Sermon 5-8-2016‘Gratitude and Grace’;
2 Corinthians 4:5-15
Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow – The Three Essential Prayers, Riverhead Books, 2012, pps 43,46,47, 57,58.
John Piper: http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/grace-gratitude-and-the-glory-of-god
Pastor Ruthie Tippin, Indy First Friends
“Thanks” is the short form of the original prayer I used to say in gratitude for any unexpected grace in my life. ‘Thankyouthankyouthankyou.” As I grew spiritiually, the prayer became the more formal “Thank you,” and now, from the wrinkly peaks of maturity, it is simply “Thanks.” So says Anne Lamott, in her book, ‘Help, Thanks, Wow’. Thanks. Gratitude. Grace. Grace and gratitude are tied together, often in ways we don’t see.
Giving thanks covers a wide range of circumstances:
Whee! Level One Thanks: I found a close parking space!
Whoo! Level Two Thanks: The cop didn’t notice me speeding – or at least didn’t stop me for it. What a relief.
(deep breath) Whoooooo… Level Three Thanks: The white blood cell count was about allergies – not leukemia.
The scriptures are full of thanksgiving, just as we are, often after facing huge crises. It’s as if these deep places force us into exhaustion, need, our cry for help, and finally, our sense of gratitude that we are not alone. That the thin places between life and death, human and divine, love and Light are transparent, and God-in-us is also God-with-us. Thankyouthankyouthankyou. I have found grace.
Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, is a clay jar. He’s just like any one of us. He’d be happy to have a cop pass him by, to discover that he doesn’t have leukemia, or to pull into a close parking space at Kroger. He works for a living. He has friends - and he has enemies. Here, his integrity has been called into question, and his work, his ministry, is in trouble. The folks at Corinth aren’t sure they can trust him, so what he has to say matters even more than we might think: “We have this treasure in ordinary, everyday, clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. [2 Cor. 4:7-11]
Ordinary, fragile, regular people, are able to overcome incredible things through the life, power, and grace of God. What looks and feels like death, is really life. True life.
Anne Lamott: “Gratitude runs the gamut from shaking your head and saying “Thanks, wow, I appreciate it so much,”… to saying “Thanks, that’s a relief,”… and of course, gratitude can be for everything in between… But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on. Through the most ordinary things… life is transformed.”
This transformation is just what Paul is talking about. Our reading today ended with Paul saying in verse 15, and our NRSV translation got it right: “Everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.” John Piper writes: “Almost all English translations miss a beautiful opportunity to preserve in English a play on words that occurs in Paul's Greek. Paul says, "It is all for your sake, so that as charis extends to more and more people it may increase eucharistian to the glory of God." The Greek word for thanks is built on the word for grace: charis becomes eucharistian. This could have been preserved in English by the use of 'grace' and 'gratitude' which show the same original root. So I would translate: "It is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase gratitude to the glory of God." The reason this is important is because when we try to define thanks or gratitude, what we find is that it has a very close relationship to grace. Unless we see this relationship, we really don't know what gratitude is.
Piper goes on to explain what gratitude is NOT. Saying ‘thank you’ out of habit, or because your dad told you to, is not being grateful. It’s a good thing to be trained to have good manners – ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ goes a long way – but true gratitude is a feeling, not a rehearsed response. ‘…gratitude is more than delighting in a gift. It is a feeling of happiness directed toward a person for giving you something good. It is a happiness that comes not merely from the gift, but from the act of giving. Gratitude is a happy feeling you have about a giver because of his giving something good to you or doing something good for you… [and] the emotion of gratitude generally rises in proportion to how underserved a gift it is. In other words, gratitude flourishes in the sphere of grace. And that is why the play on words in 2 Corinthians 4:15 is significant. Grace is charis and gratitude is eucharistian because gratitude is a response to grace. Gratitude is the feeling of happiness you feel toward somebody who has shown you some undeserved kindness, that is, who has been gracious to you.
For Paul, for me, for you, that’s Christ. Christ loves us at our worst, at our best, at our most selfish, at our most generous, at our most ugly, at our most beautiful. Christ loves us. Christ loves us all. Regardless of who we are, of how atrocious or spectacular our manners are, how kind or thoughtful we are, how much we deserve kindness in return. Christ loves us all without qualification. Christ loves Donald, and Bernie, and Hillary. Christ loves Muslims and Christians. Christ loves gays and straights, fundamentalist Christians and atheists. Christ loves you and me. And there isn’t a thing we can do about it. Christ loved the Corinthians that weren’t so sure about Paul, and Christ loved Paul. Christ would have died from old age if he didn’t love us… all. That’s grace. That’s what Paul, and Annie, and I, are talking about today. And that’s why we can all say, “Whoooo… thanks.”
Anne Lamott: “The truth is that ‘to whomever much is given, of him will much be required; and to whom much is entrusted, of him more will be asked,” if Jesus is to be believed. He meant us. Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that’s been given to you, in your lifetime and in the past few days, it’s hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.” Gratitude is a response to grace.
So – this is Sunday – First Day. Think backwards. Just this past week. Where did you experience grace? How did you respond? How did you behave? How did your behavior reflect the grace of God? The goodness of God? The gratitude you have for all you have, toward God? It’s hard not to be humbled, isn’t it? A big part of the word gratitude is attitude!
“Saying and meaning “Thanks” leads to a crazy thought”, says Annie. “What more can I give? We take the action first, by giving – and then the insight follows, that this fills us. Sin is not the adult bookstore on the corner. It is the hard heart, the lack of generosity, and all the isms, racism, and sexism and so forth. But is there a crack where a ribbon of light might get in, might sneak past all the roadblocks and piles of stones, mental and emotional and cultural? We can’t will ourselves to be more generous and accepting. It obviously behooves me to practice being receptive, open for the business of gratitude. A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: “I’m not going to take anything away from you. You have to give it to Me.”
“I have found,” Annie says, “that I even have to pray for the willingness to give up the stuff I hate most about myself. I have to ask for help, and sometimes beg. (Mayday!) That’s the human condition. I just love my own guck so much. Help.”
Perhaps, if we ‘cracked pots’ – so fragile, thin, and open, can allow the Light of God, that ‘ribbon of light’, to permeate us, to fill us, to provoke us to use the Light we are and have for others, we will discover the charis – the grace of gratitude - for ourselves, and for others. Our thanks will mean more to us. We will say it more often. We will say it with greater cause and for deeper reason. Our thanks will be filled with giving. Our giving will be filled with thanks. Our gratitude will come from the attention we’re paying to God’s good grace. ‘thankyouthankyouthankyou’ Amen.