WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE GIVE THANKS

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1 1 Streetsville United Church Sunday, October 13, 2013 Rev. John Tapscott WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE GIVE THANKS Luke 17:11-19 Someone has said that when you read the Psalms it seems feels like you re standing on an active volcano. But this volcano is not erupting with molten lava; rather it s erupting with enthusiastic praise and thanksgiving. The Book of Psalms was Israel s worship book and the keynote of Israel s worship was thanksgiving to the Lord their God. Praise the LORD! I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation. O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his steadfast love endures forever. Know that the Lord is God. It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. And though it may not be quite as obvious, the keynote of New Testament worship is thanksgiving. Before Jesus performed one of his most famous miracles he gave thanks to God. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them. I believe that Jesus giving thanks had something to do with the fact that 5,000 people were that day. Something very good happens when people give thanks to God. Then there was that night in the Upper Room at the Last Supper. Jesus, facing crucifixion the next day, ate the Passover Meal with the twelve. While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take and eat; this is my body. Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the new covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Thanksgiving was central to the Last Supper. That s why Holy Communion is often called the Eucharist, which in Greek means thanksgiving. But giving thanks to God is not always automatic for God s people. As our reading from Luke 17 shows, there can be a streak of ingratitude in God s people. Ten lepers cried out to Jesus for mercy. He told them to go and show yourselves to the priests who will certify your healing. As they went they were made clean by Jesus power. And one, when he saw that he was healed, turned back and praised God with a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus feet and thanked him. And he was the unexpected one, the Samaritan. Jesus asked, Were not ten made clean? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? Then he said to him, Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well. Now notice that all ten were healed. And Jesus didn t take the healing back from the nine who failed to give thanks. But something good, something extra happened in the life of the one who gave thanks. He received an even greater blessing. Your faith has made you well.

2 2 We are blessed by God in so many ways, more than we can count. And yet we are often careless in our gratitude. Praise and thanksgiving are not on our lips as often as they should be. Why are we sometimes counted among the nine? Well, for several reasons - thoughtlessness or busyness, perhaps. And the spirit of gratitude gets stifled when things like illness or difficulty or unexpected loss come to us. We don t feel very grateful. Words of gratitude get caught in our throat. I understand that and feel it myself sometimes. But the biggest reason for our ingratitude is that we take God s blessings for granted. Carol wanted to do something for her neighbor, Mrs. Smith, so she baked a pie and carried it next door. When Mrs. Smith opened up her door and saw Carol holding the pie, she replied, "For me? Oh, thank you so much! You don't know how much I appreciate it! You are so thoughtful! Thank you! Because Mrs. Smith liked the pie so much, Carol decided the next week to bake another. When she took it over, Mrs. Smith opened the door and said, "Thank you so much. You are so kind!" When she took another pie over the following week, Mrs. Smith simply replied, "Thanks." Carol took another pie over the next week and Mrs. Smith responded, "You re a day late with that pie." The following week she baked her yet another. This time her neighbor said, "Try using more sugar and don't bake it quite as long. The crust has been a little hard lately. And I'd like cherry instead of apple next time." The next week Carol was busy, and was unable to bake for her neighbor. When Carol passed by her house, Mrs. Smith stuck her head out the window and yelled, "Where's my pie?!" Commenting on this story a writer says, It's so easy to get used to our blessings. After enjoying them for a while, we begin to think we deserve them. Then instead of being thankful, we start complaining. It's a process that occurs so slowly, we don't even realize it's happening. Our attitude has changed from being grateful to being ungrateful." And that s how it is with God and us. Mercies upon mercies, blessings upon blessings come to us every day, but we get so used to them. We start to take them for granted and forget to thank the Giver. But then Thanksgiving Sunday comes along with its reminder to give thanks to God. Now let me say it again - God does not withdraw blessings from those who never praise him or thank him. Many people this very day are enjoying God s blessings without even thinking of the Giver. But as the story of the thankful Samaritan shows, something extra happens when we praise God. Very good things always happen when we give thanks to God. First, something very good happens to God when we give him thanks. In this passage verse 17, you can just hear the sadness and the joy in Jesus voice when he asked, Were not ten cleansed? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? Jesus was saddened by the ingratitude of the nine. But the gratitude of the one gave him joy. And since the heart of Jesus is the very heart of God that means the same thing happens to God in heaven. Ingratitude makes God s heart sad. But saying thank you to God puts joy into God s heart. God is delighted when his children are grateful. We think that sounds strange. But God is no stone idol. Our Father in heaven has feelings much like ours only on a much higher and purer level. Remember that Jesus

