Gratitude

Sixteenth Sunday, 1995

Gratitude

I think I made this fairly obvious point that all these little stories, all through the Bible, but particularly in the Gospel, are liable to multiple meanings, like any good story. I mean, I suppose that's the difference between a classic story and a Harlequin Romance. Because Lear, apparently, is a much richer source of meaning than is the last dozen Harlequin Romances published last week ... And I think that's pretty true in regard to the Gospel. Not only was Jesus a great story-teller himself, and these stories have all kinds of meanings, which was a standard Jewish way of teaching, but even the way the stories about Jesus were told..., the stories that were told about Jesus as they came to be part of what we call the Gospels today worked the same way: there were multiple meanings there and this familiar Martha/Mary business is a good instance.

The most obvious meaning we can pick up, in a sort of subtle way, from this strange passage about Abraham entertaining the strangers -What's going on there, of course, is the great Oriental custom of hospitality .... hmnn? So you embodied in this story, these strangers coming in and Abraham and Sarah making these elaborate ...preparations. And hospitality, I think, in most societies, save ours, I think, is still pretty much in place as a very important thing. And this almost magical business of: "Well, you have to be hospitable because you never can tell when you're going to have an angel or a god come into your place..."? But anybody who has lived in the third world is aware of that ... People who have been in Central America, Latin America, certainly in Africa that's true - yet.

So what Luke is having Jesus point out is the obvious thing to Martha. Martha -l'O.K. Martha, c'mon ... yeah, you gotta make sure you've got enough napkins and the forks are on the right side of the plates and all that ... but what's crucial here is that you've got a guest ... and you who are fidgeting around (the Greek is translated by one guy as 'putting yourself in an uproar, ... ) -you are basically missing the point. I think that's clearly one, and the most obvious meaning. And I think probably the people who chose these readings wanted that kind of resonating from the Abraham entertaining these strangers and the Martha/Mary business entertaining Jesus and it high-lights what, as I go through the Gospels over and over again, seems to be one of the most striking aspects of the figure of Jesus -His clear- sightedness ... you know? It sounds like "small case virtue ... " But the older I get, and the more "uproars" I find myself putting my self through, and they seem to increase rather than decrease as I age, the more I appreciate that somehow this man was able to go through life, presumably with lots of stuff going on, and yet be quite sure in any situation of the one significant, central reality ... And the central reality in this story is: "you have a guest here ... and you can have the most beautifully set table, or the best souffle, or whatever ... " -you know? But that's altogether peripheral to the fact that here is another human being and here's an opportunity to get in touch with another human being and all this other stuff is extra ... and dispensable ... But, if what I said is true, there are multiple meanings -I'd like to push this further and say: "what is see is going on?"

What is Mary doing? Just taking this as a piece of literature, we don't have to worry about any historical issues, but as Luke has set this up, what is Mary doing ... ? She's receptive to this presence in her life. To put it in a more fore-thought way, she's grateful ... I mean, she's clear-sighted enough to see that this man, at this time, in this place, right here and now is an enormous, to use the religious word, which is not basically religious at all .... grace ... It's a "gift." that's all the Greek word "karis" means -it's a "gift." And so she is grateful and her gratitude is simply played out in terms of her attentiveness to this man and who He is and what He has to say to her. And, as I said last week, and to steal a line from Mary-Jo Ledy ... she said in a talk in Ottawa a few months ago: "the fundamental religious attitude is gratitude..." I deeply believe that's the first time I heard that in such a lapidary way. "The fundamental religious attitude is gratitude." You can tell somebody who's religious, of whatever stripe, by whether they're grateful or not ... For what? -For bloody everything ... y'know ... ? The religious person will say, to paraphrase Descartes: "I am, therefore I am loved ... "I am, therefore I am loved ... And that consciousness, precisely, is gratitude, which founds everything else... -everything else ... Which enables us to portion our energy, our time, our attention, our fears .... because we're supposed to be fearful, except there's good fear and there's bad fear, there's sick fear and there's healthy fear, there's destructive fear and there's fear to help us to grow... Or our joy, or our sadness, or whatever .... helps us to give a "human shape" to all of those things -to make fear, joy, expectation, hope ... a means of growing up ... But, underlying the whole business, Mary has caught us. Martha's like ... me...: "Oh, my God, I've got all this stuff." She's not even grateful for the fact that she has a sister. But no, this sister is not "doing her job ... "

Is this romanticism? This is the thing that keeps Hallmark Cards on the road, I suspect ... because we can romanticize, we can sentimentalize this whole business. And a for sure sign that we're doing it is precisely to deny -that we're not there -to deny or eliminate all these black things ... Things like fear and anxiety and stuff like that ... And, as I said, there is a "Holy Fear," there is a "Holy Anxiety." Paul talks about this stuff all the time. There's also "unholy fear" and "unholy anxiety." And the thing, again to repeat, the thing that enables us to sort one thing from the other is this business of "gratitude"... Which -oh, that's very nice ... -No it's not ... because that puts the skids to an enormous amount of what I call my religiousity. Because I'm not grateful ... Because that's not what I really believe ... Because if I really did believe that whole-heartedly, then I would be able to suffer considerably more gratefully than I do -because, as I've said over and over again, there's Holy Suffering ... Then the menu, the repertoire of my resentments and my vindictiveness ... will look very different than it does, in fact, if I were grateful ...

So -I don't know-it doesn't solve any problems but it has the enormous value of, what I've tried to say, of helping us to sort out where we are ... And if you look at the great religious figures -they've just republished the definitive version of Anne Frank's Diary, I presume most of you have read that, this young thirty year old girl who was ultimately gassed and burned ... who lived in this hellish confinement ... in a closet, basically ... in, I think, Amsterdam or some place in Holland ... and who was able to say after that experience, knowing full well what was going on, knowing full well why she was there, and fully anticipating what was likely to happen to her ... When all this had ended she said: "you know, I really still believe that people are good ... I believe people are good ... " The great Daas Haammerscholl and that quite extraordinary diary they found after he died ... that astonishing line from this international banker/diplomat: "I don't know when it happened or why or how, but I know that at one time I said 'yes'... to everything ... " What was Hammerscholl saying? It sounds like expressing what I've been trying to say ... that everything is given ... Finally, what I find useful in a kind of weird way ... about this is to be able -If this is where the religious person truly stands, and I believe it is because that's where Jesus clearly stood about His life, about His dying, then it helps me to kind of assess where I am. It asks that great, great -the greatest question of all ... you know ... : "Who am I, Trojcak?" becomes reducible to: "What am I grateful for ... ?" That's what ???????? That's where the Scripture becomes a double-edged sword separating bone from sinew and all this other stuff ... And that's what gives us again the possibility of growth ...

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