Fall is upon us! The Cottage is celebrating turning leaves and sweater weather with an autumn equinox surprise subscription offer: THE PUMPKIN SPICE SPECIAL!
New subscribers (and those upgrading from free to paid) receive an extra 10% off a regular yearly subscription (which is already a really good deal). You can use the extra cash to put toward a Pumpkin Spice Latte (everybody’s favorite drink to hate). This offer is good ONLY until OCTOBER 4 (St. Francis Day).
Today is the fifth and final Sunday in the Season of Creation, a short liturgical season that runs from September 1 to October 4 attending to the spirituality of creation and a theology of the environment. During this time, Christians and those of other faiths are encouraged to read the Bible with our hearts attuned to the Earth and its inhabitants and our hands ready to participate with God in co-creating the future.
I’m preaching today at Plymouth UCC in Fort Collins, Colorado. The pastor asked me to speak on Luke 17:11-19 to open the church’s stewardship celebration. The story of Jesus healing ten lepers is not the standard lectionary gospel text for today. But it is the text for Canadian Thanksgiving, which is on October 9.
It certainly is appropriate for stewardship and Thanksgiving — and it is fitting to end the Season of Creation with a call to gratitude.
Luke 17:11-19
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were made clean. 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. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."
When my friend asked me to preach on Luke 17:11-19 to kick-off his church’s stewardship season, I remembered that I’d written on this text just last year here at the Cottage. I also recalled particularly liking that post. So, I’m sharing it again below with a postscript for the Season of Creation.
* * * * * * * *
After my book Grateful was released in 2018, I spent almost two years speaking and preaching about gratitude. One of the most frequently asked questions at those events came from grandparents: “How do I get my grandchildren to write thank you notes?”
At first, I replied by offering tips on forming spiritual practices with children. That never seemed quite satisfactory. During one Q&A, a nice grandmother bemoaned that her grandchildren never said thank you for any of the gifts she sent them — and she was quite hurt by their lack of gratitude.
On a whim, I asked her a follow-up question, “If your grandchildren never sent you a thank you note, would you stop sending them gifts? Would you insist they return your presents?”
She laughed, “I’m tempted. . .” Her grandparent-peers laughed. “But of course I’d still send them gifts. And I certainly wouldn’t take them back!”
“So,” I replied, “you don’t send gifts to get notes? Why do you send gifts?”
“Because I love them,” she replied. “Thank you notes are nice, but gifts aren’t contingent on them.”
And that’s today’s lesson from Luke.
In this story, Jesus heals ten lepers. They are healed. All of them. But only one went back to Jesus and said thank you. He’s an outsider, a Samaritan, perhaps one not accustomed to being the recipient of a divine gift like healing, a spiritual blessing conferred in this instance by priests. For whatever reason, this one leper didn’t take the gift for granted and choose to return to Jesus to express his gratitude. In response, Jesus thanks him — and sends him on his way.
This is a rich story for what it says about Jesus and the Samaritan leper. And it is an intriguing one for what it doesn’t say about the nine lepers who didn’t return to say thank you.
There’s no indication that their lack of gratitude affected the gift.
Jesus didn’t take the gift back. He didn’t threaten or warn the nine. He didn’t send the disease to reinfect the ingrates. He didn’t direct the temple authorities to arrest them and return them to the leper colony.
Saying thank you — or not — had nothing to do with the gift.
Ultimately, this story is about the generosity of God. The gift of healing is free. Christian theology calls that grace — a gift with no strings attached, a gift that comes from the nature of God, a gift of love. God is the Ever-Gifting One. Extravagantly, endlessly, without condition or expectation of response. All of creation is a gift; every day we are surrounded by gifts. The gifts never stop, are never taken back, not in any way contingent on the recipient. The gifts just are.
Only sometimes do we notice. Only occasionally do we turn back, fall on our knees with gratitude, and say thank you.
However, gratefulness isn’t what heals us. At the end of the story, Jesus says it is faith —meaning TRUST (not “belief” or “doctrine,” but a disposition of “trust”) that makes us well.
In effect, gratitude is an expression of trust. Sometimes, we take gifts for granted because we trust that they will always come. Perhaps not sending a thank you note is an odd expression of that confidence — we trust the dependable, loving grandmother to never forget a holiday or birthday. But, sometimes, a gift is so enormous, so unexpected that we do notice. And that’s when we turn around and fall on our knees in wonder to offer thanks, finally understanding that gracious gifts surround us every day and have always attended our way.
That’s when gratitude can change everything — it transforms our ability to see the giftedness of our lives, to stop taking the great generosity of the Gifter for granted, and to freely respond with attentive trust.
