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Only One Said Thanks
The man and the woman were always on the same block.
Every time I went into the center of Mumbai, they were there, one block from the Gateway of India, one of the city’s most visited tourist attractions. The man had only stubs where his fingers used to be. Part of the woman’s nose had worn away. All over their faces, hands and arms were the tell-tale patches of white skin where the melanin had broken down. They were dressed in tattered rags and carried beaten up steel cups, which they jingled up and down and thrust in the tourists’ faces as they walked by. People made a wide berth around them when they encountered them on the sidewalk. This man and woman were lepers.
They had no home but the sidewalk, no family but one another, no community except the random travelers who wouldn’t come near them. These two people with leprosy were isolated and lonely. They were destitute and desperate. They had nothing in the way of earthly possessions and not very much for which to be thankful.
I had never thought much about the 10 lepers from today’s Gospel lesson until I encountered these two people living with this terrible disease that caused their body to deteriorate and their loved ones to abandon them. Leprosy was one of the most feared diseases that existed because it always caused a slow and tortured death. For the sake of the community, anyone with it was shunned.
Leper colonies were more common in Jesus’ day, when one who had a disease that we now call leprosy would be permanently isolated. They were sentenced to live at the edge of the village or town and spend their days yelling to the passersby to stay away from them and relying on the generosity of strangers for simple meals of bread and water. When the tell-tale patches of white skin started to show, families were ripped apart as mothers and fathers, grandparents and cousins were shipped off to the edge of town, to be seen but never touched again.
So when this community of 10 lepers called out to Jesus as he and his disciples walked by, we have to believe his heart melted for them. How could he not reach out to them with love and compassion? So he told them to go show themselves to the priest, and as they left their isolated spot, their skin was re-colored, their fingers healed, their noses and lips re-grown. Can’t you just hear their whoops and shouts of joy! But before they got too far, the one who was a Samaritan realized what was happening to him – and more importantly who made it possible. He left the others and ran back to Jesus, threw himself at his feet, and uttered the words, “Thank you,” in wet, weepy tears.
This Samaritan leper, the one who was the most isolated and most shunned in a group of cast-offs because he was not Jewish, became the one who was the most grateful. He did more than offer thanksgiving; his action of unabashed and unleashed love was of thankful living.
Thankful living is more than just a one-time response to a piece of good news. It is deeper than a cursory “thank you” offered to a waiter or waitress as a restaurant. It is saturates one’s life more fully than a child’s forced thank you to an aunt at Christmastime. Thankful living is about attitude; thankful living permeates one’s thoughts and action, one’s heart and soul. Thankful living is cultivated not by polite manners or rote learning – it is grown and cared for in the heart of Christ.
You may know of people in your life who exemplify this type of thankful living – a level of gratitude in everyday life that goes beyond formality or occasional occurrences. Thankful living is a matter of the heart; those who possess it are grateful in all circumstances, both good and bad. They are hopeful when others have given up, they are generous even when they may not have enough, they are secure in the knowledge of God’s abundance even when those around them are crying out about scarcity and lack.
I think of Alexandra Scott, the little girl from Philadelphia who was diagnosed with cancer at the age of four. She decided she needed to help “her doctors” find a way to cure her cancer and that of all other children who had it and so she and her older brother set up a lemonade stand in their front yard. In four years, before she died at the age of eight, she sold lemonade every year from that stand in and encouraged others to do the same, raising $1 million. Even in the midst of her suffering, she was reaching out to others. She exemplifies thankful living.
Or one of the saints of our own congregation who died this past year. Near the beginning of each month, he would arrive early in the morning at the office and turn in his offering envelope. “I give to God first,” he would say. “Always have, always will.” Even when his own health suffered, he was faithful in offering his first, his best to God. He exemplified thankful living.
Given the news of the past week, however, embodying thankful living feels harder and harder. With a stock market that has plunged 1,000 points in eight days, with the news of layoffs and foreclosures, with the reality of a tightening credit market and the disappearance of decades’ worth of retirement savings in a few short days, scarcity is more prevalent than abundance. Fear and uncertainty seem to rule, from the dining room table to cable news talk show hosts. In the past year, the economic situation for many of us has changed, and not for the better. Gas and food prices have increased. Our medical conditions require more out-of-pocket payments. Our children, no matter if they are 6, 16 or 26, need more of our financial support.
In the face of challenges such as these, how do we as people of faith respond? How can we hold onto thankful living when all around us, fearful living, scared living and insecure living are rising up above the fray?
Ironically, we can fully inhabit thankful living when we abandon all claims to our financial gifts. A period such as this provides the rude awakening that even when we think our financial resources are ours, they really are at the mercy of forces greater than ourselves – risky investors, greedy corporate executives, the entire federal monetary system. It is a reminder that our financial resources are never ours, were never ours – they are God’s. “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it,” says the Psalmist in Psalm 24. What we have comes from God and belongs to God. We are stewards, caregivers, of that which has been given to us.
We fully inhabit thankful living when we realize how our gifts benefit others. Children are fed at schools in Zimbabwe because of our gifts. Seniors gather for learning and fellowship here in West Grove because of our gifts. The Frankford neighborhood in Philadelphia creates a Shalom Zone of non-violent conflict resolution because of our gifts. We give so that others might share in what God has first given to us, and we are excited to see how God will use our gifts to bring others the healing, the growth and the wholeness we have found in Christ.
First we abandon, then we realize. We fully inhabit thankful living when we then take the next step –and we give. We take thankful living beyond thinking and into doing. We offer back to God that which is God’s in the first place, and we do so with joy, not because it is easy on our checkbooks or because we have some extra cash in our pocket this week. We give with joy because giving is a tangible sign of how thankful we are to God who created us, for God who loves us in Christ, for God who gives us community and blessings to share with others.
When we give with intention and with purpose, we decide each and every week to embody thankful living. By considering the size of our gifts to God through the church, we look at our lives as a whole. We consider our priorities, our spending habits and our hearts. Returning the first fruits, a tithe, or 10 percent, is what the Scriptures teach us is the minimum response to the blessings we receive from God. For some of us here, 10 percent may be mathematically impossible. For others of us, it’s just a start. No matter the amount, we offer to God a percentage of our income that best reflects the place that God has in our lives and the call Christ gives to each of us.
Next week, our guest preacher, the Rev. Mandy Stanley Miller, will ask each of us to consider what percentage of our income God is calling us to give. Does your current giving reflect where you want to be in your spiritual growth? Are you giving out of your excess or out of your sacrifice? The amount isn’t important. It’s the intent with which we give and the leading of the Holy Spirit that we follow. Does our giving signal that we embody thankful living? Are we like the Samaritan leper, offering our gratitude to Christ with abandon and joy, regardless of what the consequences might be?
Nitin was one of the boys at the street children’s shelter I worked in as a missionary in India and he was a model of thankful living. His right arm had been amputated when he was a younger child. He was then a teenager and a big brother to many of the other boys who made their way to his train station. He always took the youngest boys under his wing, those who were seven or eight or nine and living on their own at the train platform. He would spend the morning at our center and then would return to the train station in the late afternoon to beg for coins from the commuters.
Each night, he would take the few coins he had gathered and purchase food for the group. Nitin would pass around the food to the other boys first, letting them have their fill. Whatever was left over, he would take. He gave away the best fruits of his labor before he had his fill. He embodied thankful living. The Samaritan leper gave his fruits of joy and gratitude to Jesus. He embodied thankful living. How are you and your family being called to live thankfully and return your first fruits? Amen.