Rev. Paul Walker “The Real Magic Words”

Our gospel passage for this Thanksgiving Day service is in the lectionary for obvious reasons. Jesus heals ten lepers; one of them returns to give thanks. The text says, “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him.” Millions of people will do some version of this around the dinner table – or maybe this year the outdoor picnic table – thanking God for the gifts we have received. Although the prostration will likely be later as a result of an oversupply of food and drink.

     I feel that Thanksgiving is such an important and evocative day. I suspect that I am not alone in this. Feasting, football, friends, family in the beauty of a Virginia Autumn – all the things I love! That most of us are forced to have at least a hobbled version of this deep day is difficult. How I wish we could be having this service in Christ Church on Thanksgiving morning – one of my favorite services of the year.

      Next best thing, I guess, is to give you that service today, online. We preempted the lectionary Christ the King readings for the Thanksgiving Day service. And, at least we’ve rolled out the cornucopia, the Thanksgiving litany, and the We Gather Together and Now Thank We All Our God. And I do pray that your Thanksgiving Day is, despite all odds, full of genuine gratitude. And maybe some oysters, too.

     I witnessed some genuine gratitude the other day. I was visiting the kids in our preschool a few weeks ago in our outdoor classroom. That’s always super fun and super cute: snacks and sandboxes, a teepee, a little kitchen sink, and the chatter, wonder and imagination of 3 and 4 year old children.  As I turned to head back into the office, one smiling 3 year old boy said, “Paul! Paul!” “Yes?”  I said. With a little smile on his face, he said, “Thanks for coming to talk to us.”

     That melted me, of course. What 3 year old thanks an adult for coming to talk? For that matter, what person of any age thanks another person for anything? Most of us are too caught up in our own worlds for gratitude to break in. And often when we do thank another person, the gratitude is often obligatory (“Son, say thank you to your grandmother”).  Any parent knows that getting children to write thank you notes for Christmas presents is a herculean task.

     When gratitude is not obligatory, it is often designed to get something for yourself. You want to win another person’s affection or esteem. If I really thank her, then she will like me. Like many children, I learned that there were 2 “magic words” – please and thank you. (Do parents still say that when trying to instill manners in their children?)

     Think about it, though. What do magic words do?  They unlock doors, or make people levitate, or cause the speaker to disappear. “Abracadabra! Behold, the frog is now a prince!” The speaker of the magic words wields power. That doesn’t sound much like authentic gratitude, does it? You might even say that curated gratitude – although the well-mannered are certainly more pleasant than the ill-mannered – is not much more than some hocus pocus.

      It seems to me that authentic gratitude arises out of powerlessness, rather than power. Dustin Johnson won the Masters last week. He is known for his power over the golf ball and his power over his emotions. He stays in control. Though he is the number 1 player in the world, he had never won golf’s most coveted prize – the green jacket. And although he has one victory in a major, he has been on the cusp of many others, only to see them slip away.

     Sunday however, he broke through and won at Augusta. And accordingly, his emotions -rarely expressed – broke through. While Tiger Woods – last year’s champion -slipped the green jacket on DJ, the controlled and stoic golfer started crying. When asked about it later, he said that he is always good at controlling himself, but at that moment was so filled with gratitude that he lost control. Again, authentic gratitude arises out of powerlessness, rather than power.

     That sure looks to be the case in today’s Thanksgiving gospel passage. Leprosy was the epitome of powerlessness. Remember, being a leper meant that not only were you physically unclean, you were also ritually unclean. Did you catch that phrase, “keeping their distance” in the passage? Sounds pretty familiar to us right now. Ritually unclean meant that you were excluded from worship. According to the Jewish law, lepers had to social distance themselves from everybody, including God!

     So, you would think, maybe, that once healed, each one of the ten lepers would come back to thank Jesus. But, then again, maybe not. As I said earlier, most of us too caught up in our own agendas, too in control of our situations – or so we think – to be overcome by gratitude. I probably would have been in the pack of 9 lepers, racing to the priests, excited to return to family and friends and church. They’d been on the outs for who knows how long, so who can blame them for rushing headlong back into life without taking the time to thank the One who healed them.

     But, the one who came back to thank Jesus was a Samaritan. That is important here, and important to the point I’m trying to make in this sermon. In Jewish culture, Samaritans were powerless. They were not full-blooded Jews and therefore had no claim on, no right to worship in God’s house, no access to God’s love and mercy. And to the point of the passage, they had no expectation of God’s healing. 

     This man was completely powerless. So you can see why he rushed backed to Jesus, praised God with a loud voice, and fell prostrate in worship at our Lord’s feet. It’s a beautiful picture, isn’t it? A man overwhelmed with gratitude by given a gift he felt he did not deserve.

     But, what about you? Surely this pandemic has awakened the powerlessness in you? And, might that, then, be a good thing? Might that, then, lead to an even more expression of Thanksgiving this year? And, if gratitude most naturally springs from an awareness that we have been given something that we do not deserve or that we have not earned, then for believers the eternal well-spring of gratitude flows directly from the atoning cross of Christ. Although it is Autumn and not Spring, there is a bee-line directly between Good Friday and Thanksgiving.

     St. Paul says it this way. And if you are looking for truly magic words, words to evoke genuine gratitude, look no further than these: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”

     Happy Thanksgiving to you all! Amen.