Practicing Gratitude
Acts 4: 32-35
November 3, 2019
Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley
The Rev. Brett Younger is a Baptist pastor now serving a church in Brooklyn. He went to my alma mater, Baylor University, although we were not there at the same time.
In his first year there, when Parents Weekend came around, a letter went out to all students explaining that there would be a picnic on the quadrangle on Friday, except for those whose parents were not coming. Those orphan students were to go to the cafeteria as usual. Brett’s parents lived in Ohio and they weren’t coming to Texas for the weekend. Neither were his roommates’s parents. They thought it was hugely unfair to be left out of the picnic. So, they decided to go anyway. But, by the time they got in line for fried chicken, they were terrified that the kitchen workers were about to catch them. Brett said, “I imagined a woman in a hairnet shouting, ‘where are your parents? Your parents aren’t here. Security.’”
“So I decided to outsmart them. Just before I was given a drumstick, I shouted to no one at all, ‘Mom, I’ll be right there.’ That is when the most surprising thing happened. A woman I had never met shouted back, ‘I’m over here, son.’”
What would possess a stranger to claim him as her son? She turned out to be another student suspiciously there without her parents. Her name was Ashley. Brett and Ashley have been friends for decades now. For all that time, he has been calling her “Mom” and she has been calling him “Son.” [1]
There are probably many reasons why their friendship has endured, but I think a big factor in its beginning was gratitude. Gratitude for another person who gets your sense of humor and shares your willingness to break social norms. The kind of gratitude that comes from a shared experience can be a powerful bond.
The early Christian community was bound together by their shared experience of the risen Christ. At the start of his ministry, Jesus’s personal mission statement was a quote from Isaiah which began, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” As Jesus’ followers continued his mission, the most dramatic sign of resurrection power was a community in which there was not a single needy person. The transformation bought to the world, brought to their own lives by the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, drew from them a response of wonder and awe and gratitude. They created a community of sharing. Their faith in God was characterized by boldness and mutual generosity.
Last week, I spent a lot of time talking about what happened in Gander, Newfoundland on September 11, 2001. I talked about how the residents of that area provided extravagant hospitality for thousands of people who were stranded at the local airport when US airspace was closed. Every need – for food, shelter, medication, access to e-mail and telephones – every need you can imagine, was provided for, at absolutely no cost to the recipients. We can only imagine how grateful the plane people were. Of course they said thank you at the time. They also expressed it in many other ways. When they made it home, they sent back gifts and notes and money. One of the first notes to arrive was a fax, sent by Werner Kolb after he reached his home in the Netherlands. He said, “It is not possible for me to tell you how I felt during my stay with you. Only once was I treated in a similar way. This was when I was a child. I was liberated in Holland in 1945. You wonderful Canadians have not changed.” [2] Some plane people formed lasting friendships with local folks and returned to the area for frequent visits. One organization said thank you for the use of a school’s computers by entirely replacing and upgrading the school’s computer lab. On one departing plane, the passengers who knew that the local high school drop-out rate was high, agreed to set up a scholarship fund. Every adult on the plane signed a pledge form to donate. By the time they landed, they had $15,000 towards a fund which is now called the Lewisporte Area Flight 15 Scholarship Fund. It is now worth over $2 million and has provided almost 300 college scholarships.[3]
Gratitude is powerful. You should know that Emmanuel evokes gratitude. Some of the best God-moments I experience are when gratitude for this congregation is expressed to me. It’s one of the privileges of being pastor. Sometimes I receive the gratitude of strangers, like the time the Fellowship Fund paid for work boots so a man could get a paying job. Or when a newcomer thanked me, with tears in her eyes, for the worship experience on a Sunday morning. She was thanking me for my words in the sermon, but also for some very specific acts of hospitality that some of you had extended. Gratitude is not just limited to strangers and newcomers. I also regularly hear it from long-time members who are going through a particularly hard time and are grateful, in ways that cannot be easily expressed or measured, for the support and care you offer. When we receive sincere gratitude, especially from someone who cannot pay us in any other way, especially from someone who really needed what we shared, it is its own reward. It can transform us into people who want to do more for others because receiving gratitude is so powerful.
Gratitude is also transformative when we are the ones who offer it. John was the senior pastor in a church where I served as associate. Every time we celebrated the Lord’s Supper, after the elements had been distributed, he would lift the cup and say “Drink and remember and be thankful.”
Every time, I would hear that part “be thankful” and it would hit me in all the wrong ways. Internally, I would think “Well, I can’t just make myself be thankful. That’s not how it works. John shouldn’t say that like it’s a command.” And by the time I finished my internal conversation, communion would be over and I would have basically missed the moment. Back then, I thought that gratitude could only occur spontaneously, when the circumstances were right. But I have come to realize that thankfulness can be learned. We can choose gratitude by focusing on the good gifts around us, instead of primarily attending to the hard things. We can practice being gratitude.
In her book, Grateful, Diana Butler Bass writes: If you choose ingratitude, I cannot help you. But most of us do not willingly say, "I have decided to live my life free from thanksgiving.” . . . Even at ungrateful moments, we feel the tug toward something else. But it can be hard to get there. Ingratitude often results from misunderstanding the nature of thanks, failing to see the larger picture of our lives, or forgetting to nurture a spirit of gratefulness. . . .But when, if even for a little while, we choose gratefulness, that choice builds on itself and begins to create a spiral of appreciation. The first choice . . . sets up the next choice, and the next, and the next one beyond that. To choose gratitude is not an act of dogged determination. To choose gratitude is to hear an inner urging toward thanks, to be aware of the grace in life, and to respond. For whatever reason, we turn and reply to an invitation for a deeper, better life.”[4]
It turns out that we can “be thankful” on command if we practice it. And the more we practice it, the more natural it will become.
In this season, we have sought to cultivate wonder in our worship because wonder can lead to appreciation which can lead to gratitude. We have taken a look at the larger picture of our lives, examining the messages we’ve absorbed about money and responsibility and scarcity and enough. We’ve attended to scripture passages which encourage us to put our trust in God, to seek the things which are ultimate, rather than the illusory security of wealth and possessions. Our intention is to become more joyful, less anxious and more generous with our time and energy and money. Our goal is to let our faith shape and even transform our economics.
Today we come to an annual milestone in this faith community. Today we make a commitment of our financial resources for the next year. It’s a commitment we make to God’s work in the world through the mission and ministry of this church.
We do this every year. Some of us respond out of duty or maybe even guilt. We give because someone taught us we should. We give a certain percentage of our income because it seems like the responsible thing to do. On the other hand, every year, some of us give out of gratitude. We give in thankfulness for the good gifts in our lives. We give with a sense of wonder about what God has done and what God might yet do within us and among us. Now, when the pledges are received, when the financial people crunch the numbers, the $100 given from guilt looks just like the $100 given with gratitude. It all goes into the budget the same. But I think there is a difference. The difference is that the gift given with gratitude is more satisfying. The difference is that the gift given with gratitude brings more joy to the giver. So, beloved ones, may God transform our guilt and fear and duty into awe-inspired wonder and gratitude so that we may give with joy. Amen.
[1] Brett Younger in his sermon “Living with the Spirit” published at goodpreacher.com, April 20, 2011
[2] Jim DeFede, The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 221
[3] https://www.recordcourier.com/news/local/9-11-survivor-shares-experience-of-landing-in-newfoundland/
[4] Excerpted from Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks. Copyright © by Diana Butler Bass. Published by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Excerpt found here: https://day1.org/articles/5d9b820ef71918cdf2004236/diana_butler_bass_choosing_gratitude_as_a_way_of_life