The Open Hand — What Gratitude Lets God Give You

Central Image

The grasping hand vs. the open hand — drawn from the one leper who turned back: the nine got healed and moved on, but the Samaritan who came back empty-handed walked away with something none of the others got.

The Turn

Getting what you prayed for is not the ceiling — the man who turned back in gratitude received something the other nine never thought to want.

Outline

The field house door

Junior or senior year, dead sprint toward a locked steel-tubing door, friend throws a gym bag at his feet, Toby goes airborne, one hand catches the frame, one hand glances off a bar, and the whole thing stops at his shoulder instead of his skull. Fifteen guys on their backs laughing. He loved it. But sitting with that memory now, he feels something he didn't have at seventeen — a real warmth for those people, a gratitude that only years can give you. The sermon wants to do that deliberately, once, on purpose: look back at 2023 with an eye toward thankfulness.

Deuteronomy 8 — remember, don't forget, remember

Moses is giving his last speech before Israel crosses over. Chapter 8 runs on three beats: remember, don't forget, remember. He's drawing a connection between three things: walking in God's ways (which Israel would not have heard as mechanical rule-following — more like pay attention to his teaching, try to be like him), being attentive to gratitude in both the good times and the hard ones, and having something like a good life. The fear is the flip side: get in the land, prosper, start patting yourself on the back about how you did it, and forget where it all came from.

Neither gospel

The prosperity gospel says do right and God makes you rich. That's wrong. But Toby named the other one too: the miserable gospel, which says if you're following God you've got to be suffering, and if things are going well you must be doing it wrong. That's also wrong. Moses' correlation is real — not guaranteed, not mechanical, but real. The person walking rightly and staying thankful is encountering the world more sanely than the person who isn't, and sanity tends to produce better outcomes than the alternative.

The congregation names 2023

Rather than just preaching about gratitude, Toby opened the floor and asked for one thing per person — someone not in the hospital and not broken, a brother who made the year survivable, a church they finally found, a husband coming to church after forty years, a neighbor who can help lift things, mobility holding out, kids and grandkids and great-grandchildren. Toby named walking on holy ground — an old mentor told him early on that ministry means people invite you into the parts of their lives others don't see, and to look for that. He named the celebration of life he'd done the day before for a woman named Robin Bohan: what God had done in her life, where he'd brought her from and where he'd taken her. He named butter. He named magical trees that make things you can put in your mouth. He named a world he didn't have to make and didn't have to invent, full of what he called casual wonders. The room named what was true.

Luke 17 — the ten lepers

Ten lepers call out from a distance: Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. Jesus sends them to the priest — the one who had to officially clear them before they could re-enter society. They go. On the way, all ten are healed. One of them, a Samaritan, realizes it, turns around, and throws himself at Jesus' feet. Jesus asks where the other nine are. Then he says to this man — the one who was already despised by the people watching — your faith has saved you. The nine were concerned with getting their lives back, and they got them. The one who turned back with an open hand got something nobody in that story had on their list: the Messiah, the king of the Jews, speaking directly over a Samaritan outcast in a way he spoke over no one else in the story.

The open hand

The grasping hand can't be filled. Only the open hand can be filled. The nine weren't wrong to go to the priest — Jesus told them to. But the grasping hand, even once it gets what it wanted, stays closed. Gratitude is what opens it. And an open hand in 2024 might receive something that doesn't fit any system, doesn't match any expectation, and comes entirely out of left field.

The Landing

Listen to "What a Wonderful World" this week and let yourself sit with the fact that the world Louis Armstrong describes came from God's hand, not yours — then go into 2024 with your hand open.

1. Toby described looking back at those idiots outside the field house — fifteen guys dying laughing — and feeling a warmth for them now that he didn't have the sense to feel at seventeen. Is there something from this past year, or years back, that you can appreciate now in a way you couldn't when you were in it?
2. Moses hammers three beats in Deuteronomy 8: remember, don't forget, remember. What do you think Israel was most likely to forget once they got into the land and things started going well?
3. Ten lepers called out to Jesus, and all ten got healed. One turned back. Jesus said something to that one man that he never said to the others. What exactly did the Samaritan receive that the nine didn't?
4. Toby drew the line between the grasping hand and the open hand. When you're honest about this past year, where were you grasping?
5. The nine lepers weren't disobeying — Jesus told them to go to the priest, and they went. They just didn't come back. Is there something you asked God for, received, and then moved on from without turning back?
6. Toby said walking in God's ways and staying attentive to gratitude correlates with positive outcomes — not prosperity gospel, but a real connection built into the way God made the world. Do you actually believe that? Where does it break down for you?
7. As a church, going into this new year, what are we most at risk of grasping instead of receiving with open hands?
8. The assignment is specific: listen to Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" this week — today if possible — and sit with the thought that the world he's describing wasn't from anyone's hand but God's. Do it.