Giving Thanks

(28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, C)

These ten lepers who approach the Lord on his way to Jerusalem in the Gospel today are, in many ways, a model for our own spiritual life.

How do they begin? At first they are calling out for his pity, standing at a distance. Of course they must remain far off, because their disease is considered to be contagious. In much the same way, our own diseases of sin, selfishness and indifference keep us at a distance from God. But we too can call out from our misery, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!”

And what is Jesus’ response? He says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” Now according to the Law of Israel, it was up to the priests to examine people with skin conditions and decide whether they were lepers who had to be excluded from the community. Jesus invites the ten lepers to address their situation through the ordinary practice of their religious tradition.

In the same way, when we decide that we are sick of our misery and sin and we call out to the Lord for healing, he invites us into the plain, ordinary practices of faith. He calls us to enter into the life of his church and the life of his sacraments. Sure, we can say, “I have spirituality, but I don’t need this quote-unquote ‘organized religion.’” Trouble is, when we try to live a life in the Spirit—which is what “spirituality” is supposed to mean—without a community of faith and teaching, well, we will have nobody to challenge our ideas and nobody to correct our misperceptions. And so we will eventually find out that our so-called spirituality is really just another kind of vanity and self-service.

But let’s say we have avoided this trap, this danger that the marketers of home-made “spirituality” have put before us. Instead we have called out to the Lord and have followed his call to enter into the life of his Church. Indeed, all of us who are here for Sunday Eucharist have presumably done this. Good for us, no? We’re all set, right?

Well, almost. We’ve gone as far as the nine lepers who were healed but who didn’t return to the Lord to give thanks. We must never take what we are receiving here in the Eucharist for granted. And for us who attend to our religion day after day, year after year, it’s easy to do. That’s why we should always notice that in both the first reading and the Gospel today, it is the foreigner who remembers to return and give thanks to God. Sometimes it takes the enthusiasm of the convert or of the one who has been away from the Lord to remind us how tremendous the gifts of God have been in our lives.

We have this great grace in our lives because God himself has not only invited us into it, but given us the willingness to follow and accept it. And this ought to produce a prayerful attitude of gratitude within us. In this Naaman the Syrian from the first reading is a model for us.

After he was healed by following the advice of Elisha the prophet, what is his response? He asks for the two mule-loads of earth. He does this because he will build an altar out of them, because he now realizes that there is no god but the God of that place, of the land of Israel. Naaman’s response to what the God of Israel has done for him is to assume an attitude of grateful worship.

And this is what our Mass will be if we do it well. The word “Eucharist” is derived from the Greek verb “to give thanks.” It is celebration of thanksgiving to God.

Part of the purpose of practicing our religion is to challenge us into noticing the goodness of God. And when we do, we need, like Naaman, like the lone leper in the Gospel, to return to the Lord in our heart and thank him for the healing and peace he has worked in our lives. And if we do this, we too will hear the words that Jesus offers to the leper who came back: “your faith has saved you.”

May we too begin again to return to the Lord to say, ‘thank you.’

Priorites

(13 Sunday in Ordinary Time, C)

“Lord, let me go first and bury my father,” but Jesus answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God”

These are strong words that we have from Jesus today. And as I reflected upon how we might understand them, I was reminded of someone I met once. I spent one of my summers when I was in college volunteering down in Appalachian coal country, and one of the things I did was pay visits to the older folks who often lived alone and weren’t able to get out much. I would see how they were doing, and if they needed anything. It was certainly never boring. One day I would be helping with the canning of tomatoes or cabbage and on another I was invited to throw rocks at the wood-pile to “scare away them snakes.”

In the course of my adventures I met a wonderful older woman named Ocie. That’s O-C-I-E. Ocie had recently lost her husband, so I went to see her to see how she was doing. When I asked her how she was doing with her grief, she said to me:

“Young man, it was sad to see him go, but I’m not too troubled.”

“Oh?” I said. She continued,

“’Well, before my husband died I asked him a question. I said, who do you love more, me or the good Lord’? And he said, ‘Well, Ocie, I love you, but I reckon I love the good Lord more.’”

Ocie was delighted with this answer! She said,

“When I knew my husband loved the good Lord more than me, I knew I would be with him again in heaven.”

Now this is an expression of a simple faith, but I think it can help us to understand what God demands of us as disciples of Jesus Christ. It’s not that in order to follow Jesus we have to leave everyone we love behind, but that when we put God first the way we relate to them will be transformed by grace. It can help us understand the Lord’s words that “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

It’s not as if in order to follow Jesus we need to run away to the desert or abandon our families or jobs. Because once we put God first, the way we love and work will be made new by grace. So when we return from prayer to our daily life, we’re not looking back, but looking forward to the kingdom of God, because the way we will do even the plainest things will be lifted by the light of grace.

Look at the prophet Elisha. Yes, his life was radically changed by the call to become a prophet of Israel. He even destroys the plow and oxen that were his livelihood. But what does he do with them? He cooks the animals, using the plow as fuel, and feeds the people he leaves behind. The call of God never leaves anyone abandoned.

Take the Lord’s own words as another example, “let the dead bury their dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Being Christians doesn’t mean that we should ignore the needs of those we love while they are alive, or not bury them with dignity when they leave us. But once we put the kingdom of God first, once we make it our first priority in life to have the love of God reign in our hearts and minds, we will no longer care for those we love or bury those who die in the same way.

In fact, once we put God first, the love with which we love those around us becomes part of God’s love—and thus we touch the caring and gentle Mystery at the heart of all reality. Once we put God first, though we might seem to be burying the dead, we are actually just saying goodbye to those who are being born ahead of us into eternal life. So when we grieve for our loved ones who have passed on, we are not the dead burying the dead, but the living who suffer with a brief separation from the living. The way we remember those who have passed from this world ought to reflect our faith in the eternal life we have in Christ, the eternal life of which this Eucharist is like a sample taste.

And to live this way is freedom from sin and selfishness, as Paul points out in the second reading. Because when we put God first, everything else we do becomes a little part of what God is doing in the world. And in God there is no misery or evil. In the inner life of God there is only peace and gentleness and joy. And this life is ours through the humanity of Christ, through the Body of Christ we receive and we become at this Eucharist. So let us follow receive the Body of Christ and follow the Lord into the peace of his kingdom. Amen.