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A little over a week ago I was standing right here taking vows for my ordination to the priesthood. During the announcements, Bishop Sutton gave me the opportunity to share my gratitude to everyone who has been part of my process to become ordained. It was during this part of the service that I noticed a man sitting in the back of the church. It was my middle school drama teacher. It has been quite awhile since I have seen him. I usually run into him and his wife at Costco over the holidays.
Back in July I preached on having to undergo brain surgery and the power of prayer. I talked about how I was diagnosed with an arachnoid cyst at the base of my brain stem. I was truly blessed to have a successful surgery and smooth recovery.
But it was during this time of being in and out of the hospital and having to undergo surgery that I missed out on my fall theater production of Annie. Where I was to star as Ms. Hannigan, the mean caretaker of an orphanage where Annie lived. Looking back now it was only a school play, but for my 13 year old self it was a big deal.
I was really devastated—I was more upset about missing the play than I was having brain surgery. You would have thought I lost my opportunity to star on Broadway.
About three months after my surgery I slowly made myself back to school with half days. My drama teacher approached my parents and I one day with a proposal for me to have the opportunity to star as Ms. Hannigan in one additional production of Annie. I was ecstatic!
It would only be one production of the show on a Friday night but all the money that we raised for the production would be donated to the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. My teacher wanted to teach us how to give back. That it was not just about me being able to star as Ms. Hannigan—see I have already been given the greatest gift, a second chance at life. He wanted me to share that second chance with others.
As much as I was excited that I would have my off Broadway moment of stardom, my teacher wanted my classmates and I to learn that we need to give back. That to be grateful is not something you just feel—but something you enact.
It was about teaching a group of middle schoolers that the world is bigger than their small bubble of school, friends and video games. That there are children out there hurting and a whole world in need of blessing.
My drama teacher recognized this as a teachable moment for all of us and especially for me to learn about what it means to embody gratitude. See I was thankful for my second chance but I didn’t know how to share it or to express it as a young kid. He showed me how--he showed all of us how to say thank you.
For Jesus, those nine lepers who were healed and did not return they were not bad people. They didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just that they missed out on giving thanks for what they had been given. They forgot to say thank you. They saw their good fortune but they were so caught up in it like anyone else would be that they forgot to show thanks. Who hasn’t done that? Once in our lives we can be guilty of forgetting to say thank you.
I am thankful for those people who remind us and show us how to enact our gratitude. In the Gospel it was the one man that returned to Jesus and for me it was my teacher.
The president of Lutheran Theological Seminary said that “Gratitude draws us out of ourselves into something larger, bigger, and grander than we could imagine and joins us to the font of blessing itself. But maybe, just maybe, gratitude is also the most powerful emotion, as it frees us from fear, releases us from anxiety, and emboldens us to do more and dare more than we'd ever imagined. Even to return to a Jewish rabbi to pay homage when you are a Samaritan because you've realized that you are more than a Samaritan, or a leper, or even a healed leper; you are a child of God, whole and accepted and beautiful just as you are.”*
What are we grateful for? We live in a life of both blessings and challenges. But what blessings do we feel grateful for in our lives that draws us out of ourselves into something bigger?
For that man, he was so grateful that he prostrated himself—laid down on the dirty grown after being healed from his painful wounds. His humility is drawn out and his gratefulness leads him into relationship with Christ.
Where do you feel drawn to give back? To your families, communities, churches? Giving back does not always have to be about money—it can be forgiveness, love, and time.
Giving back and giving a part of ourselves with grateful hearts not only pulls us into a greater relationship with those around us but also with Christ. We are living out his message to love one another. We all need people like the one leper in our lives to be a reminder to give back and to be thankful for what we have been given and to grateful for it. Who is that person in your life that enacting and embodying a grateful heart?
For one show on a Friday night, a middle school production of Annie raised a little under 3,000 for the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. As a young thirteen-year-old kid, that play meant more to me than just having the chance to star as Ms. Hannigan. It was realizing that I had a responsibility to give back. I already saw where it was going.
My roommate in the hospital was traveling back and forth from Chicago for surgeries and treatments. She had been born premature but at the time she was my roommate she undergone her 21st surgery. She has been one of the most positive and strongest people I have ever met in my life. Never complained and was always upbeat during the week we spent together. The play was for kids like her. Three thousand dollars may not sound a lot to some but for a bunch of middle schoolers that was a lot. And it meant a lot because the play and the money were for kids like my roommate who spent lots of their childhood at Hopkins.
Gratitude draws us out of ourselves (our single-mindedness, our everyday lives, our bubbles) into something greater—into actively engaging our world where we see the sadness and need that God wants us to help and repair. Jesus would still have healed those nine men even if they had not thanked God for their healing. Where are your blessings calling you to serve and say thank you?
The Rev. Jessica E. Sexton
*http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2796
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