Thanking It Forward

This sermon was preached on November 23, 2008, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, at Calvary Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon. There were two texts for the day--Luke 17: 11-19 and 2nd Corinthians 9: 6-15 --and the sermon and worship service followed a Thanksgiving theme.



“Thanksgiving is a time for families and friends to gather together and express gratitude for all that we have been given, the freedoms we enjoy, and the loved ones who enrich our lives. We recognize that all of these blessings, and life itself, come not from the hand of man but from Almighty God.”

Those are the words that begin this year’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, signed on Friday by President Bush at the White House. As most of us learned in school, the celebration of Thanksgiving and its attendant prayers and feasting was traditionally thought to begin with the friendly gathering of Pilgrims and Native Americans in 1621, continuing for years, officially and unofficially, throughout the early years of our country. And each year since President Lincoln officially revived the tradition in 1863, each President of the United States—no matter what his party, religious tradition, or philosophical convictions-- has made an annual proclamation declaring a national day of thanksgiving.

As I prepared this sermon, I browsed through close to 150 years worth of Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamations online—the internet is a wonderful thing!—and I was struck by all the ways each year’s proclamation reflected the personality of the president and the tenor of the time in which it was issued. (For example, it won’t surprise any of you when I tell you that some of the very longest proclamations seemed to have been written by Bill Clinton!)

Many of the proclamations recount the story of the first Thanksgiving and quote stirring words from George Washington, William Bradford, or other historic figures; many of them list particular achievements and accomplishments of the year just past, and call for Americans to pray for particular goals to be accomplished; and all of them state unequivocally that our blessings as a people and as a nation are not of human creation, but are gifts bestowed by God—and urge us to to set aside time, together, to offer God our thanks.

Thanksgiving is a distinctively American holiday (although, to be strictly accurate, it’s also celebrated by our neighbors in Canada). But the idea of thanksgiving—of devoting concentrated time and conscious energy to recognizing and giving thanks for our blessings and God’s love and care for us—the idea of thanksgiving is, and has always been, central to our understanding of our belief, our worship, and our lives as Christian people, followers of Jesus and members of his church in the world.

In fact, since we’re going to be dusting off our Greek a little bit in this sermon, we might as well begin by talking about the Greek word for Thanksgiving—a word that is used throughout the New Testament. Does anyone know what it is? The Greek word for thanksgiving --thankfulness, gratitude, giving of thanks-- is “Eucharistia”—and it’s from that word for Thanksgiving that we Christians derive one of our common terms for communion, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper—one of our most important moments shared together as a community of believers in Christ. We call it “The Eucharist.” And in fact, “Eucharist” is the preferred term for communion used by many of our brothers and sisters in the Christian community, including Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, United Methodists, and Lutherans.

Each time we meet as a community of believers at Christ’s table in communion, we meet in Eucharist—thanksgiving—offering to God our prayers, and our praises, and sharing together in the gifts of Christ’s body and blood, given for us. You can’t get any closer to the heart of our faith than Eucharist—you can’t get any closer to the heart of our faith than the idea of thanksgiving.

There are so many passages in the Bible that give us insight into the idea of thanksgiving—that speak of giving thanks to God as a necessity, a spiritual practice, and a way of life for God’s people. We have read two of those passages from scripture this morning. These passages are probably familiar to you, and each one has something to say to us about what thanksgiving is, and the spiritual gifts that a life of true thanksgiving imparts—principles that can guide us on Thanksgiving day and all the ordinary, but no less important, days that follow it. Interestingly enough, our first reading, from Luke, is all about thanks; the second reading, from 2nd Corinthians, is all about giving.

In our Luke passage, we see Jesus traveling between Samaria and Galilee, on his way to Jerusalem. Along the way, he encounters ten people with leprosy, who call out to him and beg him to have mercy on them. They want to be healed of their painful and disfiguring disease. Jesus tells them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” and as they go on their way, they discover that their leprosy has disappeared.

Nine of the ten keep going on their way; only one turns back, throws himself at Jesus’ feet, and thanks him. And Jesus, after wondering that only one of the ten would return to give thanks, tells him, “Your faith has made you well” (that's the NRSV translation).

So we can learn from this passage that giving thanks is good—that it’s something Jesus approves of. But there’s more. If we dig a little deeper and look at the words Luke uses in the original Greek text, we can see that one particular word, katharidzo, means “they were made clean” in verses 14 and 17; and another word, iaomai, means “healed” in verse 15.

And yet—in verse 19, when Jesus says “Your faith has made you well,” he uses a different word entirely from those two. He uses the Greek word sodzo, the meaning of which doesn’t really come through here in our English translation. The meaning of sodzo is much better captured in the King James translation where we read that Jesus says: “ Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.” Or you could put it this way: “Your faith has saved you.”

In this story from Luke’s gospel Jesus shows us clearly that healing is not the same as wholeness. All ten of the people with leprosy are healed, but only one—the one who returns to acknowledge Jesus and give thanks, is made whole in a spiritual sense; only one, the one who gives thanks, is restored to right relationship with God; only one, the one who gives thanks, is given his salvation.

I see this difference between healing and wholeness every day in my work at hospice. We care for people for whom healing is impossible—our patients have a terminal illness and an expectation of less than 6 months to live. Of course, we have doctors and nurses who attend to our hospice patients’ physical symptoms, and yet all of us know that physical healing is no longer the goal of our care.

Instead, each day I see many of our patients take steps on the journey to wholeness. Assisted by our social workers, our chaplains, our volunteers, and everyone on the hospice team, I see patients reconcile with estranged family members, come to terms with disappointment and regret, explore the meaning of their life’s work, find comfort and peace, and --maybe most importantly-- say those things to their loved ones and to God that bring their lives and their relationships to spiritual wholeness and completion: I forgive you. Will you forgive me? Thank you. I love you. And goodbye.

By showing us the difference between healing and wholeness, the story of the ten people with leprosy from Luke’s gospel teaches us that giving thanks is more than the spiritual equivalent of an obligatory thank you note to God. Giving thanks isn’t just going through the motions, giving credit where credit is due, or counting blessings on our fingers. The story of the ten people with leprosy teaches us that giving thanks is a deep spiritual journey of return and restoration to right relationship which acknowledges Jesus as Lord, brings us closer to God’s infinite wholeness, and reaffirms for us the reality of our salvation.

In our passage from 2nd Corinthians, we find a different insight into thanksgiving as a spiritual task. Whereas the story of the ten lepers is about thanks, this passage is about giving.

Here we find the apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth, encouraging them to do their part in taking up a collection for the struggling and poverty-stricken Christian community in Jerusalem. Paul urges them to give generously, for “God loves a cheerful giver.” And he tells them that “You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God.”

For Paul, thanksgiving is found not just in raising words of thanks to God, but in performing acts of generosity and service to others. Paul tells us that it is the giving—the giving of our selves—the giving of our time, our resources, our ministry—that truly gives thanks to God.

This idea of giving to others as thanksgiving to God might make us re-evaluate that question we’ll no doubt hear a lot this week—“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” What would our holiday look like if each of us took our cue from Paul and spent our day not cooking for our own family, but serving in a soup kitchen for the hungry; not napping on the couch, but opening our doors to those who sleep outside; not counting our own blessings but trying to be a blessing to others? What would our every day look like if we took our cue from Paul and lived each day of our lives this way—giving thanks to God by giving of ourselves?

Well, I think it might look a little bit like the idea called “Pay it forward.” Have any of you seen that movie? It came out some years ago. It’s based on a book of the same name, and is probably still available on DVD, if you’d like to see it or see it again.

In the movie, an 11 year old boy named Trevor, who comes from a troubled home is given an unusual assignment in his social studies class at school -- think up a practical way to make the world a better place, and put it into action.

Trevor comes up with an idea that he calls “Pay It Forward" -- do a needed but unexpected favor for three different people without being asked. And then, when each recipient asks, “How can I pay you back?”—tell them, “Don’t pay it back, pay it forward”—asking each recipient in their turn to go out and do an unexpected favor for three other people.

Now in the movie, Trevor doesn’t make the wisest choices when he tries to put this into practice, and his three favors-- letting a junkie stay in his home, fixing up his mother with his teacher, and trying to rescue one of his schoolmates from a bully—don’t seem to work out. And yet, amazingly, one day a journalist comes to Trevor’s door asking about “Pay it forward” because someone has done him a favor and he’s traced the idea back to Trevor—and Trevor learns that his idea has caught on and is becoming a movement far beyond his own home town.

Maybe—if each of us, in the spirit of the apostle Paul’s vision of giving as thanksgiving, were to live each day not paying it forward, but thanking it forward, we might start a movement that grows far beyond our home town—and maybe, we might get a little closer to being God’s beloved community and bringing Christ’s community to fulfillment on earth.

As we know from the Biblical witness and from our rich, ongoing Presbyterian tradition of worship and service, the notion of thanksgiving is a central part of our faith and our lives as Christians. Each time we meet as believers at Christ’s table in communion, we meet in Eucharist—thanksgiving—offering to God our prayers, and our praises, and sharing together in the gifts of Christ’s body and blood, given for us.

As we see from the story of the ten people with leprosy, thanksgiving is about thanks— it's about returning to God in thanks to acknowledge Jesus as Christ and Lord, to restore our relationship with God and to be made whole in the spirit of joy and salvation.

As we learn from Paul in 2nd Corinthians, thanksgiving is also about giving— it's about giving to others in a spirit of generosity and love. It is about thanking it forward, not only on one holiday a year but on each day of our lives as people of faith who claim Christ’s beloved community as our own.

As we gather at table on this coming Thursday, our national Thanksgiving Day— as we gather with loved ones, friends, fellow citizens, and the whole family of God, in all its beauty and joy, in all its brokenness and sorrow-- may we resolve, together, to weave the strands of Eucharist, of thanks, and of giving, into our relationships and our celebrations—and into the beautiful, and challenging, fabric of our lives.

Amen.