In the name of the One from whom all blessings flow. Amen.
A recent Pew study found that 80% of all Americans report feeling thankful in the past week. 80%? If that seems a bit high to you, it seemed that way to author Diana Butler Bass, who has written a new book called Grateful. She says that she was confounded because other studies show that Americans are more anxious than ever and more pessimistic about the future. If you look at our economy or our political system, it certainly doesn’t seem like gratitude is a core principle in our society. She says that what we are experiencing is a “gratitude gap” between how we state that we feel and how our lives are actually lived out.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor in Nazi Germany who was martyred by the Nazi regime for his opposition to them. One of his most enduring pieces of writing is called The Cost of Discipleship in which he contrasts cheap grace with costly grace, and it’s a helpful way to think about the gratitude gap that we’re experiencing. One the one hand, we have cheap gratitude. We’ve all done it; it’s called “common courtesy.” Someone gives you something and you write them a thank-you note, whether you want to or not. Cheap gratitude is forced, rooted in the idea that you owe someone a “thank you” or that they owe you one. To be clear, if you give someone a gift in order to get something back from them, even a simple “thank you,” then it’s not a gift, it’s a transaction. Cheap gratitude is cheap because it costs very little. Saying “thank you” takes hardly any time or effort.
I’ve heard many recent veterans speak about how they are tired of hearing the phrase “Thank you for your service,” not because they don’t like the recognition, but because the people who say “Thank you for your service” feel that they’ve done their duty and are now able to receive the benefits of the veteran’s service with a clean conscience – that they don’t have to worry about the veteran suicide rate or the trouble caused to families by long deployments. Gratitude isn’t supposed to be something that we give in order to make things “even,” but so often that sort of cheap gratitude is what we give.
Corrie ten Boom was arrested for helping her Jewish friends in World War II, she lost family and friends to the Nazis, and she herself ended up in a concentration camp. She had every reason in the world not to be grateful for what was going on in her life, and yet she said: “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” When we are not grateful, we fill that space with anxiety. One Franciscan priest has gone as far to say that “the opposite of faith is not doubt, but anxiety.” To be less than grateful means that we are not fully trusting in God to provide for us.
Every single one of our Scripture readings this morning point us towards God’s abundant grace. Joel speaks of the ways in which the earth provides bountifully. Psalm 126 recounts how God transforms lack into plenty. 1 Timothy reminds us of the greatest gift of all – our salvation in Jesus Christ. And in Matthew, Jesus tells us that God will take care of us just as the birds of the air and lilies of the field are taken care of and so, we need not worry. Abundance and blessings are all around us, but we fail to recognize them, we squander them, we hoard them from others, and in doing so, we end up with the opposite of faith – anxiety.
The theological problem with cheap gratitude is that it is rooted in a worldview of scarcity. There is so much anxiety in our world around not having enough – enough money, love, time, power. And if we’re not worried about having enough, we worry that things aren’t good enough – that our car isn’t nice enough, that our body isn’t thin enough, that our friends aren’t friendly enough, that our house isn’t clean enough. A doctor at the Mayo Clinic has noted that about 80% of all stomach issues are not caused by organic issues, but rather stem from worry and fear. One theologian has said that “we are held captive by disappointment,” and it is clear that this disappointment, this lack of gratitude is infecting not only our culture, but our very bodies. And when nothing is ever enough, then our gratitude will always be cheap because it’s not coming from gratefulness, but rather obligation.
There was a study done on gratitude across cultures and one of the findings was that white American men are the least grateful people in the entire world. Gratitude is rooted in the realization that we have received something as a gift. One preacher describes our resistance to God’s abundance in this way: “The problem is that the human imagination is simply not large enough to take in all that God is and has to give. We are overwhelmed. God’s inexhaustible creation, limitless grace, relentless mercy, enduring purpose, fathomless love: it is just too much to contemplate, assimilate, or understand. And if humans turn away it is sometimes out of a misguided but understandable sense of self-preservation in the face of a tidal wave of glory.”
