The Attitude Of Gratitude
11/21/99
ORGAN PRELUDE ANNOUNCEMENTS CALL TO WORSHIP Sunday School Children
Invitation to the Celebration As grateful people, welcome to the last worship in Pentecost. Think about the attitude you came to worship with today. (Pause.) Who would be willing to express how you came into the sanctuary? (we need not rush through worship.) Let them know, how you came. It's OK not to be perfect+always in control.
Everyone: Thanks for creating us, Lord. Your creation of us amazes us. You acted out of your love in Jesus, and that gives us hope forever. Thanksgiving means choice; and choice is made freely. Thanksgiving means life, life pulsating with courage. Thanksliving means acting out our faith; for our faith is seen in our actions. We celebrate with thanks.
*INVOCATION AND LORD'S PRAYER Christ's spirit has set us free and made us responsible to express thanks, to live thanks. We express thanks, we live thanks because we know that the past is forgiven, that the future is before us.
Thank you for your invitation to us to love life, and the people who share it with us. We embrace life in Christ; we live life
*GLORIA PATRI *OPENING HYMN We Gather Together # 597
SCRIPTURE READING Deuteronomy 8:7-18
8:7 For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, 9 a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. 10 You shall eat your fill and bless the LORD your God for the good land that he has given you. 11 Take care that you do not forget the LORD your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. 12 When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, 13 and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, 14 then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, 15 who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, 16 and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. 17 Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.
RESPONSE Psalms 65:1-13
65:1 Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion; and to you shall vows be performed, 2 O you who answer prayer! To you all flesh shall come. 3 When deeds of iniquity overwhelm us, you forgive our transgressions. 4 Happy are those whom you choose and bring near to live in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, your holy temple. 5 By awesome deeds you answer us with deliverance, O God of our salvation; you are the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas. 6 By your strength you established the mountains; you are girded with might. 7 You silence the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples. 8 Those who live at earth's farthest bounds are awed by your signs; you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy. 9 You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it. 10 You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. 11 You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with richness. 12 The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, 13 the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy.
OFFERING What if you lost everything, except your life, for 24 hours? At the end of the 24 hours, you were able to have returned to you the five most important things. What would they be? (One minute of silence; write down your responses.) Then ask, how many of you included "God" on your list? (Pause before receiving the offering.)
*DOXOLOGY
*PRAYER OF DEDICATION By your Spirit, Lord, teach us how to use our money, checkbooks, credit cards for the building of your Kingdom, rather than ours.
CHILDREN'S STORY TIME Edward Spencer was a student at Northwestern University in 1850. One day, while walking along the shore of one of the Great Lakes, he noticed a boat sinking. For the next several hours, he swam out to the survivors, bringing them to shore one by one. He saved seventeen lives. But the ordeal broke his health. He could not pursue his intended career. As an old man, he acknowledged that not one of those people ever thanked him. Now, that sounds similar to today's Scripture. I invite you to remain while the drama group enacts this story.
Have ten people carry signs identifying some of today's "lepers." Suggestions: viral infections, MS, cerebral palsy, AIDS, cancer, deaf, blind, deformed, lame, leper. Have them dress the part if possible. As Jesus "heals" them, they throw their signs on the ground, and run out of the sanctuary. In a while, one returns. Jesus asks, "Weren't ten healed; where are the other nine? Isn't anyone going to turn and praise God for what's been done, except this stranger?" Jesus then touches the person and says, "Go on your way. Your faith has made you whole." And the person replies, "Thanks, Jesus."
CHORAL ANTHEM
PRAYER We have used or heard the phrase, "God, thank you for our many blessings" hundreds of times. Do we ever consider the impact of our prayer? 1. If you are the provider, why are so many without even the necessities, while we thank you for our luxuries? (silence.) 2. you invite us to use this time to repent, rather than to thank. Help us think about those things/that stuff we had to have, which in a short time appeared in our garage sales or garbage bags. (Pause until the people feel uncomfortable.) Perhaps our "many blessings" are actually "many cursings." Because the more we have, the more we want. Perhaps we are the rich young ruler who chooses to turn away. We may turn away by saying that we really deserve all that we have. To turn to you, we will need to give up our self-righteous attitude, which insists that we have all of this stuff, because you, somehow, favors us above all the rest of the creation. NOT! If we read the Scriptures carefully, you seems to favor the poor and powerless, those at the bottom of the economic and social ladder. (Silence) P: Lord, have mercy on us.//M: Christ, have mercy on us.//P: I invite us to keep taking a look at ourselves in light of the Gospel. //M: We seek forgiveness for turning our backs to others, for claiming superiority over others, for living out our God-given freedom without taking responsibility. //P: We confess to you, Lord, who we are, what we believe, where we go apart from you, and there is no health in us. //M: By your Spirit, make us thankful people, who live grateful lives -- with less.
