[Sermon] The Posture of Gratitude

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo

October 12, 2025 + Lectionary 28

Living Generously, Loving Boldy Week 2: Love that Sacrifices

When one healed leper turned back to give thanks, he discovered that gratitude is not a polite response but a transformed way of living. Pastor Hector invites reflection on how gratitude reshapes our posture toward God and one another. True worship, he reminds us, happens not only in sanctuaries but in daily acts of mercy, generosity, and care. Gratitude becomes the soil in which sacrificial love takes root. When faith and thankfulness join hands, healing flows outward to restore community and renew life.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

Grace to you and peace from God—Abba, Father, Mother, Creator—and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who stops us, takes a good look at us, and sends us made well. And we said, amen.

How are you today? There’s one good over here—how about this? Hi! Great! Oh, they are better than you—they are great. You are good? Oh, they are awesome! How about here?

I don’t know what was going on—probably with the lepers—when they found out that they were healed, right? “I’m good.” “Oh no, I’m better.” “No, you’re good.” “No, you look better.” I mean, the Scripture doesn’t say much about what happened on the way. In fact, the Scripture doesn’t say what happened after everything—when they were healed. And maybe that’s what I invite you to reflect on today: what is beyond the story of the ten lepers that traditionally focuses on being grateful?

I think there is something deeper, more profound—something challenging, but at the same time, life-giving. Last Sunday, I said that when we were talking about faith, as David reminded us a few minutes ago, faith enables us—or enables God, or the Spirit—to work in and through us in ways that defy ordinary human experience. This is the big tree that David was talking about, right? Enormous tree, enormous deeds, enormous ways that we show and become an extension of the compassion of the Lord Jesus.

But I also was telling you the story of an experience I had with a group of people praying for a person who died. In some way, I can say for this person, healing was not granted. But maybe many of you, just like me, have experienced the opposite—what happens when healing comes, and when healing comes unexpectedly?

A few months ago, when I was in Mexico—as some of you know—the reason that I had to leave suddenly for Mexico was because on a Friday I was told that my father, after the surgery he had on Thursday, was not responding. His lungs were basically collapsing—he was not breathing. His vitals were so low that the doctor said, “There is not much that we can do, so your dad is not going to make it. Probably a few hours. Come as soon as you can.”

So on that Friday, I talked to our staff, to the council, and I said, “I need to run to Mexico. I need to change my flight and go as fast as I can.” So I prepared myself—and you probably have been there—we prepare ourselves to encounter a loss, to encounter the loss of a loved one, to come to the realization of the limitations that we have as human beings. I was preparing myself to basically come to celebrate the funeral of my father.

And when I got there early Sunday morning, and arrived at the hospital ready to see my father dead or dying, the first thing I heard was, “Your dad is okay.” I mean, he was weak, but he was okay.

So the question is: what do we do when unexpected healings happen, in the same way that we ask what do we do when the healing we expect doesn’t happen in our lives?

Maybe, as I was reading this passage, I was thinking:

What has this experience meant for us—for my family? Did the busyness of trying to put things in place, to be ready to travel, to even prepare for a funeral—did all that prevent us from seeing the healing that was happening? Or did the healing that happened prevent us from turning to the source of that healing?

There is a song written by a Spanish singer that I used to listen to when I was young, many years ago. He’s from Spain—a Catalonian—and in this song he says (and I’ll say it in Spanish so that you can hear how it sounds):

“Si cuando se abre una flor, al olor de la flor, se le olvida la flor.” “If, when a flower blooms, at the perfume or aroma of the flower, we forget the flower…”

How many times in our lives, in the celebration of a blessing we’ve received, do we forget the source of that blessing?

And perhaps that’s what I was experiencing when I went to Mexico that day. I was so busy. I was so frustrated. And instead of seeing my father’s healing as something to reflect on—to think about and see the source of that healing—I was more concerned with, “Now what do I do with a father who is alive, who was supposed to be dead?”

And I speak like this because this is the reality of life, my siblings. This is the reality that we walk together. In the story we heard, we have a situation—we have these lepers. These lepers, and especially this one, who sometimes makes me wonder: what led him to go back to Jesus?

What led them, in the first place, to look for Jesus that morning, that afternoon, or that moment when they were waiting by the road? Did they know they were going to be healed? Or had they heard people talking about this healer who was going to pass by, and they said, “Well, let’s get closer to the road. Maybe, by any chance, we can talk to him—and by any chance, we may be healed.”

Was it this collective sort of excitement, this community buzz about healings that were happening, that made everyone a little desperate to find healing for themselves? These lepers, out of desperation and a desire to get better, risked everything and went close to Jesus to ask him for mercy. “Lord, have mercy.” Kyrie eleison.

And then, when Jesus looked at them—in this translation we read—it says that he “took a good look at them.” I was wondering, what did Jesus do when he took that good look at them? Was he looking at their appearance? Was he looking at their attitude? Was he seeing how they were ill—or was he looking into their hearts, at what they truly needed?

