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Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed,
turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself
at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus
asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are
they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God
except this foreigner?’

Let there be thanksgiving…

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within
me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not
forget all his benefits – who forgives all your iniquity, who
heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who
crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with
good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the
eagle’s.

I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole
heart, and I will glorify your name forever.

It is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing praises
to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the
morning, and your faithfulness by night.

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his steadfast
love endures forever. It is he who remembered us in our low estate,
for his steadfast love endures forever; O give thanks to the God
of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship
the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing.

Know that the Lord is God It is he that made us,
and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts
with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name.

For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures
forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall
continually be in my mouth.

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his
steadfast love endures forever.

What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty
to me? I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice and call on
the name of the Lord.

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food
will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the
harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way…
because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you.
Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in
the heavenly places, to the praise of his glorious grace that
he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. Do not worry about anything,
but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God. Thanks be to God, who
gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ… rooted and
built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were
taught, abounding in thanksgiving. …giving thanks to God the
Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ.

Though he kill me, yet I will trust in him.

Luke 17:15-18; Ephesians 5:4; Psalm 103:1-5; Psalm
86:12; Psalm 92:1,2; Psalm 136:1,23,26; Psalm 100:1-5; Psalm 34:1;
Psalm 107:1; Psalm 116:12,17; 2 Corinthians 9:10,11,15; Ephesians
1:3,6; Philippians 4:6; 1 Corinthians 15:57; Colossians 2:7; Ephesians
5:20; Job 15:13 (margin).

…..

Did you hear about the grateful entrepreneur who
was kidnapped by a thug and threatened with death? He had his
response ready: ‘Thanks for not coming sooner!’ Then there was
a grateful clergyman who surveyed the empty pews one stormy Sunday
night and prayed ‘Thanks Lord that’s it’s not always like this!’
And a very grateful American Christian took the text seriously
which encourages us to be grateful for all things. He made a long
list of ‘all things’ for which he was grateful. At the bottom:
‘When I’m lied about.’

Unto us a son is born; unto us a Son is given. Jesus
the Son of God has taught us by his words and his life how to
be grateful. He once healed ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19) and sent
them off for the regulatory examination by the Jewish priests,
so that they could be pronounced well, and be accepted back into
the life of the community. But only one came back to thank him
– and he was a Samaritan…

At the end of his life Jesus and his friends were
in the Upper Room, and there was a feeling of dread and foreboding
in the group. They were sharing the Last Supper together on the
eve of his execution. He took bread and broke it – as a symbol
of his body soon to be broken… Then he took a cup, filled it
with wine – as a symbol of his blood soon to be poured forth onto
the earth. And then he gave thanks! Have you ever thought about
that? In his darkest hour, he gives thanks! With death almost
upon him, he is grateful!

How does anyone get to be like that? There is only
one answer: Jesus had the kind of relationship with a loving Father
which never doubted that despite trouble and even calamity, God
is good; beyond death there is always resurrection. And as the
early Church Fathers were fond of saying, ‘He became what we are,
so we could become what he is.’

The saints, along with an awareness of original sin,
have a similar deep awareness of original love as well. They live
as if goodness and mercy are following them all the days of their
lives.

When we were born – naked, bloody, scrawny-looking
– we were nurtured and cared for. The first seven years of our
lives we were taught to say ‘thank you’ (and then we were taught
to become so independent of others we wouldn’t have to say ‘thank
you’ again!). Many parents would echo Shakespeare’s lament, ‘How
sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.’
Unfortunately unhappy children make unhappy parents (in both senses).

Gratefulness is the soil out of which every other
virtue grows. ‘Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues,
but the parent of all the others,’ claimed Cicero. Grateful people
are truly happy people.

Negative and ungrateful people are unhappy people,
who not only make others unhappy, but whose ingratitude cancerously
destroys their own vitality. For the grateful, life is good even
when storm-clouds threaten; the grumbler invariably chooses darkness
and gloominess. Why are some people ‘nice’ and others ‘nasty’?
Simple: nice people have learnt the art of gratitude, nasty people
haven’t.

