LAKE JAMES

NORTH CAROLINA

Proper 23-C + Oct. 14, 2007 + St. Paul’s Church Lake James

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

A major theme of the Bible readings appointed for use today is that of “gratitude,” but, after pondering them, the word which kept coming back to my mind was not “gratitude,” but rather, “absurd!” Absurd meaning “ridiculous” or “contrary to reason.”

Consider the story we have just heard in the Gospel. In Our Lord’s time, people suffering from leprosy were forbidden to have any contact with those who were healthy. Lepers lived in terrible isolation, a life which, without exaggeration, could accurately be described as “a living hell.” St. Luke tells how ten lepers had an experience which profoundly changed their lives. By chance, they happened to see Jesus, the rabbi from Nazareth, recognized him, and, since they were forbidden to come near enough to talk with him, they yelled, got his attention, shouted out their desperate plea – and were healed! When they became aware of what had happened to them, one, only one, bothered to come up to Jesus to thank him! For now, let’s ignore the fact that the one who thanked Jesus was a Samaritan, someone from the group which ranked lowest on the low on the social scale of the day. That’s another sermon. Let’s focus this morning on the issue of being grateful and expressing gratitude.

Whenever today’s Gospel reading is heard, most of us, I suspect, identify more or less with the leper who did turn back to thank Jesus. After all, we are people of good manners! When we were children, how many times did someone teach us to say “thank you”
when we had been given something? We who are parents, grandparents, godparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, teachers, or other helpers of children, how often have we done the same? (I’d love to have a dime for every time I reminded my young children with words such as “well, what do you say?” after someone had given them a gift.) And I’m sure that we in the 21^st century are not much different in that regard from those who lived in Our Lord’s time. So, that word “absurd” comes back to mind, for it does seem absurd that anyone whose life had been so drastically changed, transformed, restored, would not at least bother to stop and say “thank you.”

There’s an old story (and it’s absurd, too) about a family who had a brother who lived in a distant city where he worked for a zoo. Because his job often took him to the town where the family lived, he was in the habit of stopping in for a brief visit whenever he was in their town. Frequently he was transporting a creature of some kind, so the children especially looked forward to their uncle’s visits, wondering what unusual or esoteric creature he might have brought with him. The parents had become accustomed to it, and so were not particularly surprised when, one day, he arrived at their house with a small alligator on a leash. It was almost noon, so the family decided they’d go to a nearby restaurant for lunch. The alligator was put in the bathtub where it would be comfortable. What they should have remembered, but didn’t, was that the every-Saturday cleaning lady would be coming that afternoon. When the family returned from lunch, they found a note which read: “I did not clean your house today! I’m sorry, but I quit! I will not work for people who keep an alligator in their bathtub. I realize I never mentioned this earlier, but somehow, the subject of alligators never came up!” When it comes to giving thanks for the caring, healing, and loving we receive from God, don’t we also frequently seem to “forget to bring the subject up?” Consider the time you spend in prayer each day and what portion of that prayer time is given over to prayers of petition, asking for something, or prayers of intercession, praying for the needs of others, and how much is spent simply in giving thanks. If you are like many of the rest of us, isn’t that a bit absurd?

Some time ago, I was talking with a man who had just come from an appointment with his Ophthalmologist where he learned that he was going blind and there was nothing that could be done to change it. For years, the man had been an avid reader, an enthusiastic golfer, a lover and amateur scholar of the French Impressionist school of art. Now he had been told that, before very long, all that would be only memories for him. I wondered then, and I wonder now, how many of us take the time to be aware of – and thankful for – the gift of sight. Think also, if you will, what it means to be able to enjoy beautiful music, the sound of the wind in the trees, or birds singing. Without the gift of hearing, none of those would be possible. Have you had the experience of being away from a loved one, missing that person greatly, and then, known the joy of just hearing his or her voice again and simply delighting in that sound? What would it be if you were completely without any ability to hear at all? So, again, how often do we take the time to be thankful for things, such as the ability to speak, to love, to think – even the very gift of life itself! How often do we turn to our God to offer our thanks?

So many of us tend to take our blessings for granted. Unless our eyesight is threatened, we don’t give much thought to what a precious gift it is. Unless the use of a hand is in peril, we seldom stop to marvel at the ability to hold things, to shake hands, or to wave a greeting. On the other hand, we are apt to concentrate on whatever might be missing, asking God for whatever that may be. In today’s Gospel, God speaks to us and says STOP! Be aware of the gifts given to you and be thankful. Anything else is, yes, absurd.

So far, we have been concentrating on physical things. But there are also other, even more significant dimensions to life. In the Epistle this morning, we heard St. Paul remind Timothy of the spiritual healing which far surpasses the physical, saying now, having been redeemed by Christ from the evil of sin, one should “Live with Jesus.” Daily life should be a continuous expression of gratitude to God, which, as the Collect for today puts it, would be expressed through “continually being given to good works.” “Living with Jesus” and “being continually given to good works” – those descriptions sound so pretty, so idealistic, so “sermonic,” even so unreal as to be somewhat absurd! (There’s that word again!) You and I are caught up with the realities and obligations of daily life. We may have problems with health – bodily, emotional, or both. We have families and friends to love and care for (as well, perhaps, at times to try to cope with), and somehow, the image of the happy, smiling person who does nothing in life but offer thanks to God sounds more like a description of the Angels and Saints in Heaven than anyone I know on earth. How about you?

Finding it difficult to remember to be thankful for all one’s blessings, and then taking time to offer those thanks in prayers, is not a new thing, or even a peculiarity of the 21^st century. It is part of the ordinary, normal, human experience, and always has been so. One of the most dependable ways to counteract that is a daily examination of conscience. Whether one has a crowded schedule or a leisurely one, regardless of whether one is young or old, rich or poor, male or female, ordained or lay, the practice is time-tested, quite simple, and can be very effective. All that it involves is that each night, before going to sleep, one takes the time to review the events of the day which is ending, offering thanks to God for blessings, and contrition for what was done that should not have been done, or for what wasn’t done that should have been done. That’s all there is to it! If you are not already doing that, might you give it a try?

Ten lepers suffered from physical, emotional, and spiritual agony. They knew what was wrong in their lives, and urgently begged for healing. But when they were healed, only one took the time to say “thank you.” Now that God has confronted us with that issue, now that the question of not only being thankful, but expressing that gratitude has been moved from the pile entitled “Things I should do – someday,” now that the Gospel reading (and perhaps this sermon as well) has thrust the question in front of our minds – now what? Will you start including more time in your prayers for giving thanks? You have to do it – it won’t happen automatically or by itself.

In the Collect, we all prayed for grace, for the spiritual strength to enable us to live our lives as God would have us live them. We prayed that prayer, not as a pious pretension, but as an expression of our conviction that God can and will give us the grace we need, and that, if we use that grace, we can grow in the spiritual life, we can become people who are not only increasingly truly thankful, but who take the time and make the effort to express those thanks. If you think about it, anything else – would be truly absurd, wouldn’t it?

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The Reverend Alfred T. K. Zadig, Sr.

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