THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MEISTER ECKHART
Twenty years ago on a Saturday night I was just about to head upstairs to get ready for bed when I heard the rumbling of a car with a bad exhaust system pulling up in my driveway. The man who came to the door was passing through town, but he and his family were exhausted. He wanted to know if I could put him up in a motel for the night. I had a fund at my disposal with which I could do such things, so I called the motel and booked him a room. Then he told me that his family was hungry. Since there was nothing open at that time of night, I gave him a loaf of bread, a block of cheese and some sandwich meat. About the only thing I couldn’t give him was a gallon of milk, since our son, Rob, would need that in his bottle in the morning. The man thanked me and went on his way. Several months later, he showed up at my church. The Boy Scouts were meeting there that night and he found them first, so the scoutmaster led him to my office. Again he needed food and gasoline, so I wrote him a voucher and sent him on his way. Later, the scoutmaster came to my office and asked, “What did that guy want?” I said, “Oh, I’ve seen him before. He just wanted a little food and gasoline.” Then the scoutmaster asked, “Did you see what he was driving?” I said, “No.” The scoutmaster said, “He was driving a brand new Lincoln Town Car with the dealer’s tag still in the window!” Ah, some people have a profound sense of entitlement, do they not?
Twenty years ago, people used to ask for 20 or 25 dollars. Five or six years ago, they started asking for 100 to 150 dollars. Now people ask for four or five hundred dollars without even batting an eye. Not long ago a woman came into my office and said she needed help to pay off a delinquent gas bill so National Fuel would turn her gas back on for the winter. I said, “How much money do you need?” She said, “$2407.00.” I helped her a little, but I did not pay for all of it. Some people have a profound sense of entitlement. And most of us wouldn’t mind helping if people would at least show a little gratitude.
About 10 years ago, I led a senior high school mission trip to rural Tennessee. We did Habitat for Humanity-type work on a trailer home. We put a railing on a large front porch that had been built by another group. We crawled under the trailer and shored up the floorboards from underneath. Some of the kids climbed on the roof and spread tar to keep it from leaking. We put in a new kitchen floor. Then we built a small back porch, but we ran out of time before we could build the steps. I went into the trailer to tell the woman we were leaving because it was time for us to head back home and she said to me, “What’s the matter? You can’t build steps?” I said, “You know what? I’m a minister, not a carpenter. No, I can’t build steps.” When the kids heard about it, they were incensed. When we bend over backwards to do something for someone else, we just want them to show us a little gratitude.
A similar thing happened to Jesus in the passage we read from the gospel according to Luke. Jesus was approached by 10 lepers who cried out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priest. While they were on the way, they discovered that they had been healed. One of them, a Samaritan, returned to Jesus, fell on his face, and thanked him. Jesus said, “Is there no one to give thanks to God except this foreigner? Go your way. Your faith has made you well.” Jesus appreciated the gratitude. We can presume that the other nine were still healed, in spite of their ingratitude. The lesson here is clear. We, too, are still called to help the needy whether they are grateful for it or not. We do what we feel called to do as Christians, even if they’re not being completely honest with us. I figure we do what we feel called to do and if they’re pulling the wool over our eyes, they’ll have to answer for that some day. But the question I have for you now is this. Which of the lepers are we most like? God is the source of all that we have and all that we are. Are we grateful to God for all that we have, or are we constantly in search of more?
Gratitude is the hinge upon which the Christian faith turns. The Christian church has always taught that God first loved us. God sent his only Son that we might have the hope of salvation. We are not faithful in order to gain salvation; rather, we are faithful because we have already received salvation. And that’s why we take part in the life of the church. We join the church and we worship God because we believe we can do more for the kingdom of God as a congregation than we can as individuals. I guess the question here is this. Is there really such a thing as spiritual but not religious? Can we truly express our gratitude to God when we are not a part of the institutional church?
Listen to this. Many years ago, there was a man who just quit going to church. After month or two, the minister decided to go and pay that man a visit. The man welcomed the minister into his home, and the two of them sat in front of a large fire. They didn’t say a word for the longest time. They just watched the flames. Then the minister took a pair of tongs and removed a glowing ember. He set it on the side of the hearth. The ember flickered brightly, then it just glowed, and then it died. The man smiled, nodded his head and said, “Reverend, thanks for the powerful sermon. I’ll be back in church next Sunday.”
Ladies and gentlemen, are we willing to be a part of the community of believers, or do we think we can make it on our own? Are we willing to express our gratitude to God, or are we constantly in search of more? Meister Eckhart was a 13th century spiritual writer. He once said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”
A local minister recently said to his congregation at the end of a worship service, “Go home and write down something you want God to do for you. Then just wait and see what happens.” I would reverse his charge. I would say, “Go home and write down everything God has already done for you.” If you do that, I suspect you will find yourselves moved to express your gratitude. And you’ll be well on your way to becoming the kind of Christian Jesus had in mind all along. Amen.
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