Gratitude – KPB Stevens

Faith is one of the great spiritual themes in Luke’s Gospel, and in this passage the disciples faith is being called upon in three different ways. First, they are asked to expose themselves to the vulnerability of the indigent and propertyless. “Take nothing for your journey,” they’re told. I’ve known several people who have undertaken similar acts of faith. A Jesuit who was sent out walking between Minnesota towns, begging from door to door as part of his novitiate. A poet who walked the Camino de Santiago three times, and on the last and longest pilgrimage started from France, walking as his feet swelled and his boots broke, relying on the other pilgrims to hand him the things he needed when he needed them. Both talked about these journeys as acts of faith, moments when they set aside the communities, possessions, and riches that normally providedfor them and relied on God entirely. But as I honor them for this, I also recognize that this is how a lot of people in the world live every day – without possession or security, and with a different and more profound faith than I am capable of experiencing from my position of relative privilege and wealth.

In a way, the commissioning of the disciples is an embodiment of the beatitudes. Jesus has told them what the blessed are like, and now he’s inviting them to experience that blessedness. This is not to make an idol of poverty, but simply to say that there are times in our lives when we might need to experience blessedness as a raw, unvarnished reliance on God. We don’t often think of blessedness in this way. When asked to name our blessings, we often name our loved ones, some success we’ve had, some security we’ve attained. Can we also name solitude, and even loneliness, as a blessing? Can we name failure as a blessing? Can we name loss as a blessing? These are the blessings that the disciples are immersed in as they go to bring healing and blessing to others.

It is not surprising that Herod comes back into the narrative at this point. Herod’s wealth and power is the antithesis to this blessing. In a few chapters we will hear about him again when Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him. Some Biblical commentators suggest that Jesus sends the apostles out in order to keep Herod from finding him. Herod, after all, doesn’t know what Jesus looks like, so must be confused by reports of twelve Jesus-like figures doing Jesus-like things. Who to arrest, when one person has become twelve? But at this point, Herod is more curious then threatening. So why doesn’t Jesus want Herod to find him? In a way, Herod is the first of a certain type whom we will meet again in Acts, the person who believes that he can buy the blessing, or that his power and privilege makes blessing his right. Maybe Jesus isn’t hiding from Herod as much as providing him with twelve more examples of what real blessing, and real faith, looks like. These examples won’t help Herod, or the Herod in us, but a profligate God keeps spreading them like seeds over the landscape.

When the apostles return from their wanderings, they haven’t quite learned the lesson of faith that Jesus was trying to teach them. The multiplication of the loaves and fishes is a restatement of that lesson, a miracle that reiterates the wisdom in relying completely on God. It’s a more challenging lesson this time, because the apostles feel responsible for the crowd’s wellbeing, not just for their own. And this is the thing that keeps me, and probably most of us, from experiencing the beatitudes in our lives. If I had no responsibilities, if I owed nothing to the people I loved, then I might give away all of my possessions and wander as a mendicant from place to place. But I have a spouse and a child, and I owe them something. The apostles feel that they can’t provide for the crowd, but they can at least make sure that the people are provided for in the surrounding towns and villages. Jesus challenges them, and us, to a faithfulness that might feel very irresponsible.

Finally, he challenges their faith by giving them a glimpse of the end game. He is going to experience suffering and death, and the disciples and apostles are, eventually, going to experience the same thing. Can we grow more faithful in the midst of loss? There will be so much more to say about the cross in the days to come, but it looms ever over us, challenging our presumptions and calling us into deeper faith.

The Weeping Woman by KPB Stevens

Jesus doesn’t condemn people for their sins because everyone has flaws. Only God is perfect, and while we strive to imitate God (and sometimes even succeed) we remain flawed, temporal beings. The secret to peace and joy is not getting too upset about it, not punishing ourselves or others for not being perfect, while, obviously, trying to refrain from letting our flaws harm other people. We need to maintain a certain balance. As T.S. Eliot wrote at the end of “Ash Wednesday”: “Teach us to care and not to care,/Teach us to stand still.”

This is what Jesus’ forgiveness is. Jesus restores balance in the woman who weeps and wipes his feet with her hair. So why does Simon the Pharisee take offense at it? Adyashanti explains it well:

The open heart is compassionate because it maintains an essential connection. But as soon as we separate ourselves from another – as soon as we say, “No, there’s nothing in you that corresponds with something in me” as soon as we forget that you and I essentially share the same spiritual essence – then we cut ourselves off, and we go into blame. Forgiveness comes from that deep intuition of our sameness, of our shared humanity. That perception starts to lower the walls of defense, and being judgmental is ultimately a defensive game, a way of staying, “I am not like you.” To forgive is really a way of saying, “I see something in you that’s the same as in me.” Then, even though you may be upset, even though the other person may have caused you pain or harm, when you connect with your shared humanity, there’s forgiveness.

Simon’s response to the woman is essentially defensive. He wants to separate himself from this woman so that he doesn’t have to consider his own flawed nature. And Jesus doesn’t let him off the hook. The parable he tells is about two people who both have flaws, and both get healed.

The proper response to forgiveness, as to so much else, is gratitude. And gratitude is so precious and joyful that God wants us to generate more and more of it. It is, after all, the thing that will keep us in equilibrium, despite our flaws. Whenever we start to focus too much on our sins, and feel the heat of past embarrassments rush to our cheeks, and become paranoid that other people are judging us for all of our foolishness, the best way to stop this spiraling sense of our own flaws is to start naming the things we’re grateful for. I often think of my wife, and am amazed that this person, whom I’ve loved for twenty-five years, and who knows all of my manifold flaws and failures, loves me anyway, with a deep, enduring love. That’s the love that Jesus is offering to the weeping woman, and for the rest of her life she will be able to look back on his forgiveness and use it as a wellspring of gratitude. That’s the true power of forgiveness.

Quote from Resurrecting Jesus by Adyashanti. View the book here.

Tag: Gratitude

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