Faith, generosity and thankfulness
As people I think we are regularly tempted to put our lives into different sections, different compartments. Perhaps we have a work life and a social life. Perhaps a church life and private family time. These are just some options of how we might compartmentalise our lives at times and in reality, we may split it down a lot further than this, breaking down each of those sections more…
But our readings today remind us that three very key things in our lives are actually inseparable both from each other and from the lives of Christians in general. Those things are faith, generosity and thankfulness and as we commemorate a different harvest to usual those things are no less important…
In our gospel reading (Luke 17:11-19) we have this amazing account of Jesus being approached by 10 lepers who asked him for healing – perhaps this year more than ever before we recognise the words in the gospel as they approached Jesus ‘keeping their distance.’ Safe physical distancing was something that made sense even 2000 years ago.
And Jesus recognised their faith in asking him for healing and so he sent them to the priests – the priests couldn’t do the healing, Jesus had done that, but the priests were the ones who would pronounce the lepers as clean… Somewhere in that journey of faith that they took to see the priests, Jesus healed them.
And so, these were people of faith – they approached Jesus in faith, they obeyed him as they were told to go and show themselves to the priests, but what they missed was any sort of real thankfulness. Only one noticed that they’d been healed and knew that they had to return to Jesus to thank him and this one was a Samaritan, a group who hated the Jews.
And Jesus’ words were interesting – he recognised that only this one person had come to say thank you but wondered where the others were. And he then said to the Samaritan, ‘Get up and go on your way, your faith has made you well.’
Jesus was saying that the physical healing from the leprosy was only a part of the healing of those people and it’s only the one who came back who found true healing in Jesus. Faith had made the others physically well, but spiritually they had failed to recognise and praise Jesus who gave them healing.
Faith and thanksgiving go together automatically as we recognise that all of our gifts are from God and we need to respond with thankfulness expressed in our words and our actions.
And in the 2nd letter to the Corinthians (9:6-15) which we heard part of, Paul (the writer) takes this even further by explaining the connection between faith, thankfulness and generosity.
He says about the person who sows sparingly who will then reap sparingly. He says about God being able to provide not just adequately for our needs but abundantly but also that when we receive, we are to share, not out of duty but as a response to the gifts of love and grace given to us. God loves a cheerful giver the reading says.
God doesn’t need our giving, but he wants to see it because cheerful giving is an expression of the recognition of God’s incredible love for us. It is a response of thanksgiving for the life changing love of God. It is a response of thanksgiving for the gifts that he gives us day by day… One of the most famous bible verses of all is from the gospel according to John (3:16), ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’
Think how incredible those words are, ‘God so loved that he gave…’
God gave and gives to us and we are called to recognise that in faith; to be thankful for it in lives that seek to reflect that generosity and care; and to be generous, not giving just what we can as an absolute minimum out of duty, but giving so that it might even sometimes hurt… ‘God so loved that he gave his only Son…’
And Paul suggests in this letter that in our giving we will be drawn closer to God who will enrich us. It is a remarkable journey of faith that we continue as day by day we can be drawn into new experience, new challenges and experience new blessings.
And that was something Paul knew all too well – Paul whose life had been changed, who knew about worldly hardships. Paul, who dedicated so much of his life in giving to others and what he gave was the invitation to life that he had received and accepted from Jesus. And at the end of this passage, I think the last line sums things up so well, ‘Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!’
It’s almost as if words fail him. It’s almost as if he suddenly realises the magnitude of what God has done for him, of what he’s given to him and he has just to cry out these words of thanks.
And these words I think, when related to the life of Paul and when considered in the light of the gospel account about the 10 lepers highlight what I said earlier that faith, generosity and thankfulness are inseparable.
So what does that mean for us ?
Well, it means our lives are changed but just three things to sum it all up.
Firstly, we are to respond to God’s invitation into a closer relationship with him – a relationship that can be deepened every day through prayer, through the bible, through fellowship, through our actions and words. Faith is a huge challenge for us at times, but as we deepen our faith, we recognise God carrying us through every situation. We recognise God as having provided all we need and we trust that, just as he has delivered the possibility of eternal life, so he delivers what we need always.
Secondly as we are drawn into a closer relationship with God then we are drawn even more into the recognition of what He has done for us – he has provided abundantly for us in every way. Again, I repeat, ‘God so loved that he gave….’
And as we recognise all that God has done for us we are called to be generous to others – it will be in giving of our time and our money sometimes, but it is also in giving a generous heart, a heart that looks for the best in people, that prays for God to change people into his likeness.
It's so easy to judge others whilst not looking at ourselves. It's so easy to judge others when they do things obviously wrong, but let's be generous - giving chance after chance and praying for people, whoever they are, whatever they’ve done – people, created just like you and me in God’s image….
And to add to faith and generosity, the third thing has to be thankfulness. Let’s never be like one of the 9 lepers who didn’t come back to Jesus and who didn’t receive the guarantee that their faith had made them well. Let’s be more like Paul, ready to just praise God with or without words, to praise God for his indescribable gift !
Because that’s what our lives are – indescribable gifts lived in relationship with people around us, lived in relationship with God…
Be faithful, be generous and be thankful.
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