, is that no Biblical text is more foundational to our understanding of stewardship than this text, because I believe no factor more determines our stewardship than gratitude.

            The story is pretty straightforward, actually. Ten lepers approach Jesus asking for mercy… ten men, outcasts from their community because of a disease that drove them there… to the outskirts of town. Jesus affords them mercy by sending them to the priests for ritual purification and re-entry into the community. And so they go, and as they go, all are healed. But one of them, a Samaritan – a foreigner and an enemy of the Hebrew people – notices something. He sees that he has been healed, and he is overcome… and so he turns on his heels and races back to the feet of Jesus, where he falls on his face before the one who has given him back his life.

            That’s it… a fairly simple story.  And yet, it leaves for its hearers unanswered questions… questions not so much about the story itself but about those who hear it. For me, there are two particularly haunting questions with which I am left:

            The world is full of gracious gifts, but have I noticed?

            If I have noticed, how will I then choose to live?

            Truthfully, those two questions are foundational questions for all of Christian life, because Christian faith affirms that the fundamental fact about our lives is grace.  God, in love, reaches out to help, heal and restore us.  God’s love is expansive, abundant, full of grace.  Yet, according to this story, the odds are about nine to one that we won’t get it.[1] And that is a shame, because the awareness of grace in one’s life can work a wonderful change in one’s attitudes and relationships… and in one’s capacity for joy… even in less than optimal circumstances.

This past summer the singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter recorded an essay for the “This I Believe” segment of NPR’s Morning Edition, which she wrote after suffering a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. She called her essay “The Learning Curve of Gratitude.” 

I had just finished a tour [she said] and a week after returning home, severe chest pain and terrible breathlessness landed me in the ER. A scan revealed blood clots in my lungs.

Everyone told me how lucky I was. A pulmonary embolism can take your life in an instant. I was familiar enough with the medical term, but not familiar with the pain, the fear and the depression that followed.

Everything I had been looking forward to came to a screeching halt. I had to cancel my upcoming tour. I had to let my musicians and crew members go. The record company, the booking agency: I felt that I had let everyone down.

But there was nothing to do but get out of the hospital, go home and get well.

I tried hard to see my unexpected time off as a gift, but I would open a novel and couldn't concentrate. I would turn on the radio, then shut if off. Familiar clouds gathered above my head, and I couldn't make them go away with a pill or a movie or a walk. This unexpected time was becoming a curse, filling me with anxiety, fear and self-loathing — all of the ingredients of the darkness that is depression.

Sometimes, it's the smile of a stranger that helps. Sometimes it's a phone call from a long absent friend, checking on you. I found my lifeline at the grocery store. One morning, the young man who rang up my groceries and asked me if I wanted paper or plastic also told me to enjoy the rest of my day. I looked at him and I knew he meant it. It stopped me in my tracks. I went out and I sat in my car and cried.

What I want more than ever is to appreciate that I have this day, and tomorrow and hopefully days beyond that. I am experiencing the learning curve of gratitude. I don't want to say "have a nice day" like a robot. I don't want to get mad at the elderly driver in front of me. I don't want to go crazy when my Internet access is messed up. I don't want to be jealous of someone else's success. You could say that this litany of sins indicates that I don't want to be human. The learning curve of gratitude, however, is showing me exactly how human I am. … I… wonder… how it took me my entire life to appreciate just one day. [2] 

            Maybe something like that query struck the tenth leper, the one who turned around and came back to Jesus. After a prolonged experience of vulnerability as a leper he suddenly came face to face with the possibilities in his life, with the grace that gave him that day and those that now stretched out before him. Maybe he noticed the grace, and made a decision to begin to exhibit some grace and gratitude of his own. But lifting up the Samaritan leper is not to cast aspersions on the other nine, who made a different choice. Barbara Sholis has helped me to understand how overwhelming the experience of healing could be for them. She writes:

I am sure the lepers were speechless, overwhelmed with the shock of disbelief at their good fortune. One moment they were living a dreadful, diseased, quarantined existence, and then, in the time it took to walk to the village priest, their skin healed, their vision cleared, their sores dried up. The local priest sounded the “all clear,” freeing them to return to society, to their homes, to productive lives. If you think about your own probable reaction, it is hard to blame the lepers for scattering to the wind and leaving the past behind them like a bad dream.