Call to Pardon
God forgives only those who repent, that is, those who change their attitude and behavior. How could it be any other way? So, today, this week, examine your blessings. Check off which ones may or have become cursings. Write them down, and make them a part of your daily prayers. (silence.) No, Jesus never said that the rich will not enter the Kingdom. It's more difficult, he said, because we spend more time with our riches, and what they can buy, than with God. We too easily depend on our riches, whatever form they take, to save us, rather than Christ. So, what are you willing to let go, and let God take over? (One minute of silence.)
*PREPARATIONAL HYMN In Thanksgiving Let Us Praise Him # 590
SCRIPTURE TEXT Luke 17:11-19
17:11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" 14 When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" :19 Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."
SERMON The Attitude Of Gratitude
Loving God and others may be the most important decision one will make in life, but cultivating an attitude of gratitude is the best magnet for other worthy qualities one needs in one's earthly life. Let me explain.
I've learned that one cannot have an lasting attitude in one's life and have it in isolation. Why? Because attitudes love to flock together in families. It is true that, in any given week or month, one experiences a kaleidoscope of feelings, emotions, and attitudes, it is also true that one chooses a key attitude to remain in one's life. Once that decision is made, and an attitude takes residence in your life, its kissin' cousins will come to roost with it. Of that, you can be certain.
You can have an attitude was resentment. What comes with it are other unhealthy qualities/stances: 1) a basic mistrust of life; 2) a desire to get even with others; and 3) a commitment to make things work in my favor, for fear they wouldn't otherwise. Once Jesus Christ moves from being an idea to being our personal Lord and Savior, he brings with him into our heart and life the spiritual antonym of resentment, the attitude of gratitude. Gratitude's kissin' cousins include: 1) a basic trust of life, because of one's growing trust in God; 2) death to the desire to get even and its replacement with a desire to understand, in a Christian way, people's behavior and beliefs; and 3) a new and lasting commitment to move from being manipulative of people and events to seeking and discerning God's hidden purpose and gracious will in and through such matters.
All this serves as a healthy and helpful backdrop to the American theme of Thanksgiving. Historically, we know that our "Thanksgiving" roots go back to the year of 1621 when the surviving Pilgrims, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, gave heartfelt thanks to God for a very helpful harvest. They were very convinced that without God's help and the Indians' partnership, they would never have survived. I think this event, unlike other historic American events, speaks of a special kind of victory, not a military one, but an attitudinal one, one of gratitude over bitterness. And, it attributes the victory, not to a heroic human person, but to the living God and His Son Jesus Christ. // The scripture passage on Jesus' healing of the ten lepers reveals that for at least one former leper, the healing event was more than just skin-deep; his heart and life were converted, the chief evidence being his attitude of gratitude expressed to Jesus.
Which do Americans as a whole abound with the most: gratitude or entitlement? I've discovered over the years that genuine, abiding gratitude inspires a spirit and practice of generosity in a person toward others. Americans tend to be generous to themselves and to their immediate families, but they assume they should be on the receiving, not the giving, end of everything and everybody else. We have very little tithing in churches; people give with great calculation more than they give out of great gratitude. /// This scriptural, as well as our historic American, theme of thanksgiving is one we should cherish with a renewed depth of commitment. In verses 11 through 13, we see Jesus traveling and his traveling is a means by which God works powerfully through him to heal ten persons from a dreaded disease. He still travels, through Holy Spirit pathways, to heal and to help others. But he seems most effective when vessels like you and me willingly become mission and ministry itineraries for Jesus, while we move from terrestrial task to terrestrial task. Just as Jesus wanted the healing of the ten lepers to be more than a physical healing, one that also transformed heart, mind, and life direction, so also, in our daily lives, tasks, and professional responsibilities, Jesus would like to have permission to do something redemptive in and through us. A task done in a human life can have helpful spiritual ramifications and impact if the people involved are spiritually minded and vessel-ready to serve Jesus at the same time. Think about it. Act on it.
