"Gratitude," the senior sermon delivered on October 14, 2004 in Christ Chapel, by Annie Bates, Class of 2005 from the Diocese of Western Louisiana

I have decided that in order to redeem myself and to prove to my fellow students and the esteemed faculty and staff of E-T-S-S that I can indeed sing, I will chant my entire sermon. Just kidding.

OK, I don't mind telling you that last week was a really rough week. Singing Morning Prayer badly was not what I had planned, and it left me feeling a lot more vulnerable than I expected. I have a pretty thick skin, and I have embarrassed myself many times before, so this was nothing new. What was unusual for me was the gentleness with which you all treated me afterward, and your kind words of reassurance.
I should have expected that from this community of tender souls, but it caught me by surprise and broke open my heart in a way that really caught me off guard. And then my husband's uncle died, and put everything back into perspective.

Bobby was an exceptional person, the greatest model of a Christian gentleman I have ever known. He spent his life as an educator then after he retired he served for 20 years as mayor of his tiny town of Ringgold, Louisiana. He treated my husband as his own child, and when we were married, I became one of his too. He was steady, smart and faithful, and the loss of him is profound.

But this is life, isn't it? Love and loss, failure and redemption. You just usually don't get all of it in a one week package. Experiences like this stretch you. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. You feel yanked and torn and yet still you find yourself intact. You realize your faith has been stretched along with you, growing enough to accommodate all that you have to handle. It makes old things new, it reveals blessings in tragedy and it lifts the spirit even when we're at our absolute lowest.

But when the stretching stops, you realize something else has happened too. You're on a new path that's not as familiar anymore, and it's beckoning you to the risk of new places and new responsibilities.
Most of you have been your way on the faith path for a while, so you know all about the risk and responsibility of being someplace new, don't you? And for some of us, this little adventure has even led us into scary neighborhoods where the Commission on Ministry lurks, Middler Evaluations leer and the streets are named Insecurity, Uncertainty and Conditional. But you stick to the map, and before long,
you're merging onto the road to the priesthood. That's when the fun really starts.

I love a good road trip. My family is mystified by our driving habits. They all fly, but Will and I drive everywhere. When he and I get crossed up, or are having a hard time getting through to each other, we hop in the car and go. It doesn't matter where. We can go a thousand miles and never turn on the radio. You'd think after being together more than 20 years we'd run out of things to say, but we do our best talking at 70 miles per hour. Maybe it's because there's no running away; you have to stay and work things through. Or, maybe we're just crazy.

I get the impression Jesus loved a good road trip too. Have you ever noticed how often the Gospels have a travel motif? It's a classic literary device, really. Traveling is all about leaving things behind and approaching something new. And this Messiah of ours is a real action figure… he's always going, always doing. He's traveling toward his destiny, touching lives and leaving people changed forever as he keeps on moving down the road.

And so it is on a road in the no man's land between Galilee and Samaria that Jesus encounters a group of lepers who flag him down and ask for a little roadside assistance. Jesus is happy to oblige, and simply tells them to go to the priest and show themselves. They head off immediately, and while on the way, one of them notices that as he walks his body is restored. So he turns around and heads back to Jesus. But he's the only one.

When was the last time you really thanked God for healing? Nine times out of ten our muttering of, "Oh thank God" when the symptoms abate or when the crisis is averted is more of a convention than a doxology. So why are we so surprised when only one of the lepers returns to thank Jesus and praise God? Why would their actions be any different from ours?

Oh, how we take healing for granted, especially in the U.S. We don't just expect relief from our symptoms, we expect a cure, and a quick, affordable one at that. We demand immediate access to it, we want the freedom to control every aspect of it and we want it to taste good, too.

Will and our friend Tommy discovered a pair of British tourists in Orlando, Florida, videotaping the headache remedy aisle in the Eckerd's one day, killing themselves laughing. They had never seen so many choices, because their socialized medical system doesn't create a market for nine kinds of liquid acetaminophen for children. They couldn't believe the extravagance. And we just think it's normal… no, worse, we expect it. Could someone pass me the strawberry kiwi Rolaids please? This is making my stomach hurt.

But we also think nothing of a society that holds up such artificial standards for beauty that it's become a sub-industry within medicine.

We spend billions of dollars a year in this country nipping, tucking and liposuctioning our bodies into some crazy idea of plastic perfection.

Girls in my daughter's eighth grade class are obsessing over their looks, spending big bucks on hair straightening, body waxing and even personal trainers. All of this is encouraged and funded by their parents. And then we send them to therapy to cope with their poor self-esteem. But only if insurance will cover it.

Meanwhile, there are children in our area who go to bed hungry, homeless and hopeless. There are hardworking adults who can't afford to buy their medications and food. What is wrong with us? Is this how we show love for our neighbors?

But let's turn back to the gospel, because we're not really done.

It's interesting to me that we tend to think that the story ends there, with the one, foreign leper giving God what is meet and right. OK, we get it, the outsider was the one in the right, the pyramid of power is again turned on its end. We've heard this story before, right? But there's a subtext here we tend to miss.
This story is sandwiched between two rebukes. One is against the disciples for being of weak faith and the other rebuke is against the Pharisees because they wouldn't know the kingdom if it came and bit them on the ankles. The evidence of the failure of their faith is in their actions, because neither the disciples nor the Pharisees are allowing what they claim as their belief in God to change how they interact with the world.

Jesus' point is this… the kingdom is not something you see, it's something you live. And living it begins with reorienting to God and away from self. It begins with turning away from what we need and turning toward what others need. It begins with obedience to the will of God that we love God with all our hearts souls and minds and we love our neighbors as ourselves. It means turning away from first pursuing what may make us feel happy, whole and secure. Because if we turn to God, we will recognize our happiness, wholeness and security can only be in God.

But that doesn't mean we get all that happiness and security up front. We have to be willing to take action first. We have to do it out of gratitude, not out of expectation for reward. We have to work to make the kingdom come… by recognizing first that it is all around us and tapping in to its power.
We are so blessed. We are better fed, better educated, better housed and have better healthcare than any other nation in the world.

Yet how do we show our gratitude? By spending our time, effort and money on selfish pursuits. By thinking to ourselves, I got mine, let them get theirs. By hoarding what we want in fear that it may be gone tomorrow. Is that what we call faith?

No, because faith dispels fear. Faith is working for others from a wellspring of abundance so that we all have a chance. Faith is showing gratitude not only with our lips but in our lives… where have I heard that before? Faith is not looking out for number one… It is walking the dusty highway with the last of ten lepers, choosing the company of the most outcast of the outcast, the most lost of the lost… and then thanking God for having the opportunity to be one in whom God's glory will be revealed. It is taking that revelation and passing it on to another and another and another.

Sounds like a good excuse for a road trip. Let's go! In the name of the creator, the redeemer and the sustainer.