On the Way of Gratitude
October 12, 2025
Rev. Traceymay Kalvaitis
Psalm 111:1
Praise the Lord! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation.
Luke 17:11-19
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
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Today’s sermon is titled On the Way of Gratitude.
Where I grew up, it was not enough to simply say, “Thank you.” It was “Thank you, Ma’am” or “Thank you, Sir.” Manners were strictly enforced in the southern culture and every child by the age of three had mastered the basics of Ma’am and Sir and the fact that “Please, may I…” and “Thank you” were part of the necessary vocabulary for every single request. I do not remember being coached as a child but I am certain I was because I learned when my own children came along that we humans are neither gracious nor grateful by nature. In fact, we have successfully evolved over millions of years because we are discerning, suspicious, and cautious. Our brains are wired to detect differences and dangers. Psychologists call this our negative bias. Laurie Santos, professor of Psychology at Yale, writes, “Because of our negative bias, we tend to notice what’s wrong more than what’s right. From a survival standpoint, this made sense: Paying attention to danger helped keep our ancestors alive. But today, that same bias can make us miss the good things happening around us, and within us.”* Our brains have evolved to notice what’s wrong more than what’s right, and focusing on what is wrong leaves very little space for gratitude.
In our scripture reading for today, we heard the retelling of an event in Jesus’s ministry where one person out of ten returned to offer their gratitude. It was one person out of ten; all were healed and only one returned.. Jesus said, “Your faith has made you well.” Some translations read, “Your faith has made you whole.” I prefer the latter because I have witnessed the healing that can happen even when there is no apparent cure.
Let’s think about this for a moment. I am probably not the only one here who has been led to believe that if my faith is sufficient, I will be healthy and fulfilled and live a life of abundance. This is the message that countless numbers of clergy have used to fill the offering plates on Sunday mornings and raise the annual pledges each autumn. This message is toxic, though, because when we find ourselves ill, or unsatisfied, or without, and when we find ourselves, inevitably, on the threshold of death, will it be because our faith was insufficient? Absolutely not!
Some of the most helpful instruction I have received about faith has come from the work of James Fowler in his book Stages of Faith. I always thought that faith is something we acquire through experience, something we cultivate and nurture so we can then put it into practice and lead more fulfilling lives. According to Fowler, faith is not what we have; faith is what we do
If we learn how to practice faith, how to live in it and through it, we can handle anything life has in store for us. It turns out that we already have faith whether we are Christian or Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu. We have faith if we are agnostic or atheist. Faith is not a product of religion. Faith is a product of being and staying alive. According to Fowler, living faithfully begins in our earliest moments of life. As we are born and cared for, as we survive mishaps and learn to navigate complex relationships, we learn who and what to trust and we learn to whom and to what our loyalties belong. We learn faith like we learn to walk. Faith is not what we have; faith is what we do and it takes practice.
Biblical scholar Kimberly Bracken Long writes of the connection between faith and gratitude, “One might say that faith and gratitude are two words for the same thing. To practice gratitude is to practice faith.”
I’ll offer you an example from my own life. Even though my youngest are seniors in high school and able to drive themselves, I still want to get up early and make them breakfast and see them off, but that means I have to get up when it is barely light outside. It has been 19 years of getting up earlier than I would prefer and you would think I would be resigned to it by now but I am not. My first impulse is to dread getting up and out of bed. A few years ago, I began a practice of using those first few waking moments to frame a positive thought. The easiest, most reliable practice has been using what I call the shortest prayer; it consists of two words: thank you. When my alarm goes off, I practice forming the thought and feeling of the words “Thank you” as my first waking impression. I don’t say the words out loud, but I don’t just “think” the words, either. There is a feeling of gratitude that I aim to conjure, and genuinely experience, before I get up out of bed and begin my day. It worked beautifully for a very long time but lately I have felt the need to be more specific, so now, in those first waking moments when I am stirring, I say, “thank you that I am able…” Some mornings it is “thank you that I am able to get out of this bed.” Other mornings it is “thank you that I am able to face the work set before me today.”
