November 18, 2012
“Where are the nine? Were not all healed?”
Luke tells the familiar story of the ten lepers who come to Jesus asking for help. He tells them to go to the priests. One comes back to Jesus falling at his feet in gratitude; Jesus pulls him up to his feet and asks: Were not all healed? Where are the other nine?
He expresses a very human feeling of being hurt because the other nine lepers who were also healed did not come to show their gratitude to him. The only one who came back was a Samaritan, a group despised by Jews.
This reminds me of an incident when I was working in TASSC, a non-profit organization of survivors of torture. One day a young man came in to the office asking for help. According to him he was seeking asylum and needed a lawyer and other services. He looked physically and mentally beaten up; his left elbow was twisted. When I asked him what happened, he said that a military person had beaten his arm with a metal bar and dislocated his elbow. We referred him to a legal office for help with his asylum petition, and to various medical and health services. Eventually he successfully convinced the immigration judge that he deserved to be granted asylum in the U.S.
He never came back to the office again after that. I felt hurt because of his failure to thank me and the other staff, not even bothering to call us. For myself I just tried to forget the incident and not blame him for his failing.
Does anyone here wish to say something about having similar feelings because someone forgot to thank you after you went out of your way to do something for that person? Or do you wish to say how important it is for you to thank another person for a favor?
Saying thank you is one of the most common expressions in all languages; gratitude is a basic human emotion that we learn at an early age to express from the time we are born and cling to our caregivers. Saying thank you is also usually one of the first things that we teach our children . When the child expresses gratitude to her parents it strengthens the loving relationship and builds the family; so also being grateful teaches the child the first steps of socializing and making friends, and thus becoming human.
(How important do you think is it to teach your children to say thank you? What has been your own experience about this, from your own kids or while you were growing up from your own parents?)
Being grateful is not a value of the empire and the imperial mind which demands from others as something that others owe and grabs what it claims as its privileges.
I can’t forget an incident in the 1990’s when the U.S. was forced to give up its two military bases in the Philipppines, Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Force Base. The U.S. military took back important hardware and other equipment worth carrying back and left an area that was full of environmental pollution that caused diseases to the neighboring communities around the bases, not looking back or bothering to help with the clean up.
This is the same thinking behind the corporations owning the coal mines clearing the mountain tops of West Virginia to get the coal leaving the rivers, environment and communities polluted.
The same thinking that looks down at the 47 percent or 99 percent as folks from another backward planet.
Gratitude is essential in building community. Perhaps a way to bridge divided and competing communities in the US today is to remind everybody how much we owe to one another and how much we need to give back. This might be a way to find that common ground that Martin Luther King talked about. Remembering to give back expands our hearts, widens our world and our community. In the faith community we give back by serving one another in love.
The psalm says:
Give thanks to Yahweh, give thanks for his loving mercy lasts forever.
It is not because of something that we did but because of his loving mercy that we are what we are and received grace.
At the heart of the Christian community is the celebration of the Eucharist, which comes from the Greek eucharistia meaning thanksgiving. Remembering what Jesus did on the night before he was crucified when he gave thanks and offered his body and blood to us. Jesus commanded: Do this in remembrance of me. Telling us that his followers are a grateful people, a community that celebrates the loving kindness of Yahweh and the love of the brother who gave his life to save us. And because of this memory it is a community of servants of one another.
Thank you all for being present and listening. Have a wonderful thanksgiving celebration.