An Attitude of Gratitude
Luke 23:33-43
November 25, 2007
I was out running one day last week – my head was a bit stuffed up, my knees were achy, my back was feeling every one of its almost 48 years – and my heart was filled with a profound gratitude for this flesh, for being incarnate, for being embodied.
The fall colors stood out against a slate grey sky and filled my field of vision. I could hear a crow cawing in a tree overhead, and hear the flow of Four Mile Run alongside the trail. I could feel the solid ground beneath my footfalls, and nod at other folks on the path with whom I share this common wealth. I felt as if a doxology was sounding forth all around me.
If Henri Nouwen was correct in saying that gratitude is the fundamental perspective on the world shared by all of the world’s great religious traditions, then my several miles in the church of the great outdoors was the most religious experience I’ve had recently. Likewise, following Nouwen’s observation, Thanksgiving is the most essentially religious holiday that we mark. Oh, not sectarian, to be sure, and not even theist, but fundamentally religious.
So I thought it would be appropriate this morning, as the Sunday after Thanksgiving coincides this year with the final Sunday of the liturgical calendar, to stop for a moment, and lift up our own doxology, and name some of things for which we are grateful this day.
So, what are you thankful for today?
At the risk of sounding way too churchy and giving a stereotypical preacherly response to the question, I want to offer thanks this morning for Jesus.
I don’t want to offer a Christology or an apologetics or any orthodoxy; rather a more simple doxology – an offering of praise and thanksgiving for the one who stands inescapably at the center of my life and faith.
Oh to be sure, there are many times when I’d rather not even acknowledge that center where Jesus stands. There are many times when I’d prefer a dark, quiet absence to the bright demanding presence of Christ in my life. There are many times when I’d prefer to pretend that I don’t know him at all and that, perhaps more to the point, he does not know me.
This final Sunday of the liturgical calendar – celebrated as Christ the King Sunday – can be one of those times. Frequently the lectionary places before us the famous passage from Matthew 25 where Jesus tells the parable of the king who sends to glory those who fed the hungry poor and visited the least of these in prison, while sending away to eternal damnation those who did not and reminding all of us that what we do or do not do to and for the least of these we do or do not do to Christ.
I love that particular text; and I stand under its judgment. I read it and prefer a quiet corner out of the way of the risks that reaching out to the least of these always requires. I read it and prefer a quiet corner out of the way where Jesus won’t be looking at me asking me to take the risks that incarnate faith always asks of us.
So how is it that I should come to offer thanks for Jesus this morning? I mean, when I’ve just given this list of reasons why I’d so often rather avoid him altogether, why this claim of gratitude?
To begin with: gratitude. That is to say, following Nouwen, I believe gratitude is the fundamental attitude, outlook, perspective of authentic religious feeling – true faith, deep spirituality. Gratitude opens our hearts, and our hands. Gratitude opens us to the present moment – with all its earthy messiness, its mix of joy and suffering, its inescapably incarnate, bodily fullness. And, just as importantly, gratitude opens us to the possibility of a future otherwise; in other words, to hope – the primary form of expression of any authentic religious experience of gratitude. In other words, when we feel gratitude, we express hope.
During my years in Cleveland, I was fortunate enough to meet Willa Carpenter, a feisty retired postal worker who was five years past a diagnoses of terminal cancer that had given her one year to live. I visited Willa regularly for the two years we were in Cleveland – at first in her home, then in the hospital, and finally in a nursing home. She’d long-since lost all of her hair to the drugs, so she had the most amazing collection of hats – such that, at her funeral, I read from a Nikki Giovani poem about black women in big hats on their way to church.
But the funeral is rushing ahead of the story. Indeed, focusing on the funeral would make it seem as if the story was Willa’s dying – as if the story of life can be reduced to the inevitability of death.
And although she was dying the entire time I knew her – progressing from one stage to the next of the disease that would eventually claim her – my many visits with her were never about death and dying. Indeed, although she thanked me profusely every time I stopped in to see her, I always felt that it should be the other way around. There was about her an air of such gratitude for every little thing that, even though she was wasting away, she was, till the last breaths were leaving her body, surrounded also by an air of profound hope as well.
I would never have numbered Willa Carpenter among “the least of these.” Indeed, she would have greeted the notion with a guffaw and probably the back of her hand, as well. She was feisty, as well as grateful, until the very end.
But, of course, in her extremity, she was – as are each of us – among the least.
The story of Jesus is the story of how power is confronted by the reality of powerlessness. It is most obviously a political story, but it is also, subtly, a quite personal story as well. The struggle between power and powerlessness plays out within each of us.
On the cross, that struggle is turned upside down, as Jesus – in the least powerful position imaginable – claims ultimate authority over the powers of death itself.
My friend Willa understood this deep in her cancer-ridden bones, and the gratitude with which she lived was the incarnation of this hope.
When we live into this hope, which we Christians encounter in the person of Jesus, our lives become a bold, risk-taking incarnation of the Christ whose light shines within us.
So this morning, no matter what places that may take me, no matter what risks it may impose upon my life, I’m simply giving thanks. Amen.
