Grace, Gratitude, and Generosity
Grace, Gratitude, and Generosity – they begin with and return to God. Such is the Kingdom of God.
Sunday, October 2, 2022, we did something we had not done st time we had come forward, receiving the communion elements – bread and wine, body and blood – kneeling at the communion rail, receiving the cup from a tray, or dipping a piece of bread into the juice. Much of our lives are still returning to normal since words like COVID, masks, Fauci, vaccines, and boosters became part of our common vernacular. Last Sunday, we came forward, receiving body and blood, some kneeling to pray while others were relearning the motions, asking, “When do we stand, sit, or kneel?”
There were some awkward moments, for sure but there were also moments of pure Grace.
A father and son at the 8:30 service kneeling together at the communion rail. Dad helping his son open the prepackaged elements, then receiving the elements together, and finally praying with and for one another.
A mother and her son, generations ahead of the father and son at the communion rail, were seated in a pew. The son serving his mother knowing she had spent a lifetime serving him. “Mom, the blood of Christ given for you.”
If you were here last Sunday, you know we are in the second week of our annual stewardship campaign. If you were here last Sunday, God bless you for coming back knowing the congregation will hit you up for money. If you arrived this morning, thinking yourself in the middle ofa of our annual fundraising drive, thank you for not walking out in the middle of the Children’s Moment.
Jesus is traveling with his followers between Galilee and Samaria. He is headed toward Jerusalem, perhaps moving through an unofficial neutral zone between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. Jesus is moving between two groups of people who did not get along. Two groups of people who would not be caught dead helping one another, let alone cohabitating in the same territory.
As Jesus entered a village, he was approached by ten men. Lepers in need of healing. Upon seeing Jesus, the ten men begin to shout.
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”[i]
“Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”[ii]
“Jesus, Master, show us mercy!”[iii]
Jesus sends the men to the priests, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”[iv]
You see, the priest - the religious professionals - were the only people who could declare someone who was ritually unclean to be healed or clean. But as the men turn and begin to make their way to see the priest, they are healed.
Realizing what had just happened, one of the men turned and approached Jesus. The man fell at Jesus’ feet, thank Jesus and praising God.
The story sounds normal enough for the Bible, but after the man returned to fall at the feet of Christ the healed man is identified as a Samaritan.
A Samaritan.
If you skipped Sunday school the day Samaritans were covered, he’s what you need to know.
First-century Jews did not go near Samaritans or Samaria. Jesus is too close to a place he should not be near, healing a person he should not be healing according to the cultural understandings of the first century. Samaritans were considered by their Jewish counterparts to be culturally inferior, and liturgical and theological heretics. On Samaritans Rachel Held Evans wrote, “Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, a story that carries extra significance when considering the fact that the Jews hated the Samaritans for their mixed Gentile blood and alternative worship style.”[v]
It would be easy to say, “look, the outsider recognized Jesus, and showed Jesus gratitude for an act of mercy. Go and do likewise.” But that’s not what is going on in this healing. Turning this lesson into another thing you need to do would cancel the Good News that Jesus has done everything required of us, on our behalf, at no cost to us. That’s a better deal than any Prime Day bargain you will find this week.
The Samaritan man returns because he realizes his life has been transformed by the Grace of God. He has been transformed by God.
The priest he was sent to see probably would not have taken the appointment, let alone declare him clean because in the eyes of the priest, a Samaritan could never be clean. In a world that told the man, “No,” Jesus said to him, “you are my beloved – healed, whole, and free.”
This lesson cannot be about gratitude because humans are not naturally thankful. Thankfulness is not an intrinsic human quality.
In her book Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks, author Diana Butler Bass writes, that gratitude is “an outlook toward life that manifests itself in actions—it is an ethic.”[vi]
Think about it, as a kid your parents most likely taught you to say “Thank you.”
“Say ‘thank you’ to Meemaw for your birthday present.”
“Make sure to write a thank you card to Uncle Pete for the graduation gift.”
“Always say ‘please and thank you’ when you’re in public.”
The Samaritan’s gratitude was a supernatural response because he was saved from the inside out by the Grace of God.
The generosity of God, cutting across cultural, liturgical, and theological boundaries produced a response of gratitude. The Samaritan celebrated what has been done for us by Jesus. The very thing we remember and celebrate when we gather around Christ’s table of Grace.
When we gather at the Table, we begin with gratitude.
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow; praise God all creatures here below; praise God above ye heavenly host; praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
The gratitude we expressed last Sunday was a response to the generosity of God.
Responses like “Thanks be to God,” “Praise the Lord,” or tears of joy without words because we know that in bread and wine, in body and blood, Jesus has saved us by his faithfulness when our faithfulness has run short.
Because we are recipients of a supernatural Grace, something we a difficulty naming but once we have experienced it, we are never the same, our posture and response to God are one of gratitude, shifting our worldview entirely.
Worship goes from being a 60-minute weekly hostage situation to being the posture we assume throughout the week. Stewardship becomes joy-filled generosity instead of being a fundraiser where the giver is constantly on the lookout for a return on their investment.
Jesus told the Samaritan man, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”[vii] “Get up and go. Your faith has healed you.”[viii] A better translation of this is, “Get us and go on your way. Your faith has saved you.” The mustard seed-sized faith that the man had transformed him from the inside out.
The same is true of us – the sinners and saints of the church. In his book, Kingdom, Grace, and Judgment Robert Farrar Capon wrote, “Grace perennially waits for us to accept our destruction and, in that acceptance, to discover the power of the Resurrection and the Life.”[ix]
God’s generosity produces gratitude in us, moving us from wondering what’s in it for us to seeing the Kingdom building we are called to as an opportunity to be an extension of the generosity of God’s Grace.
Grace, Gratitude, and Generosity – they begin with and return to God. Such is the Kingdom of God.
[i] Luke 17:13, NRSV and MSG
[ii] Luke 17:13, NIV
[iii] Luke 17:13, CEB
[iv] Luke 17:14, NRSV
[v] https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/newfundamentalist
[vi] Bass, Diana Butler. Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks. HarperOne. 2018.
[vii] Luke 17:19, NRSV
[viii] Luke 17:19, CEB
[ix] Capon, Robert. Kingdom, Grace, and Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus. Eerdmans. 2002.