An old story goes: In Budapest, a man goes to the rabbi and complains, “Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do?” The rabbi answers, “Take your goat into the room with you.” The man in incredulous, but the rabbi insists. “Do as I say and come back in a week.” A week later the man comes back looking more distraught than before. “We cannot stand it,” he tells the rabbi. “The goat is filthy.” The rabbi then tells him, “Go home and let the goat out. And come back in a week.” A radiant man returns to the rabbi a week later, exclaiming, “Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute of it now that there’s no goat — only the nine of us.” 1
For most of us, gratitude is not instinctive, it is cultivated. Gratitude is hearts turned again and again to the outpouring for the blessings that fill our lives. Jesus knew this long before it became vogue to give thanks each day of November. In Matthew, we find our passage from the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. Directly after Jesus warns the thousands who are gathered that they cannot serve two masters, Jesus continues with the words we heard in our gospel lesson. We hear the words of Jesus directing the people not to worry about the their food, drink, and clothes, but to give thanks to God for the provision that is afforded to each of them. Look at the birds of the air; consider the lilies of the fields. The words of Jesus were true even before science had an opportunity to construct experiments and confirm them. Now, for those of us who are curious, medical science has come to confirm the value to life span in cultivating gratitude, as well as the inability to grow lifespan based on worry.
Out of the Harvard Medical School, there has been a series of studies on the role of gratitude in our lives. One study compared a group who wrote about things they were grateful for that had occurred during the week with a second group who wrote about daily irritations or things that had displeased them, and the third who wrote about events that had affected them (with no emphasis on them being positive or negative). After 10 weeks, the group cultivating gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives, including exercising more and fewer visits to the doctor.
A second study came from our backyard at the University of Pennsylvania. Individuals throughout the study reflected on earliest memories. When their week’s assignment was to write and personally deliver a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked for his or her kindness, participants immediately exhibited a huge increase in happiness scores. This impact was greater than that from any other intervention, with benefits lasting for a month.
Last year, Harvard Medical Publications released a study that indicated that the sharing of one gratitude a day increased productivity and had positive effects on blood pressure. Of course, studies like this do not prove cause and effect. But most of the studies published on this topic support an association between gratitude and an individual’s well-being. Giving thanks, cultivating gratitude is good for us and it is good for others. 2
A third study out of Harvard looked at how gratitude can improve relationships. For example, a study of couples found that individuals who took time to express gratitude for their partner not only felt more positive toward the other person, but also felt more comfortable expressing concerns about their relationship. Gratitude in human relationships laid the groundwork for the hard work of living in this world; imagine what gratitude in our relationship with God can do for our larger concerns about the world and our place in it.
The apostle Paul suggest in the first letter to Timothy, his protégé, that the quiet and content life comes from thanksgiving and gratitude, prayer and godliness. The peace we are seeking; the sacred in the ordinary is the by-product of lives when they are filled with thanksgiving and gratitude, prayer and seeking God. Theologian Paul Tillich suggested strongly that the most predominant modern anxiety is spiritual; that is, we suffer from emptiness or meaninglessness.3 If Tillich is the diagnostician, then perhaps the Jesuit theologian Anthony de Mello, following Jesus’ advice, offers the cure. De Mello said, You sanctify whatever you are grateful for.”4 In other words, instead of nursing our worries, change the focus. Look elsewhere, cultivate a grateful heart.
Our cultivation of a grateful heart requires us to move beyond the off-handed way in which we often find ourselves engaging our lives. How casually, we offer our off-handed gratitude to the one, who checks us out at the grocery store, our children as they pass the casserole dish or even God as we close our prayers. Can’t you hear your own voice to a child: Now, say thank you to Mrs. So-and-So. There is a story that is told in multiple iterations, but here is one of them:
Two men were walking through a field one day when they spotted an enraged bull. Instantly they darted toward the nearest fence. The storming bull followed in hot pursuit, and it was soon apparent they wouldn’t make it. Terrified, the one shouted to the other, “Put up a prayer, John. We’re in for it!” John answered, “I can’t. I’ve never made a public prayer in my life.” “But you must!” implored his companion. “The bull is catching up to us.” “All right,” panted John, “I’ll say the only prayer I know, the one my father used to repeat at the table: ‘O Lord, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful.'”
