Lewis trains boxers. He is convinced he’s a better trainer because he cultivates gratitude since thankfulness is a key character quality. Each day he’d try and find two or three things to be thankful for, thankful in his case towards the universe. I talked with him about how my own gratitude was towards to God, who is the source of all good things, and we agreed to put our chance encounter with one another on each of our gratitude lists.
‘Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done’.
Today’s readings pick up on this theme of thankfulness alongside the theme of healing. In the Old Testament story from 2 Kings Chapter 5, Syrian army commander Naaman is healed by bathing in the Jordan. This reading was chosen in parallel to that of the story in Luke Chapter 17 of the ten lepers healed more simply just by meeting Jesus. This story is a reminder of what healing is in Christianity, beautifully and concisely expressed by Bishop Morris Maddocks: ‘Christian healing is Jesus Christ meeting people at their point of need’.
I wonder, as we gather to the Lord in this eucharist, whether there are people here aware of a deep need. Like Naaman they may be too shy, or even too proud, to bring that need forward to the Lord this morning. May this sermon prompt you, as the young girl who served Naamon’s wife prompted him, to approach the God of Israel and see Jesus meet you at your point of need. The Bread and Wine, or the priest’s hands outstretched in blessing, are to be the Lord who awaits you later on in this service. Think about it, look to God and expect him to meet you at your point of need this morning!
In the second part of the Gospel one leper is praised for showing gratitude. ‘Were not ten made clean?’ Our Lord asks. ‘But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ Then he said to the Samaritan, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well’ - translated whole, or saved in other Bibles.
Notice the nine were spoken of by Our Lord as being ‘made clean’ but the thankful leper was said by Jesus to have been healed inside as well as outside. In other words, thankfulness is a quality that demonstrates the fullness of life we Christians call salvation. It’s a sign we’re living life to the full, life as God wills it. Archbishop Michael Ramsey described thankfulness as ‘a soil in which pride finds it hard to take root’. If we see our whole life as given by God that recognition protects us from obsessive self interest.
To walk through life with gratitude on our wrist, or better still, in God’s company, makes us less out for ourselves and more out for those on the heart of God.
‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest’ he says in Matthew 11:28. As Christians we are bearers of that invitation through practical action towards those in our circle overwhelmed, for example, by the cost of living. Of course there’s politics here, issues of lifestyle, family breakdown and the like. The beauty of thankful living is that it helps you to go blind to all of that and, to see all you have as a gift, including those you meet, hour by hour, to be welcomed as part of that gift.
Today 9 October is kept as the commemoration of Saint John Henry Newman, an ecumenical saint who died in 1890 after a life of service both as Anglican and then Roman Catholic priest. Saint John Newman was canonised by Pope Francis three years ago. I preached at Roman Catholic Vespers in St Paul’s Haywards Heath on that day as part of local celebrations. I mentioned then as I do now Newman’s motto ‘Cor ad cor loquitur’, let heart speak to heart, which captures what it is to live thankfully with compassion towards others. I want to end with Newman’s famous fragrance prayer, his prayer for grace to radiate Christ to a needy world.
Dear Jesus, help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of yours. Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus! Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be a light to others; the light, O Jesus, will be all from you; none of it will be mine; it will be you, shining on others through me. Let me thus praise you the way you love best, by shining on those around me. Let me preach you without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to you. Amen.
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