A sermon shared at the
Suttons Bay Congregational Church, November 19, 2017
Scriptures: Luke
17:12-17; John 12:1-8;
Most of us recognize the simple and straightforward ways in
which gratitude enriches our lives. Experiencing
it restores our perspective and helps chase away such inner demons as
despair, doubt, jealousy, greed, and envy. Expressing
it draws us into a state of humility, compels us to acknowledge our debts
to others, and provides sustenance to our relationships. Receiving it offers encouragement and reassurance that our acts of
generosity and kindness have not gone unnoticed. In some deeply true way, the
only difference between a happy and fulfilled life and a miserable and
unfulfilled one often lies in the single ingredient of gratitude.
As
people of faith, we try to remain mindful of the importance of directing our
gratitude toward God. We hear this sentiment in the words of Thomas Merton:
To be grateful is to
recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us—and He has given us everything.
Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a
grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes
nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, [and] is constantly awakening to
new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows
that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all
the difference.
During this season especially,
we remind ourselves, and each other, of the important place that gratitude has
in our mental and physical health, the quality of our existence, and the depth
of our relationships with everyone, including God. It is a pretty simple idea.
But
treating simplicity with a healthy skepticism often turns out to be a good approach,
particularly in theological matters. After all, we worship a God for whom complexity is
not a hobby but a vocation, indeed a loving and principal preoccupation.
Consider the design of the universe, or the architecture of a strand of DNA, or
the mysteries of a Bach fugue, which, it has always seemed to me, were not just
written to the glory of God, as the composer declared, but in God’s own image.
God instills complexity into even the simplest of things, leaving it there for
us to seek and find. Today, I want to talk about three aspects in which the
“simple” phenomenon of gratitude may be more complicated than we first suspect.
One
of those complexities relates to how we think about and deal with ingratitude. Ingratitude shows up in our
lives in very different ways. Sometimes we act as purveyors of ungratefulness.
Other times we find ourselves on the receiving end of it.
I
suspect that none of us cares much for being treated ungratefully. Indeed, when
Shakespeare’s King Lear cries out “how sharper than a serpent’s tooth is to
have a thankless child,” we may think he has understated matters a bit. After
all, thankless spouses, parents, friends, neighbors, bosses, co-workers,
customers, clients, or elected representatives probably do not sit very well with
us, either. We do not find ungratefulness an attractive characteristic in
anyone and feeling unappreciated is a consistently lousy experience.
And
yet ingratitude is extraordinarily common, as the Bible recognizes. In
preparation for this sermon, I worked my way through the Gospels looking for
instances where someone who had been the beneficiary of Jesus’s healing,
forgiveness, or grace expressed their thanks to him or to God. I did not find
many. Sometimes, Jesus’s acts are even met with dismay: for example, after he
casts the demonic spirits from a herd of swine, the local people “thank” by
asking him to leave town as quickly as possible. More commonly, his actions are
met with silence.
In
most instances, Jesus passes over these omissions without comment, but
occasionally he takes note of them. Consider, for example, the first passage I
read this morning from chapter 17 of Luke. Jesus heals ten lepers, and only one
(ironically, a socially marginalized Samaritan rather than an observant Jew) bothers
to offer thanks. Jesus essentially responds: “Only one returned to praise God?
What happened to the other nine?”
In
contrast, throughout the Gospels we find Jesus giving thanks and expressing his
gratitude to God. When he feeds five thousand people with five loaves and two
fishes—he gives thanks. (John 6:11) When he breaks bread and takes the cup at
the last supper—he gives thanks. (Matthew 26:27) Indeed, when we share in
communion, we replicate Jesus’s act of thankfulness and make it into our own.
Given
that ingratitude is so unattractive, causes so much unnecessary pain, and seems
so thoroughly un-Christ-like, we might wonder why it is such a pervasive,
tenacious, and stubborn force in our society. Maybe much of it has to do with
fear: fear that gratitude costs us something; fear that it somehow lessens us;
fear that exhibiting it will signal that we owe something to someone else. In
this sense, we may shy away from shows of gratitude for the same silly and
ungracious reasons we may shy away from apologizing.
This
possibility may offer some guidance about how to deal with our own ingratitude.
When we hesitate to express our thanks, maybe we simply need to remind
ourselves that the most commonly repeated phrases in the Old and New Testament
are “fear not” and “be not afraid.” Maya Angelou once said that: “courage is
the most important of the virtues because without [it] you can’t practice any
of the other virtues consistently” and I think I know where she got that idea.
In any event, nothing puts us on the fast track to ingratitude like fear and
insecurity.
The
notion that ingratitude often has its roots in fear may also help us deal more
patiently and empathically with the ingratitude of others. Ungratefulness can make our blood boil. But maybe it turns the
temperature down a bit if we understand that it is likely a symptom of something
else. The ingratitude that we experience as an affront may actually be evidence
of a great and terrible battle going on inside someone’s heart and soul and
mind, and heaping our resentment on top of it will not do anything to help
matters.
A
second complex dimension of gratitude relates to our hesitancy to accept
displays of it. We have probably all had the experience of squirming
uncomfortably while some well-intentioned soul expressed their thanks and
gratitude to us in terms that we experienced as overly generous. If you wondered
just how deeply complicated we human beings can be, then connect this issue
with the one I discussed a moment ago: we don’t like ingratitude, and sometimes gratitude
doesn’t sit all that well with us, either.
I
suppose that a variety of factors might trigger our occasional allergic
reactions to gratefulness. Perhaps we don’t care for the spotlight it shines on
us. Perhaps we worry that people will conclude we did something in order to be
thanked for it, which doesn’t just reduce the value of our act but turns it
into a kind of narcissistic ploy. Or perhaps shows of gratefulness aggravate
the “impostor syndrome” from which many of us suffer, making us wince at
exclamations over how wonderful we are when we know full well just how
wonderful we aren’t.
But,
of course, we shouldn’t fall into the trap of answering someone else’s gratitude with our own version of ingratitude. We must sustain gratefulness
even in the face of a little embarrassment, or a concern that our motives might
be misunderstood, or our settled convictions about our own unworthiness. As the
great New York Times columnist David
Carr once observed: “We all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is
to be grateful and hope the caper doesn’t end anytime soon.”
Jesus
teaches us something about accepting shows of gratefulness in the passage in
which Mary anoints his feet with perfume and wipes them with her hair. Judas
objects (insincerely, the text tells us) and argues that she should have sold
the ointment and given the money to the poor. But Jesus commands Judas to leave
her alone, declaring: “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of
my burial. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have
me.” (John 12:1-8)
Socially
conscious readers of the Gospels sometimes bristle at this passage, taking it
as a callous dismissal of the concerns of the impoverished. But that would be
very unlike Jesus and in my judgment any such reading misunderstands the
passage. Note the sequence of events—Judas objects only after Mary has already spread the perfume on Jesus’s feet. At this
point—when it is too late to do anything else with the perfume—Judas sanctimoniously
tries to embarrass Mary over her extraordinary show of adoration.
Jesus
comes to her defense, and his words do not seek to elevate himself but to elevate her—and,
along the way, to put Judas in his place.
In essence, Jesus says: “Don’t condemn her for buying perfume for my burial
and then thinking to anoint me with it while I am alive! I am grateful for the
kindness she has shown while I am still with you.” And then he adds: “Oh, and
by the way Judas: don’t worry about your opportunities to care for the poor—you
will have an abundance of them, if that really interests you.”
It
is, of course, true that whenever a person shows us gratitude there is always
someone or something else that may have a better claim to it. But, as a friend
and mentor of mine often says: rejecting gratitude is like throwing a gift back
into the giver’s face. “Greet gratitude with gratitude,” the story of Mary
anointing Jesus seems to tell us, “for by doing so you magnify it and affirm
it’s holy grace.”
The
theme of grace leads us to the third and last of gratitude’s quiet
complexities. And it is this: our most profound experiences of gratefulness
frequently come from unexpected sources. As I mentioned at the beginning, the
God we worship appears to love complexity, and this explains why God has such a
deep fondness for paradox.
In
many instances our sense of gratitude has predictable sources. To take a local
example, if on a clear and sunny day you can walk to the top of Pyramid Point
and look out at the glistening blue water of the lake and not feel grateful for the weather, and the health that got you
there, and the bright sky, and the view, and the breeze, and the companionship
of whoever came with you, then please let me know and we will set up a special prayer
circle for you. In settings like that, most of us do not have to work at
gratefulness—it just wells up in us easily and effortlessly.