As you can see, I have more questions than answers for this passage, because this story is so rich and reflects so much of our personal lives that I almost don’t have enough time to go through every single word. And don’t worry—I’m not going to! But there is just so much in this story.

The leper—the Samaritan, to me—returned to Jesus and didn’t go to the priests because he was a double outcast. He was a Samaritan, and he was a leper. He had nowhere else to go. The system—the religious system—had rejected him as unworthy and unclean. So he decides to return to the one who showed him power and compassion, the one who restored to him the God-given dignity that he had as a human being, regardless of being a Samaritan and a leper.

And in his joy of celebration, he allows that very joy to disrupt the comfort of his blessing. Instead of simply going to celebrate with friends, he goes back—to prostrate himself before the Lord Jesus.

But then the question for me is: what about the other nine? If we read the passage, Jesus says at the end, “Get up. Your faith—what?—has saved you. Your faith has made you well.” But the other nine didn’t hear those words. So the question is, were they really healed? Did they really go to the priest?

Did they even regret that they didn’t go back to Jesus? We do not know. But it’s an important question to ask ourselves, because it helps us reflect on how we respond when we smell the beautiful aroma—the perfume—of the flower that blooms in front of us. And instead of forgetting the flower, we go back to the flower.

How do we see God working in our journey? Moreover, how do we respond when God works in our lives? “Get up, and go on your way; your faith has healed you and saved you.” Or, as other translations say, “Your faith has made you well.”

This story, my siblings, I believe, is about a posture—a posture in relationship with God. A posture of humility, of gratitude, and of recognition that we are recipients of grace. A grace that is not deserved. A grace that is not about earning wages.

Remember the story from last Sunday, when Jesus told the disciples that they need to be like those unworthy servants—those who simply do what they are called to do, without expecting more. Because the important thing is not the reward they might earn, but the gift they have already received.

The leper’s return to Jesus is not just an act of gratitude. I wonder if it might also be an act of desperation and faith—recognizing Jesus as the true authority in his life, the one who rules his life with mercy, compassion, and grace. A rule of life.

Gratitude and worship are central to our Christian identity.

And this gratitude has implications—not only for us as individuals, but also for us as a community. Because this gratitude is revealed in the ways you and I interact with one another, in the ways you and I look at each other, and in the ways we see ourselves as creations of the compassionate God who sends us into the world to be extensions of healing for the whole world.

This parable is about the necessity of community—how healing is a communal experience—and how our response to God’s mercy is central to our identity.

So this Samaritan leper came back to Jesus, and one of the translations says that he prostrated himself before Jesus—at the feet of Jesus—and worshiped him.

This is a question for you: what comes to your mind when you hear the word worship?

What do we normally think when we talk about worship?

Celebration.

Praise.

Adoration.

Communion.

Fellowship.

Do you see everything that you said? Worship is not necessarily about this place, this building, or even what we do physically.

Worship is a posture—a posture of openness and willingness to be transformed and changed through our relationships with one another. This man reminds us that it is in relationship with Jesus that we become part of true worship.

A worship that doesn’t just happen at 10:00 in the sanctuary every Sunday. A worship that happens—what did you say?—five days? Only five? Six besides Sunday, right? Exactly! Worship happens 24/7—every day, everywhere, all the time—because it’s about your posture of living open to the gracious God who comes, looks at you and me, gives us life, and restores to us the dignity that the systems of this world so often take away.

Those same systems that prevent us from seeing each other as human beings—created in the image of God, called to hold one another in love, grace, and embrace.

Worship is beyond the physical gathering in this place. It is an alternative community, founded not on ideology or theology, but on posture—on the posture of worship.

And every time you and I meet people and share words of encouragement… every time we go out of our way to lift up someone in distress… every time we listen actively to others and create spaces where we edify one another in conversation—even when we have different views of the world—that’s when we are worshiping.

That’s where healing happens.

When this congregation—when everything you do in every ministry—embodies that posture of grace, healing happens. Think of it: pastoral care ministers, Stephen Ministers, Neighbors in Need, Living Water, the Gathering, the music, the singing, the fellowship, the families who gather, the youth—everything I mention. When all of it is done open to the grace and mercy of God, that’s when healing happens.

And it’s not just physical healing—it’s that we are made well. We are restored to what God intended for each one of us.

Living generously requires a sacrifice of our time and our attention.

Loving boldly is gratitude that becomes a natural response—in other words, a way of life.

Loving boldly means celebrating and being led away from self-centeredness toward the source of wholeness and healing in Jesus.

Loving boldly is relying on the faith that turns us around 180 degrees—to give ourselves in acts of love, care, solidarity, compassion, and healthy empathy toward others.

Loving boldly, my siblings in Christ, is about living seven days a week, everywhere, all the time.

Get up, and go on your way—your faith has healed you, has made you well.

Let’s go—and let’s worship the rest of the week until the Spirit brings us back again.

Amen. Amen.