W.H.Auden observed:

… weather Is what nasty people are Nasty about,
and the nice Show a common joy in observing.

Nasty people don’t know how to be thankful. But why
are they nasty? Gounod, the composer, had a deep insight into
human nature when he said, ‘There are three things for which people
will never forgive you: the evil you have done to them; the evil
they have not been able to do to you; and the good you have done
to them which has placed them under an obligation to you.’ St.
Vincent de Paul puts it more Christianly: ‘The poor will never
forgive you the good you have done them, unless you love them…’

A proverb that exists in more than one language says
that if you want to help someone, don’t shower them with gifts,
but teach them to be satisfied with little. A variant is the Arab
proverb, ‘All sunshine makes a desert’. Be grateful for what you
have now or all your life you will never have enough. People who
have an ‘attitude of gratitude’ make the most of living today.
They don’t postpone life until they get to the top, or save for
an overseas trip, or get the kids off their hands, or win the
lottery, or retire…

Thoreau use to wake up every morning and, even before
getting out of bed, would give thanks that he had been born. He
often ran his mind over what he would have missed had he never
been born…

Think about that. What would you have missed if you
had not been born? I think about a little baby’s fingers curling
around mine; a summer sunset (seen out of my loft window as I
type); the neighbour’s dog that comes to greet me as I enter our
driveway; someone who phoned to ask ‘I’m praying for you – what
should I pray about?’; above all, my wife and family; and then
some problems – and the conviction they are good for me…

G.K.Chesterton, when he wrote his autobiography near
the end of a long and useful life, tried to define in a single
sentence the most important lesson he had learnt. He concluded
that the critical thing was whether one took things for granted
or took them with gratitude.

Practically every culture has its special thanksgiving
traditions. No people can feel unmoved when the harvest has been
gathered in. Frequently there are special religious services.
Sometimes tokens of the harvest are sacrificed to a deity. High
on the list of thanksgiving traditions are the special meals associated
with the festivities. Maybe you could encourage your church to
celebrate Thanksgiving Sunday as Christians do in North America.
Their ‘Thanksgiving’ started in New England when the Pilgrim Fathers
celebrated a bountiful harvest by giving thanks and sharing their
crops.

One of the common names of the Lord’s Supper is ‘eucharist’,
‘giving of thanks’: a word that implies intimacy with the person
to whom thanks is given. The root word of thanksgiving is charis,
‘grace’. We acknowledge this when we ‘give thanks’ or ‘say grace’
before meals.

A truly thankful person can thank God in everything
(even if we don’t understanding how we can be thankful for everything).
A truly thankful person can thank God for every person (even if
we don’t happen to like every person).

Above all, may we express our thanks, as Paul suggests,
by offering our lives to God as a sacrifice (Romans 12:1,2). So
much has God given us; let us give everything back to him. The
seventeenth-century English poet Richard Crawshaw wrote, ‘We ourselves
become our own best sacrifice.’ Then, even small gifts are tokens
of love: Mary and Joseph could bring only two turtledoves when
they presented Christ in the temple (Luke 2:22-24).

You have given so much to me Give one thing more
– a grateful heart… Not thankful when it pleases me, As if your
blessings had spare days, But such a heart, whose pulse may be
your praise.

…..

Marge Cooper was in an iron lung for forty years.
That woman amazed all her friends, because in spite of her paralysis
she was able to see the bright side. She didn’t have a trace of
self-pity in her. She was full of thanksgiving…

Skip Wilkins wrote a book called The Real Race. In
it he tells how he put his life back together after a water-skiing
accident that broke his neck. He is a quadriplegic now, and he
can’t move much of his body. But he worked and trained and finally
came to the point where he won gold medals in international Paralympic
competitions. And he thanks God every day for the way God has
taken care of him.

Joel Nederhood, Light-hearted Thanksgiving, script
of a broadcast of the Reformed Churches of Australia, n.d.