November 25, 2007
I was out running one day last week – my head was a bit stuffed up, my knees were achy, my back was feeling every one of its almost 48 years – and my heart was filled with a profound gratitude for this flesh, for being incarnate, for being embodied.
The fall colors stood out against a slate grey sky and filled my field of vision. I could hear a crow cawing in a tree overhead, and hear the flow of Four Mile Run alongside the trail. I could feel the solid ground beneath my footfalls, and nod at other folks on the path with whom I share this common wealth. I felt as if a doxology was sounding forth all around me.
If Henri Nouwen was correct in saying that gratitude is the fundamental perspective on the world shared by all of the world’s great religious traditions, then my several miles in the church of the great outdoors was the most religious experience I’ve had recently. Likewise, following Nouwen’s observation, Thanksgiving is the most essentially religious holiday that we mark. Oh, not sectarian, to be sure, and not even theist, but fundamentally religious.
So I thought it would be appropriate this morning, as the Sunday after Thanksgiving coincides this year with the final Sunday of the liturgical calendar, to stop for a moment, and lift up our own doxology, and name some of things for which we are grateful this day.
So, what are you thankful for today?
At the risk of sounding way too churchy and giving a stereotypical preacherly response to the question, I want to offer thanks this morning for Jesus.
I don’t want to offer a Christology or an apologetics or any orthodoxy; rather a more simple doxology – an offering of praise and thanksgiving for the one who stands inescapably at the center of my life and faith.
Oh to be sure, there are many times when I’d rather not even acknowledge that center where Jesus stands. There are many times when I’d prefer a dark, quiet absence to the bright demanding presence of Christ in my life. There are many times when I’d prefer to pretend that I don’t know him at all and that, perhaps more to the point, he does not know me.
This final Sunday of the liturgical calendar – celebrated as Christ the King Sunday – can be one of those times. Frequently the lectionary places before us the famous passage from Matthew 25 where Jesus tells the parable of the king who sends to glory those who fed the hungry poor and visited the least of these in prison, while sending away to eternal damnation those who did not and reminding all of us that what we do or do not do to and for the least of these we do or do not do to Christ.
I love that particular text; and I stand under its judgment. I read it and prefer a quiet corner out of the way of the risks that reaching out to the least of these always requires. I read it and prefer a quiet corner out of the way where Jesus won’t be looking at me asking me to take the risks that incarnate faith always asks of us.
So how is it that I should come to offer thanks for Jesus this morning? I mean, when I’ve just given this list of reasons why I’d so often rather avoid him altogether, why this claim of gratitude?
To begin with: gratitude. That is to say, following Nouwen, I believe gratitude is the fundamental attitude, outlook, perspective of authentic religious feeling – true faith, deep spirituality. Gratitude opens our hearts, and our hands. Gratitude opens us to the present moment – with all its earthy messiness, its mix of joy and suffering, its inescapably incarnate, bodily fullness. And, just as importantly, gratitude opens us to the possibility of a future otherwise; in other words, to hope – the primary form of expression of any authentic religious experience of gratitude. In other words, when we feel gratitude, we express hope.
During my years in Cleveland, I was fortunate enough to meet Willa Carpenter, a feisty retired postal worker who was five years past a diagnoses of terminal cancer that had given her one year to live. I visited Willa regularly for the two years we were in Cleveland – at first in her home, then in the hospital, and finally in a nursing home. She’d long-since lost all of her hair to the drugs, so she had the most amazing collection of hats – such that, at her funeral, I read from a Nikki Giovani poem about black women in big hats on their way to church.
But the funeral is rushing ahead of the story. Indeed, focusing on the funeral would make it seem as if the story was Willa’s dying – as if the story of life can be reduced to the inevitability of death.
And although she was dying the entire time I knew her – progressing from one stage to the next of the disease that would eventually claim her – my many visits with her were never about death and dying. Indeed, although she thanked me profusely every time I stopped in to see her, I always felt that it should be the other way around. There was about her an air of such gratitude for every little thing that, even though she was wasting away, she was, till the last breaths were leaving her body, surrounded also by an air of profound hope as well.
I would never have numbered Willa Carpenter among “the least of these.” Indeed, she would have greeted the notion with a guffaw and probably the back of her hand, as well. She was feisty, as well as grateful, until the very end.
But, of course, in her extremity, she was – as are each of us – among the least.
The story of Jesus is the story of how power is confronted by the reality of powerlessness. It is most obviously a political story, but it is also, subtly, a quite personal story as well. The struggle between power and powerlessness plays out within each of us.
On the cross, that struggle is turned upside down, as Jesus – in the least powerful position imaginable – claims ultimate authority over the powers of death itself.
My friend Willa understood this deep in her cancer-ridden bones, and the gratitude with which she lived was the incarnation of this hope.
When we live into this hope, which we Christians encounter in the person of Jesus, our lives become a bold, risk-taking incarnation of the Christ whose light shines within us.
So this morning, no matter what places that may take me, no matter what risks it may impose upon my life, I’m simply giving thanks. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
2:43 PM
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