Indeed, our deficiency in the face of God’s grandeur overwhelms us. And we’ve so often been trained to treat independence, toughness, and self-sufficiency as virtues. Gratitude flies in the face of this though, as being thankful means that we have to admit that we are needy, dependent, incomplete, and reliant on others. So to protect ourselves, we function in the realm of cheap gratitude. We have even have a holiday called “Thanksgiving” which we celebrate under the guise of being thankful when gratitude is not a way of life for most of us. When we are closed off to the depths of gratitude, it means that we are not open the fullness of God’s grace.
This cheap gratitude is contrasted with costly gratitude. Bonhoeffer wrote, “In normal life one is not at all aware that we always receive infinitely more than we give, and that gratitude is what enriches our life.” Costly gratitude is different because it is a response as opposed to a transaction. Costly gratitude is allowing that tidal wave of glory to wash over us and transform us. Gratitude becomes not something we do by writing a note or saying “thank you,” neither of which are bad things to do, but gratitude becomes a way that we see the world. Instead of giving thanks, we become thankful; that is, we become full of thanks in response to the outpouring of God’s love for us.
This sort of true and Christian gratitude is about seeing the world differently, with eyes of love, with a heart for mission, with a foundation of abundance. It’s what at the heart of the meal that we’ve gathered for today – and I’m not talking about turkey and pumpkin pie. The word “Eucharist” means “good thanks.” And certainly, this meal is all about costly gratitude. It is costly because we recognize and admit our frailty and neediness as we kneel at the altar to receive the saving Body and Blood of Christ, which is a pure gift from God. The Eucharist is costly because it is a radical act in which we proclaim that the divisions and accolades of the world amount to nothing in face of the glory of God. The Eucharist is costly because in it we confess that all of our striving gets us nowhere, but rather we are utterly dependent on God.
And so we respond in gratitude and not out of any duty or obligation. God does not need us to celebrate the Eucharist, rather God gives us the Eucharist so that we might join the celebration. And just as there is transformation in the Eucharist, there is transformation in us as we take part in thanksgiving. Once we become aware of the ways in which God’s grace is given to us, we then respond by telling others about this amazing grace, by serving those in need just as God served us in our need, by practicing generosity because God has abundantly given us more than we could ask or imagine. And we practice generosity and service not because we must, but because it is the only natural response. Gratitude becomes a way of life as we approach relationships and situations trusting in God’s abundant love.
There’s a brain surgeon and researcher at Stanford who recently said in an interview that “We know this from science – when a person sees another person engage in a positive behavior, they’re many, many times more likely to engage in that behavior themselves. When they see another person act with kindness, or generosity, or gratitude it becomes infectious, a positive contagion.” He’s saying that gratitude is contagious, and so I commend the practice of gratitude to you on this Thanksgiving Day. Because our culture isn’t rooted in gratitude and we often are anxious about having enough, we do have to actually work to be more grateful. God has given us all abundant grace and mercy, let that seep into your soul that you might become infectiously grateful.
So today, however you will celebrate Thanksgiving – make gratitude a part of it. And not just by going around the table at dinner and saying what you’re thankful for, though that’s a good start. But how might gratitude flow through you? How might you not speak about your gratitude but show it through acts of mercy, and generosity, and service? How might a posture of gratitude change your reaction when you burn the rolls in the oven or when someone brings up the opposite political view at dinner?
And beyond today, give some thought to how you might include gratitude in each day. Maybe you put notes around your house to remind you to stop and smell the roses, or as Jesus puts it, to consider the lilies of the field. Maybe you set a reminder on your phone to remind you to take a moment to be grateful. Developing a prayer routine each evening in which you review your day with gratitude in your heart is a great practice. Before bed, just take a few minutes and walk through your day in your head and give God thanks for all the things that you overlooked.
David Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk who has written extensively about gratitude. He says “Everything is a gift. The degree to which we can awaken to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness; and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness.” Gratitude is such a core component of Christian living because by gratitude we are awakened to God’s grace and by it are able to serve those in need. Gratitude focuses our attention on how God blesses us with abundant love, on how God has given us the gift of Jesus, how God is with us by the Holy Spirit. Now and always, praise God whom all blessings flow.
