Sermon for November 19, 2006ARE YOU FEELING GRATEFUL OR FEELING ENTITLED?By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
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Scripture: Philippians 1:3 I thank my God every time I remember you, Craig Wilson writes a weekly column for USA Today each Wednesday and it is one of the first things that Judy and I read when we get the Wednesday paper. He told this week about several experiences where people lost something very dear and then were ungrateful when they got their lost item back. Wilson says he found on a Sunday morning after walking through the woods, a cell phone and a credit card sitting on a curb. He took them home and when the cell phone rang it was the owner. Wilson said the woman had a lot of moxie; she did not offer much gratitude but instead asked him if he would send her credit card and phone to her-she just lived two miles away from him. He told her no, she could come get them and if he was not home he would leave them in his mailbox. She came when he was out for a run and in the mailbox there was no acknowledgement, no thank you, no “you saved my life, I’ll get you a gift certificate”-no expression of thanks. He says a couple of years earlier, living in the Washington DC area, he found a driver’s license on the street and he says that anyone who has ever dealt with the DC Department of Motor Vehicles knows that you don’t want to lose your driver’s license. He saw that the fellow lived just a couple of blocks away and called him up. The owner was sort of blasé about it all and asked if Wilson could just come by and slip the driver’s license under his door; he wasn’t very grateful and did not offer to come by and get it himself. Wilson says he sees this as a lack of courtesy and manners; I think it is deeper. I think it is about self absorption and a feeling of entitlement instead of the Biblical posture of gratitude and thankfulness that Paul exhibits in the first part of his Philippian letter. Paul takes pains to say he is deeply thankful for the support network he feels among the folks in Philippi, and this is a contrast to the self centeredness and entitlement that we see so much of now. Why should I be thankful—I am entitled to everything I have and much more, people think. I knew of a man in Colorado Springs a few years ago who did not celebrate Thanksgiving Day because, he said, he had no reasons to feel thankful to God or anybody else—he was a self made man, he deserved all he had, he had earned every bit, he was ENTITLED to it and he had no reason to thank God or anyone else or to feel any gratitude at all. There is a Bible story about this contrast between feeling thankful and feeling entitled. Toward the end of the gospel of Luke Jesus is traveling from Galilee where he has spent most of his three years of ministry teaching and preaching and healing. He is on the way now to Jerusalem where he will confront the self serving religious bureaucracy and put his life at risk. And on the way, he has to travel by the region of Samaria. When Luke tells us that, a light will go on in the minds of his listeners and it will go on in our minds if we have any familiarity with the Bible. Why? The Jews and Samaritans were hostile to each other. There was much bitterness from the time 700 years before Jesus when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and some of those Jews compromised their faith and intermarried with the Assyrians and then became known as Samaritans. Also, 200 years later when the Jews who had been captive in Babylon came back to Jerusalem and were rebuilding the city and the Temple, some of those Samaritans made it difficult for them. Jews and Samaritans did not speak with each other or associate with each other. They were on very unfriendly terms. That is why it is so scandalous in the Gospel of John that Jesus is even traveling through the region of Samaria and stops in a village where, at the well, he asks a woman for a drink and she is astonished because he is a Jew and she is a Samaritan and he is willing to drink from her water cup! It is also the reason in the gospel of Luke that when Jesus tells the story of the man who was robbed and beaten and left to die, a priest and a Levite passed him by and left him but when the third man came by and helped him, there was a gasp from the crowd around Jesus as he told the story because the man who helped was—a SAMARITAN!! You and I know the parable by the title of the Good Samaritan but there was no such thing in first century Judaism as a “good” Samaritan. That background is important as you hear the story of Jesus as he is traveling to Jerusalem for the high noon showdown with the establishment and ten lepers call to him from a distance, “Jesus, master, have compassion for us.” They do not get close to him because lepers were outcasts; they were misfits and sinners. Remember what happens? Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priest and on the way, they were healed. What did they do after they were healed? Only one of them, when he realized he was healed, came right back to Jesus, praising and thanking God and thanking Jesus. Jesus said, “Where are the others? Why don’t they feel grateful also?” The one who came back, Luke tells us, was a foreigner, a Samaritan. The others did not return perhaps because they felt entitled. They were self absorbed? Who knows? Certainly they did not have the attitude of gratitude that Paul exhibits in our scripture reading and that he so often in his letters asks us to have as well: Be thankful in all circumstances, he says in one place. Not, be thankful FOR all circumstances but in all circumstances. Or he reminds us elsewhere, what do you have that you did not receive? God has been good to each of us and God is with each of us supporting and sustaining us and giving us hope even in the dark times. What do you have that you have not received? Alex Haley author of the Roots book and TV series several years ago had a photo in his office of a turtle sitting on a fence post. He has it there to remind him of a lesson taught him by a friend who said, “If you see a turtle on a fence post, you know he had some help getting there.” Haley said, “Any time I start thinking, Isn’t this marvelous all of what I have done, I look at that picture and remember how much help I have had getting to where I am.” Albert Einstein said that as well: “A hundred times a day I remind my self that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of others, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am receiving.” That attitude from Einstein is not an attitude of entitlement; it is an attitude of gratitude. How much do we have to have to feel thankful this week? What if life is not going well for us? How could we feel grateful to God? The people who first began an annual day to give thanks to God could answer that for us. The folks who came over to the new land in 1620 had a horrible first year here. Of the 120 or so who came from England to the new world, only about half that number survived the devastating winter. They had to bury children and mothers and fathers. Luckily after that winter they had made friends with the Native Americans and began to learn which crops would be best and learned about the best places for hunting and fishing. And in the fall of 1621—you remember the story, William Bradford, the leader of the colony declared a festival to thank God just for being alive and surviving and for the birth of hope amongst them, and they invited their native friends and had a three day feast of food and games and of giving thanks to God just for being alive. That is the place to begin our thanksgiving to God—Thank you God for the gift of getting up this morning and being able to move around and have another day of life. Thanks be to God. David Rothenberg understood that. Remember David’s story—the boy whose mentally ill father came into his room during the night and poured kerosene all over the room and all over the child and set everything on fire? David, although burned over 95% of his body, survived and has had to undergo numerous operations as he grew up. But at the age of seven, young David gave us these words about being grateful instead of just thinking we are entitled: I am alive! I am alive! I am alive! I didn’t miss out on living, and that is wonderful enough for me!! And in the Bible, not only do we hear the apostle Paul tell us from his prison cell that it is possible to feel grateful and to give thanks in all time and circumstances, we hear these words from the book of Habakkuk about trusting in God even in the hardest of times:
One last thing, feeling thankful this week is not enough. We have to say and to show it. Someone said. “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. These commitment cards are one tangible way we express our deep thanksgiving to God and our insight that God has blessed us so that we can BE a blessing to others. We have to DO something to show our thanks. And we have to say Thank You to others instead of feeling like life just owes us all we have and we are entitled. What do you need to do or say to express/show your thankfulness? You have heard the story of the fellow who looked up the address of his high school teacher from 30 years ago and wrote her to tell her how important an influence she was in his life. She wrote back: “My dear Will. I want you to know how much your note meant to me. I am an old lady now, 82 years old, living by myself, cooking my own meals, feeling like the last leaf on the tree. You will be interested to know that in all the years I taught school, yours is the first letter of appreciation I received. It came on a cold, blue morning and it cheered my lonely, old heart as nothing has cheered me in a long time.” What do you need to do so show your thankfulness? Sponsor a family at Christmas? Write a couple of letters like Will did? Write that end of the year check you have been thinking about? What do you need to do to show you are grateful and not just feeling entitled? If you listen and pray, you will know the answer. |
