“SHOUTING GRATITUDE”
Psalm 65
Luke 17: 11-19
A Thanksgiving Sunday Sermon
by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart

You’ve heard the parable of the Good Samaritan. Today our gospel reading, found only in Luke, is the story of the encounter between Jesus and “the loud Samaritan.” It is a story about a man who shouted gratitude. At first he shouted, not with thanks, but with desperation. He, along with nine others, called out to Jesus for mercy. All ten of them were afflicted with the deadly and contagious and isolating disease of leprosy.

Then, after they all were healed, only one man, the Samaritan, turned back to shout his thanks. He alone was so overcome with gratitude when he realized that he was healed, that he stopped, ran back, threw himself at Jesus’ feet, and shouted thanks and praise to God.

Have you ever shouted “Thank you!”? Have you ever been so grateful that you stopped, turned around and shouted thanks?

It might have had something to do with overwhelming relief … a rescue, or reprieve,… a lost one returned, … a traffic accident that turned into a near-miss or, an accident that you survived. Shouts of “Thank you, God!” so often follow shouts for mercy.

Or, perhaps you’ve shouted thanks in surprise at the magnitude of a gift. We learn to politely say “thank you” in life, can we also learn to shout thanks for God’s healing grace with the same volume and intensity that we might bring to a football stadium, or the still wonder and tears we might have at the miracle of birth? Even small gestures – our Bishop, Bishop Beverly Shamana, holding communion outside the walls of the church and on a door until the doors of the church are truly open to all people – even small gestures are cause to shout.

If we are mindful, thanksgiving can come just as spontaneously in response to everyday and overlooked wonders. Shouting gratitude can become a spiritual practice as we contemplate the real and regular stuff of our lives as pieces of the whole fabric of God’s amazing grace. Praying the psalms, singing hymns, saying aloud and shouting in silence, “Thank you, God!” can form a shouting gratitude attitude that changes lives.

In recent weeks Epworth’s Quilters have contemplated whether their organized quilting days might be coming to an end. Since then, however, three new projects have appeared. But the prospect of the Epworth quilters quilting no more got me to thinking … and so today I invite us to consider the practice of everyday thanksgiving with quilts, quilting, and quilters in mind.

The two beautiful Quilts you see before you were quilted by Epworth Quilters –one- just completed and auctioned this fall, the other belongs to Jeanne Olson. At Fellowship Hour you can see the project they are currently working on for Anna Martinez stretched on its frame, and photo albums of quilts and quilters throughout the over forty years of their ministry.

Emma Ford, Betty Johnson, Betsy Walter, and Pearly Dorsey are the quilters who continue now that Martha Kridle has moved, and other co-workers have moved on. They gather on Wednesdays downstairs in the Parlor and work on projects, some of which were begun by other hands, decades, or even generations before, and some of which are brand new.

People with fabrics cut but not sewn, sewn but not backed, backed but not quilted, come to the quilters to have projects made whole.

In addition to providing this welcome and needed service, the Quilters have used all monies they have received to provide support for Epworth’s buildings, furnishings, and ministries through the years. It is a wonderful cycle of service and gratitude and service.

Last week they paid for an annual deep cleaning of the church kitchen … and an interesting thing happened. A young man on the cleaning crew asked Emma Ford if she would bless him and their cleaning! She was startled by the request, but he insisted and she blessed him.

I know I am blessed when Chris and I join them for lunch on Wednesdays (as have pastors before me). If you want to make quilts, or make friends, come for a blessing. You just never know how the blessings of one generous act will be multiplied and carried forward in community!

While sometimes a quilt is a solitary project, at least as often a quilt is an expression of community life and value and memory.

This morning I brought one quilt completed nearly a quarter century ago in celebration of a church’s 75th anniversary with individual squares illustrating aspects of the church’s life. I brought another made in 1937 as a gift to Jim’s mother and father, Mildred and Don, for their wedding. It was done by the women of Mildred’s family … with squares of the quilt carrying the names of each extended family member.

And, of course in recent years the AIDS quilt has commemorated those who have died of AIDS, with individual panels quilted and sewn together in an immense and powerful expanse of loss and of love and of life.

In a book titled With Sacred Threads, Susan Towner-Larsen and Barbara Davis write, “Perhaps no other art form invites us to gather the fragments of our lives into a palpable pattern as does quilting. Quilting has been called “memory art.”

“Memory art” provides the perfect invitation to gratitude. If we stop to remember, we will give thanks. Marguerite Ickis recalls the bittersweet words of her great-grandmother:

"My whole life is in that quilt. It scares me sometimes when I look at it. All my joys and all my sorrows are stitched into those little pieces… I tremble sometimes when I remember what that quilt knows about me."

Patricia Polacco tells of the family quilt that moved through the generations of her family as they emigrated from Russia … it had been made from the fabric of worn-out and outgrown clothes. The great-grandmother who had sewn it was remembered as saying “We will make a quilt to help us always remember home. It will be like having the family back home in Russia dance around us at night.”

And finally, Rev. Jan Carlsson-Bull writes,
"Quilting mirrors our yearning for wholeness… that longing to piece together those otherwise contrary remnants of our lives and realize beauty."

This morning, as you get the feel of a stitch or two or many … or as you remember the labor and history of the quilts that are present, or of others you have seen … picture in your mind the quilt of your life … hands that have held you, lives that have shaped yours, communities that have shared your struggles, the Holy Spirit that has stitched all these pieces together … What would your life-quilt contain?

Those of you who know Tom and Jeanne Olson know that their shout of gratitude is a quiet one, but it is a shout.

As you come to Thanksgiving … with the collection of spirit-lifting joy and soul-deepening pain that have brought you to this place … remember that they are all sewn together in one cloth that is your life.

When you remember a moment that has shaped you, a relationship that has changed you, a small gesture that has healed you … turn around… and shout “Thank you, God!”

In our gospel lesson, all ten were healed, cleansed of leprosy, but Jesus told only the one who shouted gratitude, “Your faith has made you well.” Your faith has made you whole. May thanksgiving and thanksliving restore us to wholeness and open us to the future.

With the well-known prayer of the late Dag Hammarskjold may we pray… “For all that has been, … thanks. For all that will be … yes!”

Amen.