In verse 14, his response was one of healing. But imagine ten persons, each an individual, and how the disease common to them probably fostered a sense of family among them on some level. Their traveling together indicates some level of common community. Any racial or economic differences were long since discarded. Furthermore, the fact that they made their request to Jesus "keeping their distance" reveals a rule of the day that lepers, when windward of healthy people, must be at least fifty yards from them.1 Imagine the pain of diseased persons who can no longer assume that they are a part of any larger human community. In verses 15 and 16, we witness only one of the ten healed persons choosing to praise God and to thank Jesus. His gratitude for the blessing of healing motivated him to express his praise and to share his thanks. Are you in touch enough with a number of your blessings that you gratefully seek more of God's presence rather than less? In seeking out Christ, he was not only expressing his gratitude, but also indicating his willingness to enter into Christ's presence. We hope this was not based on a motive to stay nearby to selfishly reap more earthly blessings, but rather simply to enjoy the presence of the One who changed his life for the better.
"And he was a Samaritan." The Samaritans had become that expression of Judaism who had held reciprocal hatred with mainline Judaism. This person, who was shunned by many Jews and diseased by nature, was, like the other nine, a candidate for God's grace. The one outside the covenant was the only one of the ten to be thoughtful enough to say "Thanks!" In verses 17 and 18, the implication of the ingratitude of the nine is that, though they were by tradition the closest to understanding the covenant terms between God and His people of Israel, they were thoughtless and ungrateful. The "foreigner" outside and apart from the covenant tradition had a heart that was reachable and tender toward the person of Christ. That is, his healing stretched his heart to embrace and to thank Jesus Christ. The other ones' hearts chose to shrink and travel in an inner world of their own, being far more presumptuous than grateful. The desperate longing of the ten for healing revealed subsequent to their healing very different hearts of the one and the nine. These nine who wanted healing wanted their bodies dramatically changed but their hearts and wills to remain spiritually impoverished. They did not feel indebted; they somehow felt entitled.
Maybe that's part of the bottom line of this story: people who feel entitled have no room in their hearts for gratitude and a deeper life change. They merely want to improve their own life position, and they believe it's far more a right than a privilege. Their attitude of entitlement has a lot of unhealthy kissin' cousins, so many, in fact, that gratitude proves to be an outpost beyond recognizing, a kind of foreign word and language. Why didn't God remove their healing, given such ingratitude? Maybe because their greatest disease, of a more spiritual nature, had yet to be faced and would prove a greater destroyer than even leprosy. Would they choose to be insensitive to this greater disease, or sometime, somehow, reckon with its implications? We don't know. But we do know that we need to choose to make a grateful response to this One who ever offers deeper and deeper levels of healing and help. Gratitude wakes us up to that fact; Gratitude is the pathway to entering God's more thorough healing and deliverance of our lives from all that diseases us. In verse 19, Jesus invites the grateful one to reenter life and to be aware that faith, a kissin' cousin of gratitude, will be a resource and guide to all that God will yet use to complete his life.
To be grateful is to keep ourselves awake and sensitive to God's movement. Not to be grateful is to preoccupy ourselves solely with our own movement. Gratitude keeps our focus on the Giver of gifts and resources, never on the gifts and resources themselves!
Let's not carry an attitude that instructs us to take God's blessings and run. To do so is to enter into all kinds of misunderstandings of life and to remain on the shallow side of things. To this One who has been so faithful to help and heal us, in a number of ways and on a number of levels, let's practice gratitude, which will, over time, bear the fruit of faithfulness on our parts.
1. William Barclay, Luke, Westminster Press, p. 218.
*INVITATIONAL HYMN Now Thank We All Our God # 592
*BENEDICTION "If we cannot or will not give thanks to God for what we receive, then I invite us to give thanks for what we have escaped" (author unknown, slightly revised).
ORGAN POSTLUDE
Meditation
"Poverty does not prohibit gratitude; prosperity does not produce it" (author unknown).