The power of faith is the power to re-frame the circumstances of our lives. This is what I try to do each morning. I try to turn the dread of getting up or the dread of facing my day into the opposite of dread and I can do it with my heart and mind, invisible and imperceptible to anyone else. All I am doing is shifting meaning away from what is unpleasant and shift meaning, instead, towards what is more pleasant. For example, instead of placing meaning on how much I want to stay in my warm, cozy bed, I place meaning in being thankful that I can physically get up and out of bed. I place meaning in being thankful that my children are physically able to go to school and that I have food to offer them. That, my Friends, is an example of choosing to live in faith. I’m not letting myself be swallowed up by dread and negative feelings. I’m trying to learn that faith is not what we have; faith is what we do and faith is expressed in how we live in the world. Faith is inextricably bound with gratitude and with where and how we find meaning.
Here is James Fowler’s definition of faith: “Faith is a dynamic existential stance, a way of leaning into and finding or giving meaning to the conditions of our lives.” Let’s unpack this a little bit, Friends, because I expect I am not the only one here who might have misunderstood what faith is all about. Fowler writes that faith is how we lean into the conditions of our lives, how we find meaning in the conditions of our lives, or how we give meaning to the conditions of our lives. This is so important, Friends, because these are all choices we make. Do we lean into the conditions of our lives and work with them, or just gripe about them and gripe about the people we hold responsible? Do we find life meaningful? If not, are we looking for meaning in our lives? And to what do we give meaning to in our lives? Do we spend our time dreading and worrying about what might happen or do we, instead, give meaning to what we are able to do right now, even if it’s something as simple as putting one foot in front of another or climbing out of bed in the morning? We hear of people losing faith. We can not lose faith; we can only cease to live faithfully, and cease to live gratefully, when true meaning is missing from our lives.
Let’s go back to Fowler’s definition of faith. And, by the way, his work is based on the work of Erickson, Piaget and Kohlberg, names the educators among us will recognize as experts in the field of human development. Fowler writes, “Faith is a dynamic existential stance, a way of leaning into and finding or giving meaning to the conditions of our lives.” His use of the words “dynamic existential stance” define faith as an ever-changing, dynamic part of how we exist in the world. I love the pairing of the words “dynamic existential stance.” Stance is our position, how we stand in the world, and how we respond to the demands of our lives, so our stance must be dynamic and ever-changing. We are constantly faced with the question of whether we move towards life, shield ourselves from it, or brace ourselves against it. And how often, when things are going well, do we, like the one leper, return to a place of gratitude and acknowledge the force of love we call God. Is it one time out of every ten?
In closing, Friends, I pray that we will cultivate and practice gratitude as a way of life, giving thanks, as the psalmist describes, “with our whole heart.” To practice gratitude is to practice faith. Imagine how such practices can transform us as individuals and as a society. Through our gratitude, may we become more aware of the goodness, the God-ness, within us and within our world. May we live in faith, intentionally cultivating the wealth and the depth of meaning all around us. And may our faith make us whole. So be it. Amen.
*https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-from-a-neuroscience-perspective/202505/gratitude-and-neuroscience
**Fowler, James. Stages of Faith the Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. Harper & Row, (1981).
Pastoral Prayer
Dearest Beloved, our minds and our hearts are so full this morning. We are trying to make sense of the senseless, to find reason in the unreasonable, and to see You, Lord, in the inner workings of a culture that seems to be falling apart. Remind us, when we question, that Your presence is alive within us, preceding before us, inspiring us in the moment, and supporting us when we falter. We ask your blessings on those who are without, those who are in pain, and those who are frightened. May we be receptive to Your Holy Spirit working through us to nurture them, and nurture ourselves, in ways unexpected and profound. This we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.
Benediction
I leave you with these words from Romans chapter 15:
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”