Does our Culture Give Thanks like a Pharisee?

Ten people, instantaneously healed.  But only, “one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving thanks.” (Luke 17:11-19)

This thanksgiving, we turn our hearts to emulate ‘this one’ leper in the story above.  Asking, What did he have? What was it about him that made him not run off forgetting….instead coming back to give thanks?

The Bible says, “he was a Samaritan.” Samaritans lived in the Northern Kingdom of Israel.  They were mixed in race, and had pagan ancestry.  Therefore, they were hated at that time, by God’s chosen…the Jews.  

Jews segregated themselves from these people, walking around their region…in hopes to not get “contaminated” by their so-called impurities.

And yet, of all the ten that Jesus healed, it was the Samaritan that fell humbly at His feet, offering appreciation.

And I wonder today….

• Who of us are expecting?
• Is it the outcasts, weak, unassuming that most fully appreciate the things they have been given? 
• Does God use pain, sickness, and suffering to draw diverse people groups together in their lack?
• Is it those that expect less, who appreciate things most?
• Is there even 10% among us who would respond even close to how this Samaritan had?….Is there 5%?…..1%?  
• Who of us would fall upon our faces in appreciation, if we were healed, as this Samaritan was?

During this season, we do well in trying to stir up thanks.  We work hard at having a heart of thankfulness, using this day each year to try to cultivate an attitude of appreciation…  

But I wonder…

• Does thankfulness stem less from words and more from a condition of our hearts? 
• Does thankfulness rise from a life-style lived meek, humbly, without arterial motives? 
• Is thankfulness more like “Ol’ faithful”, something stirred up unexpectedly? Something more than simple words offered, mind-fully calculated?
• Is thankfulness less a mind-less route of sayings, a “check list” of gratitudes?
• Is “thanks” more of a life-lived daily focused less on us…and more on who God is?

And I sometimes think it’s amazing how we can take good, holy, pure gifts….the fruit of a life lived in communion with God, and somehow own what He has done….

Like a rule-making Pharisee trying to make a formula out of what is meant to be a life-style….a heart condition….the acceptance that we need a Savior.

Still I wonder if we…if I….if we all sometimes give thanks less like God intended, and more like the Pharisees…“God, I thank you that I am not like other men.” (Luke 18:10-12)

I wonder if our thanks, even for what we have, can be a way we list how good we are, on the scale weighed against other people’s circumstances….

For Biblical thanks is not listing our stockpiled barns of blessings, or “digging” for God in the garbage of broken souls around us….

God is here.  He is always with us.  He has already found us….

And He blesses us with spiritual gifts….material gifts only illusions that thieves can steal and moths eat up.

The tax collector got this.  

This sinner recognized his depravity in light of the glory of a living, perfect, holy God.  In response, he beat his fists against his chest and confessed humbly, honestly, “Jesus, I am a sinner”. (Luke 18:13)

And wasn’t that the same heart of the Samaritan (Luke 17:16-18) who returned thanks….“Who am I that Christ would heal me?”

I conclude:

• Any thanks that lifts us up…is not thanks at all. It’s pride.
• And any gratitude that stems from an attitude of supposed superiority or exultation above other people, is not thankfulness.  It’s a well disguised ego.

Still I confess as I write this….

• I have fallen in my thanks. 
• I have run forward and often not turned back to thank Him. 
• I have made my words pillars to lift myself in the rank of my own eyes. 
• I have built towers of babel to inflate the insecurities of my real state, the knowledge that I can never reach God on my own without grace.

So this thanksgiving…

• I will not list off all the details of how grande life is.  
• I will not run off with my blessings, forgetting the one who stopped for me in my stench.  
• I will not post all over the internet, how great, or wonderful, or superior my life is in comparison to so many others who might have less….

I will just bow in my room, on my floor. I will simply lift my head, as I rest at His feet, with breathe-less wonder and awe, whispering, “Thanks”….

For I am very much a Samaritan….though my flesh lives like a Pharisee.

(Linking with Tracy, WLW)