Saying Thank You - November 20, 2011

Saying Thank You

Rev. Lee Ann Bryce

Community Christian Church

November 29, 2011

                                                                                                Text:  Luke 17:11-19

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.  ¹²As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, ¹³they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  ¹⁴When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean.  ¹⁵Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.  ¹⁶He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.  ¹⁷Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?  ¹⁸Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”  ¹⁹Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

I suspect we would all agree that it’s important to say thank you.  It’s difficult, however, to find an adequate way to express appreciation when you recognize a great debt that you owe to another.  Billy Collins wrote a poem about this.  He is one of my favorite poets because he can take those every day, ordinary experiences that are shared by many and bring them to life.  He wrote this poem about saying thank you to his mother.

The Lanyard

By Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

I don’t believe I ever made a lanyard for my mother or my father, but I can recall dozens of gifts I made as a child, like Billy Collins often out of boredom, in some class or Sunday School room, and then took home and proudly presented to my parents.  Keychains, Christmas ornaments, those turkeys you make by first tracing your hand and then coloring the feathers.  As a child, I probably thought that I had evened the score with my crude little thank you gifts.  It’s as I have gotten older that I have realized the enormous debt of gratitude I owe my parents for the ways they have shaped me, for all they’ve done for me.

In our story from Luke today, one leper returned to thank Jesus.  The other nine did exactly as Jesus had directed.  In keeping with Jewish custom, they went to show themselves to the priest like good Jewish, ex-lepers should do. 

I wonder if he had a mother who drilled into him the importance of writing thank you notes?  My mother always told me I should do that.  Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t, but I can attest to how great it feels to receive one and to write one.  Is that the point of this story, that the leper was the only one who took time to say thank you?  Was he merely demonstrating polite social etiquette? 

Part of the answer may be found in the identity of this healed man.  He was a leper like the other nine.  But, he was different than the other nine lepers.  He was a Samaritan.  As a leper he was ritually unclean and, therefore, to be isolated, an object, no doubt, of revulsion and fear on the part of his neighbors.  And as a Samaritan he would have been seen even more as an outsider – and a despised one at that – at least to the more orthodox Jews of Galilee.  Perhaps for these reasons, the Samaritan leper suffered more and thus he felt a more profound gratitude when he was healed. 

We don’t really know why he came back.  But it seems that Luke is telling us something about the boundless nature of God’s grace as shown through Christ.  In Christ, Luke is saying, everyone, Jew and Gentile and even the despised Samaritan, is affirmed.  In Christ, the boundaries are expanded to include even those the world defines as unclean, foreign, or impure.  Luke is telling us a story about crossing a boundary in a bold, daring way; daring both on the part of Jesus and also on the part of the Samaritan. 

And when the Samaritan returned, Luke tells us that not only did he say thank you, but that he laid down at Jesus’ feet.  This intimate action seems to show that he not only felt obligated to say thank you, but that he had a sense that faith cannot simply mean the performance of rituals and practices.  There is something more.  Faith lures us into relationship with God that is healing because it is intimate and humbling.  The Samaritan leper knows that he is deeply and lovingly dependent on Jesus.

I dare say none of us has leprosy and yet, we are far from whole.  In his commentary on this text, John Thomas says:  “Part of the illness of life today and part of what leads to the sense of distance and isolation so many feel is a deeply ingrained feeling of entitlement, the notion that I am somehow entitled to things, that I owe no one anything and have no responsibility for anyone.  It is a deep self-centeredness that assumes everything is my right, my due, an attitude that replaces concern for the community with a preoccupation with my own needs.  It enables me to maintain my distance in the illusion of absolute independence.  Healed of illness, we wander off like the nine because, after all, we’re entitled to health.”

It seems that in our culture, dependency is a dirty word.  We value independence.  Dependence on another is a sign of weakness, of vulnerability.  Gratitude, saying thank you, in the end is an expression of our need of others, our need for God, our dependency on God.  In a few days, we will sit down at our Thanksgiving tables and perhaps say a quiet prayer before a meal.  That prayer is a way of acknowledging that our lives depend on God’s bounty, as well as on a host of people who contributed to the food on the table; those who grew, processed, distributed, prepared, and served the food that gives us nourishment and pleasure.  Saying a prayer by a hospital bed is an acknowledgment that our health rests in God’s love as well as the skills of physicians, nurses, medical scientists and a host of people who maintain these hospitals and places of care. 

And, yes, even sending a thank-you note, as mothers perhaps instinctively knew, is far more than etiquette, but an awareness that the best gifts and thus much of the joy of life are not things we can give ourselves.  They come from beyond us as generous expressions of love.  And each thank you becomes a way to practice gratitude so that more and more of our lives are weaned away from the myth of entitlement and the arrogance and isolation of independence.  Each thank you becomes a way to practice gratitude so that more and more of our lives are shaped by the truth of our belonging to others, even to Christ.

I believe the happiest and healthiest people I know are those whose say thank you over and over again, not just to God for the blessings of this day, but to everyone whose life touches theirs in a creative way.  Gratitude opens us to new blessings, but more importantly - gratitude opens our hands to bless others, with a kind word or a more significant investment of our time, talent, and treasure.

So, throughout this day and every day, say thank you.  Recognize independence for the illusion it is.  Resist the pull towards entitlement.  Remember those who have supported you.  Consider the blessed circumstances of your life about which you have become complacent.  Rejoice in the interconnected web of your life that heals and restores you.

Let us pray.  Teach us, O God, to practice gratitude in our lives that we may honor the graciousness at the center of your creation.  Forgive every form of self-centeredness that assumes we are entitled to what we have and make us mindful of every good gift and of every good gift-giver.  Renew us with your love and grant us the joy of your presence.  Amen.