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Written by Jeanne Knepper
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Saturday, 20 October 2007 |
GRATITUDE AND HEALING
Joel 2:23-29; Psalm 65; Luke 17:11-19
October 21, 2007
Suppose I told you that I have found the key to a good life, would you be interested? Let me take it farther—suppose I could name a practice that could turn your life around, increase your sense of peace and well-being, heal angry hearts and transform stunted lives—would you want to try it? Suppose I could then tell you that this practice is one you already know, is free, and can be done by anybody, anywhere, with tremendous benefits and no—NO bad side effects. Would it be magic? No, it’s not magic, though many of us first learned to call it a magic word. It is this—saying “Thank you.” It’s what our mothers and fathers and teachers taught us, so long ago, to be grateful for what is given to us. Gratitude is truly a magical practice, a way of blessing and healing our worlds.
As I thought about it during the week, it struck me that one of the clues to spiritual and emotional health is the willingness to say, “Thank you.” To people who help us. To people who care for us. To people who are just doing their jobs. To God. To each other. I think that it is in our ability to be grateful that we come into some of the fullness of who we can be as human beings. When I thank you for something you have done, at a deep level, I am acknowledging that your world does not revolve around me, that you were kind or helpful to me because you sense in a deep way that we are connected and that my well-being affects your own. Your kindness is not my due, it is your gift to give. And when you give it, whatever it is, you have enriched my life in the spending of your own, of your own effort, or resources, or time, or care.
I carry this insight into the reading of the story of Jesus and the ten lepers. Now, even the translations are quick to point out, if you look at the footnotes in your text, that many diseases were jointly called leprosy. We have no way of knowing which disease these men had, or even if they all had the same disease.
Now, the first thing to remember, when we read this story of ten lepers healed, is that what we know as leprosy, that is, a disfiguring, mutilating previously incurable disease we now call Hansen’s disease, was not at all what Old or New Testament writers meant by the word that is translated as leprosy in our Bibles. In fact, the disease we call leprosy did not even exist in the Biblical Middle East. It surfaced later, during the middle ages, in Europe, and was later carried to other placed and climates, thriving especially in hot humid climates, not in arid deserts. But this was long after the writing of the Biblical texts.
If you were to turn your bibles to the book of Leviticus, chapters 13 and 14 [pages 98-102 in your pew bible], you would find a whole raft of leprosies, of the skin, of clothing, even of houses. Leprosy was any disfiguring stain or eruption—the zit on my chin, a bubble of mildew in your shower, a patch of raised and whitish skin such as I sometimes find on my leg, a place where a shirt discolored when it was put away wet and left too long without good air. Some kinds of disfiguration, hopefully like this zit, have always been temporary. Some kinds, like dry rot in a bathroom floors, bespeak a much greater problem. All of them led, in a time when it wasn’t easy to distinguish the disastrous from the merely dismaying, to isolation, to banishment from human society. As I think about it, it’s almost as if our worst nightmares from adolescence came true: that acne would ruin your life, forever!
Except, of course, that the culture had am escape, a way to distinguish the temporary from the dangerous. Part of the process was spiritual, reflecting the belief that everything that people experienced was from God. Part of it involved rituals of cleaning. Once this was done, if the eruption, if the bump or discoloration or roughness seemed to heal, if the washed wall stayed clean, then the afflicted one visited the rabbi, who was empowered to pronounce the leprosy healed and the person restored to community.
Jesus was called rabboni, teacher, by some of his followers, so it was not surprising that ones who had been pronounced unclean might approach him to be declared healed. And so it was, somewhere on the border between Galilee and Samaria, Luke tells us, that ten lepers hailed him from a distance—they had to maintain a safe distance away from others so long as they were in an unclean status—and asked him to heal them, to pronounce them ritually clean. When he saw them, and that is one of the miracles of the story, the frequent miracle that Jesus did see the people on the margins, the ones banished because of one ritual disfigurement or another, when he saw them, Jesus sent them to present themselves to the rabbi, essentially telling them that they were clean, that they were fit for human community as they were.
Think of the amazement! Suppose you had something you had always known as an affliction, something that made you not as good as others, not even fit to be around others. Think of the many things it could be—the things people have learned to hide, because, what would people think or do if they knew—impetigo or epilepsy, addiction or overweight, sexual orientation, a history of abuse, past time in jail, stuttering, a bankruptcy or a child given up for adoption, an abortion or the sure knowledge that your external gender and your internal being do not match. Think of whatever it might be that could leaving you feeling like you didn’t really belong in the community of faith, and then imagine that this one, this one called Jesus, had just said that you were healed, that you could go to the leader of the faith and be pronounced clean, whole—wouldn’t that just amaze you? Couldn’t that turn your life around?
And so, they went celebrating and rejoicing, all but one, who realized what a great gift this rabbi, one who was not even of his own people, had given him. That one returned to Jesus, praising God. And that one only was told, your faith has made you well.
You see, curing the skin eruption was not the big deal. Those things literally came and went. What was the big deal was that Jesus treated him, and them, like beloved children of God, that he saw the mark of God’s love on the one who was different, defiled, discriminated against. What set him free of his awful experience of dislocation and discrimination was his willingness to be grateful, to bring thanks to God. What was the big deal, for the one who returned, was that he got it, got it that God loved him, got it that Jesus reached out to him because of God’s love, got it that he could also be empowered to reach out to others. For, it is in expressing gratitude that we are freed from the tyranny of our circumstances, freed to grow into our best and most whole selves, freed to step out of the strait jackets imposed by discrimination, by internalization of hostility, by resentment and by feeling less than others. It is by expressing gratitude that we reclaim the selves that “our mothers taught us to be,” that we enter into the wholeness of being beloved children of a loving God.
I would wager that there isn’t a one of us here who hasn’t had that experience, sometime, of someone pronouncing us clean, of someone telling us that those eruptions or our unwelcome humanity, whatever they were, were not the determining factor of our acceptability, of our welcomeness, but that the bottom line of God’s love and grace meant that we were also welcome to be a part of the family of the people of God. Not a one. It’s such a blessing, to finally get that word, to know that we are beloved, first, and then we heal from all the pain that our particular human condition has brought us.
Many years ago, when I was going through a tough time in my life, one of my dear friends told me to buy myself a blank journal, one that had a pretty cover that I really liked. In it, I was to put the things I was grateful for, recording things people had said that made me feel good, recording moments that lifted my spirits. And then, when I was in the dumps, she told me to read the book, slowly, taking it all in. That book became my first gratitude journal. Reading it helped me to remember that I was more than my temporary pain and discouragement. It helped me to heal.
Merry was years ahead of two psychologists who decided recently to test the hypothesis that gratitude could help people to heal. Dr. Michael McCollough, of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and Dr. Robert Emmons, of the University of California at Davis were curious about why people involved in their faith seem to have more happiness and a greater sense of well-being than those who aren't and decided to study the connections. After making initial observations and compiling all the previous research on gratitude, they conducted the Research Project on Gratitude and Thanksgiving. The study required several hundred people in three different groups to keep daily diaries. The first group kept a diary of the events that occurred during the day, while the second group recorded their unpleasant experiences. The last group made a daily list of things for which they were grateful.
The results of the study indicated that daily gratitude exercises resulted in higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism and energy. Additionally, the gratitude group experienced less depression and stress, was more likely to help others, exercised more regularly and made more progress toward personal goals. According to the findings, people who feel grateful are also more likely to feel loved. McCollough and Emmons also noted that gratitude encouraged a positive cycle of reciprocal kindness among people since one act of gratitude encourages another.
McCullough says these results also seem to show that gratitude works independently of faith. Though gratitude is a substantial part of most religions, he says the benefits extend to the general population, regardless of faith or lack thereof. In light of his research, McCullough suggests that anyone can increase their sense of well-being and create positive social effects just from counting their blessings.
We are coming to the time each year when we look to our own lives of blessing and consider how we might choose to support this community of faith with our time, presence, prayers and financial support. As we come now to the point where we make our promises to support and care for this community of faith, I invite you to come forward, bringing your pledge, not out of obligation, not out of pride, not out of fear, but out of gratitude. Gratitude that the love of God has touched your life. Gratitude that people before us kept the message alive in their lives and actions so that it could be passed on to us. Gratitude that you and I now have this moment when we can turn back to Jesus, leap for joy, and say “Thank you. O God, thank you so much for the blessings that have brought me to this place, to this understanding, to this people, to your love. Thank you for the opportunity you give me to grow in my understanding and spirit as I receive your love and grace and to pass it on to others. Thank you for this community that nurtures my growth. Thank you God, and thank you people of God.” You, you are the seed that will grow a renewed and vibrant church. Thank you. Amen.
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