An Attitude of Gratitude

As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee.

As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him.  They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying, "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!"

And when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the priests."  As they were going they were cleansed.  And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice;

and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.  He was a Samaritan.

Jesus said in reply, "Ten were cleansed, were they not?  Where are the other nine?

Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?"

Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you."  (Luke 17:11-19)

At some point, every parent faces a certain challenge – teaching their children to say the “magic words.”  Please and thank you.  “Please” is easy.  After all, there is immediate positive reinforcement; you say please, you get what you want.  Thank you is another story.  Kids don’t see that thank you’s get them much of anything. 

Many, many years ago, as mere little guys, my brothers and I were always battling our mom's insistence on proper thank you notes.  My youngest brother had a clever strategy for deferring the dreaded task.  His birthday was at the end of June, almost exactly six months from Christmas.  He would claim that he was waiting until Christmas and would thank everyone once for both gifts.  Of course, when Christmas rolled around, it was only six months until his birthday.  No sense with thank you notes then, he’d just wait and kill two - or was that three, or maybe four - birds with one stone.

Grandparents make this parenting challenge even more difficult.  My mother-in-law, Pat, would send things to the kids all year long!  We’d say, “send a thank you to Grandma or she’ll stop sending you these goodies.”  Of course, the postman was never overwhelmed by the mail that followed, but that didn't stop Pat!  The gifts kept coming!   What’s a parent to do?

Of course, Pat and other grandparents aren't the only ones whose generosity is unstopped by lack of thanks.  God is on their side.  In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus offers a gift beyond wildest imaginings.  As lepers in the ancient world, the ten supplicants were not simply sick; they were cast out from any contact with society.  So Jesus did not simply cure their disease, he reunited them with the community, made them one again with humanity.  And yet only one came back to thank Jesus for this great gift.  Jesus praises this man, but, as the kids might be quick to point out, despite their ingratitude, the other nine lepers are not “uncured.” 

What’s the deal?  Why should we have to thank God for his grace if, as its very name implies, God freely and unconditionally gives it to us?  Why does Jesus make a connection between gratitude and salvation if the other lepers are cured despite their ingratitude?

Perhaps our model of God is deficient, and therefore, our concept of gratitude is flawed.  We imply to our children that in giving thanks, they will encourage others to continue their generosity so that the gifts keep coming.  Gratitude is simply a subtle instrument of self gratification.  As givers, that’s the way we work, right?  We expect thanks when we give a gift.  If we give a wedding gift and don’t receive the obligatory note of thanks, we feel miffed.  We look at that couple in a different light.  See what they get from us on that first anniversary.  Nada.  Zip.  Zilch.

We assume that God acts in the same way.  If we remember to thank God, then He will continue to remember us in our need.  And, thus, we have reduced the eternal, almighty, all-knowing, all loving God to a simple vending machine – put in the right coins and hit the right buttons and we receive grace.  Fortunately for us, God is much greater than a heavenly vending machine.

God loves us and graces us not for what we do, but for who we are.  He created us out of love, he created us in his very image and likeness, and he created us to be with him in love for all eternity.  We are for God.  Yet we live as if we don’t believe this at all.

Instead, we take our lives and all that God has given us for granted.  Our goal then becomes to work hard to make our lives as good as they can be for us and for our children.  And yet this hard work never completely satisfies.  It seems we never have enough.  There is always something that seems just beyond our reach, but if we work just a little bit harder, it can be ours.  Of course, if we get it, there is then something else just beyond that, and the cycle continues.  We never work hard enough, we never satisfy ourselves, and on our worst days, we feel that we are simply not good enough.

We seek the new and improved, but once we get it, it quickly becomes the old and the ordinary.  We think that more is always better – more possessions, more pleasure, more power, more beauty, more friends, etc. – yet we soon learn that more may be better for a while, but more is never enough. 

Mary Jo Leddy, in her book, Radical Gratitude, refers to this state as perpetual dissatisfaction.  It is ugly, but it is the lifeblood of our money-based economy.  Without our constant yearning for the newer car, the bigger house, the latest fashions; without our obsession for the new and improved; without our mantra of “more is always better,” we spend less, the economy falters, jobs are lost, and our material wealth and our self-worth shrinks.  We no longer live for God, but only for ourselves.

Jesus praises the grateful leper for he has broken this cycle of dissatisfaction.  The man has recognized the source of his life, the source of all that he is, the source of all that he has, and it is enough.  His sight is no longer focused on what he lacks, but on what he has already been given.  

When we come together here to celebrate the Eucharist – the root word for Eucharist is the same word that Luke uses to describe the man’s thanks and praise to God – we recognize that God has given us our very lives as a gift, that God loves us with a love that knows no bounds, that He gave us his only Son to die for us that we might have eternal life with Him.  It does not change God, it changes us.  When we live with this radical, at-our-very-core gratitude, we, like the leper, appreciate and honor what we have, not obsess over and crave for what we are missing.  We can see ourselves for who we are – loved children of God – rather that constantly trying to be who other people want us to be.  And unlike the perpetually dissatisfying more, this is enough, for it is the fruit of God’s infinite and everlasting love.

It is enough.  Thank God.