Expect to Be Thankful
Pastoral Pointers
I think every one of us complains from time to time: the weather is too hot or too cold, the parking lot was too full or too empty, or the traffic was dreadful, and so on. This comes, I believe, from a sense that lurks deep in the heart of every human being that things in this world are not as they should be. And of course when circumstances in our lives become painful and really difficult, this deep felt sense can rise to the top, and we begin desperately to want things to be corrected, to “get back to normal,” so to speak.
In one sense, our intuition that things aren’t right with the world is absolutely correct. As Paul says in Romans 8:22, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Not only human beings, but the whole creation longs for the day when predators won’t endanger the young of other species, and earthquakes and hurricanes kill whole populations indiscriminately.
But when we think God owes us better circumstances, our dissastisfaction is unjustified. In Luke 17:11-19, Jesus heals a group of ten Samaritan lepers who call out to him for mercy, but only one returns to thank him. Jesus asks, “Were not all then cleansed? Where are the other nine?” (Luke 17:17)
When we consider the lepers’ circumstances, this is a very good question. First of all, as lepers they were absolutely and permanently outcast from their own families as well as the rest of society. But they were also Samaritan lepers: members of the people the Jews, and from the Jewish point of view, God himself despised more than any other.
In healing them of their leprosy, Jesus instantly removed both of these insurmountable calamities. Yet 90% of this group never even said, “Thank you.” It seems the nine who went away somehow felt they were owed their restoration. Their ingratitude illustrates their unworthiness. They had asked Jesus for mercy, but forgot that mercy isn’t deserved—God gives it freely precisely to those who don’t deserve it.
People behave this way because deep down we believe we deserve things to be a certain way, and so we expect it. We expect the food to be hot or the weather to be pleasant, or our health to be robust. And when it’s not, we complain—I know I do. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, I complain “that the world will not devote itself to making me happy.”
Shaw’s outlook on our expectations is instructive. I ask myself: “Do you expect God to make you happy? Are you complaining because he hasn’t?”
In a very real sense, the world as we know it is upside down. In our deepest selves, we realize that. But Jesus turned the world of those ten lepers right-side up. He’s done no less for you and for me in taking on our human nature to die in our place and bring us to God our Father. He himself is our completion and our rightness. So, join me in thanking him daily for bringing us to himself. Living right-side up with Christ is a reward our upside-down circumstances can’t give us!
Rev. Mario Gonzalez del Solar
Assistant Rector, St. Matthew's Episcopal Church