Granted,
some of us are tougher cookies on this front. The story goes that on a walk on
a perfect spring morning a friend said to Samuel Beckett “Doesn’t a day like
this make you glad to be alive?” to which the prickly playwright responded “I
wouldn’t go as far as that.” Still, most of us know these sorts of obvious
occasions for gratitude when we see them.
In
contrast, think about the sources of gratefulness in the Gospel stories we have
looked at today. Ten people are suffering from a terrible disease—and
gratefulness comes out of it. Thousands of people are hungry—and gratefulness
comes out of it. The Son of God awaits his crucifixion and anticipates his
burial—and gratefulness comes out of it.
Or
think of the Beatitudes, where Jesus describes those whom the Lord has blessed
and who should therefore be deeply grateful. That list includes some we might
expect: those who hunger for righteousness; the merciful; the pure in heart;
the peacemakers. But it also includes others who we might think of as unlikely
candidates for blessedness and gratitude: the poor in spirit; those who mourn; the
meek; and those who are persecuted.
The
last of these anticipates the greatest and most unlikely source of gratefulness
in the history of humankind—a savior’s agony upon a cross that, in the end,
conquers death itself and transforms a symbol of torture into one of grace,
redemption, love, and eternal life. Think about the complexity and paradox
inherent in that idea—and think about what it offers us. Indeed, we could do a
lot worse than to begin every church service by pausing, taking a deep breath,
looking upon the cross, and saying softly to ourselves: grateful; grateful;
grateful.
We
live in difficult and challenging times. Every day appears to bring us new
reasons to feel disappointment, dejection, and despair. We seem to encounter
endless occasions for sadness and worry. Hope can strike us as elusive, fragile,
and vain.
And,
yet, over and over again, even out of such hard raw material the God of
complexity and paradox brings us reasons for gratefulness: gratefulness for the
voices of sanity among the madness; gratefulness for the courageous people who
run toward the trouble while the rest of us run away; gratefulness for those
who fight for justice, equality, and liberty even when injustice, bigotry, and
oppression threaten to outflank them; gratefulness for acts and words of
kindness, generosity, and decency in a world that sometimes seems relentlessly harsh,
selfish, and crude. To paraphrase what the patriarch Jacob said about God after
a wonderful dream: “Surely, there are reasons for gratefulness even in this
place—and we did not know it.”
Sermons
on this Sunday before Thanksgiving often end with simple admonitions for us to
go forward into our lives with an “attitude of gratitude.” Perhaps I have
persuaded you that things are more complicated than that. And maybe they are that way because that is
how God likes them.
Maybe
in order to cultivate a truly deep sense
of gratefulness we need to work on other qualities as well. We need to be brave—so we are unafraid to acknowledge our
debts to those who have given us reasons to be grateful. We need to be empathic—so we are not quick to judge
the apparent ingratitude of those around us. We need to be open—so we are receptive to the gratitude that others show us and
do not indulge in our own form of ungratefulness. And we need to be watchful—always on the lookout for the
opportunities for gratefulness that come to us in the most unexpected ways and
from the most unexpected sources.
Brave,
empathic, open, and watchful. It sounds like quite a self-improvement project,
doesn’t it? And yet we are assured of this: “We can do all things through the
one who strengthens us. And, through Him, all things are possible.”
Toward
the end of his life, after he had discovered that cancer was overtaking him,
Dr. Oliver Sacks wrote several essays that have recently been assembled in a
short book called Gratitude. He
concludes one of those essays with these words: “My predominant feeling is one
of gratitude. I have loved and been loved;
I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and
traveled and thought and written. [And above all else,] I have been a sentient
being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been
an enormous privilege and adventure.”
And
so:
for
the blessings that come from unexpected places;
for
our capacities for bravery and empathy and openness;
for
loving and being loved;
for
the giving and the receiving;
for
traveling and coming home;
for
thinking and writing and speaking our conscience;
for
our time on this beautiful planet;
for
the timeless place that awaits us;
for
the presence of Christ in our lives;
for
the paradoxically redemptive beauty of the cross—
here
we are, the gathered people of the living God …
grateful,
grateful, grateful.
Amen.
