XX Pentecost – October 10, 2010 – Year C – Proper 23 (RCL)
The Collect of the Day—our theme-prayer for the week—gives us a lens through which we can view two of the lessons from Holy Scripture we’ve heard this morning; it’s the lens of gratitude.
(If the mention of the word “gratitude” puts you in mind of that curious phrase “grace, gratitude, and generosity” we’ve been toying with for the past few months, culminating in Bishop Cate’s evening with us last Tuesday, it’s not by accident.)
“Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works,” were the words we used to set the tone of our worship at the beginning of the service: that our gratitude for God’s grace, so generously, extravagantly bestowed, would surround us on every side and inspire us to do good works. (BCP, pp. 234-235)
Our gratitude for God’s generosity can lead to some generosity of our own.
(Turns out you can pack a lot into a collect!)
How do we cultivate an attitude of gratitude?
My daughter Leah says, “You work through the quirks.”
Leah’s moving our grandchildren to the country after living more or less in the city or at least in the suburbs their whole lives.
Our grandson Sage doesn’t know what to make of the farmhouse they’re moving into.
“It’s got old rickety windows that steam up like Grandma and Grandpa’s,” he exclaims.
Leah says she’s about half finished painting the bedrooms:
“The landlord has a few quirks. I began to suspect that when he took so long to get back to us about whether he would rent to us. So we won’t be able to depend upon him for much. But he doesn’t seem to mind if we just go ahead and do what needs to be done. So there’ll be some quirks, but we’ll work through them. I’m just grateful we found a place. And my friends at church are going to help us move.”
“You work through the quirks.”
That’s more or less what the prophet Jeremiah says in the letter that he sends from Jerusalem to the exiles in Babylon—the people and clergy who had been carried away by Nebuchadnezzar into captivity.
He tells them to make the best of it, sounding a lot like Garrison Kiellor’s Lake Wobegone mother: “Build houses and live in them,” he says; “plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters [and] take wives for your sons, [etc.]; multiply …and do not decrease.”
They’re told to make the best of it.
They’re even told to “seek the welfare of the city where [they are in] exile” because “in its welfare” [they] will find [their] welfare”. (Jer. 29:1,4-7)
Working for the benefit of others—even their captors—will be to their benefit.
One of the main reasons, I understand, why those thirty-three Chilean miners, who hope to be freed from their underground prison as early as this week—why they have fared so well for so many days is that they have been able to organize themselves into a cooperative community, quite possibly out of sheer gratitude for their just being alive, not to mention the efforts of so many people aboveground doing everything they can to get them out as fast as possible.
How can we cultivate that kind of an attitude: an attitude of gratitude?
What did Jesus say, when the Samaritan came back to thank him for being healed?
We don’t exactly know, but at least he didn’t say “No problem!” which we are all likely to say from time to time, almost without thinking; in Germany, instead of hearing “bitte”, which serves for both “please” and “you’re welcome” you’re likely to hear more often than not “Nichts zu danken” which means “Nothing to thank [me for]”.
Which makes me think of the kid, who, when told by his auntie that the necktie she had given him was “nothing to thank me for”, said: “That’s what I thought, but Mom said I had to.”
What I suppose Jesus more or less said to the grateful Samaritan is what I remember someone saying to me years ago when I thanked him for helping me out: “Don’t thank me! Thank God!”
That’s nice, but somehow I still felt rebuffed, like he didn’t need my thanks.
At least Jesus gave the Samaritan a compliment of sorts, if a rather back-handed one.
What Jesus said when the Samaritan thanked him was this: “Was the only one healed who came back to give praise to God this foreigner?” (Luke 17:11-19)
That’s still better than if he had said “No problem!”.
It’s actually pretty easy to cultivate an attitude of gratitude.
All we need to be is as generous with our “thank you’s” as we possibly can.
And I’m not just talking about being polite.
It’s more than that.
And we’re already off to a very good start.
Think of the verbal exchange that takes place every time we drive through a drive-through, whether it’s at a bank or a fast-food restaurant.
Do we ever say “You’re welcome,” when someone says, “Thank you.”
I think what we say when someone in the drive-through says, “Thank you” is “thank you!”
And when someone says, “Have a nice day!”, we try to remember to say “thank you”, before we fire back: “You, too!”
Before long an exchange like that could develop into a chain reaction of “thank you’s”!
It could go on forever—one “thank you” after another!
Of course, there’d be no problem with that.
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