Sermon: Gratitude and Gracious Living

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Gratitude and Gracious Living

By Charles Rush

November 4, 2001

meone recently sent me a list of some of the more colorful excuses parents have written to their children's teachers. These are, no doubt, penned on the back of your child while talking on the phone and checking their backpack for homework:

For example, one parent wrote, “My son is under the doctor's care and should not take P.E. today. Please execute him.” Freudian slip Mom?… I know just how you feel.

Or this note from a mother who appears to have taken drastic action herself. “Please excuse Mary for being absent. She was sick and I had her shot.” (I gave her a shot?)

Or my favorite: “Please excuse Fred for being. It was his father's fault.” Ma'am, that's more information than we need.

Like you, I got quite a few e-mails from people around the country -- and from Christ Church members all around the world -- in the couple weeks after September 11th wondering what life was like here. Two things that struck me immediately about that. The first is still not really believable on some level, that sense of the tape being cut in the middle of the recording in the middle of a completely normal, boring day.

My friend Jay Helvey said that as soon as he saw the first plane hit the first tower, he called his good buddy Todd Rancke and asked how he was doing. “Todd said everything was fine… He was going to help some people out of the building… He closed with ‘Hey, thanks for calling. Thanks for checking in. Everything's fine really.'” That was the last we heard from him.

Another guy I read about got home, checked the messages on his office machine, and heard his wife, who worked, I think for Cantor Fitzgerald. She said, “Honey, can you pick the kids up from soccer today, someone in the carpool can't make it. We're out of pasta if you think of it for dinner. I love you. See you around 7.” Apparently, in the couple days after, he played that tape over and over and over again.

Then there were dozens of people that couldn't reach their spouses at the office because the phones were down, so they called their cell phones. For hours, sometimes days afterward, they got this: “Hi, this is Ben, I can't get to the phone right now. Please leave your name and number and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.”

That was one thing, the unreal interruption of an ordinary day. A lot of people still can't really accept it.

The other image that stayed with me was the trains coming out of Manhattan. We had E.M.T. people and counselors down at the station to meet the commuters coming home in the middle of the day. Hundreds, thousands got off those trains…thank God. No one was much talking. There were just hundreds of people all covered in dust. It was pretty quiet for such a busy crowd. For the most part, people just got in their cars and drove. My wife told me that she had never seen so many Dads picking up their kids as the school bell rang at Franklin School. I'll bet if you could have seen a simul-cast of all the homes in town, you would have seen dozens and hundreds of families at home in bed all hugging together.

The next couple days, no one had offices to go to. Almost everyone was home. Everywhere you went around town, you would see folks walking in their neighborhood. It was Dad's walking with their children, Mom's Dad's and kids. No one passed without speaking. I saw a bunch of guys that ran into each other that usually just shook hands. They would shake hands, but that didn't seem like enough, and they actually hugged… “Good to see you.”

People gathered together in prayer, in the quiet of community. They baked for those who had family members missing. They checked in with each other to see how they were doing.

In a moment, all of us suddenly paid attention to what was real. What was really real -- Family, neighbors, community, God, being together, the precious wonder of living, the privilege of love. It was a very sad time, a very tragic time, but in the midst of it, we all felt a fundamental spiritual gratitude about life itself, about the wonder of being alive. And being grateful, we were gracious. That is what is fundamentally real.

I suspect that quite a few of us are going to be permanently changed for the better in some ways that are subtle but significant. I suspect that we are going to pay better, deeper attention to what is real. And we are going to pay less time to what is not. Someone recently commented to me about the contrast between today and just a couple years ago, the amount of time and energy they spent on extravagant client entertainment -- how thrilling it was then, how not thrilling it is now. Surely, it will come back some. But he is right.

The present situation reminds me of a study I read about. One hundred large wooden birds were placed on the Izu peninsula of Japan. Their purpose was to attract endangered albatrosses and encourage them to breed. One albatross was truly fooled. For more than two years, this 5-year-old albatross named Deko tried to woo a wooden decoy by building fancy nests and fighting off rival suitors. He spent his days standing faithfully by the decoy's side. Japanese researcher Fumio Sato, talking about the albatross's infatuation with the wooden decoy, said, “He seems to have no desire to date real birds.”

Just now, I think, a lot of our former pursuits, a lot of the Master of the Universe diversions just seem like wooden decoys. I suspect that a lot of us are just going to quietly trade in the blow up doll for something real.

This is what Jesus was really talking about in this passage. There are lots of reasons that we do what we do, lots of reasons even that we give what we give. Most of the reasons that we give are noble but there is a dimension, even in our philanthropy, that we need to be seen in a certain way, thought of in a certain way. All fund raisers play to this. Giving to this cause will position your firm in this way… Giving at this level will put you at a table with all these prominent people… You know the drill. Interestingly, Jesus doesn't condemn any of these things. He just says, ‘they are their reward'. It is what it is.

But, give from your heart. As you grow in spiritual maturity, be more and more of a generous person and see your giving as your investment in what is really real. Support what is really real in your life with your time, your energy, your money. Give graciously out of gratitude.

And invest yourself with abandon in things that really matter. Joseph J. Melone, the president of Prudential Insurance Company, put it like this: “Everything I've ever read suggests that those individuals who are most successful in this world -- the ones people really look up to -- all say the same thing: the greatest joy in life doesn't come from wealth or praise or high honors. It comes from achieving something worthwhile -- something of lasting value.

“The ancient Romans were noted for their achievements in construction. Thousands of arches are still standing today. They have survived for 200 years. The Romans had an interesting practice. When they finished building an arch, the engineer in charge was expected to stand beneath it when the scaffolding was removed. If the arch didn't hold, he was the first to know.”
“Whatever you choose to build with your life,” said Melone, “build it so you -- and someday your children's children -- can stand beneath it with confidence and pride.”

Habitat for Humanity, the group that builds houses for the poor, built 27 row houses in Dade County, Florida. Some of these houses -- built entirely by volunteers, were right in the path of Hurricane Andrew, which devastated South Florida in the late summer of 1992. Yet almost every house build by the Habitat for Humanity volunteers survived the destructive forces of the hurricane's winds and rains. On one street, the only houses whose roofs remained were the houses built by Habitat. The leader of the Greater Miami chapter said simply, ‘We don't cut corners when we build them.”

Jesus said, build your spiritual house on a good foundation and you will not be disappointed when the bad weather comes, when the trials of life surround you and you seek shelter from the storm. I have a feeling that we are in a position to hear this and make a long-term commitment to do something about it in a way that we were not just a few months ago. I have a feeling that we are going to move some of that discretionary income over from diversionary activities and stuff that entertains us to the column that says investment in things that last, in stuff that is really real. And you know what that is. God, community, the next generation, charity that reflects our deepest values.

I hope that in your reflections in the past few weeks and in the months to come that you are able to articulate some of your deepest held values. Martin Luther King once said that at the moment you have found something you are willing to die for, you are free. I hope that you are able to articulate your deepest held values and I hope that you are lucky enough to be able to support them in such a way that with your time, your energy and your gifts, you will be able to establish them for the next generation. Because that is what is really real. I like the motto at Mercedes-Benz they have at all their plants. It says, “Das Beste oder Nichts.” The best or nothing. Something like that ought to be the motto for spiritually attuned people, certainly for Christians, ‘our best or nothing'. May you find what you cherish and may you be blessed to build it well.

Amen.