Lucille is an 86 year old woman that grew up during the Depression. I haven't seen her in a while, but I got to know her very well when I was living in St. Augustine. I met her through my grandmother, they stayed together in a retirement facility. Lucille was a bit lonely, I think, and she loved to dote on me. During the time that we spent together, she shared many of her stories. She talked about her childhood on the farm, about all the work that she had to do at home, cooking the family meals when she was at the age of 10. Her childhood had not been easy, her mother died when she was very young. Her father remarried, and at a time when she needed much love and attention, she didn't receive it. Her stepmother treated her poorly. When she was still a teenager, she left home to live with and work for a rich family. She worked hard, but they were not particularly generous with her, nor particularly caring.

As she told me these stories many years later, it was obvious that some of this pain was still fresh. During my visits with her, many of these stories would be repeated several times. It was obvious that they had become sort of a leitmotif of her life, these stories were central to how she saw herself and how she saw the world in general. One of the conclusions that she seemed to draw from these stories was that, in her words, "No one ever gave me anything. We had to work hard for everything we had." She would say that with a certain clenched jaw, a certain tightness of her spirit. "No one ever gave me anything." I would frequently express sympathy for her stories and ask her questions that would invite her to share more. I think she appreciated that. But regardless of how many times we talked, she would again return to that same refrain -- "No one ever gave me anything. We built our lives from scratch." On occasion, I would point out that in fact she had not built the roads on which she traveled, she didn't build her house, she had not created herself, as a matter of fact, many people had given her many things. She might acknowledge what I said, but the truth of what I said would not penetrate, it had little effect on her clenched spirit.

Of course, it was not my job to change her, nor was that in my power. I just tried to listen to her, to share her pain, to talk about whatever, to spend time with her. But there was and is a part of me that was made sad by her statement. As much as I care for her, part of me cannot help but think, I don't want to be like that. I want to be more grateful than that. I want to have more of an open spirit, I want don't want to be so tight with my gratitude, I want to be more grateful than that.

In some ways I may not want to be like Lucille, I may want to be more grateful, but I suspect I am more like Lucille than I would care to admit, which is to say, I am not nearly as grateful as I should be, not nearly as grateful as I would like to be. Who among us is?

For most of us, I think, gratitude doesn't come easily. We struggle with gratitude in so many dimensions of our lives. Our husband or wife takes out the garbage week after week, or they cook dinner, or they do the laundry or something else, and do we say "thank you"? Probably not, or at least not often enough. A maid cleans our office day after day, week after week, after a while we don't notice it anymore, we take it for granted, we forget to say thank you.

On a national level, as well, I often sense a certain attitude that reminds me all too much of Lucille's clenched spirit. In commentary and in political conversation, I often detect a certain lack of gratitude, a lack of humility, encountering instead the sense that we Americans did it all, we singlehandedly built the greatest civilization in world history, we built ourselves up from scratch. We have nothing that we ourselves need to be thankful for, rather it is the rest of the world that should be thankful to us. That myth obscures our indebtedness to peoples who were here before us, to other nations with whom we exchanged ideas and support, it inhibits a sense of gratitude. It is probably no accident that when considering other countries, Lucille would always say, "What do they have that we don't have?" When we struggle with gratitude in our personal lives, we struggle with it as well in our life together as a community.

The difficulty we have in being grateful is sometimes evident in the church as well. I have occasionally had experience with people who go through the greeting line after the service and say, "I didn't really get much out of that sermon, or out of that service." Or else I encounter people who are looking for a church that fills them up, they are looking for a church that has good programs for their children, or a good preacher, or some other activity that meets their needs. And as important as our needs can be, isn't there something more to church and to our life together as a community of faith than having our needs met?

I hear this outside the church as well, when people say, "Church doesn't really do much for me." On the one hand, maybe that is a signal that the church needs to be more responsive and relevant to peoples' lives, but on the other hand, is that what the church is really supposed to be about, what it does for you?

