The theme of the Lent study group that I've been participating in had the theme of 'Saying thank you to Jesus' this week. It looked at this passge from Luke 17 (vs 11-19, NRSV):
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
I don't really know what we are suppose to learn from this passage. It reads to me like a story very specifically addressed to (criticising) his Jewish audience (hence the reference to 'this foreigner') and when I encounter things like that in the bible I try to see how they would translate to Christians (that works well for the parable of the 'Good Samaritan' for example), but I don't really get it for this story.
So, here's my problems with thanking God or Jesus.
In an interview a while back I heard the Revd. Luke Larner talk about some of the issues he has with a certain sort of evangelical Christian, and as an example he made reference to Christians thanking God for helping them get a parking-place at the supermarket. I remember that sort of thing from my days in 'Christian Union' groups when I was an undergraduate at Oxford. Someone gets lucky on a visit to a busy supermarket because a spot comes free as they arrive, so they give thanks to God/Jesus. (OK when I was an undergraduate it wasn't about parking cars - none of us had cars - but you get the idea.) We can laugh at that, but there's something quite insidious if, as is often the implication, if not explicit, that they see it as God singling them out for help because they are a Christian. It feeds into the 'chosen people' narrative. That we Christians are God' s chosen people (replacing the Jews). This idea of Christians being God's "Chosen People" comes up quite explicitly sometimes, and it is used to make Christian communities feel good about themselves. The trouble is that if you have chosen people by definition you have people that have not been chosen. God gave you that parking space rather than someone else. To see where that leads look at Zionism (both Jewish Zionism and Christian Zionism) which is used to defend Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. A bit of a stretch from thanking God for finding you a parking space at a supermarket and ethnic cleansing with genocide, you think? I'm not so sure. It only seems absurd because we are safe and comfortable in England, insulated from the harm we are doing elsewhere on the world, and we can do that thing that we English are especially good at: hypocrisy.
But there things that I want, feel the need, to give thanks for. There are lots of wonderful things in my life and it is good to appreciate them. For general things like the beauty of the world, for flowers and good weather, which are for everyone. There are also personal things that I'm grateful for, like my own good health and my friends and family. To be thankful, but not thanking God or Jesus for giving them to me, as though they are personal presents like the birthday presents from family members.
I would say, BTW, with a SoF hat on, that the need to give thanks is one of the purposes for creating God. We feel delight in the world and want a something/somebody to give thanks to - as well as something/somebody to blame for the bad things in the world. But that is whole other discussion for another time.
Coming back to the bible passage. Being healed from leprosy is clearly on a different scale from getting a parking space at a supermarket, but it is in the same category in the sense that if you are healed and someone else isn't, then it might seem that you have been 'chosen', or even 'deserved' to be healed rather than that other person. So I'm still struggling with knowing what, if anything, I should take away these verses, and for the moment don't have a lot of use for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment