The Gratitude Muscles

Sermon

This month I will be preaching on texts from the Letter to the Philippians. I love the letter to the Philippians—it is so sincere and wise and loving. Many of you know that I will be leaving Westminster at the end of September, and I chose my final sermons with you to be on some of these beloved texts from Paul’s letter. (Well, that, and the lectionary selections were a bit dreadful, in my humble opinion.) If you have some spare time, maybe you’ll want to take a half-hour or so and read through this epistle. Paul is at his best in this letter, something I always took for granted until I cracked open a commentary by Dr. Elsa Tamez.

Some of you may remember Dr. Tamez, who spoke at Westminster a few years ago as our theologian-in-residence. She is a Mexican-Costa Rican New Testament scholar, a member of the Methodist church, and professor emerita of the Latin American Biblical University. She also has a deep heart, as she says in her dedication, for “women and men imprisoned because they dared to think differently from those in power.”

The first few sentences of her book caught me short, as she writes, “In a filthy and foul smelling place in a Roman Praetorium, Paul begins to dictate his letter to the Philippians…. His condition is terrible [in part] because he is chained to one or two soldiers as stipulated by military custody rules.” (Elsa Tamez, Wisdom Commentary, Volume 51: Philippians, p. 37)

I knew Paul was in prison when he wrote the letter, or when he dictated the letter to Timothy, but I never really considered just how terrible that prison was. Here he is, suffering physically and mentally and emotionally, filthy, chained, not sure if he will be freed or be put to death, and yet—he writes these gracious, loving words. How?

Today I want to explore with you the virtue of gratitude, and specifically, gratitude when the world around is falling apart. The image that came to mind was of a set of gratitude muscles, muscles that need exercise so that they can become strong, strong enough to face life when things are terrible.

Let’s start with the apostle Paul. He is in an impossible situation—in a horrible place waiting a sentence, which as we know, was a death sentence. He has labored for years telling people about the way of Jesus and urging them to form community around the ideals that Jesus taught. From prison, the best he can do to encourage these communities is to dictate letters and hope that they find their way to their intended audience.

As we know, some of his letters were cheerier than others. The Corinthians must have driven him crazy. The Jesus-followers in Rome he never met. But the Philippians—there is a special place in Paul’s heart for the Philippians.

I think Paul must have drawn on some incredible personal resources to be able to write this love letter. Dr. Tamez, who has worked with many people who have been jailed for political reasons, offers three motivating forces that allow the incarcerated to remain, well, human. We might think of those motivations as gratitude muscles.

The first muscle is conviction about one’s cause. Whether it’s the apostle Paul preaching that Jesus and not Caesar is lord, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaking against Hitler and National Socialism, or Nelson Mandela fighting to end apartheid, or Martin Luther King, Jr., participating in nonviolent protest, commitment to what one is doing matters. It’s the sense that whatever it is you’re fighting for, whatever the reason you’ve been jailed, you are on the side of what is right and just, no matter what the official law says.

The second muscle is acknowledging and appreciating those tiny, good things that happen—a ray of sunshine in a dark cell, a letter from a friend, or some sort of communication that shows that people have not forgotten the person who is in jail. That’s why Paul thanks the Philippians for remembering him—he has not been forgotten. His work has not been in vain.

When I was in seventh grade I read Corrie Ten Boom’s book The Hiding Place and it had a huge impact on me. I wondered if I would have been brave enough to hide a Jewish family in my home. I wondered if I could have survived a concentration camp. Almost forty years later I still remember that book and still marvel that while in that horrific camp, Corrie Ten Boom offered a prayer of thanksgiving for the fleas in the barracks because they kept the guards away.

The third muscle, according to Dr. Tamez, is continuing concerns for loved ones. We do that. We don’t want the people we love to necessarily know how much we are suffering, so we share with them things like our commitment to the cause and our willingness to be jailed for it, or we share with them some small gratitude that came our way. A decent meal. A letter. A walk outside.

In 1915 a Polish-Jewish woman named Rosa Luxemburg was put in prison for her political activism. Two years later, she wrote this to a friend. “Here I am quiet and alone, enveloped in multiple layers of black darkness, of the boredom of captivity in wintertime; and in these moments my heart beats with a strange and indefinable internal happiness, as if I were walking amid the rays of a brilliant sun in a field of flowers. And in the darkness I smile at life, as if I had a magic secret that could refute everything bad, everything sad, and convert it into an abundance of light and happiness.” (Tamez, p. 46, quoting Jorn Schutrupf, ed., Rosa Luxemburg o el precio de la libertad)

And so we have the gratitude muscles: commitment to one’s ideals; appreciation for even the smallest joy; concern for loved ones. And so our work is cut out for us.

Now it is entirely possible that expressing gratitude in the face of some terrible situation is not high on your list of priorities. That’s okay. During the pandemic I learned that phrase “toxic positivity,” which means invalidating negative emotions and plastering on a happy façade. That is not what I’m talking about.

For us, using our gratitude muscles is a matter of drawing on our faith, drawing on our belief or hope that we are utterly beloved by our God, drawing on our commitment to follow in the way of Jesus even when that asks hard things of us, and drawing on our desire to be in community and to strengthen our community.

Do you know that God loves you? I think it’s good to check in every so often about that. And I think that is such an intangible thing—surety of God’s love—and it can sound very touchy-feely. God’s love for us is something that each of us chooses to believe. One could argue that there is no tangible proof of God’s love. If we were to point to a lightning strike missing us as evidence of God’s love, what does that say about God and the person who is hit by lightning?

I believe in God’s love because that is one of the great themes of our sacred scripture. It is the force behind the brave choices the prophets and disciples made. God’s love is seen in the work of Jesus. Just as much as we can choose to believe God doesn’t love us, we can choose to believe that God does. So why not choose love?

It is the love of God that undergirds those things we would call our ideals. We advocate for justice because God loves the person who is hurt by injustice. We care for our neighbor, even the neighbor we might not like very much, because God loves that person and that is good enough for us. We push aside all those negative things the world tells us about our worth and hold on to that tiny spark of God’s love that resides deep within us.

Our gratitude muscles get a workout when we are intentional about seeing what is truly good, or heartening, or life-giving, even when we are in a bad situation. A few years ago one of our beloved members was in the slow process of dying. Week after week he came to church, and as the end of his life drew near, he shined with more and more luminousness. It was a beautiful thing to see. I do not know what he was grateful for specifically, but I think it has something to do with his faith. (And the music.)

Some of you keep gratitude journals, and I know that keeps your hearts open and hopeful, and it’s a great workout for those muscles. On days when I am super grouchy and I cannot stand myself for one more minute, I challenge myself to look around and see what is good. Our dog, Max, is good. The blooming dahlias are good. A phone call from our daughter is good.

We have to be intentional about building up those muscles because the world throws so much at us that we might easily only see what is bad or wrong or tragic. And those things are there. Oh yes. But they aren’t the only things.

The last workout for our gratitude muscles is our love and concern for the community. That might be at work, or in the neighborhood, at school, and definitely at church. How are we caring for each other? How are we appreciating each other? How are we working to make things better, to truly hear each other, to remember why we have gathered in this particular community?

That is maybe the thing I appreciate most about Westminster—the way you all care for each other. I’m tempted to name specifics but I think that might embarrass some of you. So let me just say I see how you take each other to breakfast when things are crappy. I see how you send cards of encouragement. I see you bring cookies to the staff or offer emotional support chocolate. I see you making an effort to stay in relationship with someone who is feeling angry or cut off. I see you sing to the dying. I see your eyes light up when a baby or toddler comes to church. Your care for each other is immense and may be the secret sauce of Westminster.

And so with the apostle I say, I thank our God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for you, I always pray with joy. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more.

To the glory of God.