Materials
Living In The Way
of Jesus,
#4
Living
In The Way Of Jesus: Gratitude
Psalm 118:19-29
by R. Todd Bouldin
This week we all will gather around our tables with friends
and family once again and give thanks. Thanksgiving seems so innocent
and so normal on the surface. No one is harmed by a little thanksgiving.
Even non-religious people this week will celebrate the day, and may
even bow in prayer to show their gratitude to whoever they believe
God to be. But there is another side to Thanksgiving, and it really
isn’t so innocent and harmless. In a culture where unleashed
capitalism and relentless marketing tells us that there is always
more that we should have and experience, thanksgiving proclaims a
subversive message that we have enough.
19 Open to me the gates of
righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the
LORD.
20 This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through
it.
21 I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.
22 The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
23 This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.
24 This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be
glad in it.
25 Save us, we beseech you, O LORD! O LORD, we beseech you, give
us success!
26 Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. We bless
you from the house of the LORD.
27 The LORD is God, and he has given us light. Bind the festal procession
with branches, up to the horns of the altar.
28 You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God,
I will extol you.
29 O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love
endures forever.
Prayer -
Dear God, give us the vision of a world filled with
Your Presence and of life filled with gifts that come from You, the
great Giver
of Gifts. Make us grateful
not only for the blessings that we see, but also for Jesus Christ who will
bring to us all the blessings we cannot see but one day we will know face
to face. In His Name, Amen.
The Psalm I read earlier belongs
to one of the group of Psalms known as the Hallel or praise psalms. When
the Hebrews heard, “Blessed
is The One who comes in the Name of The Lord,” those words
were as familiar to them as “Amazing grace how sweet the sound!” or “A
Mighty Fortress is Our God.” These songs were sung especially
during the festive season of Passover.
This Psalm gives thanks to God for what God has done. That is the
first and most basic kind of thanksgiving: responsive gratitude. “ I
thank You that You have answered me and have become my salvation.“ (Psalm
118:21). So when Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey during
the Passover
season,
the crowd began to sing the hymn once again, “Blessed is The One who
comes in the Name of The Lord.” They probably didn’t start singing
it when He arrived. They probably had been singing it for a while, the lines
over and over just like a contemporary worship song that won’t quit.
But the Gospels make it clear that the crowd was clearly singing this song
to Jesus for all that He had done in His ministry, or maybe for what they expected
Him to do. Perhaps Zachaeus, Lazarus, or blind Bartimeaus were in the crowd
that day. Responsive gratitude responds to the grace we have received from
God with thanksgiving. This is the most basic kind of gratitude but it still
isn’t easy.
Responsive gratitude wells up within us when we are paying attention to the
blessings of life. You don’t have to be particularly spiritual to do
this. You just have to be mindful of life and what you’ve been given.
It always could be a lot worse. It is worse for someone. There always is someone
who has it a lot worse than you. But that’s just a “bottomline” responsive
gratitude. Responsive gratitude also comes from the discipline of opening your
eyes to the blessings all around you.
Two attitudes keep us from this kind of
gratitude: the desire for more, and the decision to see yourself as a victim.
First, the desire
for more comes from our instinct to believe that we never have enough.
Timothy Miller says in his book "How To Want What You Have" that
our natural instinct is to want more. All your discontent and unhappiness
in life comes from thinking that life should be “more” than
it is right now. Just this past week, I’ve counseled a friend
who is in his mid-thirties, he is a lawyer at a prestigious law firm
in Washington, DC and he makes almost $150,000 per year. But he is
scared that he isn’t where he should be in his life, that others
are getting ahead, that his career isn’t taking him toward
his goals. Most of our frustration with life comes down to this desire
to have something more than we have: a bigger house, a better husband
or wife, more money, better sex, more appreciation, a fitter body,
or a better location. This desire robs us of our joy because this
desire unleashes a voracious hunger in our life that becomes woven
into the fabric of our existence. Our daily lives are characterized
by discontent. Whatever “more” you need becomes what
you are because it is all that you think about, and it leaves no
room in your life for seeing the pervasive Presence and beauty of
God in your life.
God has surrounded us with amazing gifts and beauty,
but it takes discipline to see it. You know the feeling that you
get when you
hear Louis Armstrong’s song, “What a Wonderful World.”
I
see trees of green, red roses too,
I see them bloom for me and you,
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue and clouds of white,
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night,
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.
I hear babies cry, I watch them grow.
They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know.
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.
