Giving thanks
Luke’s story of the one who turned back giving thanks is the classical and quintessential thanksgiving story. In Canada, the Thanksgiving Weekend is associated with Harvest Thanksgiving as well as the forms of National Thanksgiving. With the first, we give thanks for the harvest and with the second, we give thanks for the spiritual and rational freedoms which properly belong to our lives as citizens. Both forms of thanksgiving point us to the radical nature of thanksgiving as something spiritual and intellectual. A check on the idea of taking things and one another for granted.
Thanksgiving is the counter to all of the forms of privilege and entitlement, to the idea that somehow we are owed things like life and pleasure. It is profoundly about giving not getting and only through a recognition of what the American theologian and novelist Marilynn Robinson wonderfully calls “the givenness of things.” Thanksgiving recognises the spiritual nature of the natural world and of human affairs. As such it opens us out to a larger understanding of our humanity universally considered regardless of the particular cultures from which we come. It is an interesting point. We can only arise to things universal through the particularities of our cultures and lives. Thanksgiving reminds us that we are embodied beings and embedded in certain cultures with their distinctive histories and characteristics.
Thanksgiving, like learning, cannot be forced. It can only come from within as a result of a recognition of things without which belong to life itself. In the theological understanding it is really about God as life and the source of all the forms of life in which we find ourselves.
I am reminded of St. Francis of Assissi’s lovely Canticle of the Sun (c. 1225), one of the earliest literary works written in Italian. It is a lovely hymn of “praise to God with all his creatures”, Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Brothers Wind and Air, Sister Water and Brother Fire, Sister Mother Earth and even Sister Death. The canticle looks back to Genesis, to creation understood as distinguishing one thing from another, as well as echoing the ancient Greek ‘physicists’, like Empedocles who saw nature in terms of a combination of complementary material elements: Earth, Water, Air and Fire, for example. The canticle reminds us of the deep connection between the Creator and creation in ways that complement many of the indigenous cultures of Canada. There is a kind of intimacy and warmth to St. Francis’s Canticle of prayer and praise. It is humbling. “Praise and bless my Lord and give him thanks and serve him with great humility”, it concludes.
That is what we see in Luke’s story. Ten men who were lepers call out to Jesus to be healed. They are on the margins of society owing to the fears of their contagion. Jesus bids them go and show themselves to the priests, in short, following the spiritual customs of Israel. But as they turn to go, they are all healed. Only one turns back and in an act of extravagant and yet profound humility falls down on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. As Luke tells us, “and he was a Samaritan,” referring to some of the religious divisions and tensions of the time. The Jews despised the Samaritans. At issue is a dispute over the Law and the place of its being delivered to Israel. Jesus, especially in Luke’s Gospel, often uses the Samaritans to criticize the Jews. Here Jesus calls attention to the one who turned back unlike the other nine. He calls him “this stranger”.
The point is that the stranger is really the neighbour, one with us. Here the stranger teaches us what belongs to the true nature of our humanity universally considered. In other words, thanksgiving opens us out to a larger and more comprehensive understanding of what it properly means to be human. It is the counter to the various ‘false universals’ which are really about pushing and, indeed, forcing particular agendas. Jesus bids the one who turned back to “arise, go your way, your faith,” he says, “has made you whole”. Not just healed but made whole. This is the great insight and the wonder of thanksgiving as a spiritual activity. In turning back and giving thanks we are made whole.
Voltaire in his novel ‘Candide’ envisions a utopia, Eldorado, an ideal state. In it he suggests is the universal religion, the religion simply of thanksgiving. The insight, even from an attenuated and over-confident sense of human reason, is that God gives us everything. Therefore thanksgiving is the only and best response. It is acknowledgement but one which can only arise from creatures who recognise the world as something good and themselves as beings within the givenness of that ordered world. Thanksgiving acknowledges God as the source of all being and all knowing and all good. It can only come from our hearts responding to the heart of God in all creation. It requires humility which is simply our recognition of ourselves within the order of creation. But in giving thanks, we recall who we are in God’s sight. In praise and thanksgiving we find our greatest freedom, a freedom to God and to one another not as stranger and enemy but as neighbour and friend.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy