GRACE AND GRATITUDE (%) John M. Buchanan

Luke 17:11-19 Broad St. Presbyterian Churct
Thanksgiving Eve, November 23, 1977 Columbus, Ohio
WRMZ-FM - 11/20/77, 11:30 a.m.

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One of the primal, formative experiences for most of us

our
was being told by parents, over and over again, to say Uthank

you.)

we were old enough to understand and form words into sentences

From the time

we were ordered to say it.\ whether we_felt it: | whether we
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knew what it was we were supposed to be feeling was quite beside
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the point.| The goal was simply to build into us the nearly

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automatic responsive syndrome_which would result in our always,

under every circumstance, saying "thank you."
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Sometimes it was overdone. (Goa is great, God is good, let
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us thank him for this food,"Jafter several thousand incantations

———

loses something, to say the east. \ ana it doesn't even rhyme,
iia Sateen _—

unless you had a venerable great uncle like I had who actually
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said - "let us thank him for this food (as in wood), which

alway. set my brother and me to giggling when on occasion we

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dined at his table.\ But it didn't hurt us, and for social
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grace it is a good idea to cultivate the habit of ritual gra-
bal bearable nt

titude.

However, a modest conclusion of mine is that gratitude is a
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bit more profound than a ritual "thank you": \ and that it cannot
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. . . ' .
be coerced.\ You either feel it or you don't \ You are either

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grateful or u grateful and saying the words isn't likely to make ot
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much difference.\ Learning gratitude, rather, is theological. puel

Yibedt has something to do with the discovery, which can be un-

—_

welcome, that we are not all-sufficient:| that others have

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things we don't have and in giving us those things inevitably

exercise a kind of power over us.\ And that, I would submit,

is theological discovery, not just good table manners \ In
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fact, it is the learning that the good life is grace.\ But

first, let's look again at the Scripture.

The story s simple and to the point. | Jesus was on his

way somewhere between Galilee and Samaria.\ At the outskirts

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of a village he encountered a small leper colony. \ Ten men,
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afflicted by this physically deforming and socially debilita—

ting disease, called to him for mercy.\ He instructed them to

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report to the local priest, presumably to verify that they
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were clean, eet. As they made their way to the Synagogue

they were healed.\ One of them turned around and came back and
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thanked Jesus: \the one who was a Samaritan. | Jesus asked:
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heen, saan
(‘ers not ten cleansed?| Where are the nine? | Was no one found

to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?"

That doesn't require much exposition. | Ten men were given
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an incredible gift, a whole new lease on life. | One was grate—
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ful: nine were not. \ one was motivated to return to the giver

of the gift to say "thank you":\ nine neglected to do so re-

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gardless of what they were feeling. \ Obviously our Lord thought
Sentient

that the one man had responded appropriately \ The subtle part
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of this ‘+imhe vignette comes next - in what Jesus said to this

man. (mise and go your way; your faith has made you well.

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Weren't the_other nine healed as thoroughly as this one? | what

did he nean? \\ wholeness - healing - I would submit - includes

the grace of gratitude. \ The other nine, in neglecting to be

3

grateful, had not really been nearea.| They had not truly re-

ceived the gift Jesus tried to give them.

se maiemintintammial

Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, (me man who has for-
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gotten to be thankful has fallen asleep in Lite.) Kart Barth

on the same subject observed, ("It the essence of God is grace
ste od .

then the essence of man is gratitude. In other words, to be

truly, fully human is to be a person of gratitude.") (Models

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for Ministers , 10/23/77) And Doctor Hans Selye, discussing

emotional health: { "Among all the e ions, there is one

which, more than any other, accounts for the absence or

presence of stress in human relations: that is the feeling

ce,

of gratitude..." (Ibid)

Robert McAfee Brown, one of the contemporary theologians

ri —

who consistently stimulates me, wrote an essay several years
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ago on the subject _of gratitude in which he echoed Karl Barth -

that the distinctive word in the Christian vocabulary is grace.

The word that describes the distinctive Christian response to
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God, according to Brown, is gratitude .\l And then Brown talks

about a hymn: Nun Danket, "Now Thank We All Our Goa:"{ Now

there is much that I love about Thanksgiving. \ I'm in love

with gray November Days, and the exquisite aroma of turkey,

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and the excitement of a fire in the fireplace in the morning,

and the football games, and all the memories; but more than
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fame

anything else, I'm in love with the music - the hymns .\ The

Thanksgiving Hymns, for my money, are the best_in Protestantism:

————

they are, I find, good theology and good music. \ana so - when

Robert McAfee Brown writes ahout Nun Danket I sit up and take
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notice, | Let me share a little vintage Brown with you:

"It is a hymn that seems to be the appropriate one for

every occasion of worship. | I find myself wanting to

use it at the conclusion of every sermon I preach, so

that it will confirm the fact of the good news, in
case my own proclamation has been fautty. | It is the

hymn that seems most approp iate after a baptism, | It

is the hymn that gathers up our sense of gratitude after

a wedding. \| It is the hymn par excellence to be sung

—— tn

after we have celebrated the Sacrament of the Lord's

Supper, the Eucharist, the very service of Thanksgiving

and gratitude. | 11 is the appropriate hymn to sing be-

fore or after a meal, and in fact was originally written

——

to be sung &@S a grace, |rt is the hymn that I fervently

hope will be sung at my funeral. |r is the hymn that
sums up what our reaction to the Gospel must be, and
describes what kind of people we must be because of the

Gospel." (The Pseudonyms of God, p. 14)

We'll sing that hymn a little later: for now listen care~-

fully to the words -

Now thank we all our God With heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done, In whom His world rejoices;
Who, from our mothers' arms, Hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, And still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God Through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts And blessed p ace fo cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, And guide us when perplexed,

And free us from all ills In this world and the next.

The Son, and Him w

The one eternal God, om earth an eaven adore;

For thus it was, is now, And shall be evermore. Amen.
I love that nymn.| Whoever wrote it really knew what gra-
a le —_—

titude was. | He must have been sitting in his den, before a

roaring ire, in the bosom of his family, smelling the tanta-
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lizing aroma of the turkey. \ In fact — and now we're going to

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learn something about gratitude - it was written by a German

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Bishop uamed Martin Rinkart around 1636.\| I am_sure you

recognize the date as somewhere in the midst of what we know
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as the Thirty Years war. \ I discovered that Rinkert's village

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became a haven for refugees and fugitives and defeated soldiers.
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Quickly the village became terribly overcrowded and then unsan—

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itary.\ Soon people began to get huggry and sick and they started

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to die. | Binkart discovered that he was the only clergyman
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around.\ During one siege he read burial rites for from _forty

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to fifty people per day. | Rinkert buried 4,500 people in all,

——a

one of whom was his wife.

That's the man who wrote "Now Thank We All Our God, who

wondrous things hath done." | And that, friends, is a clue to

the nature lof gratitude.

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Miscow fre &

t continue to experience Ghe-—aseewe at the easy way we

Onabommmivkas hang our gratitude on the hock of_massive affluence.

Now, if you are well and healthy and at peace you should be
grateful ; humbay and profoundly grateful. [put if your gra-

titude is rooted only in what you have now, it is a very

fragile prenonenon. In fact, gratitude for things can become

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arrogant, self-congratulation terribly quickly. | It can force

an inevitable comparison with those who do not have what we
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have, and an almost irresistable conclusion that we have it

because we deserve it and they don't have it because they

don't deserve it. | the fact that there are people dying of
starvation at this moment - all over the world —- and the dis -—

ease one feels when reminded of that fact - is simply the

————

price a person must pay who wishes to_be alive to the impera-

tives of the Gospel of Jesus christ \ God doesn't intend that:

God wants his special people to do something about that - and

we really haven't gotten around to addressing it yet: not

really. \ Gratitude is far more profound.than saying thanks to
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God for a full refrigerator and a warm house and an adequate

bank account.| It has something to do with the way you and ft
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relate to our creator and to our fellows regardless of what

we happen to be owning and using and consuming at the moment.

Gratitude is acknowledging that someone else has what I
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don't have: | that my life is enriched when that person gives

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fees rendhny ie id Phen
me what he or she nas. \ i a stam y confession
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that there are other i'g in the world besides the_I_that is

me. | It is a step away from the egotism that is our sin.

Seward Hiltner, of P inceton Seminary, observes that there

—

seems to be a "moratorium on gratitude” in our society at

this cine. \ He writes: (om a Black Man, gratitude looks

like Uncle Tom, | rm a teen-ager, it looks like middle class

conventionalism., \In a worker, it looks like denial of his

own rights. bra in women, it looks increasingly like an

acceptance of the male — dominated status quo." (Theological

Dynamics, p. SL)

He's right, of course. | The individual has been reborn in

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the upheavals of the mid-twentieth century. | In the Civil

Rights and Black Identity movements, poverty organizations,

native American sit-ins, the whole feminist movement, the

individual has stood up and said("'I am me and I'm not about
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to be pushed around any longer, 2) Fhat impetus is rightly a e | “fs

part of God's will for the health and wholeness of each one pope te

of his chilérel But somewhere in the midst of it all we
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have p.omised more than the individual can deliver.| We are

who we are in relationship.\ We are given our identity by
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others. | We can only claim so much of it alone and then we
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hav to start talking about mothers and fathers and brothers

and sisters and children - or even the enemy in opposition

to whom I know who IT am. [mere is no such thing as a self-

made person, no matter who is claiming the title. {The whole-

ness and healing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is in knowing

that and confessing that: \ in turning to the person who gave

us a gift and saying "thank you."'

To be grateful is to acknowledge that_life is grace: \ that

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in the purist sense we stand strongly as individuals when we

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know that we cannot and do not stand alone:| that in the truest

sense of all we are given everything we have, \ re begins, I

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propose,on a level so elementary that it is difficult to ar-

ticulate. | Life itself is a gift: | no one of us called our~
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selves into being: \ rather we were loved into life by a man

and woman and God. \The world is a gift: the sun comes up

— a I — ws

8

every morning: | the seasons change in silent rython: | the

perpetual cycle of birth, growth, death and rebirth is a

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miracie of dependability and faithfulness so awesome we

don't even see it.\ My father was not, in any sense of the

word, a very pious man, \ But as frequently as he could he

began each summer morning sitting on a bench in the back yard
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watching the sun come up and listening to the birds and drink-

ing coffee. \ He told me once that he thanked God for that:

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the summer sun and singing birds: \the gift of this new day.

And I've often reflected that there was deep and profound
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theological truth in that,

One of my favorite stories is of an old and wise musician

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who was asked “what's the good news for today?" \ nis response

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was utterly profound and utterly gracious. | He walked over to his
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tuning fork, tapped it and said, (‘There is the good news for
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today. \ that, my friend, is an it was A_all day yesterday.
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It will be A all day tomorrow, next week and for a thousand
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——

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years. \ The soprano upstairs warbles off key, the tenor next

door flats his high ones, and the piano across the hail is

out of teme. | ee ewe

but that, my friend,

is A." |(Wallace Hamilton, Who Goes There, p. 67-68)
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We are given a universe that is stable, dependable and

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for the eyes of faith, full of the grace of coa.] We are given
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a nation:| a system of government, a history, a people. \ me
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best patriotism is not an arrogant nationalism, but simple
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er titude to those who have gone before.

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We are given other people,| They come to us, each one
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of them, as a special gift of God.\ What a difference it

would make if we could see them all that way:| as God's
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gift to us. \ And what a profound and healthy difference if
happened

in our marriages and families and most intimate relation-
| cenit te one

ship we could begin to say thank you: | thank you for what

you give to me: thank you for being you.

reread ror

We Christians bring to the festival of Thanksgiving an
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added understanding. \ We know our God as a God of grace.

We know the good news that his love is consistant :\ that he
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loves us and is with us no matter what we have or don't have.

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In sickness and in health: \ in life and death: \ in good

times and bad times he will be our God.

That's how it all began, \Witn brave but lonely pilgrims

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on the New England Coast - sure of nothing but God's faith-

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fu ness. \ And with Lincoln watching the forces of hatred

tear the union asunder, sure of nothing but God's faithful-—
ness, | coats promise is that he will be faithful:\ he will

lov. us: j| and be with us: \ and for that, this day and every

day, "Now Thank We All Our God."

The whole matter was put into perspective for me by a

charming story I read this week. | Fulton Oursler, the writer,
‘

once reminisced about his experience as a little boy. \ The

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OUrsler family servant, Ann, taught him everything he knew

about religion, he said.\ She told him Bible stories and

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taught him the Lord's prayer.\ One day as they ate together

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he saw her bow her head and wat pox (iach obliged, dear Lord,

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for the vittles." | ne little boy asked, /"Ann, what's a

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vVittle?" | sne replied: fort's what I eat and drink." \ But
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you'd get your vittles," Oursler said, “whether you thanked

the Lord or not." \ And Ann replied, "But it makes everything
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taste better to be thankful." (Expository Times, July, L977,

p. 3801)

That, it seems to me, is not unlike the words our Lord

said to the one man who returned to thank him. "Rise and
gO on your way. Your faith has made you well." Amen.

Father and God, you are the giver of every good gift. Be at
our tables: be in the midst of our family celebrations: be
near when we are alone: make our celebrating holy with your
presence. Hear our gratitude: through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen,