Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:  Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind—just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you—so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.  God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Have you ever been in the presence of someone who is truly grateful?I don’t mean someone who is grateful because she or he has been given some sort of present, or because she or he has been given money.  I mean someone who’s grateful just to be alive, grateful for the people in her or his life, and grateful for God?

I have.  I’ve had the privilege of meeting quite a number of these people, and they are amazing to be around.  The great thing about being a pastor is how many of these folks are in churches.  In fact, I believe it is these people who often keep churches alive.  We tend to think that it is leaders of a church, or the pastors, or the staff who keep a church together.  The truth is that all of us are replaceable.  The people who aren’t easily replaceable are the people in a church that the Quaker writer Thomas Kelly calls “the blessed community.”  These are the people who hold a church together through their faith, hope, love, and prayers. They are the people in the church who are the most deeply open to God’s Spirit, and as a result keep the Spirit’s presence alive in our midst.  If they leave a church, the church crumbles.  When a church is filled with them, the church thrives.  Leaders and pastors can be replaced, but these people are the live-wire links to God.  Once they leave, the link for a church to God becomes diminished.

I’ve had the honor to know quite a number of these “blessed community” folks in this church over the years.  The problem is that I can’t really talk about them in particular this morning because it would embarrass them, and they would insist that they really aren’t like that deeply prayerful, loving, and faithful.  They would be wrong, but that’s what they would say.  But I am allowed to talk about people like this who have been part of this church, but are no longer living. 

So this morning I want to talk about one of these people, Sallie Davis, a woman who died several years ago.  Sallie was the wife of a former pastor at Calvin Church from 1949 to 1963, Richard Davis.  Sallie and Rev. Davis had moved away in 1963, but after he died she returned to the area.  Sallie was an absolute joy to be around.  Her health declined over a ten-year period before she died.  Her arthritis and other ailments made it very hard for her to get around.  Still, no matter how bad things got for her, she never complained.  Even in the last years of her life, while she suffered from macular degeneration, which took away her ability to read (she loved reading more than anything else—her living room was stacked with devotional books and magazines), she still had hope.  She once told me that even though she couldn’t read, she knew what all the books said.  She couldn’t take part in the joy of reading, but she could find comfort in what she knew the books had said. 

Sallie was a bright light.  Whenever I visited her, I felt my role was to bring her some sense of comfort.  In reality, she gave me more comfort and joy than I think I ever brought.  Often I would drive home, feeling like I had been in the presence of a great sage.  I would think about things she had said.  The truth is that if someone else said the same things, I probably would have thought that they were nice statements.  Coming out of Sallie’s mouth, they sounded like wisdom for the ages. 

Above all, Sallie had a deep sense of gratitude.  Sallie was grateful for her life.  She was grateful for her children.  She was grateful for her husband who had died so many years earlier.  Sallie lived a life of gratitude. 

I don’t want to give the impression that people like Sallie are perfect.  They aren’t.  They make mistakes, parts of their lives are a little messed up, and they struggle just like everyone else.  Certainly Sallie had her share of difficulties with her health and the death of her husband.  It’s just that people like Sallie react differently to the struggles of the world than most of us.  They go through struggles, but they grow from them and seem to find God in them.  And they are amazing in this way:  when you are with them it is like being with great sages.  They may not say anything particularly wise, but it feels like they are always saying something wise

So why do so many of us have such a hard time living a life of gratitude like Sallie? I look around the world, and I see a world filled with miserable people.  They’re not necessarily miserable because of the conditions of their lives, although their conditions may contribute to their misery.  I see a lot of this misery reflected in movies nowadays.  Look at four of the five Academy Award nominated films.  They are dark, cynical films.  They may show a reality in life, but they are also films that play to pessimism.  I find that over the past few years so many films are dark and pessimistic.  In fact, I’m finding that the movies I really enjoy are those that I see with my kids.  Films like Alvin and the Chipmunks.  They aren’t films that will win Academy Awards, but they are hopeful and optimistic.  They show that things like love, friendship, and hope can win out through even the most difficult situations.  What’s hard for me is that I am a movie lover, and to have such a hard time finding good, positive films bothers me. 

So why are so many people so miserable?  We live in a time and country in which more is available than at any time in earth’s history.   We have more access to things, lifestyles, education, careers, and opportunities than at any time in human history.  But so many still choose to be miserable.  Why are these folks so miserable?  They’re miserable because they look at the pain of their lives, maybe a pain of long ago, and they let it control their vision.  They see the world and people as inherently bad.  They make a choice at some point in their lives to believe that life is bad, people are corrupt, blessings are rare, and things aren’t what they should be. 

I see this cynicism throughout life.  You have too.  For example, I see parents who constantly criticize their children, only focusing on what is wrong with them, on what they don’t do, and on how disappointed they are in them.  They don’t praise their kids and point out what’s right, despite the fact that most children are dying to hear our praises.  I see this same dynamic in too many marriages.  I realize that over time it is much easier to be critical of our spouses than complimentary.  Life wears us down, as do our relationships. Still, cynicism is a relationship killer.  Good marriages are built on laughter, smiles, appreciation, and gratitude.  Bad marriages are built on indifference, cynicism, and criticism. 

I also see these dynamics in workplaces.  How many of you have had a boss or a co-worker who is cynical and critical.  They do nothing but criticize, and then wonder why people don’t want to give them their best.  All of these people, the parents, the spouses, and the bosses/co-workers are what I call “black-hole” people.  They suck all the light and energy out of us.  When we are around them for too long, we feel like we have to take a nap just to recoup the energy we’ve lost.  They have their own kind of energy, a negative, cynical energy, and their energy comes from anger, outrage, criticism, and pessimism. 

I sat next to a person like this last week.  I was in the Dallas, Ft. Worth, Texas area.  On the way back took my seat on the airplane, an American Eagle jet.  It was crowded, and it was one of those jets that had very narrow seats.  I was perfectly happy on the plane because it wasn’t a connecting plane.  The opportunity to fly directly back to Pittsburgh and not have to connect in Chicago, Detroit, or Charlotte was wonderful. 

As I sat, a man stood next to me and said gruffly, “That’s my seat,” pointing to the seat next to me.  I got up and as he sat down he said, “Don’t you hate these planes?  They pack us in like sardines.”  I said, “Yeah, but at least it’s a direct flight.”  He said, “Not for me!  I’m connecting from Albuquerque.  I’m miserable.”  He sat down, and then the battles began for the dominance of the center armrest.  I let him win that one.  As I worked on my computer, he read his paper.  And each time he turned the page, he stuck part of the paper in my face.  Then he fell asleep, yet even then I felt like he was sucking my energy.  He kept twitching, and as he did he would elbow me or push against me.  By the time I got off the plane, I felt incredibly tired.  I felt like he had pulled out all my energy. 

These are black hole people are depreciative.  They don’t see value or beauty or wonder in the world, but diminish all value, only seeing what is wrong in the world around them.  Often these people justify their cynicism and negativity by saying that we live in a hard world, and that they are just being realistic.  But the problem is that they aren’t living in a cold, hard world.  They are just choosing to make it cold and hard. 

The apostle Paul gives us the example of how to live in a hopeful way.  If anyone had a right to look at life in a negative, cynical way, it was Paul.   But he was grateful.  Most of us don’t realize how hard Paul’s life was.  Before Paul became Paul, and was known as the Pharisee Saul, he was extremely successful.  He was a bright, rising star as a young rabbi in the Jewish faith.  He was leading the attacks against the threat of Christianity in Jerusalem, and was about to lead the expansion of this attack in Damascus.  But on the way to Damascus, his whole world was destroyed when he was blinded and had a vision of Jesus.  He became a follower of Christ on the spot.  Yet the Christians didn’t trust him.  They were afraid that his conversion was just a trick.  Then the Jews of the area found out and wanted to attack him.  He had to be snuck out of the city and hidden in the desert for three years as he learned the Christian faith. 

When he returned, he toiled in obscurity for another 11 years, and then was called to start new churches in what is present-day Turkey.  In the process of doing that, and then starting churches in Greece, he was criticized, harassed, beaten, arrested, flogged, and eventually falsely accused of the crime of bringing a Gentile into the Temple in Jerusalem.  He was convicted by a corrupt governor, and then had to travel to Rome as a prisoner awaiting an appeal.  He suffered a shipwreck, and then when he got to Rome spent two years as a prisoner, shackled to a Roman soldier for 24 hours a day. 

Despite all of this, Paul never lost hope.  It didn’t matter if he was criticized, attacked, or imprisoned, he kept speaking about Christ and Christ’s love.  Even in Rome, shackled to a soldier, he kept nurturing churches and preaching the gospel.  He had hope, and he never let circumstances pull him down.  In the midst of all this, he remained grateful.  He saw Christ working everywhere. 

Listen to what he wrote to the Corinthian church, a church divided: “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind—just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you—so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Paul is grateful for them, even though they are struggling, critical, and even critical of him.

I think that this passage is offering us a challenge.  We are called to live in gratitude.  Do you know what the word “grateful” means?  The root, “gratia,” which means “grace.”  In other words, when you are grateful, you are “full of grace.”  When you have gratitude, you live in a “state of grace.”  In effect, when you are grateful and live in gratitude, you create openings for grace to flow in your life.  And when you are grateful for your life, your family, your friends, your opportunities, nature, the world, and God, you open up to God’s free grace that is all around you.  When you take time to thank God for your life and everything in it, you live in grace. 

We are called to live in gratitude because gratitude increases grace in our lives.  So as a closer this morning, I want to invite you to engage in an exercise.  Attached you’ll find an exercise in gratitude.  Take time engage in it sometime this week, or even right now.  Look at how God is active around you, and become thankful for it. 

Do you want to find God in your life?  Start with being grateful for what you have, and look for ways to spread this grace to others.  If you are grateful, and live in gratitude, you will become a reservoir of grace.