I don’t like to think of myself as a hostile or passive-aggressive person, but perhaps I am. The older I get, the more annoyed I become when people seem to take basic courtesies for granted. Whether it’s holding a door open for someone or letting a car enter a congested lane of traffic, I am increasingly surprised at how few people pause to offer a word or gesture of thanks. Luckily for them, I have appointed myself the messenger of manners. “You’re welcome!” I often shout, usually in a sickly-sweet, cloying voice. I always feel better, but my sarcasm never seems to make much of a difference.
This morning’s gospel reading [Luke 17: 11-19] shows Jesus’s response to this kind of social ingratitude, though (luckily for us) without the passive-aggressive hostility or sarcasm. Ten people suffering with leprosy encounter Jesus, and (knowing him to be a healer) they ask that he cure them. When he does so, only one turns back to him and offers thanks. Clearly a bit stunned by their ingratitude, Jesus asks, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”
It is not incidental to the point of this story that the one grateful healed person turns out not to be an Israelite but a Samaritan, an outsider. As in the other Lucan story of the Good Samaritan, the gospel seems to be telling us something about the universal nature of human goodness. It isn’t always the chosen people who do the right thing.
But the identity of the one grateful person in the story is really a side-issue. The main point, I think, has to do with the whole question of giving thanks as central to our human relation to God. And to get at that—and with apologies to Gerti, your theologically educated warden-- I’d like to offer what I promise will be a brief but pithy little lesson in Hebrew.
There are two words in Hebrew which may sound alike but which denote a world of theological difference. The first, todah ( תּוֹדָה) means “thanksgiving”. The second, torah ( תּוֹרָה) is more familiar to us. It means “law”. Jews often use torah to describe the first five books of the Bible, but that is because Judaism considers those books to be the law. Though todah and torah may sound similar, they describe two very different attitudes toward God, the holy, and life itself.
Let’s begin with todah or thanksgiving. In the earliest days of Israel’s life—from the Exodus in around 1400 BC to the Exile in. 587 BC—giving thanks was the primary act of Hebrew worship. The great event of Israel’s common life—the Exodus—was an experience of deliverance from slavery and oppression into freedom. The worshipping life which grew out of that deliverance was one of giving thanks—of making an offering and sharing a meal with God and the community in celebration of and thanksgiving for both the corporate deliverance of the Exodus and whatever personal deliverance (a good harvest, healing, the birth of a child) had occurred in a person’s life. This todah way of relating to God was the primary characteristic of Israel’s life and worship for centuries, right up until the Babylonian exile and captivity of 587. Our Old Testament reading from Jeremiah this morning recalls that horribly disruptive period in Israel’s life.
When the Israelites returned from exile and rebuilt the Jerusalem temple, they made the move from todah(thanksgiving) worship to torah (law) worship. In the book of Nehemiah chapter 8, the priest Ezra reads the torah to the people and they commit to follow its teachings and abide by its rules. In the twenty-year period of the Babylonian exile, a significant shift has occurred: what was previouslyiii a living religion celebrating God’s ongoing presence among us by giving thanks changed to a more static observance, finding God at work most reliably now in the five books of a historic past which we can but remember. This is not to say that Jews did not still give thanks for personal and social blessings. But it is to say that gratitude was subtly replaced by obedience as the primary way one related to God, other people, and the world. Todah had become torah. Thanksgiving turned into law.
Now this rendering is a bit simplistic, but it helps us understand what Jesus is up to in this morning’s gospel. When Jesus heals the ten, he tells them to “go and show yourselves to the priests”. In terms of first century Jewish life, this command has the force of torah, of law, and the ten healed persons immediately proceed to follow orders. They’re on their way to the priest to become ritually clean and then to rejoin society. This is all conventional Jewish practice, totally in keeping with post-Exilic ritual standards.
But one healed person turns back to give thanks. It’s not that he won’t go to the priest and get purified. It’s more that he remembers an earlier aspect of Jewish life that his fellows seem to have forgotten: he remembers that what has happened to him is not so much a cleansing as a deliverance. He has been delivered from the disease of leprosy and set free to live a more abundant life. His response to that deliverance is like that of earlier Israelites. He comes back and gives thanks. He has moved from law to thanksgiving, from torah to todah.
In making that move, the one healed person encapsulates the entire Jesus experience. Jesus’s critique of first century Palestinian Judaism is a critique any of us might make of any religious system that claims to have a lock on holiness and purity. As an observant Jew himself, Jesus follows and honors torah, the law. But he realizes that the law is there properly not as the object of our worship but as a way into relationship with God, other people, and the world. To Jesus and his companions, just as for the earlier Israelites, the real point of following God is todah, giving thanks. When you put following the law first you can fall into the trap of thinking of yourself as self-sufficient. “Look at me: I’m doing everything right!” When you put giving thanks first, you realize something deeper—you realize that you are the recipient of a divine generosity that gives you not only what you have but even life itself. Following the law tends towards self-righteousness. Giving thanks tends towards compassion.
In his praise of the one who returned to give thanks, Jesus is leading us not away from the law but to putting law in its proper context of thanksgiving. This teaching suggests two ideas—one social, one theological—which all of us might ponder in the days ahead.
We are approaching elections at the state, city, and county levels next month. There seem to be two primary types of people in our political life: we might call them the “law-abiders” and the “empaths”. Some candidates argue for tough, legalistic solutions to our social problems. Others argue for compassionate actions that emphasize our solidarity with each other. When looking at these candidates and issues, we might ask ourselves the old evangelical question: WWJVF? Who would Jesus vote for? As Christians we are also citizens, and as citizens we need to be mindful that we’re all in this together. For us, thanksgiving will always take precedence over law.
That’s the social thought. Here’s the theological one. It won’t have escaped you that “eucharist”, the liturgy we do together this morning, is the Greek word for “thanksgiving”. As followers of Jesus, we identify ourselves first and foremost as those who give thanks. We come now, together, to gather around God’s table, and we do so not in celebration of our purity but in acknowledgment of our dependence. For our life, our purpose, and our fulfillment we rely not on ourselves but on God and each other. What sets us people of faith apart from our individualistic culture is that we are the people who know and acknowledge our need for each other and God. We are the people who realize, as a mentor of mine once said, that “we’re all on cosmic relief”. That’s why we work for justice and peace. And that’s why, this morning, as we do every Sunday, we now proceed, together in this Eucharist, to give thanks. Amen.
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