Homily for the 28th Sunday of the year
I wonder if you have ever had this sort of conversations with your Children.
Child “Mum can I have a biscuit”
Mother “What do you say?”
Child “Now”
Mother “No I need to hear the magic words?”
A look of bemusement on the Childs face then a realisation that of what those magic words are and then the Child says Oh “ Please can I have a biscuit” and then the child takes the biscuit and the Mother waits patiently for the words “ Thank you” which sometimes comes and is usually said very quickly.
In the readings we see that both Naaman and the Samaritan gave thanks to God for the wonders he had done for them. Naaman not only rejoiced in the gift if healing but also recognized the giver. In the story we are presented with in the Gospel we see that all the leapers experience the healing touch of Jesus but only one of them a Samaritan an outsider expresses his thanks to Jesus and return back to him to express it by face. Jesus seems slightly surprised that there was only one who came back. He questions them asking where the others are. It seems that he goes through the same issues that we spoke about earlier. Why is it so hard to say Thank you?
Let’s think aloud for a moment and come up with some ideas why this is so hard. We are often suspicious of someone saying thank you. Sometimes we ask ourselves what they want with us. We feel embarrassed, and have this false sense of humility. When someone does the extraordinary we even might find it difficult to accept because we don’t feel worthy of it so we escape by not saying anything at all. It’s not that we are not thankful we just find it hard to express. I think that sometimes it even goes on a much deeper level. Maybe we try and be too independent where we want to go it alone and to accept help means that we have somewhat failed and so we do not say thank you. I am not saying any of these are true but maybe they are reasons why we find it difficult to say what we mean and to express our thanks.
And yet spiritually we give thanks every Sunday for: Eucharist means thanks. When we gather here each Sunday we come to thank God in the mist of the community gathered around us. We give thanks together as a Church for all the things that God has done for us during the week. We come to gain strength to pray together and celebrate our faith in Jesus Christ.
So let us thank those who have been kind to us and help us in our lives and not forget to say thank you for the gifts that God has given us.
It does not take much to say thank you rather than be complaining all the time. I will leave you with a little story about my own experience of saying thank you.
Every Christmas when we got presents from our aunties or uncles or family or friends the next few days just after the New Year were spent with writing thank you notes to all who had given us presents. A little thing for us to do a little time out of our day really brightened up someone else’s life. If we learn anything about the spiritual life it is in the small things of life that grow and mean the most.
So today I am going to give you some Home work to do. Find someone this week that you may not have thanked enough and go and thank them. And also to thank God for the many gifts he has given to us.
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