18th Sunday after Pentecost-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

 18^th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 23C

October 9, 2022

 

        Thanksgiving.  It’s at the very heart of who we are as people of faith.  We practice it week after week after week in the Eucharist, which literally means thanksgiving.  You’d think we’d be good at it, that it would come easy for us.  And maybe it does for some of us. 

Most of us know we are supposed to be thankful.  If our mammas didn’t drill it into us with their refrain of “now what do you say to me?”  (and we all know the answer is “thank you”), then our southern culture did.  (“He or she just wasn’t raised right” we say of someone who fails to write a thank you note.)   We know we should be thankful, and yet, so many times, we aren’t.

I’m intrigued by this story from Luke’s gospel this week, that follows immediately on the heels of last week’s gospel.  Immediately after Jesus’s overwhelmed disciples plead for him to give them more faith and he tells them a weird story about how slaves are just supposed to show up and do what they’re supposed to do, then we get today’s story.  Jesus is traveling in a sort of in-between space when he encounters 10 lepers, people who have been isolated from community, who plead to him, “Have mercy upon us!”  Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, and as they go, they are made clean--healed of their affliction which separates them from community.  Luke tells us that when one of the former lepers notices the healing, he stops and turns back to Jesus.  He falls at Jesus’s feet and praises God, giving thanks. 

Jesus asks him where the other 9 are, but we know this don’t we?  They are wrapped up in all the same things that keep us from giving thanks.  One is too busy, trying to do the “right” thing, the thing that Jesus told them to do—go show themselves to the priests.  One is too preoccupied and hasn’t even noticed the miracle has occurred.  One is too distrustful of the gift, the miracle, suspicious of what he has received.  One is too self-sufficient, unwilling to admit that she was ever in a place where she needed to be healed and unwilling to be made vulnerable yet again in the offering of thanks.  One is conflicted about accepting anything that hasn’t been earned through hard work or merit.  I’m sure we can name many other reasons why we have failed to give thanks when we might have.

But the one who returned and gave thanks to Jesus… he has not only been made clean, but Jesus also tells him that his faith has saved him or made him well.  What is it about this act of thanksgiving that is also an act of faith, and how does it also work to save him or make him well? 

Every week, we offer our prayers of thanksgiving to God.  We come to God’s table with our hands outstretched and open.  They are open in thanksgiving, offering back to God all the good gifts we have received over the week, and they are open in supplication, asking to be filled/refilled with the very gift of God’s presence in our hearts and lives, in our bodies and souls. 

This week, I’m going to offer you time and space to be thankful, to lay aside all those impediments that distract us from being thankful, for offering thanks, for just a few minutes.  I’m inviting you to start writing down on this tiny slip of paper everything you can think of for which you are grateful, about your life, about this place. I hope everyone can think of at least three things you are grateful for, and I suspect, once you get started, you will be able to write so much that you cover the paper, running out of both space and time to keep going.  

As you come forward for communion, carry your gratefulness in your open palm to God’s altar where you can make it a part of your offering.  Pay attention to what is happening in your heart as you offer your thanks to God.  In what ways might that be healing for you?  And then with empty hands, receive God’s good gift for you again this week, so you can go back out into the world to continue the work of thanksgiving.