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Give One Thing More
Dänke. Merci. Gracias. DOH-moh ah-REE-gah-toh. Grazi, mille grazi. When picking up a few words of a foreign language, just enough to get by, we learn to say “hello,” “good morning,” “good-bye,” and “thank you.” Of these, “thank you” is probably the most important. If we forget how to say “good morning,” we can get by with a smile, but if we have nothing to say when someone gives us a gift, the silence can be almost unbearable.
In the Gospel we have heard this afternoon, ten receive gifts from Jesus, ten lepers. Because of their disfiguring, contagious disease, they are outcasts from society. They cannot make a living and so must depend on occasional handouts in order to survive. Hoping for a few coins, they have asked Jesus to “have mercy.” But what they receive is far more wonderful. They find themselves cured of their diseases. They will be able to re-enter society, to earn a living again, to take up their places in their families. Jesus tells them to show themselves to the priests, because the priests had to certify such cures and to remove the legal stigma of the outcast. And so they leave. And they do not return. And the silence is unbearable—until broken by the loud gratitude of the one who does return.
Perhaps we should not be too hard on the nine lepers who fail to return to say thanks to Jesus. Given the joy and astonishment they must have felt, they must have wanted to go as quickly as possible to their loved ones. Their wives. Children. Parents. “Look at me,” they must have said. “You thought and I thought I was lost to you forever. Now I am clean and we can all be together again.” But the one who does return to Jesus, the foreigner, the Samaritan, can now come close. He is no longer required by law to keep his distance, so he falls at Jesus’s feet and thanks him.
Even on a purely human scale, saying thanks is important. Saying thanks means someone knows that a gift has been given. When kids on Christmas morning cannot take the time to say “thank you,” there is a good chance that the gifts are no longer making much of an impression. If we do not take the opportunity to say “thank you” to our parents, it may be because we do not appreciate how much we owe them. If we do not feel grateful to Native Americans, it may be because we have forgotten that we live on land they preserved. And if we do not appreciate life in a society now far healthier and better educated than it once was, it may be that we have forgotten the political courage and wisdom of men and women who dedicated themselves to working for the public good.
Saying “thank you” is important also because it confirms a human relationship. But because gratitude offers a powerful connector between human beings, we may hear people making an effort to avoid it. Perhaps we make that effort ourselves sometimes. Once when we said “thank you” to someone, that person would usually respond, “you’re welcome,” which means, roughly, “you deserve the assistance I have offered.” But in just the last few years, we are likely to hear a response that rejects any connection. “No problem,” we say, which, at least to my ear, sounds like, “I don’t need or want your thanks. I opened the door for you. You thanked me. Let’s stop it right there.”
Maybe I am being overly sensitive to this cliché, but saying “thank you” enables us to offer something in return for a favor done to us. And saying “you’re welcome” in response acknowledges that there has been a kind of reciprocity. That’s a good thing. Saying “thank you” is giving a gift to the giver. In our Gospel story, of the ten who were cured, only the Samaritan achieves the dignity that comes with gratitude well expressed, and Jesus confirms this. As he asks the Samaritan to rise and go on his way, Jesus gives him a sense of spiritual power and potential that should serve him well. “Your faith has made you well.”
There is of course a larger dimension to this story. It asks that we group ourselves either with the nine “locals,” who never quite get around to saying “thank you,” or with the foreigner, who understands how much he has received and must turn around, with gratitude in his heart, to praise the God who has so richly blessed him.
Do we enjoy the grace the Samaritan possessed? If so, we recognize how much we have to be thankful for. That this day and this week have been added to our lives. That we have food to strengthen our hearts and wine to make glad our hearts. That we enjoy the love and company of friends and family. That we enjoy the care of doctors and nurses, the protection of police officers and fire fighters, and the dedication of artists and performers. That we share parks and schools and museums and great houses built by the hands of earlier craftspeople. At Stan Hywet, you can see the point made in the crest above the entry to the Manor House, where the motto, Non Nobis Solum, “Not for us alone,” points to the family’s awareness that it was building for future generations.
If we enjoy the grace shown by the Samaritan, we will celebrate every time we enter St. Paul’s the commitment that has given us this church. We will feel gratitude for the hands that planted the flowers we enjoy. We will rejoice and give thanks for the faith and talent that inspires our hymnal and Prayer Book. We will understand how fortunate we are to know one another. Above all, we will share with one another our gratitude for God’s gift of himself in the bread and wine, the Flesh and Blood of the Eucharist.
God’s greatest gift may be simply this: the grace to acknowledge all that God has given and to say thank you “with our lips and in our lives.”
The first two lines of a poem by George Herbert express for me the prayer that today’s Gospel should prompt.
“Thou that hast giv’n so much to me,
Give one thing more, a gratefull heart.”
Amen