Giving Thanks
Sermon given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
November 24, 2013
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
One of the hazards of being a minister is people will often, without warning, ask me to speak or comment at parties, dinners and even the check-out line at the grocery store, authoritatively and extemporaneously on topics ranging from healthcare to divine intervention to immigration and whether or not the devil is real. And then there’s prayer... especially grace before a meal. I know some ministers who keep back-up prayers in their wallets in case they get stage or, I guess, “table” fright.
I’m reminded now of a story told to me by a colleague when we were both still in seminary. It seems she was spending Thanksgiving with a group of close friends. As she and her friends sat down to eat, she...the seminarian, was asked to say grace before the meal. In what she thought would be a modern, egalitarian gesture, she innocently invited everyone gathered to name one or two things for which they were grateful... after which she would do the same.
A weighty silence came over the group which became more and more awkward as it continued. There they sat, for what must have seemed an eternity, and no one said anything. Finally, unable or unwilling to bear the pressure, my friend offered a few things she was thankful for and the others nodded or muttered agreement with what she had said.
When she first told me this story she expressed how, at first, she was surprised then annoyed at her friends. After all they were all thirty- somethings...healthy, gainfully employed, living pretty good, comfortable lives. What seemed to bother her even more was they were really nice people who liked to go out and have fun but also regularly volunteered at a city shelter and soup kitchen...they were not affected types, they really cared about others. How could they possibly sit in silence when asked to name something... anything they were grateful for?
Together we wondered what might have been going on in their minds...
Maybe they were annoyed or felt put on the spot by the question...
Maybe they were trying to think of something big or profound to name...
Maybe all they could think of was what they wanted and didn’t have...
Maybe they were worried the food was going to get cold...
Maybe they were feeling guilty about all they had...
Or maybe they really didn’t know what they were grateful for...
As my spiritual director, a Buddhist, used to remind me with some frequency,
“Most people sleepwalk through life.”
And this brings us to the story told in our first reading from Luke’s gospel which, along with all its rich linguistic, spiritual, and theological symbolism and meaning, invites reflection on things like being awakened and seeing or awareness, states of heart that birth, nurture, and sustain a deep sense of awe/wonder, humility, and gratitude.
In the gospel story, we encounter Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem. Luke locates the story in a village at the northern border with Samaria, which explains why there are Samaritans and Jews among the population. While there, ten lepers approach Jesus and asked that he heal them. Luke writes that Jesus “saw them...”
Lepers, though, were not meant to be seen, indeed both Jewish law and what we would today consider social prejudice or bias worked to ensure that people like the lepers were unseen or kept away from “normal” or ordinary society. Their condition was seen as many to be a sign of God’s judgment. They also reminded people of the life’s impermanence and the fleeting nature of our own circumstances. We can imagine the lepers then were akin to some of the sick or elderly in our time, shut away and forgotten in nursing facilities... or the poor and homeless, people increasingly criminalized to help keep them out of sight.
To be seen then, as Luke writes, is not only to be acknowledged by the one who sees, but, for one who is seen, it is to exist, to be known...to be valued. And in that moment of seeing and being seen there is potential, potential for a spark of awareness to ignite the truth of our interconnectedness...and our shared humanity. In that moment our kinship with one another and all of life is revealed. In that moment of awe and insight, the notion of stranger or separateness no longer makes any sense. Note that of the ten lepers Jesus heals, Luke chooses a Samaritan,a text book example of a stranger or outsider at that time, as the one who returns to thank Jesus, making the story all the more powerful.
After expressing surprise or even disappointment that the other nine lepers did not also give thanks, Jesus instructs the one who did thank him, to get up and go on his way, adding, “Your faith has made you well.”
The phrase, “your faith has made you well” can also be read as “Your faith has saved you.” The other lepers were healed, but one was saved. To be saved, or made spiritually well, is, in my understanding to be made aware of one’s wholeness or as the poet Galway Kinnell would say, one’s “loveliness.” reminding as he does in his poem “St. Francis and the Sow”, “sometimes it is necessary to re-teach a thing its loveliness.”
When Jesus saw the lepers, he acknowledged them in way that communicated he knew and valued them as brother or sister when no one else would. He attempted to re-teach or reveal to them their loveliness, their wholeness. Only one of them however came to see and then trust his own loveliness and that of Jesus as demonstrated by his giving thanks.
The others, while no doubt happy and excited that they had been healed were too distracted to notice the profundity of what they had been offered. We can imagine their eagerness to get back to their friends and family, to rejoin society, to have a normal life. They probably weren’t bad people or even what we would call ungrateful people, in fact I bet they were more or less just like you and I or my colleague and her friends around the Thanksgiving table, doing the best we can to get through each day without causing or getting into too much trouble, and like most of us, sleepwalking or perhaps minimally awake much of our lives. Its not easy to stay awake.
The world we’ve inherited and continue to co-create or tolerate perpetuates a sleepy existence. And it is exhausting when commercial interests relentlessly remind us how ugly, fat, stupid, flawed, unhappy, unhealthy, deprived, inadequate, cheated, or entitled and deserving we are all with the aim of selling us stuff we largely don’t need, want, or can’t afford. and then there’s all the political, corporate and other power driven interests that want to keep us locked in a gladiatorial mindset where almost everything is a matter of “us versus them.” Even our leisure..our “free” time is largely a consumer, and often passive, endeavor bought and sold as entertainment.
Meanwhile the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west and the ocean’s waters ebb and flow. Birds migrate, animals forage, and fish swim as flowers offer then surrender their blooms and trees reach towards the sky only to release their leaves to the wind which returns them to the earth. And we, the advanced species, obsessed with what we’re told we lack or afraid of losing what we have, sleepwalk, spending our days, months, and years gorging on distractions pre-made, pre- packaged and available 24/7. In such a world, who has the time or bandwidth to notice the true abundance of life?
And so perhaps it is not as shocking as it might seem at first to hear of people rendered speechless when asked to name one or two things they are grateful for, one or two things that they have been given...no strings attached. Perhaps for a moment, we too can imagine being jolted by such a question... a question that not only dares us to awaken but invites us to look beyond the horizon of our distracted lives and see life anew and abundant.
One can sense the unfolding of such an experience in the words of our second reading from the Odes of Solomon, a masterpiece of ancient poetry. Here the writer speaks the language of the awakened heart...
You made all things new;
you have showed me all things
shining.
You have granted me perfect ease;
I have become like Paradise,
a garden whose fruit is joy;
Blessed are the men and women
who are planted on your earth, in
your garden, who grow as your trees and flowers
grow, who transform their darkness to
light.
All those who love [you] are beautiful;
they overflow with your presence
so that they can do nothing but
good.
And in the closing line, hidden in plain sight, life’s invitation is made... “There is infinite space in your garden, all men, all women are welcome here; all they need to is enter.”
Come in, come in....life beckons us, come in....an invitation that is never withdrawn, only declined.
I wonder now, if my colleague’s invitation to her friends to name one or two things for which they are grateful, and which left them speechless, was heard differently than I had, until now, imagined. I wonder if maybe, just maybe, it was heard as an invitation to look beyond the familiar and see more deeply into life. And if so, perhaps in time their silence would give way to a new way of seeing...and the words would come giving thanks...
For being seen, for being valued and asked to offer their thoughts...
Or thanks not just for the food before them, but the many people, animals, and other forms of life and forces of nature that made their meal possible...
Perhaps they would give thanks for simple pleasures and let go of constantly worrying about measuring up or keeping up with others...
Perhaps they would transcend the self concerned loathing of guilt, give thanks for what they had and commit to helping those with less...
Perhaps they would realize most of their needs are actually wants and give thanks...
Perhaps they would give thanks for being jolted awake that they might recognize and accept the invitation to an abundant life...a life where we realize and re-teach one another our loveliness (or wholeness)... a life where we learn to number our days and value each moment for what it is, a life where we come to realize our interconnectedness... our kinship with all...where the word stranger has no meaning...a life we learn, practice and live together as a community of faith... an abundant life for which we can’t help but live giving thanks.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
November 24, 2013
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
One of the hazards of being a minister is people will often, without warning, ask me to speak or comment at parties, dinners and even the check-out line at the grocery store, authoritatively and extemporaneously on topics ranging from healthcare to divine intervention to immigration and whether or not the devil is real. And then there’s prayer... especially grace before a meal. I know some ministers who keep back-up prayers in their wallets in case they get stage or, I guess, “table” fright.
I’m reminded now of a story told to me by a colleague when we were both still in seminary. It seems she was spending Thanksgiving with a group of close friends. As she and her friends sat down to eat, she...the seminarian, was asked to say grace before the meal. In what she thought would be a modern, egalitarian gesture, she innocently invited everyone gathered to name one or two things for which they were grateful... after which she would do the same.
A weighty silence came over the group which became more and more awkward as it continued. There they sat, for what must have seemed an eternity, and no one said anything. Finally, unable or unwilling to bear the pressure, my friend offered a few things she was thankful for and the others nodded or muttered agreement with what she had said.
When she first told me this story she expressed how, at first, she was surprised then annoyed at her friends. After all they were all thirty- somethings...healthy, gainfully employed, living pretty good, comfortable lives. What seemed to bother her even more was they were really nice people who liked to go out and have fun but also regularly volunteered at a city shelter and soup kitchen...they were not affected types, they really cared about others. How could they possibly sit in silence when asked to name something... anything they were grateful for?
Together we wondered what might have been going on in their minds...
Maybe they were annoyed or felt put on the spot by the question...
Maybe they were trying to think of something big or profound to name...
Maybe all they could think of was what they wanted and didn’t have...
Maybe they were worried the food was going to get cold...
Maybe they were feeling guilty about all they had...
Or maybe they really didn’t know what they were grateful for...
As my spiritual director, a Buddhist, used to remind me with some frequency,
“Most people sleepwalk through life.”
And this brings us to the story told in our first reading from Luke’s gospel which, along with all its rich linguistic, spiritual, and theological symbolism and meaning, invites reflection on things like being awakened and seeing or awareness, states of heart that birth, nurture, and sustain a deep sense of awe/wonder, humility, and gratitude.
In the gospel story, we encounter Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem. Luke locates the story in a village at the northern border with Samaria, which explains why there are Samaritans and Jews among the population. While there, ten lepers approach Jesus and asked that he heal them. Luke writes that Jesus “saw them...”
Lepers, though, were not meant to be seen, indeed both Jewish law and what we would today consider social prejudice or bias worked to ensure that people like the lepers were unseen or kept away from “normal” or ordinary society. Their condition was seen as many to be a sign of God’s judgment. They also reminded people of the life’s impermanence and the fleeting nature of our own circumstances. We can imagine the lepers then were akin to some of the sick or elderly in our time, shut away and forgotten in nursing facilities... or the poor and homeless, people increasingly criminalized to help keep them out of sight.
To be seen then, as Luke writes, is not only to be acknowledged by the one who sees, but, for one who is seen, it is to exist, to be known...to be valued. And in that moment of seeing and being seen there is potential, potential for a spark of awareness to ignite the truth of our interconnectedness...and our shared humanity. In that moment our kinship with one another and all of life is revealed. In that moment of awe and insight, the notion of stranger or separateness no longer makes any sense. Note that of the ten lepers Jesus heals, Luke chooses a Samaritan,a text book example of a stranger or outsider at that time, as the one who returns to thank Jesus, making the story all the more powerful.
After expressing surprise or even disappointment that the other nine lepers did not also give thanks, Jesus instructs the one who did thank him, to get up and go on his way, adding, “Your faith has made you well.”
The phrase, “your faith has made you well” can also be read as “Your faith has saved you.” The other lepers were healed, but one was saved. To be saved, or made spiritually well, is, in my understanding to be made aware of one’s wholeness or as the poet Galway Kinnell would say, one’s “loveliness.” reminding as he does in his poem “St. Francis and the Sow”, “sometimes it is necessary to re-teach a thing its loveliness.”
When Jesus saw the lepers, he acknowledged them in way that communicated he knew and valued them as brother or sister when no one else would. He attempted to re-teach or reveal to them their loveliness, their wholeness. Only one of them however came to see and then trust his own loveliness and that of Jesus as demonstrated by his giving thanks.
The others, while no doubt happy and excited that they had been healed were too distracted to notice the profundity of what they had been offered. We can imagine their eagerness to get back to their friends and family, to rejoin society, to have a normal life. They probably weren’t bad people or even what we would call ungrateful people, in fact I bet they were more or less just like you and I or my colleague and her friends around the Thanksgiving table, doing the best we can to get through each day without causing or getting into too much trouble, and like most of us, sleepwalking or perhaps minimally awake much of our lives. Its not easy to stay awake.
The world we’ve inherited and continue to co-create or tolerate perpetuates a sleepy existence. And it is exhausting when commercial interests relentlessly remind us how ugly, fat, stupid, flawed, unhappy, unhealthy, deprived, inadequate, cheated, or entitled and deserving we are all with the aim of selling us stuff we largely don’t need, want, or can’t afford. and then there’s all the political, corporate and other power driven interests that want to keep us locked in a gladiatorial mindset where almost everything is a matter of “us versus them.” Even our leisure..our “free” time is largely a consumer, and often passive, endeavor bought and sold as entertainment.
Meanwhile the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west and the ocean’s waters ebb and flow. Birds migrate, animals forage, and fish swim as flowers offer then surrender their blooms and trees reach towards the sky only to release their leaves to the wind which returns them to the earth. And we, the advanced species, obsessed with what we’re told we lack or afraid of losing what we have, sleepwalk, spending our days, months, and years gorging on distractions pre-made, pre- packaged and available 24/7. In such a world, who has the time or bandwidth to notice the true abundance of life?
And so perhaps it is not as shocking as it might seem at first to hear of people rendered speechless when asked to name one or two things they are grateful for, one or two things that they have been given...no strings attached. Perhaps for a moment, we too can imagine being jolted by such a question... a question that not only dares us to awaken but invites us to look beyond the horizon of our distracted lives and see life anew and abundant.
One can sense the unfolding of such an experience in the words of our second reading from the Odes of Solomon, a masterpiece of ancient poetry. Here the writer speaks the language of the awakened heart...
You made all things new;
you have showed me all things
shining.
You have granted me perfect ease;
I have become like Paradise,
a garden whose fruit is joy;
Blessed are the men and women
who are planted on your earth, in
your garden, who grow as your trees and flowers
grow, who transform their darkness to
light.
All those who love [you] are beautiful;
they overflow with your presence
so that they can do nothing but
good.
And in the closing line, hidden in plain sight, life’s invitation is made... “There is infinite space in your garden, all men, all women are welcome here; all they need to is enter.”
Come in, come in....life beckons us, come in....an invitation that is never withdrawn, only declined.
I wonder now, if my colleague’s invitation to her friends to name one or two things for which they are grateful, and which left them speechless, was heard differently than I had, until now, imagined. I wonder if maybe, just maybe, it was heard as an invitation to look beyond the familiar and see more deeply into life. And if so, perhaps in time their silence would give way to a new way of seeing...and the words would come giving thanks...
For being seen, for being valued and asked to offer their thoughts...
Or thanks not just for the food before them, but the many people, animals, and other forms of life and forces of nature that made their meal possible...
Perhaps they would give thanks for simple pleasures and let go of constantly worrying about measuring up or keeping up with others...
Perhaps they would transcend the self concerned loathing of guilt, give thanks for what they had and commit to helping those with less...
Perhaps they would realize most of their needs are actually wants and give thanks...
Perhaps they would give thanks for being jolted awake that they might recognize and accept the invitation to an abundant life...a life where we realize and re-teach one another our loveliness (or wholeness)... a life where we learn to number our days and value each moment for what it is, a life where we come to realize our interconnectedness... our kinship with all...where the word stranger has no meaning...a life we learn, practice and live together as a community of faith... an abundant life for which we can’t help but live giving thanks.
Amen and Blessed Be
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