Three Magic Words: Please, I’m Sorry and Thank You: Thank You
November 20, 2016
Rev. Eric Huffman
Psalm 100

Make a joyful noise to theLord, all the earth.
Worship theLordwith gladness;
come into his presence with singing.
Know that theLordis 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 theLordis good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
Psalm 100 (NRSV)

I’m with you today because Dr. Pace and I are switching pulpits. Just for today, don’t worry! Just for today. He is, for the first time, preaching at The Story and I’m here.
You might remember my very first Sunday almost two years ago you were in a sermon series called “The Seven Deadly Sins” and Dr. Pace made me preach to a whole bunch of people I’d never met about the topic, about the sin, of lust. So I’ve been waiting and scheming all this time. We’ve been in a series on the Ten Commandments and this is the last week of this series. Anyone want to guess what commandment I saved for Dr. Pace?
You all pray for him – he’s preaching about adultery today over at The Story building. And it’s Children’s Church Sabbath so all the kids are in the room. So turn about is fair play as it says no where in the Bible. But it’s fun!
Dr. Pace has been such a great mentor and such a great leader to me personally through all of this and I’m sure to all of you as well. So grateful to God for him. I’m so glad that this congregation at The Story gets to know him as Senior Pastor today and I’m grateful for it all.
I’m here to talk about some words that matter. You know we’re finishing the sermon series here as well. You’ve been talking about saying words that matter. Very simple words like please and what’s the other one? I’ve forgotten – it’s so important I’ve forgotten it. And today we’re talking about thank you which is appropriate because it’s almost Thanksgiving. These are words that we might say often enough but I’m not sure we really grasp the Bible’s call, God’s call, for us to be thankful. We’re going to talk about that today.
A few months back I was called to do a funeral out of town, about five hours out of town. And the family was very gracious. They didn’t want to have me drive up that Saturday morning, and do the ceremony after driving five hours. So they put me in a hotel the night before. Very sweet of them.
But I was still cranky about it. I was cranky about being away from my family. I was cranky about being out of my own bed. I was cranky about staying in a Hampton Inn. Something has changed with me because there was a time when I would have given anything to stay in a Hampton Inn and I would have told you that the Hampton Inn was like the Hilton. The problem is that I’m spoiled now. I’ve stayed in a Hilton and I know the Hampton Inn isn’t the Hilton.
So I was cranky. Worst thing about the Hampton Inn is the breakfast – everyone knows that. You don’t have to eat the breakfast but it’s free, but I feel it would be rude not to eat the breakfast. So every time I eat the Hampton Inn breakfast. And this morning was no different, I got ready for the funeral and I headed to the lobby. I grabbed my plate and wouldn’t you know it – the waffle iron was broken.
Which is terrible! If you know the Hampton Inn breakfast you know that waffles are the only redeemable part of the breakfast. The waffles that are shaped like the state of Texas. And it was broken – there were no waffles. And they didn’t have any light roast coffee and I’m a light roast guy. All they had was dark roast and it tasted like it had been brewed days before. The crankiness just continued to fester inside me.
But that didn’t stop me from eating. So I got breakfast and took it to a table and I noticed an older couple next to me just sitting there with their food in front of them and not eating yet. They were in their 70s – maybe their 80s – and they were country folks. I know country folk, I’m from East Texas and these were country folk. He looked like Wilford Brimley and she looked like Ma Kettle. He reached his old calloused hand across the table and she met him halfway and she reached her big old calloused hand across the table and he led them in a prayer.
I was close enough to eavesdrop, I heard the prayer. So I could tell what kind of a prayer it was and it was not something he’d thought of on the spot. He wasn’t going off the cuff. This was a prayer that man had prayed many, many times before. I pictured him praying that three times a day, every time that family broke bread he led his family in that prayer the same way, every day the same.
Something like “Lord, make us thankful for this food and the hands that have prepared it and for Jesus in whose name we pray, Amen.” He took about three and a half seconds and it was the same prayer every day.
I had two thoughts come to mind when I heard him pray that prayer. I wasn’t proud of either of these thoughts. Keep in mind that I was not my best self that morning so my first thought was that there was no sense in blessing that food; even God could not save it. I was in a bad place. But my second thought was worse than the first one. My second thought was to think, “Ain’t they cute? Aren’t they sweet? They’re just precious.” Which sounds like nice things to think, but I know myself I wasn’t thinking it in a nice way. I was thinking it in kind of a condescending way.
Kind of like “Aren’t they cute” like a toddler’s cute when they recite a prayer they don’t fully understand, and they do it because they’re told to do it. I just thought “Aren’t they cute?” like the chinchilla at the zoo. Isn’t that cute? Isn’t that sweet? And these are grown people. And here I was being condescending to them. So I felt ashamed and guilty about it. I felt like I shouldn’t patronize someone for doing something the Bible clearly calls us to do. I’m a preacher, right? Over a hundred times the Bible tells us to be thankful for things, to give God thanks for things, over one hundred times.