Gratitude requires our careful and cultivated attention and our tender and tuned hearts. Many of us will sit around tables and at counters on Thursday and express thanks. We may speak it aloud to friends and family or we may treasure it in the stillness of our hearts. We may thank God, and we may thank each other. We may thank our own hard work, and we may be without words to express. And our gratitude will change us. As we express our gratitude, our eyes and hearts will be more attuned to the grace and gifts in our own lives as well as sharing them with others.
But perhaps, you are in place of wondering exactly what you will give thanks for. Like the Pilgrims, so many years ago, despite your hard work and dedication, things are not going as you have planned. A mere ten months before the famed Thanksgiving feast, the Pilgrims debated returning to England because the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. With person afflicted from new diseases, no food growing, little shelter against the hard winters, and a landscape that seemed more hostile than welcoming, the pilgrims were close to venturing back across the ocean, even with full knowledge of the challenge of sea sicknesses and illnesses. The times were bleak. The thanksgiving feast came just in time to plant hope in the wilting souls. Depending on the accounts, you read, some will say generosity of the Native peoples in teaching ways to work with the land turned the Pilgrims’ experience around. Some will say it was the tenacity of learning the land and others the providence of God.
Whatever it was, we can imagine that not everyone fully felt like celebrating that first Thanksgiving or even in the ones that have come since. Our ten months ago, might be just as it was for the Pilgrims. The economy is still down, jobs are hard to find and asking more and more of those who are working. Many are ill, struggling with health issues, mourning the loss of loved ones, and wondering if we can just return to a better time. Perhaps, there are times when we too, need someone or something to plant hope in our wilting souls.
Our hope comes God. The God of us all who offers us blessings a plenty. The God of us all who sows the seeds of God’s love among us in hopes that they will take root and grow. The God of us all who offers love eternal and hope eternal. The God of us all who invites us to join God in spreading seeds of hope to all.
On this Thanksgiving, may you find opportunities to be fully present in moments of gratitude. Do not let the chance to thank with fullest heart pass you by. If you are giving thanks to Aunt Sandy for the delicious mashed potatoes, find time to focus on her. If you are thanking your brother for being present in the midst of your latest health challenge, may you be fully present in the moment. Consider expressing most fully your gratitude to your spouse that speaks the love of your heart and not just the passing second before the next commercial comes up. When was the last time you thanked your children? Perhaps your grown children for the ways you are proud of them or your growing children for their uniquenesses? And I pray, that you might find time on Thanksgiving day as well as days to come, to give thanks to God of us all who has given and graced us with more than we can ever recount.
This is the Gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.
1George Mikes, How to be Decadent, Andre Deutsch, London.
2http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/in-praise-of-gratitude
3Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be. , 1952.
4Vardey, Lucinda and John Dalla Costa. Being Generous: The Art of Right Living, 66.
Old Testament Lesson: Ruth 1:16-18
But Ruth said, “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.
New Testament Lesson: 1 Timothy 2:1-7
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For
there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind,
Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all—this was attested at the right time. For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
Gospel Lesson: Matthew 6:25-33
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Meditations For Your Week
Sunday, November 22~ Saturday, November 28
Sunday: ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” Matthew 6:25. Take time today to give thanks to God for the abundance in your life.
Monday: “And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” Matthew 6:27. Worrying is a response to concern. What can you give to God today?
Tuesday: “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:33. Striving for the kingdom of God is putting God first. Spend time in prayer today putting God first.
Wednesday: “But Ruth said, ‘Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” Ruth 1:16. Ruth remained loyally with Naomi. Be with people of God who lead you closer to God.
Thursday: “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings should be made for everyone.” 1 Timothy 2:1. On Thanksgiving day, give thanks for blessings of your life!
Friday: “For kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” 1 Timothy 2:2. As we move towards Advent, consider how God is calling you to a quiet and peaceable life.
Saturday: “For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all —this was attested at the right time.” 1 Timothy 2:5-6. Prayerfully consider the mystery of God.