17 November 2010
Psalm 101. 109; Mal 1.1-14; James 3.13-4.12; Luke 17.11-19

How do we dishonor the Lord in our worship? In the time of Malachi they did so by offering lame, blind and impure animals as sacrifice in spite of the Lord’s clear command that the animals offered as sacrifice were to be the best and purest. The costliness of the sacrifice reminded them that sin was an abomination to the Lord, not some insignificant matter. In the new covenant we need to be reminded that Jesus on the cross, his suffering and shame, is the sacrifice for sin and that reminder should be to us the sign of the nature of sin. When we worship Him, do we do so out of duty or from full and thankful hearts. If we bring less than our best to worship the Lord, we stand guilty of the same things the prophet says here, we dishonor the Lord, despise His sacrifice, and profane His Name. Worship is a thoughtful endeavor and requires us to enter His presence with thanksgiving and with an awareness of our need for the encounter.

Only one of the lepers healed by Jesus returns to give thanks and this one was a Samaritan. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus has chosen an unlikely hero in the Samaritan, so much so that the lawyer who had asked who his neighbor is could not say the word when asked who was the neighbor, but only, the one who did him a good turn. Here the Samaritan isn’t a two-dimensional character in a parable, but a person, and he is the noble one, the Godly one in the bunch. Thankfulness, I believe, is a cultivated attitude for most of us. We take too much for granted in our lives because we are well blessed. I take for granted my ability to see, hear, taste, smell, walk, talk, sleep, think, love, laugh, cry, and so many other things it is ridiculous. I take people for granted too often and I take God’s gift for granted. What would it look like if I decided to give thanks more often for everything? I might be a person that other people wanted to spend more time with and I might begin to overflow with joy as I recognized the blessings in my life.

Is the lack of thankfulness in our lives not what caused the first sin? We thought we were missing out on something in spite of the fact we had been placed in a garden the likes of which have never since been seen and all our needs were provided for by God’s gracious hand in creating all we needed before we were ever created. The only flaw had been companionship and the Lord saw to that need, the only one we recognized. Temptation is often simply a voice that says there is something missing, something God has kept from you that would make your life complete and then we are no longer thankful for what we have but coveting what we don’t have. James says that we must control our passions and desires for they are the cause of our sin. Thankfulness, counting our blessings, is an antidote for that sin.

I will sing of steadfast love and justice;
to you, O LORD, I will make music.