But I wonder sometimes if what we think gratitude means is the same as what the Bible says gratitude means. And I’m not sure. There’s a couple of things about gratitude I think we need to know before we go any further with this conversation today. Because there are two things about Biblical gratitude that eludes us sometimes.
The first thing about Biblical gratitude is that it always begins with God. To give thanks in a Biblical way is to begin by giving thanks to God. And here’s the thing: I think we thank people more than we thank God. And I think we spend more time telling people “I thank God for you” than we do actually thanking God for them. Biblical gratitude begins over here with God. And it’s not that you shouldn’t’ feel grateful for other people, it’s just that sometimes we put the cart before the horse. Ninety-nine percent of the Bible’s references to gratitude are about God and not about thanking other people. You’d be hard pressed to find more than one or two verses that really express the importance of thanking people.
It’s not that you shouldn’t be thankful for people; don’t hear me say that, please! I’m just saying that if you orient yourself about being grateful to God, then you will naturally and appropriately be thankful for people in light of your gratitude to God.
That’s the first thing about Biblical gratitude that’s important. The second thing is harder. You all dial in with me here, this isn’t going to be easy what I’m about to tell you. The Bible says, “Be thankful” and we know that. But the Bible says, “Be thankful to God…in all circumstances.” Be thankful to God in all circumstances, not just when people are nice to you, when they’re dirt, when they cut you off, when they don’t give you want you want. Not just when people do things or when life is going your way and you’re getting the things you want out of life. When things aren’t going your way, be thankful in all circumstances. Biblical gratitude is not cute or sweet or sentimental or soft like I was condescending to that couple. Biblical gratitude is thanking God the same way on good days as you thank God on bad days. How hard is that?
Does God really expect that from us? When things aren’t going our way? When people aren’t being kind to you? When things seem uncertain like, for example, in our country right now. Does God really expect us twelve days after the most filthy, most vile political season we’ve ever known – to be grateful twelve days later? Some of you are - I would guess that about a third of the room is very grateful for this election and grateful for the results. About a third of the room will never be grateful for the results of this election. And the last third of you won’t be grateful till Texas secedes from the Union and becomes the great republic it was always meant to be!
Are we really supposed to be grateful – thankful – to God when things are uncertain when an election doesn’t go our way? Are we supposed to be grateful to God when we’re stuck on the West Loop at 5:30 in the afternoon and all we want to do is get home and we’re not moving at all? Are we really supposed to be grateful when we’ve got 20 pounds to lose and it’s Thanksgiving week? How are we supposed to be grateful in all circumstances?
The 100^th Psalm that we heard earlier says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, enter his courts with praise.” No matter the circumstances, God is telling the people, “When you come in my house, you do so with thanksgiving in your heart.” And it’s not that God doesn’t understand what you’re going through. God says that in spite of what you’re going through on any given day, come into my house with gratitude. That is to say, there’s no room for cynicism in the house of God. Among the people of God there’s no room for that kind of sarcastic cynicism that says, “Nothing’s ever going to change.”
That’s hard for us but I was thinking this week how hard it was for the people to whom and for whom that Psalm was originally written. Eight hundred years before the birth of Jesus, 2800 years ago, in the Middle East in the Iron Age, in a particularly tumultuous time in that region where war and disease and famine just reigned supreme. Warlords literally roamed the countryside ravaging villages and villagers, having their way with them. Life was uncertain; kingdoms rose and fell, disease was everywhere. A child that was born had less than 50% of a chance of making it to his fifth birthday. A woman who was pregnant had about a 25% chance of not making it through her pregnancy and delivery.
There was poverty everywhere 800 years before the birth of Jesus. Life wasn’t like it is now. Life for them didn’t include as much privilege, as many choices, like what they had to eat. They had two meals a day, not three, 800 years before the birth of Jesus. And both meals were almost identical every single day. Imagine waking up in the morning, going to the breakfast table and being greeted with a little bit of bread that you would dip in vinegar. Half your calories in 800 BC came from bread dipped in vinegar. Then you would maybe have a couple of dates or maybe a fig if life was going good.
You’d go to work, come back home and at the dinner table would be more bread that you’d dip in vinegar with maybe some chickpeas. Maybe a cup of unpasteurized milk, maybe a cup of wine. And that was your meal. Same thing every day.
It wasn’t like it is now. Today we eat based on the mood we’re in. We have choices. But in 800 BC no one sat around and said, “I think I’ll have Tex-Mex tonight. Or do you all feel like some Chinese?” It wasn’t like that. It was the same thing every day. Can you imagine the kind of cynicism that would come into the human heart with those circumstances? And it’s in that reality that God speaks and says, “Come into my house and when you do, come with grateful hearts. Come with thanksgiving, singing songs of praise. I know everyday seems like it’s the same, but come on anyway, and be glad. Be grateful for what you have.”
God calls people to thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a word we should think more about. It’s a Biblical word we’ve adapted for the holiday, but thanksgiving is an intentional word and it implies an expression. God doesn’t just want us to sit around feeling thankful, God wants us to give thanks. And do you see the difference? No one here would be surprised to hear a preacher say that they’ve studied gratitude, and scientists have decided that it is healthier to be grateful than to be ungrateful. Preachers say things like that all the time and I get it. You really shouldn’t be surprised to hear it.
What really stands out to me about those studies though, is that when they parse out this grateful group of people between those who just feel grateful and don’t express gratitude regularly, and those who are grateful and regularly write letters and send notes and gifts to say “thank you.” The difference in health, longevity and wellbeing and strong relationships that last is undeniable between those who just feel grateful and those who express gratitude.
Listen to me – if gratitude is going to make any difference in your life it must be expressed. Because those to whom you are grateful will perceive your lack of expression as a lack of gratitude. Hashtag marriage. Married people, are you listening? You must express gratitude in order for it to make a difference. Even if you don’t feel grateful, fake it till you make it – you’ll act grateful and then you’ll be grateful – the one goes with the other. Thanksgiving is a verb, thanksgiving is kinetic, and it is action.
There’s a familiar story from Luke chapter seven and you’ll all know it. Even people who don’t go to church know the story. It’s toward the end of chapter 7 seen in Luke’s gospel and it’s the time when Jesus goes to a Pharisee’s house to have dinner. The Pharisee invites Jesus over because they want to have an official sit down with this guy, they want to vet this rabbi. They want to try to corner him and make everyone see that he’s not really legitimate like he says he is.
So Jesus comes to the house and reclines at the table. I can’t really show you how they did it but it’s weird. The table was close to the ground and they would recline on their left elbow and their legs would kind of sprawl out behind them to their right and they would eat like this. I don’t get it but they’d do it. Before they even started to eat their meal they were interrupted by a woman who charges off the streets, into the house without an invitation. Before anyone could stop her she’s at Jesus’ feet kneeling and sort of bending over his feet. She’s weeping, not just crying, she’s sobbing, because there are enough tears pouring down from her face onto Jesus’ feet that they are washing away the dirt and grime and sand that would be on his feet.
Then she dries them with her long hair. She takes a bottle and she pours it out. It has expensive perfume in it. Why? Why?
Luke tells us that this woman was a sinful woman from town. That’s the title he gives her – a sinful woman from town. Almost certainly a prostitute who has this perfume for occupational reasons and she doesn’t just dab Jesus’ feet with it, she pours what’s left on Jesus’ feet. It’s because he deserves it all and she doesn’t need to smell so good anymore. And everyone’s upset. The disciples are upset because they wanted that expensive perfume to be sold and the money used to help the poor. The Pharisees are upset because if this man was really a man of God – this Jesus – he would know who this woman is, that’s touching him and kissing his feet and he would not stand for it. How dare he – a man of God – to allow a woman like that to touch and kiss him! How dare he!
This is one of those stories we know so well. I thought. Until I read it again this week. Did you ever read the same Bible story 1000 times and then you read it 1001 times and you might think “Holy cow! What just happened?” This preacher had that experience this week with this story. I thought I knew the story frontwards and backwards, I thought I knew this woman, I knew who she was. And I knew why she came that night. I thought I knew her motives and I was wrong.
Jesus cleared it up for me. At the end of that story, the end of Luke’s seventh chapter, where he says to the Pharisees: “Hey, guys, look at this woman. I came into your house and you didn’t give me any water to wash my feet and she washed them with her tears. You guys didn’t embrace me or give me a kiss on the cheek as you should have to be hospitable hosts. She hasn’t stopped kissing my feet since the moment she got here. You guys didn’t anoint my head with oils like you should if you were gracious. She anointed me not with oil but with much more expensive perfume.”
And then Jesus says, “Therefore, I tell you that her many sins have been forgiven.” And this is what got me. “Her many sins have been forgiven as her great love for me has shown.”
Now you have to listen closely. “Her many sins have been forgiven as her great love for me has shown.”
Now let me explain why this blew my mind because I have for years believed that this woman came to Jesus that night feeling all kinds of remorse and guilt and shame. I thought she came to Jesus’ feet begging him for mercy. As it turns out somehow this woman has already heard the message of the gospel, somehow she already knows she has been forgiven. She didn’t come that night to petition for forgiveness or ask for mercy. She came to Jesus to thank him for mercy.
