Entitlement

Through this season of Lent I have been writing about my decision to fast one day a week through breakfast and lunch (A Lenten Neophyte).  Even this small sacrifice has been a valuable tutor in my life. 

After stumbling out of the blocks on my first day of Lenten fasting (Loving God More Than Timbits), I regained my footing and successfully fasted through breakfast and lunch the next day.  It was not without difficulty, but it was without incident.  I arrived home from work hungry, but pleased.  My stomach was empty but my self-discipline stood firm.  I had sent a message to my stomach.  My love for God outweighed my love for Timbits or the myriad of sweets that surround me at work.  Three cheers for me.  Time to celebrate.

In the day that followed I found myself using my previous sacrifice as a justification for indulgence.  The rationale was simple: since I skipped two meals yesterday, I would make up for it today. 

            An uncommon midmorning snack;

            seconds at lunch…on dessert…candy first, then a donut;  

            Munching on chips on my way home from work;

            A generous bowl of ice cream before bed.

This was far more than my usual caloric intake.  I was making up for lost ground and restoring the cosmic balance.  It would not do to follow up a day of fasting with an average day of eating.  Sacrifice one day teetered the scale.  I would totter it back into balance with indulgence the next.  My anguished stomach had earned some brownie points (a misnomer, in that there is widespread agreement that these points are redeemable for all manner of edible indulgences and not merely brownies).  Now was the time to cash in my chips.  It sounded reasonable.

After my wholly justifiable binge, I got to thinking about this being a familiar pattern. Sacrifice here entitles me to indulgence there.  It seeps into more than just my discipline of fasting.  I rationalize my failures as reasonable indulgences.  I deserve this extravagance to balance our deprivation.  It is, after all, only fair.

Ironically, I only call for fairness when I get the short end of the stick. I don’t demand deprivation after I have experienced abundance.  I don’t seek out pain to balance pleasure. The burden of deprivation lingers longer than the satisfaction of abundance.

Truth is, I don’t really have an issue with unbalanced scales, so long as they are unbalanced in my favor.

But what if I took a different angle?  I recently finished a book by RC Sproul Jr. entitled The Call To Wonder (a book I will review here in the near future).  In the last chapter he talks about his wife’s struggle with leukemia.  As she reflected on the possibility of her death, she feared not for herself, but for her children and husband who would have to live through this loss.  Sproul allayed her fears by showing her a different perspective.  The grief of loss would be countered by the joy for what they had had. 

He says it better than I can, “One cannot - or at least ought not - acknowledge the pain of loss without giving thanks for what has been given…My love for these children drives me to empathy for this potential loss.  It in turn makes me stunned that their heavenly Father should have blessed them to have had this woman for a mother” (Sproul, p.170). 

This was a helpful viewpoint.  The emphasis shifts from bitterness due to deprivation to gratitude for undeserved blessing.   Not stuck in the grief of a mother’s death, but moving forward with gratefulness for a mother’s life.  The emphasis is placed, not on deprivation, but on plenty as undeserved.  I feel entitlement far too much.  The blessings of life are undeserved, not something I am entitled to.  Deprivation then becomes something not to be compensated for, but something to be accepted. 

Fasting is not a set up for binging.  It is an opportunity to demonstrate contentment in hunger.  Discovering that God is sufficient, I don’t have to compensate with double dessert the next day.  If he is sufficient, then no compensation is necessary…though my stomach is trying to convince my fingers to type otherwise.

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Gratitude: Prejudice

This concludes my reflection s on Luke 17:11-19, begun in Gratitude: Pause and continued in Gratitude: Point

Years ago, while I was in seminary, I worked at a residential facility for mentally handicapped adults as a Living Skills Instructor, a fancy title for a house parent.  I worked in the cottage, which housed thirty of the most independent male residents, functioning at about a fifth grade level.   These were special men and I grew to love them deeply.  They taught me much, mostly inadvertently.  

One of those lessons was about gratitude.  These were thankful men, some of the most thankful I have ever met.  Their gratitude was sincere.  It was as if their threshold of expectations was set very low.  They took little for granted.  Almost any good thing was treated as something unexpected , something to relish, something to be grateful for.  An extra scoop of brown sugar for their oatmeal, a new puzzle in the game box, some microwave popcorn to munch on while watching Wheel of Fortune, an offer to iron a shirt for them, helping write a letter to their family, all were occasions of extreme gratitude.  These were enough to clear the bar of their gratitude threshold.  Each was not taken for granted, not treated as an inalienable right, not assumed to be a given.  

Their gratitude set my ingratitude into sharp contrast.  It was through them that I realized that my threshold for gratitude was set higher. I took things for granted that they never would.  You'd think that these men had far less to be grateful for than I did.  They were confined to a residential facility, sharing a room with another resident, eating institutionalized food, with no hope of ever living independently, having a career, getting married, raising a family.  They were cognizant enough to realize what their mental condition ruled out for them.  At times they grieved this loss.  But that made their gratitude all the more convicting.  It came from an unexpected source.