3 3 said that there is joy in heaven when even one sinner repents. And that joy is not just among the angels and the saints but in God s heart, too. Well, we know how it happens on a human level. You know how it stings when someone is ungrateful. But you know how your heart can be lifted when someone gives you thanks, especially when it is unexpected or comes out of the blue. Your whole day is brightened and transformed. Some years ago in her newspaper column Dear Abby suggested that her readers write and thank a school teacher who had made a difference in their lives. A while later she received a letter from a delighted former school teacher. "Dear Abby," the letter said, "You can hardly imagine how thrilled I was to receive a letter from a student I taught sixty-two years ago! He wanted to thank me for staying after school to teach him how to tell time when he was in the second grade. Abby, I am ninety-five years old and live in a nursing home. I don't expect to have many more surprises as happy as this one. Thank you!" In a similar way something good happens to God when we say thank you to him. God s heart is lifted and filled with joy. I really believe it s true. God is pleased when we say thank you for his blessings. We could say it really makes God s day. And secondly, something very good happens to us when we say thank you to God. It certainly lifts our spirits when we praise and thank God. That s why the beginning of a worship service puts emphasis on praise and thanksgiving. Songs of praise do lift our spirits and focus our attention on the Giver of every good and perfect gift. Now I know there are times when it s hard to give thanks to God and so we have to be very deliberate about it. The first thing that Robinson Crusoe did when he found himself on a deserted island was to make a list. On one side he wrote down all his problems. On the other side he wrote down all his blessings. On one side he wrote: I do not have any clothes. On the other he wrote: But it s warm and I don t really need any. On one side he wrote: All the provisions were lost. On the other side he wrote: But there s plenty of fresh fruit and water on the island. Down the list he went. He discovered that for every negative there was a positive, something to be thankful for. Sometimes we have to do something like that and when we do we will always find something to give God thanks for, probably many things. And the act of thanking God will lift your spirit and help you see your situation in a new light. The act of giving thanks to God will also not only lift up your spirit, it also raises up your level of generosity. Giving thanks to God lifts our hearts and opens our hands. Grateful people are generous people. They give thank offerings. They share God s blessings with others. They look for reasons to give. Grateful people know that you cannot out give God. Very good things happen to us when we give thanks to God and through us good things happen to others. They are blessed by our generosity. Someone told me the other day of how a family member took a blanket from the back of her car and covered up a homeless man in the rain in Toronto. We can t fix the world, she said, but we can do small things. And grateful people do those things. There is one other very good thing that happens to us when we give thanks to God. Giving thanks to God actually leads to our salvation. Jesus said to the grateful Samaritan, Get up and

4 4 go on your way; your faith has made you well. Some translations give this last part as your faith has saved you, or your faith has made you whole. Nine lepers were healed in body, but something extra happened to the Samaritan as he fell at Jesus feet and gave him thanks. The outsider who had no claim on God was not only healed, he was saved. He could get up and go on his way with the assurance that he had been incorporated into God s people forever. The Bible teaches that You are saved by grace through faith. You and I are saved by God s act in Jesus Christ accepted by our faith. We are saved from the ultimate power of sin and evil and death and hell by what God has done for us in His Son. In fact, as Jesus performed this healing for the lepers he was heading for Jerusalem where he would suffer and die for the sins of the world and rise again in great resurrection victory. Jesus Christ has rescued us from the darkness of sin and opened for us the light and life of God s eternal Kingdom. He did for us what we could not and cannot do for ourselves. The world s salvation was won at great cost. We should never take it lightly. And God s salvation becomes effective in you and in me by faith, by simply saying thank you to the Saviour. That s what faith is at its most basic saying thank you to God for his saving grace. The leper fell down at Jesus feet and thanked him. Have you done that? Have you bowed before the Crucified One and said thank you? For if and when you do, something very good happens to you indeed, something that has to do with your eternal destiny.

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