Where is the sense of gratitude, not so much to the choir or to the pastor or to the program leader, but beyond that, deeper than that, where is the deep sense of gratitude towards God? Isn't that what we are primarily about, offering our thanksgiving to God?

No, the sad fact of the matter is that even in this place, any sense of deep gratitude towards God is forgotten all too often. We instead run the risk of losing ourselves in superficial activities, of keeping our heads down without a sense of grateful wonder towards the activity of God in our midst.

Why is it that we have such difficulty with gratitude? I don't really know the answer to that, but I think I can identify a few contributing factors. For one thing, I am not sure that living in a consumer-driven society helps. When relationships are reduced to one dimension, when they become primarily about a financial transaction as I pay for my groceries or visit the doctor or whatever, what role is there for gratitude? I'm just getting what I paid for, what does gratitude have to do with anything? Instead gratitude appears irrelevant, awkward even, it doesn't fit. We are excused from gratitude, it becomes a superfluous part of our relationships with others.

Our relatively short memories also don't help inculcate a sense of gratefulness within us. A deep sense of gratitude is often rooted in a long memory, you don't forget all the things, all the big and small things, that another person has done for you. There is the sense that to remember, to really remember deeply and accurately, to remember is to be grateful. This relationship between memory and gratitude is evident throughout Scripture. It is part of the bedrock of the Old Testament, as Israel is repeatedly reminded to remember that their Lord and God is the one who brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And in the New Testament, Christ invites us to remember that he is with us always, to the end of the age. When we take the time to remember, both in our relationships with others and with God, how can we fail but to be grateful?

When we take the time . . . that's a big part of the problem, I suppose. At the rapid pace at which most of us live, taking the time isn't easy. I am tempted to think, therefore, that one of the greatest threats to any sense of gratitude is the chronic busyness that characterizes our society. There is too much to do, time presses on, we don't seem to have time, time seems to have us, there is no time to take the long view, to get perspective. It is all too easy to fail to notice the details, it is all too easy to forget to be grateful.

Memory and stillness and gratefulness, there seems to be some deep connection between them. The people that I have known that have had a spirit of deep gratitude about them, the ones that have a generous spirit that is open to the world, they have been the people that have had a stillness to their spirit in the midst of turmoil, they have been the ones that somehow find time for me when there is no time. They remember me when I forget myself.

I spend so much time talking about gratitude because I believe that gratitude is at the heart of any intimate relationship. Indeed, gratitude is the heart of intimacy, it provides the slow and steady heartbeat that sustains a relationship, gratitude is what keeps relationships alive, when the spirit of gratitude is lost, then the relationship is in jeopardy. The deeper the gratitude, the deeper the sense of intimacy. If you want more intimate relationships with others, if you want a more intimate relationship with God, then it seems to me that a good starting place is a place of gratitude, a place of stillness and long memory.

The psalmist provides the example par excellence. When I think of intimacy in the context of the Bible, perhaps no book of the Bible stands out as much as the Psalms. The Psalmist is raw in his honesty, his memory reaches back to remember the many things that God has done. It is the psalmist that says, "Be still and know that I am God". The psalmist seems to have a different way of seeing. That is what gratitude is, you know, it is a different way of seeing, it is a different way of experiencing reality. Gratitude is a way of seeing God everywhere, seeing God's footprints and handiwork in all things. The gratitude of the psalmist shines through many of the psalms, including the one today. "Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness, come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord is God. It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name. For the Lord is good, his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations."

The psalmist has a sense of gratitude that overflows, the psalm explodes with thanksgiving, all the earth is invited to make a joyful noise to the Lord. I want to have that same spirit of thanksgiving in me, in us, don't you? I've seen it present in those around us. I remember, for example, a conversation I once had over lunch with a seminary classmate. I hope I don't ever forget that conversation. My friend Jeff and I were talking about many different things, including his engagement to a fellow seminary classmate named Jen. As the conversation proceeded along, the tone deepened. Eventually, Jeff shared with me, with tears rimming his eyes, just how incredibly and inexpressibly grateful he was for his relationship with Jen. He felt so blessed, he didn't know what to do with himself. He felt so blessed and so grateful that he would never be the same again. Gratitude that deep is humbling, that conversation was like a psalm, it made me grateful just to be a witness to it.

