Philip Jenkins has written about why the Bible speaks so naturally to many Africans today. The world of Scripture—its agricultural life, its social relations—is much closer to their own experience than to ours. He points to verses like these found in Psalm 126:
Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.
To us this sounds poetic and distant. To a subsistence farmer who has planted the last of his food in hope that the rains will come, it is concrete, urgent, even desperate. The joy of the harvest is the joy of survival and of God’s providence.
The late Kenneth Bailey, a Presbyterian scholar who spent decades in the Middle East, has done similar work in New Testament studies. He shows how Jesus’ parables are filled with details that make sense in a traditional village but can seem odd to us. For example, in the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father runs to meet the returning son. To us that signals excitement. But in a traditional village, an elder would never run; it would be seen as shameful. The father humbles himself twice—first by agreeing to the son’s offensive request, then by running to welcome him back.
Bailey and the “Context Group” of scholars have reminded us that Jesus’ world was an honor–shame culture, not a guilt–innocence culture like ours. In such a world, you don’t thank an equal for doing what’s expected; you thank someone of higher status—profusely and in public—precisely because you can never repay the favor.
That is what the Samaritan leper does. He recognizes that the healing is a gift from someone far above him. So he returns, falls at Jesus’ feet, and gives public thanks. The other nine, being Jews like Jesus, may have seen him as a fellow member of God’s covenant people. They may have thought no special thanks was required.
The issue, then, isn’t merely the rudeness of the nine. It’s that they didn’t recognize who Jesus is. They failed to see the vast gulf between themselves and the One who healed them. In effect, they treated God as their equal.
And when we do that—when we lose sight of the difference between Creator and creature—we stop giving thanks.
The truth is, we often resemble the nine more than the one.
We live in a culture shaped by the Enlightenment and by democracy—good gifts in themselves. We rightly affirm the equal dignity of every human being. The Gospel itself proclaims the overturning of many human hierarchies: the poor raised up, the proud brought low, the outcast welcomed in.
But our equality with one another is not equality with God.
Jesus reimagines the family by saying, “Call no one on earth your father, for you have one Father—the one in heaven.” In the new creation, we are sisters and brothers, all equal before God. But God remains God.
When we forget that, we start to imagine that what we have is ours by right, not by grace. And gratitude withers.
The good news is that learning to give thanks—genuine thanks to God—helps to heal the damage our pride has done. Gratitude re-orders our lives. It restores us to our proper place in creation. It opens us to sharing what we’ve been given.
You can view the sermon directly using this link.
Thank you for telling us about your moment of thanksgiving. It was beautiful. It also blew my mind. Thank YOU for sharing that moment of incredible realization of life itself.
You’re very welcome. To be honest it’s a thought that still haunts me. Especially as I read more deeply in Artificial Intelligence and the question of whether or not the “Chatbots” could ever be really conscious.
Bishop, I missed your sermon last week, so I heard both this week. one message of faith and one of thanks. I was struck by how they relate to each other and my life today. as you may recall my Barbara is having a hard time and as a result so am I.
I’ve never understood the concept of faith and i’m not what anyone would call optimistic! Pragmatist, yes, I work through hard times, but I never believe they work out without full effort on my part. I’m more pennsylvania than phoenix. yet I truly believe the future can be made better.
I have been more fortunate than most in life. not a lottery winning type of fortunate, but through work, luck and fear of failure, made a good life for Barbara and myself.
all that is in jeopary as we both age and decline.
It is a relief to consider that maybe I don’t have to do everything, maybe just cut the grass and let God keep the sky up. It s a relief to recogize I have been given a gift for which I can be thankful rather than that I have labored mightily to rip a living from a hostile world that could take it back at any moment.
it wil take me a long time for me to refine these messages, but being able to be thankful for gifts and recognizing I’m not alone on this journey will certainly be a comfort as we deal with the uncertain future.
Thank you for your kindness, guidance and prayers for her/us
Steve (and Barbara)
Bless you both. You’re in my prayers.
And yes. You know there’s a saying in AA that sometimes you just can’t manage it all; you need to let go and let God.
(I think that’s a way of saying that sometimes we need to let Jesus take the wheel. And while he’s doing that, we can be fully present in the gift of the present we have, instead of worrying about the future that might be.)
Enjoyed your message; it especially resonates this week as our son Aaron celebrates his 40th birthday on the 14th. Carol & I adopted Oh Young Kyu from South Korea in ‘86. We’ve had quite a journey with him, nearly losing him in a car accident when he was 14. He adopted the mantra of “perseverance” which he got from a favorite Baltimore Orioles’ ball player Ken Griffey. Worthy of our thanksgiving and gratitude, God, and God‘s people, got us all through by Grace and yes, perseverance.
I wanted to especially emphasize that what undermines deep thanksgiving is as much our “taking so much for granted” and being lazy in giving thanks, as well as an “ingrate spirit” (often showing up in the Prayers of the People when petitions of asking are ‘audible’ while offerings of Thanksgiving go ‘silent’). Ingratitude is among the most be-setting of our sins in a first world church& culture where abundance prevails for many/most.
As we know, when we lose what is most precious (a child or spouse?) awareness of the absence can go many ways: bitterness or resentment or a sense of victimhood on the one hand; grief leading to acceptance, and yes, gratitude. Church certainly needs help to emphasize this message, especially in the context of prayer (Adoration, etc) as you cited from the catechism. As the season of annual Thanksgiving opens up, we’ll have plenty of opportunity to share other examples and give witness to the faith we hold dear!
Correction: Cal Ripken, Jr. (not Ken Griffey)