Sermon: Living Gratitude
In his letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul tells us “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” What could we possibly say in addition to this glorious hymn of rejoicing?
I believe that ‘rejoice’ is a state of being that is possible only when a person keeps a fundamental and particular attitude toward life – no matter the circumstances – GRATITUDE.
Mary Jo Leddy, the author of Radical Gratitude, describes it in the following way:
“I believe that each one of us has at least one significant word to say with our lives.
This word is who we really are, who we are meant to become, our calling in this world.
Within this word lies the secret of our happiness,
The source of power,
And the mysterious point of our being.
Through this particular word of our lives we bring the one thing still wanted and awaited in the world,
The one thing necessary that no other can give.
GRATITUDE
It is a particular grace. It is not easy to identify the word, which both concentrates and extends one’s life.
More obvious to a few, it is usually a long process of discovery for most.
Like Jacob we each have an angel to wrestle with,
The messenger who reveals our true name which is both wound and blessing.”
Gratitude is a basic attitude to life; when we keep it in our lives we need no other bulwark, no daily tribute to our self-esteem or our ego. Gratitude is a central practice of our faith, an all-encompassing attitude to life. We know when we miss it in our lives, because we soon learn and discover that we are missing the whole point of our being: not to constantly strive and pine for more, but to be grateful for this, now.
I see ourselves, the human family, as the co-creator with God, our Creator. We, beloved and being made in God’s image, participate in creating not only human communities but also a community of the earth where whole living beings find their home in the complexity and the delicate interconnections of life. Our earth is continuously evolving with human consciousness and God’s spirit. But we also see the damage and violence we are inflicting on the natural world and the rest of the human community. In our consumerist society, it seems that our intelligent, dreaming, unique and individual selves are being whittled down into streamlined, ravenous consumers, with a narrow existence of pursuing, consuming, and discarding. We pursue happiness but are chronically dissatisfied; our consumerist culture limits our sight to what we don’t have rather than to see what we really possess.
Our aging selves and the passage of years can erode our gratitude - it’s hard to be grateful for our present bodies when joints ache in the morning chill. We have known suffering, we have known loss. Dear friends and family members die, and watching their decline is very tough and heavy, especially contrasted with the memories of joyful moments when they were in their prime. Someone shared with me their recollections of the days when they and their friends did fun, crazy stuff together like square dancing, and how happy they were for the bonds of friendship and fun. It’s easy to be grateful for those times in retrospect, hard to let go of the longing to still be there.
When we are lost in ingratitude, we lose the whole point of our being – our calling in this world. We lose the secret of our happiness. We lose the source of power that grants us a sense of trust, as well - the trust that we are in the merciful hands of God, the radical gratitude that we can trust our Creator. The radical trust, confidence and gratitude that God intends to give blessings and love and we are meant to receive them.
I have always believed that God’s power is the power of creation – the creative work similar to that shown in the creative hands of an artist, the words of a poet, the tunes of a singer, the cries of a baby as well as their laughter (the natural response to the joy of life they live now). Gratitude begins as something as small and as real as a child and the hands of an artist – it enters the world with wonder as simple as a flower.
Gratitude is really an attitude and persistent act of faith, with which we can face the world and our life without fear. I believe that gratitude can grow with a simple change such as how we begin a day, how we wake each morning, how we open up to the beauty and the glory and the freshness of each new gifted sunrise. It is a commitment to an exploration of life as a gift, as a thing of not just promise but fulfillment.
Our hope is not receding when we can keep gratitude, when we can keep ‘rejoice’ as the seed for our life. Every moment is imbued with meaning and purpose and the colours and the strokes of a painter who is our Creator. One Jesuit professor liked to remind people of the beauty of now with the following words: “The present moment is pregnant with God.”
(In today’s scripture reading, the apostle Paul urges us to ‘rejoice.’ Here was a man who had lived through some tough times, who had been jailed, who had been seriously ill, who had been shipwrecked after enduring a fourteen-day storm. The man who says, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” isn’t just throwing us largesse from a blessed, comfortable life - he’s a man who thanked God from the heaving deck of a small boat while he was a prisoner under transport facing what seemed to be certain death.)
Gratitude is the small and basic seed of spirituality; we need to nurture it to live with the Spirit. Anger, resentment, despair, helplessness, a sense of powerlessness do very little to help make a difference in our lives and in our world. On Thanksgiving Day, today, practice gratitude. Show that you care for one another and for yourself; trust that God is merciful. Show your compassion to those around you who cannot let themselves believe that our world is evolving to a more compassionate way of being. Remember that gratitude is more than a feeling, it is an attitude, an act of faith. Begin each day with gratitude - even before you think you are ready. As written in today’s letter to the Philippians, be assured that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. May it be so. Amen.
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