But Luke tells us that … the Samaritan… upon seeing before his eyes the miraculous healing of his body, is overcome with gratitude. He turns back to thank Jesus. We know from his loud voice, his falling flat on his face at the Master’s feet, that even his body cannot contain his praise and thanksgiving.[3]

New Testament scholar John Carroll says, “The point toward which this story presses is doxology.”[4] And it does; it points us toward praise and gratitude before the remarkable grace of God. But doxology and gratitude are still, as Mary Chapin Carpenter said, a learning curve.  And thus the questions still swirl in my head:

The world is full of gracious gifts, but have I noticed?

            If I have noticed, how will I then choose to live?

            As important as stewardship season is for the life of the church, and it is important, stewardship is about so much more than how big a pledge we will make for the next year. Stewardship is about finding answers to those important questions about what we notice, and choosing to live in some manner that honors and gives tangible expression to what we have seen and heard. Our investment of time and energy and financial resources in the life of the church is one of the ways we give such expression, and there are many people, both within and beyond our number, who stand to benefit substantially if we do so. Gratitude and doxology can unlock so much in our lives, once we see… once we notice the grace that is all around us. Of course, not everyone notices… but it is an amazing thing to witness when one does.

On the Day 1 broadcast this morning, I quoted scholar and pastor Paul Duke who once said that gratitude and praise are the "jazz factors" of faith… indeed, that praise is love improvising its answer to love.[5]  And I spoke of the privilege of having witnessed others who were good at such improvisation. I knew a man who miraculously survived a horrific automobile accident, who found his life and relationships altered by a profound gratitude and improvised a new kind of graciousness about life.  I watched an African woman in an outdoor worship service in a Ghanaian village who had no gift of money or produce to bring as an offering, who improvised a dance of thanksgiving and praise.  I knew a couple whose only daughter was born with severe handicaps, who accompanied her through years of special medical expenses and demanding regimens of care, who nonetheless saw her and treated her as such a profound gift of God’s grace, noting improvisationally, “every day is a blessing.”

When I’m at my best, I said, I can improvise such praise. When I’m at my best, even simple daily occurrences can stir such feelings: the laughter of a young child, a sunset full of orange and yellow, a warm bowl of oatmeal on a crisp autumn morning, safe transit through heavy traffic, an unexpected act of kindness, a pedal note on the organ that makes the windows rattle and my heart stir, a disagreement settled and resolved.  When I’m at my best, I can improvise praise and gratitude for such moments. 

At other times I find my senses dulled by routines, or my conscious thoughts consumed by those things that cause anxiety, by pettiness and envy, by expectation and demand.  In those days I do well simply to follow the score. By “the score,” I mean the commands of God for faithfulness, for honesty, for treating others with respect, for demonstrating kindness to my neighbor.  Sometimes just following the score seems like burden and demand.

But I long to live by gratitude, to spend my days improvising praise! I aspire to that kind of life. It’s a learning curve, I know, a lifelong learning curve, but it is worth the effort. And I know I’m not the only one who seeks such a life. I’m in league with Mary Chapin Carpenter and with countless others who have noticed the way life is full of gracious gifts and who want to choose a life that bears evidence of what we’ve noticed.

Alan Culpepper [asks], “Are we self-made individuals beholden to no one, or are we blessed daily in ways we seldom perceive, cannot repay and for which we often fail to be grateful? Here is a barometer of spiritual health: although gratitude is not synonymous with faith, neither response to God can be separated from the other.”

The tenth leper’s faithful, untainted gratitude for God’s mercy is humbling to see. He realizes that life is a gift, that just to get up each day is windfall. [To be sure, sometimes life] can make you feel as if you have lead in your shoes. It can leave you lost, wandering and wondering. But gratitude brings buoyancy. It is the antidote for fear. Gratitude flips despair on its back and says, “You’re not robbing me of today!”[6]

            So, what do we learn from this story of the ten lepers?  In part, at least, we learn that the healing and restorative grace of God is a gift… given out of God’s abundant love. It is pure gift.  Gratitude, on the other hand, is a choice. It is a way of life, a manner of living, one that can claim you in your humanness and magnify the gifts you’ve been given… if you notice… and if you choose.