In this story of the ten lepers who are healed and the one who returns to express gratitude, Luke holds back a detail until the last breath.  Only after he has told of this man's distinction as being the only one to return to say thank you, he reveals his nationality dramatically and with emphasis.  "He threw himself at Jesus feet and thanked him - and he was a Samaritan" (Luke 17:16).  At this, the reader is to gasp with surprise. 

For a Jewish audience, Samaritans were the  most unlikely role models.  They were  a hated people, viewed as half breeds.  After Assyria conquered the Northern kingdom of Israel, they took many of the inhabitants and relocated them, leaving only a remnant behind.  To fill the space, they colonized the area with Mesopotamians imported into the land.  These Mesopotamians intermarried with the remnant Jewish population and their offspring became known as Samaritans.  To pure Jews, they were seen as compromisers, traitors, nationalistic mutts.  Prejudice ran deep.  To see a Samaritan in a positive light was unthinkable for a Jew.

And yet here it was, a Samaritan putting this Jewish audience in their place.  Jesus responds by saying, "Where are the other nine?  Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? (Luke 17:17-18).

The Samaritans gratitude puts the Jews ingratitude in sharp contrast.  Shame on them.  And shame on me. When those I would least expect to be thankful outdo me with their thankfulness it serves as a implicit rebuke of how much I take for granted.  This Thanksgiving I'm reminded of my friends from the cottage and I set the bar just a little bit lower.  

Happy Thanksgiving

Gratitude: Point

In my last post Gratitude: Pause I suggested that gratitude is our willingness to pause from the enjoyment of the gift to express gratitude to the giver.  This post continues my reflections on Luke 17:11-19.

I feel this post deserves a warning.  It's a bit deeper than any of my other posts.  I'll delve into Greek a bit (though I'll spare you the boring details). There is a path of logic I'll lead you along that I think is worth the journey, but it will take some mental engagement.  The point I'm making is clear (I hope) but not necessarily obvious from the outset.  So now that I've scared away most potential readers, on with the post.

When Jesus heals ten lepers in Luke 17, only one returns to say thank you.  In response, Jesus says to the grateful man who kneels before him, "Your faith has made you well." (NIV).  I'm dissatisfied with that translation.

The New Testament is written in Greek.  Our English versions are all translations, which is wrought with difficulty.  There is never a one-to-one correspondence between two languages.  Words in one language usually have a different range of meaning in another language.  In translating, it can be tricky figuring out the author's intent and how best to convey that in another language.  One tool that can help determine the author's intent in using a word or phrase in one context is by comparing to with another context where the author uses the same word or phrase.  Such is the case with Luke 17.

Luke has recorded this exact phrase ("Your faith has made you well") on the lips of Jesus earlier in the book.  In Luke 7, Jesus is anointed with perfume by a woman of sordid reputation.  The religious folk object, looking down their noses at this sinful woman and her extravagant display.  Jesus counters that those forgiven much love much - the self righteous have a polite affection for Jesus; this woman has a desperate love.  Jesus turns his attention to this societal cast off and says to her "Your sins are forgiven" and follows it up with this loaded phrase - "You faith has saved you" (Luke 7:48).  This phrase is, word for word, what Jesus says to another societal castoff ten chapters later, a leper.

This linguistic parallel is regrettably not evident in the English translations.  While the incident in Luke 7 is clearly a case of a sinful woman in need of "saving," this story in Luke 17 is in the context of physical healing, and so the translators assume that Luke has this in mind.  In that sense, "you're faith has made you well" fits perfectly.

But keep in mind that this is what Jesus says exclusively to the thankful one, not the afflicted ten.    All ten, after all, are healed.  Doesn't it follow that what Jesus offers the one grateful leper should go a step beyond that healing? In this sense, "you're faith has saved you" is a much better translation.  All ten share in the being made well.  But this one is offered something special - something offered ten chapters earlier to a broken woman.  Salvation - not merely from leprosy, but from sin.  It's through the healing that this man discovers the true nature of his malady.  Physical leprosy was destroying his body, spiritual leprosy was destroying his soul.  He had just encountered the great physician for whom healing his skin disease was akin to basic first aid.  This was a surgeon whose scalpel could heal the soul.  All ten are cleansed (Luke 17:14); but only one is saved (Luke 17:19).

So if you've followed me this far, we're ready for the payoff.  This is the second lesson that this text teaches me about gratitude; a lesson as subtle as the first was blatant.  The first was that gratitude is the willingness to pause from the enjoyment of the gift to express gratitude to the giver.  The second is this - God's gifts are pointing us to something greater.   He wants to use things that are temporal as giant pointers toward things eternal.  The gift of healing was intended to point them to a greater healing.

God has been gracious to me.  In this moment I have much to enjoy.  A warm fire glowing in our fireplace, a beautiful view out our sliding door of the tail end of autumn, a hot cup of English Breakfast tea I just brewed, a computer that allows me to edit all my first draft slop, a brownie I'm nibbling on left over from dinner with good friends last night.  It's all good.  But it's not complete.  In a few moments I'll have to leave for work. I'll leave behind the markers of serenity for a frantic shift at the store.  I want more.

My appetite for these moments of joy is stronger than what these moments can deliver.  I delight in them all, but I was made for more.  They last for a moment, or even a span, but they're not eternal. They are pointing beyond themselves to something greater, reminders that this is an appetite only eternity can satisfy.

In C.S. Lewis' autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he describes his pursuit of stabs of joy, moments of overwhelming pleasure and satisfaction.  They were good, but short lived.  He ends his book this way.  "But what, in conclusion of joy?  For that, after all, is what they story has been mainly about.  Those stabs of joy were only valuable as a pointer to something other and outer.  While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed larger in my thoughts.  When we are lost in the woods, the sight of a sign post is a great matter.  But when we have found the road and are passing sign posts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare.  They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up.  But we shall not stop and stare, not much; not on this road, though their pillars are of silver and their letterings of gold.  We would be at Jerusalem."

This Thanksgiving I'd encourage you to enjoy the good gifts God has given.  But don't let that be the end of gratitude.  All the good things God has given are pointing you to eternity.

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Gratitude: Pause

The story is recorded in Luke 17:11-19.  It goes something like this.  Jesus is traveling along the border between Galilee and Samaria.  Along the way he encounters ten lepers on the outskirts of a town, there because Jewish law demands that those with infectious skin diseases must live outside the camp (Leviticus 13:46).  These are the societal cast-off.  The men who stand at the end of exit ramps with their cardboard signs.  The people I tend to look right through.  But Jesus sees them.  He sees beyond their leprosy.  He sees individuals with value.

These men cry out for mercy and he responds, telling them to go show themselves to the priests.  This is the first step in an eight day process of cleansing laid out in Leviticus 14 that involves birds, scarlet yarn, hyssop, cedar wood, bathing, shaving, laundering, two male goats, flour with oil, and a partridge in a pear tree.  You can read the riveting account for yourself.   These men certainly have.  What to me is a boring litany of rules regarding how someone with an infectious skin disease is declared clean is pointedly relevant to these men.  Leprosy has controlled their lives.  They are intimately familiar with what God's Word has to say about their condition.

This cleansing process hangs like a checklist in their minds, one they have always dreamed of utilizing.  Now, Jesus has instructed them to take the first step.   But it all hinges on the priest determining that they have been cleansed from their disease.  And when they set out,  they are still covered in leprosy.  As they are on they way, the healing occurs.  And with this healing, their journey to the priest is infused with urgency.  Their minds are full of the checklist from Leviticus 14.  This is the key to their entry back into society.  They are dreaming of white picket fences, flannel sheets, coffee at Panera.  Leprosy has hijacked their lives long enough.  For the first time in ages, there is hope for their future. They are focused on completing the list.

All but one.  One, when he sees he is healed, returns to Jesus to say thank you.  This isn't on the list.  This is not part of the cleansing process.  The birds, the hyssop, the scarlet yarn - these will wait.  He will pause from the list to express gratitude.  And this is thanksgiving, our willingness to pause from the enjoyment of the gift to express gratitude to the giver.  It's this pause that I struggle with.

I suspect I am more like the nine than the one.  I like lists.  I work best when I have an agenda.  I enjoy scratching things off as they are completed.  I  do not like to be interrupted.  I have tunnel vision.

Plop me into that group of ten, healed on my way to the priest, and I'm more prone to continue on with the nine than to return with the one.   First let me get my feet under me. I'll finish the cleansing, move into a split level, lease a Corolla, start my new job.  Then I'll be in a position to properly express my gratitude.  I'll have Jesus over for dinner.  We can have the spiral cut ham with the cheesy potatoes.  But by then, there are new lists I'm focused on.

It's an implicit ingratitude.  If you asked me directly I would say I am thankful, but my failure to pause demonstrates that while I may enjoy the gift I am indifferent toward the giver.

November is an annual reminder of my failure to pause throughout the year to recognize how much God has given me.   Sure, it's been a busy year.  A year full of lists.  But it's also been a blessed year.  A year full of gifts from the hands of a loving giver.  Everyday I enjoy his gifts, both big and small.  Most are enjoyed with that same implicit ingratitude of the nine. But occasionally I join the company of the one and pause.