You don’t ever have to say thank you. God’s love never ceases; the gifts never end. And yet, it is good to notice how extraordinary it truly is — this gracious love, this gifted life. Trusting that, being attentive to it, makes us whole.
* * * * * * * *
A Postscript for the Season of Creation. This story reminds us that is easy to overlook gifts, including the gifts of ground, water, and sky — the fruitfulness of the earth, the generosity of this gorgeous planet. Without these gifts, we would never even existed. Neither God nor creation takes those gifts away — and never would they. The gifts that sustain us are always with us, even if ignored or abused to the point of crisis.
And we’ve done a lot of ignoring and abusing. It has been our choice to take the gifts for granted. We’re a lot like the nine who took the gift and moved on with life.
Yet, the full circle of gifting is not complete until we recognize the gift, turn around, and say thank you. In this text, Jesus’ final words were "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well." The Greek word for “well” is sózó. That word doesn’t just mean to be cured from an illness. Rather, it means to be saved, rescued, or delivered — healed body and soul. The one man, who freely responded and returned with thanks, was truly transformed as Jesus himself affirmed: Your trust in this circle of gifts and gratitude has made you whole.
It is easy to get caught up in gloom and guilt when it comes to climate change. Indeed, many of this past month’s texts lent themselves to exploring the sins and injustices that threaten the world we inhabit. I confess that I felt a bit overwhelmed at times as I worked through the readings.
But today’s episode from Luke leans away from judgement toward hope. The Earth, all of creation, still gives her gifts. Healing continues even in our deeply wounded world. What would it be like if, instead of going on our way, we turned around and said thank you? To God, to creation itself? Would we find ourselves growing in trust that we’ve not been deserted in this diseased place, in a spiral of apocalypse?
What if we completed the circle of gifts and gratitude by responding with thankfulness and praise? If gratefulness can save a Samaritan leper, then surely it can save us.
Perhaps a new-found trust in mutuality, reciprocity, and sharing, humbly recognizing that everything is a gift, will make us whole.
For a more scientific take on gratitude and the climate crisis, check out these 2021 articles, “How Gratitude Can Help Combat Climate Change” and “How gratitude for nature can rein in your existential angst about climate change.”
While much has been lost, there is still so much to be saved. Nature has a way of reminding me of my inherent hope. For that, I am forever grateful.
— Colleen M. Fitzpatrick
INSPIRATION
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
— Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem”
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.
— Czesław Miłosz, “The Gift” (Also: Read this amazing tribute to Milosz from fellow poet Seamus Heaney. You won’t be disappointed.)
SOUTHERN LIGHTS IS BACK!
January 12 -14, 2024
And our theme is Reimagining Faith Beyond Patriarchy and Hierarchy
Last January, almost 700 people gathered at St. Simon’s Island in Georgia for a packed weekend of poetry, theology, and music.
WE’RE GATHERING AGAIN!
YOU ARE INVITED to join me and Brian McLaren as we reimagine our faith beyond patriarchy and hierarchy in our interior lives, in our communities of faith, and in the Scriptures. We’ve asked three remarkable speakers to take us through this journey: Cole Arthur Riley, Simran Jeet Singh, and Elizabeth “Libbie” Schrader Polczer.
Please come and be with us in Georgia. SEATS ARE LIMITED! Or, if you’d rather be with us online, you can choose that option as well.
MORE INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION CAN BE FOUND HERE.
In the family we first learn how to show love and respect for life….to say ‘thank you’ as an expression of genuine gratitude for what we have been given, to control our aggressivity and greed, and to ask forgiveness when we have caused harm.
— Pope Francis
I am eager to share that in some of the most painful moments in my life, I learned so much about gratitude. Working through times when the people I love most in the world did things that seemed unthinkable and caused me great pain, I came to understand that my pain was rooted in my experience of their lack of gratitude. It felt as if I had given them this extraordinary gift of my love; care, sacrifice, time, and attention, and interpreted their behavior as indifference. Without veering into the psychology, of the powerlessness,or co-dependence of that, the wisdom, the 'takeaway' was that the finest expression of gratitude to the giver is for the gifted to love and fully experience the love and joy in the gift. I believe this a genuine reflection of God's love, and the importance that we 'give' thanks, by reveling in the gifts. Full circle thought, 'faith' is acknowledgement to the giver so we can be in relationship.
Thank you so much for sharing your writing. I just finished reading "Grateful" while recovering from a cold that I acquired while traveling. I am thankful for safe drive home and look forward to sharing your hopeful messages with my church circle in a few weeks. Our focus for October is gratitude. Your words in the book, "Make America Grateful Again -- with a radical restructuring of thanksgiving", are such a good message for our communities and the world. Philippians 1:3