By Rev. Dr, Peter Ives — A sermon delivered at Haydenville Congregational Church, Nov. 18, 2018, the Sunday before Thanksgiving. 
       A number of years ago, I was on a train traveling from Istanbul to London.  Because of a cholera outbreak, I had been delayed in Istanbul for a week, and I was very low on money.  In fact, I didn’t even have enough money to buy food that was being served on the train.  Fortunately, there was an older woman from Germany sitting next to me.  She realized very quickly that I had no money for food, so every meal time she offered me some food that she carried in her large picnic basket. She gave me warm buttered rolls, hot soup, crackers and cheese, sandwiches, apples, cakes and pies.  For three days as our train passed through the countries of Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria, she fed me from her picnic basket.  Without her, I wouldn’t have eaten the whole trip.

     Though I knew she was going to get off the train in Germany, I never bothered to ask where; so when we entered the city of Munich, the event happened that I would regret to this very day.  As the train began to slow down, I went to check on my baggage in a luggage rack two cars away.  But when I got there a conductor stopped me and asked to see my passport.  My passport was in my luggage bag and it took awhile to find it, so I was delayed getting back to my seat.  In the meantime, the train had stopped at the Munich Station.  When I finally returned to my seat, I was in despair.  The older woman wasn’t there anymore.  She had gotten off in Munich.  Suddenly realized that Munich was her home, but I hadn’t thanked her for all she had done for me.  And I would never have a chance to thank her again.  The opportunity was gone forever.

     Why is it that we so often forget to say “thank you” or procrastinate until it is too late!  Why is it that we often take for granted the wonderful things people do for us, and when the opportunity come to say thank you comes, we’ve waited too long.  Why is it that we are so unappreciative of our parents, our families, our friends, our children, our colleagues at work, until  they go away or pass away, and we are left with regrets.  Clearly this must have happened to those lepers Jesus healed that day.  ( Luke 17:11-19)

      According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was entering a village when he was met by 10 lepers.  Now the consequences of contracting leprosy in ancient times was devastating.  Once identified as a leper, you were isolated from everyone in your community, not just for health reasons but for religious reasons too.  The religious laws stated that those who had leprosy brought contamination and condemnation to all who lived in the same house, even in the shade of the same tree.  The result was that once you were identified as a leper, you were immediately cut off from all normal life in your community.  You had to live as a beggar, since no employment was possible.  You had to stay away from your own family, even your children.  Shut off from all human contact, you had to cry “unclean, unclear” wherever you walked so that people passing by might not be touched by you.  These were the men who called out to Jesus for help.  These were the ones who called out to Jesus to heal them.

     And though we will never know the full details of their affliction, Jesus healed them with the touch of his healing powers.  But only one of them bothered to return to Jesus and say “Thank You” and he no less was a Samaritan.  The other nine, apparently, got up and left and never bothered to utter a word of thanks.  “Were not 10 of you cleansed?” Jesus asks.  Where are the other nine?  For whatever reasons: insensitivity, ingratitude, neglect,  forgetfulness, the other nine simply went their way and never stopped to acknowledge that they who were once sick had now been healed, they who were once alienated from their children, their families and their community had now been restored, they who were once been all but dead, had now been given the gift of new life.

     Meister Eckhart once said that if the only prayer you said in your entire life was “thank you” that would be sufficient.  That is what Thanksgiving is all about.  Saying thank you to God and not procrastinating, forgetting, and putting it off, but actually taking the time to do it.  Alex Haley, the author of the book “Roots” once wrote an editorial for the Boston Globe called “Thank You.”  He told of the time during the Second World War when he was on board a navy ship stationed in the South Pacific.  Thanksgiving was coming but it was still 6 weeks away. Standing outside on the deck of his ship looking out to sea and idea came into his mind.  There were people who had touched his life and done a great deal for him and meant a great deal to him.  But the embarrassing truth was that he had just accepted what they had done for him and taken it for granted.  He had never said thank you!  So he decided at that moment to sit down on board the ship and write a letter to three people who had deeply touched his life.  His letter began, “Here this Thanksgiving, far out in the Pacific Ocean on board my ship, I have come to realize that I have never stopped and taken the time to thank you.  To his dad, a teacher, he wrote how thankful he was that his dad had given him his love of books and reading and had set him on his way to becoming a writer.  To his high school principal, he wrote how much his words of encouragement and support had been to him when other had been so critical.  And to his grandmother he wrote, “Gram, I simply want to thank you for having sprinkled my life with stardust.”    
      Six weeks before Thanksgiving the letters went out in the mail.  But early on the week of Thanksgiving three letters came back to his ship.  “My dad had never been very sentimental, so I knew said Haley, how moved he must have been to write me and say “that having helped to educate many young people as a teacher, I now feel that my best result as a teacher has been you, my own son.”  His high school principal wrote that he had just retired feeling very insecure about how much he had ever accomplished.

“Your letter to me, Alex, was a wonderful affirmation that my career as a principal has been deeply appreciated.”  And the letter from his grandmother moved him to tears.  “I may have sprinkled your life with stardust, Alex” but you have been my star ever since I held you in my arms as a baby.”

     So take the time to say “thank you” this Thanksgiving.  Write your own letter of Thanksgiving now to the people you have forgotten or taken for granted. And finally take time to thank to God for your own life here on this planet called Earth, this tiny bright blue green Christmas tree light, traveling through the darkness of intergalactic space that holds on its surface, everything we hold most dear: our lives, our families, our friends, our pets, our neighbors, our church members, our communities, our country, the countries of our world, and our humanity as human beings.  Say a prayer of thanks to God knowing that it is gratitude to God for our life here on this Earth that brings us our greatest joys.