“As her great love for me has shown.” She was already forgiven before she even walked in the door. This wasn’t her “come to Jesus” moment. This was a time of repentance. Those weren’t tears of shame. They were tears of joy and victory because for the first time in her life she was free. Free.
I want you to think about this woman, picture her if you can in your head. Probably a teenager. Maybe her twenties, but definitely young. I want you to think about what her life would have been like. I want you to think how everywhere she went she would have been judged by men, propositioned by men, and sometimes propositioned by the same men who judged her. Scorned women, forgotten by family, outcast from the people of God. Every day would have been the same. Exactly the same story every day. Imagine how easy it would have been for her heart to grow cold or cynical about life.
You might not think you have anything in common with a first century teenaged Palestinian prostitute. But I wouldn’t be so quick to separate yourselves from her because we’ve all been in that place. Where every day feels the same. Where it starts to feel like nothing you do and say matters or changes anything. It doesn’t matter if you do this or don’t do this, every day is going to be the same. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if you went to church or don’t go to church, it’s just going to go on without you exactly the same as if you weren’t there. You’ve been in that cynical place before, I bet, where every day starts identical to the last. Where you wake up in the same way at the same time in the same bed next to the same person with bad breath, every morning. Or you wake up alone again and you wish someone was there with you, even if they had bad breath, you’d take them. Every day the same and you wake up in the same way, and you get ready in the same way. And you fight the same traffic, you go to the same office and you deal with the same people. You do the same work till quitting time when you fight the same traffic again to go home. You go home to the same house, and the same chores, the same dishes, the same laundry. And you watch the same shows and you go back to the same bed.
Before you know it you’re more cynical than grateful and you’re less thankful for what you do have than you’re anxious about what you don’t have. And you start throwing yourself these pity parties over silly little things, like no waffles at a breakfast that you didn’t even pay for. And that sense of entitlement creeps into your heart telling you you don’t have enough.
I thought about that old couple at that table again this week and I realized that just like I didn’t understand the woman’s motives that night, I misinterpreted their motives, too. They weren’t being quaint. They weren’t just going through the motions and doing what they’d always done, just repeating their religious rituals. It wasn’t about that for them, I think. I just think that people like that remember something most of us have forgotten. I think people like that realize it’s that three and a half second prayer that they prayed in the same way, every single day, three times a day for fifty years, that little prayer is why they’re still together after all this time. And still smiling and still holding hands.
They got a call during that breakfast and I could tell as I continued my creepy eavesdropping, I could tell that they were talking to one of their kids. Then the phone passed to a grandkid, because once that grandpa answered the phone, his voice changed from when he first answered to when the kid came on. You know how a grandpa’s voice changes? And I could tell they either called to wish him a happy birthday or a happy anniversary – I couldn’t tell which. I just know he said, “I don’t know, we stopped counting years ago.”
I think that people like that understand that when you set a precedent and an expectation in a culture of gratitude in your family, a culture of thanksgiving in your family, then when you grow old they keep calling. Because they’re grateful to God for you.
I think people like that understand that Thanksgiving, giving thanks, is not something sweet, soft, and sentimental and cute and adorable. Thanksgiving is a war against an enemy who would much rather you complain about the coffee than give thanks to God Almighty. Thanksgiving is a rejection of that sense of entitlement that tells you what you have isn’t enough, and God’s been better to other people than he is to you. Thanksgiving is the difference.
Thanksgiving is the difference between enduring life and enjoying life. Thanksgiving is the difference between enduring a worship service until the preacher’s finally done, and enjoying a worship service. And opening that heart of yours and letting yourself be moved by the organ and the choir and the word and this place and this God. Thanksgiving is the difference.
It’s the difference between looking at a sink full of dishes and thinking, “I’ve got to do the dishes again” and looking at your dishes and thinking “I have dishes. I have dishes and they’re dirty which means food was on them. I have food!”
This Thursday remember after lunch is over, remember Thanksgiving means saying, “I have dishes and I am free to do them.”
Thanksgiving. It’s casting a vote for president and no matter who wins, throwing a party and celebrating. Because whoever’s in the Oval Office you have the great privilege of having been born and raised and living and breathing and voting in the greatest and freest country this world has ever known. And you did nothing to deserve it. It’s just like that Hampton Inn breakfast that someone just gives you. You just received it for no good reason. Nothing you ever did to pay for it or deserve it. It’s just yours and it’s a gift.
“So shout to the Lord, all the earth. Songs of praise for He is God and we are His people. It’s He who has made us, the sheep of his pasture. So enter into his gates every time with thanksgiving. Enter into His courts with praise. Sing songs of Thanksgiving to His name for He is good and His love endures forever. And His faithfulness through every generation.” Amen.