I met a depressed man one day who told me he had
nothing to be thankful for, so I said: ‘Well, I’m going visiting;
come with me.’ I was going to the Institution for the poor aged
sick… It was an old-fashioned building, and its management left
much to be desired; but the man came with me… From bed to bed
we went… some were quite blind, [others] quite deaf. Some were
imbecile… When we were outside again… he parted from me saying:
‘I don’t think I’ll ever grumble again…’

He went away saying (I think) under his breath, ‘I
can see… I can hear… I have my reason unimpaired. I can think
and plan and pray. I am not well off, but I have enough…’

…Thank God for the common blessings commonly overlooked.
Don’t wait till you lose them to be grateful… Thank God for
the sudden smile of a friend met unexpectedly in a place where
you did not expect to meet anyone you knew; thank God for home,
for birthday anniversaries… for all ordinary things, taken for
granted when they ought to be taken with gratitude: Thank God!
Thank God!

W.E.Sangster, ‘He Delights in our Gratitude’, Westminster
Sermons (vol. ii), London: Epworth, 1961, pp. 140-142.

‘Usually the people you save just want to get away
as quickly as they can. It’s rare, very rare, for any one of them
to say, "Thank you."’

Barry Lumsdaine, a surf life-saver. Sydney: The Sun,
January 11, 1979, p. 19.

‘What I’m looking for is a blessing that is not in
disguise!’

An overburdened young mother of a large family to
her pastor.

A seventeenth-century German pastor is said to have
buried 5,000 of his parishioners in one year, an average of nearly
15 a day. Yet, although his parish was ravaged by war, pestilence,
and an invader’s economic oppression, he wrote this table grace
for his children:

Now thank we all our God With heart and hands and
voices; Who wondrous things hath done, In whom his world rejoices.
Who, from our mothers’ arms, Hath led us on our way With countless
gifts of love, And still is ours today.

In 1636, amid the darkness of the Thirty Years’ War,
Martin Rinkart drew spiritual strength from a spirit of thanksgiving
for God’s past and present goodness.

Richard D Dinwiddie, ‘The Sacrifice of Praise’, Christianity
Today, November 20, 1981, p.40.

The art of thanksgiving is thanksliving. It is gratitude
in action… It is thanking God for the gift of life by living
it triumphantly. It is thanking God for your talents and abilities
by accepting them as obligations to be invested for the common
good. It is thanking God for all that men and women have done
for you by doing things for others… It is thanking God for health
and strength by the care and reverence you show your body… It
is thanking God for each new day by living it to the fullest.
It is thanking God by giving hands, arms, legs and voice to your
thankful spirit. It is adding to your prayers of thanksgiving,
acts of thanksliving.

Wilferd A Peterson, ‘The Art of Thanksliving’, in
The Treasure Chest, Charles L Wallis (ed.), New York: Harper &
Row, 1965, p.216.

Gratitude, more than anything else, is the difference
between ‘making the best’ of life and making the most of it.

You see, in every given situation, the choice that
is always ours is this: We can ask the resentment question – ‘Why
did this have to happen to me?’ – and concentrate on the negative,
on what is going against us. Or we can ask the gratitude question
– ‘What is there here to be thankful for that can be used in constructing
a positive future?’ – and then focus in on that which is going
for us. Obviously, these are two very different ways of approaching
a single event, and I would like to suggest that one leads to
victorious and courageous living while the other leads to immobilization
and despair…

We humans do have a choice in the great drama of
experience. We are not free to determine what happens to us, but
we are free to determine what response we will make to events.
One alternative is the way of resentment; we can focus in on the
bad and ask angrily, ‘Why did this have to happen?’ The other
alternative is the way of gratitude; this involves sifting through
an event and asking, ‘What is there here to be thankful for? Amid
all this wreckage, what can I use to build toward the future?’

This is the choice that is always ours, and it is
my contention that it is the second alternative – gratitude –
that makes the crucial difference between being a victim of or
a victor over events.

John Claypool, The Light Within You, Waco, Texas:
Word Incorporated, 1983, pp. 142, 147.

