I had imagined that dozens of characters in the Gospel would be shown giving thanks to God. I’m sure many did, but their gratitude is not recorded. Yet here is this one cured leper who had what we might call the ordinary decency to turn back and thank the Healer. The sad disappointment of Jesus rings through the words: “Were there not ten cleansed, but where are the nine?” The other nine were surely rushing off to find their friends and spread the news of their cure. They were planning what to do with their new freedom and health. They were grabbing the gift they had been given with both hands—just as we do when good news comes our way, health, an unexpected gift, an experience of love, of beauty, or of sheer human kindness. That’s where they are, the nine, living it up—and we disapprove.
But Jesus never lets us stay on the side lines disapproving. The last thing he wants is for a group of his disciples to gather in Church on Thanksgiving morning saying to ourselves: “Isn’t it great to be one of those who returned to give thanks, and not to be out there with the nine who are thinking of nothing but having a good time with the turkeys and the booze?” “Where are the nine?” We have already confessed that, far too often, we are out there with the nine. Every one of us can call to mind right now good things that have happened to us for which we rarely pause to give thanks. We take for granted what our parents did for us, what wives and husbands do for us, the friends who nourish us in all kinds of ways, the huge network of people by whose skills and devotion food reaches our tables every day. We’re not always ready for a “thank you” for the everyday courtesies we receive—the driver who holds back to let us join the traffic-stream, the bus-driver who stops to open the door again and let us in, the tired salesgirl who patiently answers our silly questions.
The saintly thankfulness of Jesus is reflected in this anonymous, one-out-of-nine, leper—about whom we know nothing except that he was “one of those,” a Samaritan. For Jesus this simple grace of gratitude outweighed any judgment as to the religious or social status of this foreigner from beyond the pale.
The simple is the saintly. That’s why I believe God welcomes today the genuine Thank yous that rise from grateful hearts whether in a service of worship, around the dinner table, or in the quiet of our room. Every pastor can tell you of the immense contribution made to any church by those who radiate a spirit of thanksgiving in all they say and do. We celebrate the various gifts of the Spirit that make a congregation into a lively and effective company of Christ. Among such gifts is this quiet and unnoticed one of constant thankfulness. Not only on Thanksgiving Day but often throughout the year, I find myself giving thanks for the thankful.
The second character who is recorded as giving thanks came as a shock to me. I found him in Luke’s Gospel near the end of the story. There were the simple words: “God, I thank thee. . . . ” And then what followed? “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector.” How about that for a prayer of thanksgiving? And is it at all that unusual? Jesus told the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, we are told, for the benefit of those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.” (I am tempted to say that the prayer of the Pharisee sounds almost like a manifesto of the Moral Majority—but perhaps that would put me in the position of thanking God that I’m not like them.”)
It’s quite a trick of the devil to worm his way into our moments of thanksgiving to switch us from the saintly to the smug. If our gratitude is chiefly for material benefits, good health, and happy homes the temptation comes to listen to the voice that says: “You deserved it.” There are traces in some of the psalms and in the book of Proverbs of that mood of self-congratulation, and we hear echoes of it today in what G. K. Chesterson described as the “easy speeches that comfort cruel men”—“I worked for it: I never fooled around: Thank God I’m where I am today.” I’m not one who despises what is called the Puritan work ethic. I prefer it to the popular slacker-ethic or the chiseller-ethic. But Shakespeare’s Malvolio is always hovering in the wings, so immensely grateful that he is not as other men are, like Toby Belch, for instance, with whose retort to Malvolio we feel some sympathy this Thanksgiving Day: “Dost thou think that, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”
There was, I believe, a simple saintliness about those Puritans who gathered to feast in thanksgiving to God after that first hard year. They were not thanking God that they were not like those native Indians. Instead, they invited them to share their dinner. They were not thanking God that they were superior to every other people on earth, and therefore had been given a mighty land to conquer. They believed that they had been led to these shores on their pilgrimage as a people who humbly tried to serve their God and do his will and sought the promise given to Abraham that through them “shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”
In these days of re-awakening patriotism, we need to remember that it can take two very different forms. There is the patriotism that consists in a deep and genuine love for the country of our birth or our adoption. This is the patriotism that rings through the Old Testament in the passionate attachment of the Jewish people to the land and its capital: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.” This is the patriotism that inspired the noblest of the Greeks and Romans and made them seek the highest good for their people. It is the patriotism that has made the greatest leaders of our own country seek an America that is not only strong and courageous but also honorable, compassionate, and good. Thus we can give thanks to God today for all that we have derived from the good land we live in, and from the history of its great men and women to whose sacrificial lives we owe so much. To me, there is something sadly lacking in a man or woman who is unable to give thanks to God for their country, and I agree with Dr. Johnson when he writes: that man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.”
The other kind of patriotism is totally different. It expresses a bigoted and lop-sided pride in one’s own country combined with a mixture of fear and contempt for every other land. It says: “I thank God I am not like these other peoples with their strange languages and funny looks. I thank God that we are Number One.” Such patriotism can be a mere disguise for ugly feelings of hatred and aggression that we would otherwise restrain. It was the false patriotism that the same Dr. Johnson had in mind when he called it “the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Rudyard Kipling who was known as a vigorous and outspoken English patriot knew what this false patriotism could be and expressed it in his Recessional:
“The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart;
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice;
A humble and a contrite heart.”
It was the thankful response of the humble and the contrite that led Jesus to his own outburst of gratitude to God. “In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.”
May it be that spirit that we joyfully share this feast of thanksgiving, 1984, and now share in that “Eucharist” that unites us to the thankfulness of Christ.
Advent Parables: Oil Crisis for the Bridesmaids
Editor’s Introduction
David Read often seized the season of Advent to preach a series of sermons under such titles as “Advent Voices,” “Advent Answers,” “Advent Encounters,” “Advent Parables,” and “Advent Grammar.” This particular sermon, and the two following, are from his series “Advent Parables.”
The Bible readings for this series are taken from the New English Bible translation,
