28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

There is a Shona proverb that translates more or less to “The person who is not grateful is a witch.” This is such a scathing condemnation of ingratitude, that it got me thinking about the inspiration behind this proverb. I think what lies at the heart of this proverb is the fundamental difference between magic and religion that was alluded to in last week’s reflection. Magic is all about accessing supernatural power in order to attain one’s own will, whereas religion is all about accessing supernatural power in order to do the will of the supernatural being. Magic is all about control, whereas religion is all about letting go. So if one is a witch, or a magician, or any sort of control freak, one is a lot less likely to be grateful for the good things that happen in one’s life – because you would attribute the good that happens to your own doing. Conversely if you have consented to hand over in a way control of your life to a higher being – you are far more likely to be grateful for the things that happen to you – seeing them not as circumstances that you have engineered, but rather as coming from the Giver of all good gifts.

The sci-fi author Isaac Asimov says that much of magic is science that we have not yet understood. Reversing this saying we could arrive at the conclusion that our science and technology is what would have been considered magic 100 years ago – but the motivation that underlie both are the same – the manipulation of objects in order to attain greater control over our lives and our environment. Living in a hyper-technical world, where we have the ability to control the temperature inside our homes, predict the weather and plan our lives down to the smallest minutiae leads to a world where there is much less gratitude. This is because not much is left to chance, if things go well, they are because I engineered and planned things well.

This is why gratitude is so important in our lives – because it keeps us in a disposition of fundamental dependence on God and prevents us from thinking that we are in control of our lives. It is recognizing that the source of my joy does not come from me – I cannot engineer my own joy. This I think is the trap that we fall into so easily – when we think that we can engineer our own joy. Gratitude then is all about a stance of faith, a commitment to the fact that I am not in control. Gratitude keeps me focused on the giver – indebted to the giver. Perhaps this was the resistance of the other nine lepers to coming back to Jesus and having to acknowledge that they were in his debt, and that perhaps that he had a claim on their lives now. Just as soon as they had acquired a modicum of freedom, just as soon as they had climbed up a rung on the social ladder, their small modicum of freedom was being demanded of them again – to go back to Jesus.

Our biggest fear is that God might have a claim on our lives if we get too close, and ask us to do something we might not want to do. It is a natural human desire not to want to experience ourselves in the debt of someone else. Our typical human response to avoiding being in someone’s debt is to construct a quid-pro-quo. Sadly our spiritual lives can also fall into this trap, where the quid-pro-quo where God gives us blessings in return for our faith and service. The lepers put their faith in Jesus and they were healed – perhaps they felt that this was what they deserved. Gratitude is what prevents faith from becoming commercial. As the biblical scholar Michael Simone puts it: “faith is not a thing God demands from us; it is a spiritual stance, an open heart that gives God room to manoeuvre. If discipleship without faith is servitude, then faith without thanksgiving is commerce.” One of my first spiritual directors used to like saying that we can judge the temperature of our prayer by how much gratitude there is in it. I think gratitude is so essential in prayer because it removes our dealings with God from the realm of commerce. Too often we can think that by our good works, by our coming to church, our faithful service of God that we have merited the grace that we receive from God. Gratitude keep the illusion of entitlement at bay by reminding us that we deserve nothing, as last week’s gospel tells us, we are but unworthy servants of the Lord. If we found last week’s gospel a bitter pill to swallow, perhaps this was because we have let our relationship with God become too transactional. The antidote to the complacency condemned in last week’s gospel is a heart of gratitude.

When we fail to be grateful, what is essentially happening is that we focusing more on the gift than the giver. While I was chaplain to a hospital, I became friendly with a little boy named Benon, who had sadly had to make the children’s ward in the hospital his home. He had been brought in by his parents who had subsequently abandoned him in the hospital because he was handicapped. So, in order to create a relationship with him, every week I would visit the hospital I would bring him a packet of sweets. Every time he would see me, his face would light up and I would give him the sweets and we would chat about his week and what going on with him. One day I forgot to bring the sweets, and as soon as I told Benon I had forgotten to bring the sweets, his face fell and he walked away, he wasn’t really interested in chatting to me if I didn’t have any sweets. The sweets were just my way of creating a relationship with him, but at his young age he was more focused on the gift than the giver. We may laugh at Benon’s behaviour and put it down to his young age, but we often behave this way with God and lose interest in God when we feel God has stopped giving us sweets.

Benon’s story happily does not end here. Since I also happened to be the chaplain at a L’Arche community not too far from the hospital where Benon stayed, I was able to organize for Benon to move into this L’Arche community and make his new home there. Now whenever I would visit L’Arche, sweets or no sweets, Benon’s face would light up. Surrounded by new and unfamiliar people, I became the one connection with his previous home, the one familiar face from his former home. I had indeed become a friend, someone he had a history with, more than just the bringer of sweets. The gifts that God gives us are simply to establish a relationship with us – but once that relationship is thriving, the need for the gifts can fall away, because now we have a history with God. Of course God doesn’t stop giving us gifts, but the manner and way that God gives us gifts can change and become more subtle, more refined as our relationship deepens.

Questions for reflection

1. What are the three things I am most grateful for at the moment in my life? When was the last time I thanked God for them?
2. What is the temperature of my prayer?
3. Is my faith the type that gives God room to manoeuvre?