The late Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri used
to talk about a disease he called ‘the simples’ which was in fact
a distortion of reality, and in my judgment this is something
we should avoid like the plague…

When we are over-simplified in our perspective on
life, it is easy to become judgmental and over-critical of others.
However, once the complexity of life is acknowledged, we are quicker
to understand and slower to condemn. The French have a proverb
that translates roughly: ‘To know all is to forgive all’, and
this of course is an over-statement, for it implies there are
no willful sins and that if we knew all the circumstances we would
excuse every action. This is not so, but it is true the more we
bother to investigate and try to understand why people act as
they do, the less harsh we will tend to be. Things are rarely
exactly as they appear on the surface. There is always more than
meets the naked eye, and if like the old Indian proverb, we would
‘walk in another’s mocassins before we criticize them’, there
would be more compassion and less condemnation.

John Claypool, in an unpublished sermon preached
at Broadway Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas, January 12, 1975.

Gratefulness is simply one way of experiencing the
life of the Triune God within us. This life springs forth from
the Father, the fountain and wellspring of divinity, the ultimate
Giver. The total self-gift of the Father is the Son. The Son receives
everything from the Father and becomes the turning point in this
divine tide of giving. For in the Holy Spirit the Son returns
the Father’s ultimate giving as ultimate thanksgiving. The Triune
God is Giver, Gift and Thanksgiving. This movement from the Father
through the Son in the Spirit back to its Source is what St. Gregory
of Nyassa called ‘the Round Dance of the Blessed Trinity… It
is one great celebration of belonging by giving and thanksgiving.
We can begin to join that dance in our heart right now through
gratefulness. What else could be called life in fullness?

David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer:
An Approach to Life in Fullness, New York: Paulist Press, 1984,
p. 189.

Ordinary moments stack up week upon week. There must
be dozens of them that I rarely think about. I mean recurring
moments when I almost always feel thankful, so quietly startled
and glad am I. One is the half-hour early in each month when I
sit down to pay the bills. Most times there is enough money to
pay most of our debts. By what miracle is this? …So I thank
God for work and pray as the pen flies over the chequebook for
those who are unemployed; I pray for families who have no work,
no home. Being thankful gets all mixed up with asking for some
of the same for others.

Mitch Finley, ‘Days of Thanksgiving’, Praying, No.21,
pp. 10-11.

I would go so far as to say that the more problems
you have, the more alive you are. Whoever has, let us say, ten
good old tough, adult-sized problems is twice as alive as the
poor, miserable, apathetic character who has only five problems.
And if you have no problems at all, I warn you. You are in great
jeopardy. You’re on the way out and you don’t know it. What you
had better do… is say to the Lord, ‘Look, what’s the matter?
Don’t you trust me anymore? Give me some problems to tackle!’

Norman Vincent Peale, ‘What Thanksgiving Means’,
Creative Help for Daily Living, New York: Foundation for Christian
Living, Nov-Dec, 1980, p.7.

A list of things to be thankful for usually turns
out to be merely a list of things we like. It ought rather, I
think, to be a list of what we have been given… How can we reach
that kind of maturity? You learn to swim by swimming. I am convinced
that we can learn best to thank God by thanking him. Thanksgiving
is itself a spiritual exercise, necessary for the building of
a healthy soul… I am not suggesting the mouthing of foolish
platitudes as a spiritual exercise. ‘Things could be worse,’ ‘Cheer
up, the worst is yet to come!’ ‘Look for the silver lining!’ and
that sort of thing will hardly nourish the spirit of thanksgiving.

Elizabeth Elliot, ‘Thanksgiving for What is Given’,
Christianity Today, November 10, 1972, p.5.

To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain
a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin
in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable
surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery
by which we live. Who is worthy to be present at the constant
unfolding of time? Amidst the meditation of mountains, the humility
of flowers – wiser than all alphabets – clouds that die constantly
for the sake of his glory, we are hating, hunting, hurting. Suddenly
we feel ashamed of our clashes and complaints in the face of the
tacit glory in nature. It is so embarrassing to live! How strange
we are in the world, and how presumptuous our doings! Only one
response can maintain us: gratefulness for witnessing the wonder,
for the gift of our unearned right to serve, to adore, and to
fulfil. It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, ‘The Sigh’, in John Garvey
(Ed), Modern Spirituality, an Anthology, London, Darton, Longman
and Todd, 1985, p.9-10.

Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world?
It is not the one who prays most or fasts most; nor the one who
gives most alms, or is most eminent for temperance, chastity,
or justice; but the one who is always thankful to God, who wills
everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance
of God’s goodness, and has a heart always ready to praise God…

If any one would tell you the shortest, surest way
to all happiness and all perfection, they must tell you to make
a rule for yourself, to thank and praise God for everything that
happens to you. For it is certain that whatever seeming calamity
happens to you, if you thank and praise God for it, you turn it
into a blessing.

William Law, quoted in T. Carson, ‘Thanksgiving’,
Sydney: Australian Missionary Tidings, 1st August 1958, p.115.

Ordinary happiness depends on happenstance. Joy is
that extraordinary happiness that is independent of what happens
to us. Good luck can make us happy, but it cannot give us lasting
joy. The root of joy is gratefulness… Joyful people are grateful
and… are grateful for their joy. But the reverse is true: their
joy springs from gratefulness. If one has all the good luck in
the world, but takes it for granted, it will not give one joy.
Yet even bad luck will give joy to those who manage to be grateful
for it. We hold the key to lasting happiness in our own hands.
For it is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that
makes us joyful.

David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer:
An Approach to Life in Fullness, New York: Paulist Press, 1984,
p. 204.

…..

Make full use of the present opportunity. Give thanks
every day for everything…

God our life, be with us through this day, whether
or not it brings us joy. Help us when evening comes to recall
one benefit, for which to give you thanks. Amen.

A New Zealand Prayer Book, Auckland, Collins, 1989,
pp. 119, 116.

My loving God, you have turned my complaining into
gratitude, my screams of despair into proclamations of joy. How
can I help but explode with praises and vow to spend eternity
in thanksgiving to you? You are my hope and salvation, the morning
sun and the evening star, my shade in the desert heat, my warmth
in the cold of night. You are the Bread of Life, and life-giving
springs when my soul is parched and dry. You are the answer to
my agonizing questions, the fulfilment of my deepest longings.
I am yours, O God, yours forever. Make my life a perpetual offering
of praise. For the glory of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Leslie F Brandt, ‘From Complaint to Gratitude’, A
Book of Christian Prayer, Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1978, p.76.

Lord God, ruler of all nature, thank you for your
goodness. Thank you for the warmth of the sun, the grandeur of
mountains, the wonder of a starry night, the beauty of birds and
butterflies and rainbows and the flowers of the field. Surely
this earth is a fit robing-room for heaven.

Thank you for work and play, for joys that lighten
us and sorrows that hallow us, for life and health and daily food.
Thank you for the touch of a loving hand, the sensitivity of a
friend with a listening ear, beautiful people who make our hearts
sing when we are with them awhile.

Thank you, Provident Lord, for preserving my life
and protecting me from dangers known or unknown. the whole order
of creation is being sustained by your loving concern.

Bountiful God, forgive me when I take your kindness
and that of other people for granted. Help me to develop the habit
– the common courtesy – of thanking those who provide essential
services. Thank you for my parents, who toiled thousands of hours
to provide for my needs; for teachers who imparted their knowledge
to me; for those elected to public office, many of whom sincerely
want to serve their communities; for pastors, doing unsung and
sometimes misunderstood work for Christ. Thank you for everything
others have done for me today: those – perhaps poorly paid immigrant
seamstresses – who helped make the clothes I’m wearing; farmers
who grew the grain I ate for breakfast; factory workers who put
together the car I drive, and the quality control person who checked
it.

Thank you that nothing can happen to me today that
you and I together can’t handle. Thank you for circumstances and
situations that appear to unpleasant or troublesome, but which
make me a stronger and better person. You will never leave me
or forsake me, you care for me – always. Yours is not a friendship
that is threatened when adversity happens.

Thank you, Lord, for everything, and most of all
for Jesus your special Gift. In him, Amen.

…..

A Benediction: To our gift-giving God, who has done
wonderful things for us; who all our life is near us; who gives
us constantly his love and joy and peace; to this bounteous God
be thanks and praise for ever. Amen.

Bibliography: The poem to conclude the homily is
a modernized paraphrase of one of George Herbert’s.