That feeling can be yours every day. The secret
to happiness is never getting what you want. Drawing
on the title of Miller’s
book, it is wanting what you have. It is to find the beauty in everyday
life: in a child’s smile, in the full moon in the sky, or in
the hug of a brother or sister, the sun setting over the ocean, the
view of the Channel Islands on a clear day, the satisfying meal,
the roses in bloom around our building, the warm air in November,
the bright blessed day, and the dark sacred night. “This is
the day that The Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm
118:24)
The secret to gratitude is to hear and see the beauty of God
in all the universe, to find satisfaction in the company of the people
already in your life, to see in ordinary things and people the sacred
Presence of God, to realize that there is beauty and meaning and
truth and love and mystery in the world at all times and places.
It is to discover your connection to your Creator, the giver of all
gifts. Good life comes down to this: to know that our God is
the giver of gifts, to know that all that really matters
in life is a gift to us. It really is a wonderful world. When we try to obtain
what should be a gift, we go back to anxiety and frustration with
the “more” that we want but can’t have.
The church
of the first century opened their eyes to a world gifted by the Presence
of Christ and The Spirit of God, and they became generous people.
You can have the life you’ve always wanted, and it comes when
you are able to trust the flow of life, accept it all as a gift,
and give thanks. When you live every day surrounded by grace rather
than by unfilled cravings, you will see so much more than you ever
thought possible to see, and do much more than you ever thought imaginable.
But it will require you to live every day a conscious recognition
that your life is enough, and even when you perceive that it isn’t,
your God is. So accept the life that comes to you as a gift, and
when it comes, give thanks.
The second hurdle to responsive gratitude
is our decision to remain a victim. Some people refuse to give thanks.
They focus on their
loss, their hurt, the way others have wronged them, and what life
has not brought them. But that is their choice. Complaint is not
natural, and neither is gratitude. Life often will hurt. But what
comes next is up to you. You can respond by complaining, or by giving
thanks. Those who choose to give thanks choose not to be victims.
Don’t dare allow circumstances to arrest your heart. Insist
on your freedom to choose your response, and choose to give thanks.
It sure feels better than whining, and those around you will certainly
enjoy you a lot more. The irony is that you may just receive
from life or others what you were wanting when your life does not
communicate
need but satisfaction – and that can only come from giving
thanks for what you already have.
But there is a more mature form
of gratitude than just responsive gratitude. Creative gratitude
does not wait for circumstances to
set an agenda for you to respond with thanksigiving. Creative gratitude
does not respond to the world you are given but creates new worlds.
It is subversive and even threatening to the world we read about
in the papers and pain-filled lives we see in the mirror because
it insists on giving thanks for a world being reconciled to God and
a creation being freed from its brokenness.
The Hallel Psalms were
sung at Passover when the Hebrews remembered that God had freed them
from slavery and brought them through the
Red Sea to a promised land. In the Exodus, God miraculously changed
the way it is, brought down an enslaving empire and created hope
where there had been no hope. So the Psalms remind us that there
we are not called just to give thanks while we are slaves, or just
when things could be worse, or when there is temporary relief from
what is otherwise a miserable existence. The Psalms call us to gratitude
that comes from envisioning a world in which God can do impossible
things, a world in which God is going to change the way it is. When
the crowds on Palm Sunday repeated this Psalm as Jesus rode past
them into Jerusalem, they gave thanks with these words and claimed
a new world in their midst. “The stone that the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone. This is The Lord’s doing
and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm
118:26). And so our thanksgiving
proclaims our gratitude for a world that is coming to be and not
just for the one that is.
Amidst the ravaging plagues upon the population,
Muslim invasions from the East, a corrupt church, and unstable kingdoms,
the Abbott
of the monastery in St. Denis in France had the audacity to construct
a church with a new architectural form we call “gothic.” The
Abbott was creating a church which represented his vision of heaven
touching earth. It was revolutionary architecture that shaped a culture
for centuries. New discoveries in science, politics and theology
followed. The Gothic cathedral made the extraordinary claim that
heaven had touched earth, and when people believe that, they become
grateful and then become creative. Sometimes they even become subversive,
as when the churches of East Germany declared their freedom in Christ,
long before the Berlin Wall came down. It’s the gratitude that
Christians in North Korea are claiming now, and Christianity is spreading
all over the land held captive by a repressive regime. Gratitude
refuses to accept the world as it is but envisions a world where
God can do the impossible and will.
If you can see that in Jesus Christ,
heaven has touched earth, then your heart can be filled with gratitude.
Jesus is all in all,
and fullness rather than depravity defines your life. Your thanksgiving
refuses to honor the disappointments and needs of the present. It
doesn’t take the cravings and the disappointments seriously
because the present will not last. In Christ, anything can happen,
because the earth is filled with the knowledge and Presence of God.
Heaven and earth have met.
So when great human tragedy, natural disasters,
war, illness, and unemployment invade our lives, we will not be a
victim. We will insist
on thanksgiving, and that opens up a whole new wonderful world to
us where anything can happen. “I will give thanks to You O
Lord, for Your steadfast love endures forever.” (Psalm
118:29)
November 20, 2005
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