Luke 17:11- 19,                                              Oct. 12.2008
Deuteronomy 8:7–18        The Gift of Thanks.     The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

Thanksgiving.  Giving thanks.  The importance of such activity is clear because we, as a society, have institutionalized it by a holiday weekend.  This very event suggests that gratitude is crucial to human growth and societal cohesion.  Yet the very fact of this thanksgiving weekend comes with ambiguity.  For some, rather than a reflection of giving thanks, it is a time to close up the cottage.  At the same time, it can be a time of feasting, with the joy of a gathering of family and friends.  And even at the feasting we can feel a resentment of obligation.  The meaning of the weekend gets lost.  As well we complain that gratitude is in short supply. Our society does not know the meaning of thanksgiving.  The holiday, and our complaints,  do remind us that a sense of thanksgiving is important to our well-being. It is a basic glue for our life together.

So our relationship with giving thanks is one full of questions.  How do we give thanks when our retirement fund took a big hit this week?  For some it is a matter of good manners, a social convention without any real sense of gratitude. For still others it is an obligation and that obligation can cause resentment. Giving thanks can be also self interest - we do it it to receive a pay back. 

In her new book, Margaret Vissar suggests that we learn about giving thanks  and that gratitude is developed and in the end gratitude rests on freedom.  Gratitude is not natural but is developed and it is developed only in a free act of giving and thanking.  Gifts are freely given and freely received.  It is not a matter of obligation but an attitude of this is who we are - we freely enter the process of giving and receiving. Yet this attitude is not easily achieved and we can learn it, and it begins in the mundane acts of saying thank you. 

Giving thanks is something that we do daily. Yet there are times that the thanks is more a polite response than heart felt. Other times, in gift giving we expect a thanks and that thanks stands in for our obligation of reciprocity or is contractual.  To arrive at gratitude , though, is to receive the gift without it obligating you to respond.  It is freely offer of thanks that leads to gratitude which is an attitude that is foundational to living.  Gratitude cannot be forced. it is an attitude that is nurtured in free response.  When we arrive at gratitude it helps create societies of gratitude where our response is freely offered out of heart of gratitude.

None of this comes naturally, for we teach our children to say thanks.  From our earliest time we are taught the codes of politeness - please pass the turkey, for many forget to do that automatically and we have to ask, and we then respond thank you, which can have an edge.  Social cohesion is maintained by this, as we teach that one should be aware of the needs of others, to move out of self interest.  So children are nurtured in learning thanks which prepares them to feel gratitude. I remember this fact vividly with my children.  We were at the table and Jeremy burped.  I said: “What do you say?”  He looked puzzled and then said: “Thank you?”  “No”, I said, “when you burp you say excuse me.”  He replied:  “I didn’t burp. I farted.”  The question is how do we move from this learned good manners to heartfelt response?

Good manners do have power to make our living together better.  Opening a door for another and then receiving a thanks makes our day better.  Giving a gift does have a social strategy.  Groups create identities that make it possible to exist. For example, vengeance as a primitive form of justice, creates a sense of security.  If harm came, some would fix the evil done.  As societies matured they look for ways of transcending primitive arrangements and gift exchange became a way of peace between warring groups.  A ceremonial gifting - and - returning creates obligation and thus security.  It replaces violence and hostility.  The more we share ideas, knowledge and goods, the more we talk, the more we increase the possibility of thanks which begins to form a grateful people.  This is why in areas of conflict we must always be reaching out to bring our enemies to the table for discussion and inclusion.

This gift giving, exchange process is a beginning.  There is a deeper level to gratitude that we must work towards.  “Gratitude, replacing selfishness, greed, disregard, ...has to be called upon to help us surmount the ecological crisis that now threatens our very existence.”  Gratitude is needed to help us to keep our heads and not fear, in our present situation.  Gratitude will seek the healing of others in times of war.

Our gospel lesson lifts up the question of thanks. All are healed and only one gives thanks.  This suggests  a new understanding of thanksgiving.  In an honor/shame society there were strong boundaries of inclusion and exclusion.  Gifts were within the group or tribe, and one had an expectation of a gift - so gratitude was not the outcome. One went to the priest to get what was owed by membership.  Gratitude, though,  suggests agency on the part of the gift giver - and agency on the receiver, we give thanks to, for
In our gospel it was a free gift of healing, not out of a obligation.  For it is the foreigner who is healed and her response tells us this healing was one that broke the boundaries of social obligation  The healed one gives thanks to Jesus, for the healing.  This is a grateful person who does not feel they deserved the healing.  Gratitude caused her to look beyond the gift to the giver. The healing changed the social relationship and the healed one freely returns and then is sent on his way without exceptions of a reciprocitial response.

The gratitude expressed is to move one from as sense of love based on family or group to a wide community inclusion. Gratitude is a matter of paying attention, deliberately beholding and appreciating the other.  It is a remembering, often for a long time the giving that has occurred. It is free response and entering a relationship with the gift giver.  One has been invited in and the invitation is one to look beyond clan or family or class.

When Dag Hammarskjold reflected on the inevitability of death he wrote:
- Night is drawing nigh - For all that has been - Thanks! To all that shall be - Yes!”

This is a thanks for the givenness of life.  God freely provides the aim of love to us and we are free not to even believe God exists.  We are graced and when we are filled with love, our gratitude for this grace expands us.  This gratitude is not heavy obligation but is light and gives light.

Our rituals and feasts prepare us and move us toward a new, inward knowing of grace, graceful life.  Giving thanks, singing thanks, sharing thanksgiving helps us accept the gift of God of love and hope.  Our activities of thanksgiving can open our hearts so we form a grateful heart.  Freely, we join ourselves with the aim of God moving toward beauty, justice and joy.

The fundamental human struggle is for identify and belonging.  We seek to be related to others and to that which is more than all of us - God.  Our practices of giving and receiving can helps us create identities of gratitude that become a source of our actions in the world.   We learn to see from the others’ viewpoint. We learn to give thanks for the gift of this world. And out of freedom we move on to living lives of gratitude because we have come to see our interdependence.  Being gifted we pay attention to the needs of others - realistically knowing the dangers of our world, the injustice.  Because there is a need we respond for we have been gifted. 

Source: Margaret Visser “The gift of Thanks”  Harper Collins 2008