If intimacy is deeply connected with gratitude, as reflected by the psalmist and in my conversation with Jeff, how do we become more grateful people? A starting place, I think, is to make time for rituals of gratitude. Rituals of gratitude. Rituals of gratitude are activities that we do on a regular and repeated basis through which we express our gratitude to others and to God. We need rituals of gratitude in our relationships with others. We need to say "thank you" and "I love you" in regular ways. Of course, those to whom we say those things may already know that, but the point is, we need to say it. We need to say it, because being grateful in big things is made possible by being grateful in small things. It is like training for a marathon, one doesn't know the gratitude of the psalmist overnight, it is the product of much time spent together, of memories that are cherished and nurtured over the years.

We need rituals of gratitude in our relationship with God as well. Our worship service together is a ritual of gratitude. I remember a sermon I heard in seminary which talked about taking a few minutes in prayer every day to be thankful for at least three things. That sermon stuck with me. The more grateful we are, the more intimate our relationships, the more we can delight in small things -- the way she parts her hair, the taste of chocolate, a moment of stillness.

For those of who want deeper intimacy with others and with God, I encourage you to start with rituals of gratitude. And I suspect that the further you go down the path of gratitude, the more its rituals become part of your routine and gratefulness shapes your way of seeing, the more likely you are to experience the truth that is at the heart of gratitude. That truth is that more than anything else, gratitude is delight in the simple presence of the other. More than it is about what others do for us, or even what God does for us, it is about a delight in the presence of the other, the presence of God.

I experienced this in Tokyo with a man named Shiro. He would always say simply, I am glad that you are here. I am glad that you are here. It was so simple, yet the sincerity with which he said it and repeated it on a regular basis, was somewhat disconcerting. Part of me always wanted to say, But you don't know me, not really, how can you be glad that I am here, what have I done, are you crazy or what, have you lost your marbles, that kind of gratitude doesn't seem to make sense, there is no reason for it."

That seemingly reasonless gratitude is called grace. It is the pure and simple yet absolutely profound joy in the mere presence of the other. You don't get there by reason. You don't get there at all -- it gets you. It is when every fiber of your being wants to move, to sing, to shout, I am so glad that you exist, that you are here, with me. Such a deep sense of gratitude -- that is what intimacy looks like. We saw that in the creation story from last week, when Adam cries out in simple yet utter joy at the creation and new presence of Eve, "This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." We detect that same thankful intimacy in our lesson today from Philippians, in which Paul writes, "I thank my God ever time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you." "It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart." "For God as my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus."

How I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. Paul had it right, it is about the compassion of Christ Jesus, for more than anywhere else, it is in Christ that we get a glimpse of what intimacy looks like. We see it in God's commitment to be with us, in Christ's willingness to offer us his intimate presence, his life. The good news is that it is God's desire for intimacy with us, it is God's desire to delight in our presence, that makes possible our intimacy with God, that allows us to delight in God's presence. That is what we celebrate today in the Lord's Supper. There is a reason that we call the liturgy for the eucharist the Great Thanksgiving, because as much as anything else, that is what this meal is about, it is about gratitude. It is about thankfulness for the long history of what God has done for God's people, and even more than that, it is a simple yet profound thanksgiving that God offers us God's presence still.

God still wants to be with us, crazy as that may seem, God still wants to give us Her presence, there is nothing we can do to change that. Our God knows us down to our core, yet still wants to be with us, to dance with us and delight in us, it doesn't make any sense, we haven't deserved it, our God has fallen off her rocker, she's lost her marbles, and if you pause for a minute and listen closely, I swear you can hear God say, "I am glad that you are here." I am glad that you are here.

Praise be to this crazy God, this delighting God, let us give thanks to this God of wondrous love.