Of
Gratitude and Grumbling and a Cheerful Heart
Exodus
16:2-3
Proverbs
17:22
;
15:15
2nd Corinthians 9:11-12
Colossians 2:7
John 16:33
I: -- Petulant whining,
complaining, grousing, grumbling; it always strikes us as so very childish.
It rains on the day of the picnic. The
child pouts and sulks, mumbles and mutters.
Finally her mother has had enough. “I
can’t to anything about the weather,” mother says, thinking that her
reasonable word to the child will undo the child’s irrationality and sweeten
the child’s sourness. Not a
chance. The child seems to prefer to
mumble and mutter petulantly, seems to enjoy being miserable.
Mother, still assuming that her rationality can undo her child’s
irrationality, sweetly replies, “All right; so we can’t have a picnic today.
Just think of all you have to be grateful for.”
Petulantly the child mutters that she can’t think of anything at all.
Of course she can’t. Ingratitude
shrivels hearts and distorts perception and perverts understanding.
At this point mother shakes her head and finds consolation that one day
her child will be an adult and will see such matters as powerlessness over
weather from an adult point of view. At
which time gratitude will appear and life will be assessed quite differently.
Yet there are some adults who, while “adult” in
the sense of being post-adolescent, never mature.
Ingratitude born of short-sightedness never gives way to gratitude for
blessings visible everywhere. An
unthankful spirit, worsened by petulance, is always a sign of childishness, to
say the least.
But more than the least has to be said.
In other words, while ingratitude is a sign of childishness, it’s also
a sign of something worse than childishness.
It’s a sign of grave spiritual sickness.
When scripture speaks of ingratitude and the
grumbling that noisily advertises ingratitude, it gathers up the inner attitude
and the outer manifestation in one onomatopoeic word: “murmuring.”
Everywhere in scripture unthankful people are said to murmur.
We first read of God’s people murmuring when they
are in the wilderness, halfway between
Egypt
and the Promised Land. Earlier they
had been slaves in
Egypt
, and had found slavery unendurable. They
had cried out in those days, and God had been moved by their outcry, since they
had grounds for crying out. God had
delivered them with his outstretched arm. Then
he had forged them into a people after his own heart at
Mount Sinai
when he had given them the Ten Words, a way of living that would end forever
the social chaos and the spiritual disintegration they had seen in the pagan
nations. The only thing left them to
do was to fall on their faces in gratitude; sheer, adoring gratitude.
After all, they had been spared the misery and humiliation of slavery as
well as the confusion and corruption of ungodliness.
In view of what God had spared them, the hardship of the wilderness –
rigorous to be sure – would nevertheless have been inconsequential.
However, as their gratitude evaporated, reasonableness evaporated too.
Now they wanted to go back to
Egypt
. “At least we had lots to eat in
Egypt
,” they whined, “even if we were slaves.”
Are the ungrateful people, now advertising their
ingratitude through grumbling, willing to forfeit their calling as God’s
people? Do they really want to hand
themselves over to the indignity and dehumanisation of slavery?
Do they really want to embrace the spiritual vacuity and the amorality of
the nations that haven’t been to
Mount Sinai
?
Yes. Insanity
of the sort just described is a spin-off of ingratitude.
In view of what God had done for them; in view of what God continued to
do for them; in view of all this, ingratitude
could only spell disaster as surely as gratitude would have guaranteed their
faithfulness as God’s people and guaranteed the fulfilment of their vocation
as a light to the nations.
I am moved whenever I read the Heidelberg
Catechism, written in 1563. The
Heidelberg Catechism is the crown jewel of the shorter Reformation writings.
It is a gem. The first
section of the Catechism is titled “The Misery of Man.”
Ten questions and answers realistically probe and portray the human
predicament in the era of the Fall. The
second section is titled “The Redemption of Man.”
Seventy-Five questions and answers tell us of God’s glorious mercy and
patience and persistence, all motivated by his oceanic love of sinners.
The third section is titled “Thankfulness;” simply that:
“Thankfulness.” This third
section begins by posing the question, “Why should we obey God?”
It doesn’t answer that we should obey him lest we provoke his anger.
It doesn’t even say that we should obey him out of enlightened
self-interest (things will go better for us if we obey him.)
It says that we should obey him out of gratitude to him for all that his
goodness has done for us. In other
words, according to the Heidelberg Catechism the whole of our discipleship, our
obedience, whatever renunciation is asked of us; it’s all motivated by one
thing: thankfulness.
By the time the Catechism gets around to speaking
of prayer it’s at question #116. “Why
is prayer necessary for Christians?” Why
do you think prayer is necessary for Christians?
Because it’s the instrument for getting what we need?
Answer #116: “Prayer is the principal element in the thankfulness
God requires of us.” Every aspect
of our response to God derives from our gratitude.
“Gratitude for what?” someone asks.
All Christians, together with our Hebrew ancestors in faith; all
Christians have stood at the edge of the Red Sea; all Christians have stood at
the foot of Sinai; and all Christians have stood, above all, at the foot of the
cross. We are the beneficiaries of
God’s goodness so many times over that minimal spiritual sanity means maximal
gratitude. Ingratitude, murmuring,
can only mean that we are so blind to what we’ve been given as to be insane.
II: -- “Is
unthankfulness as serious as that?” someone asks.
“Is grumbling that
dangerous?” Yes it is.
In the parable of the workers in the vineyard Jesus
points out that ingratitude, grumbling, reveals resentment and reinforces it.
In this parable some men are hired to work in the vineyard.
At the end of their eight-hour shift they are paid the agreed-upon sum.
Other workers, hired late in the day and therefore who have worked only
four hours or two hours or perchance one hour; these other workers receive the
same sum. This parable, we should
note right here, has nothing to do with economics or labour relations.
This parable has rather to do with God’s grace and mercy and help.
You see, in ancient
Palestine
day-labourers, the bottom rung of the working class, were paid at the end of
each day. They had to be.
They lived so close to the line that they had no savings at all, nothing
in reserve. With the money they were
paid for that day’s work they fed their families the same evening and next
morning. The men in the parable who
had worked a full day were given one day’s pay – and immediately used it to
sustain themselves and their dependents. The
men who had worked less than a day were nonetheless given a full day’s pay.
Why? Because anything less
than a full day’s pay would have been useless.
If they had received a quarter of a day’s pay for a quarter of a
day’s work, they and their dependents would have starved.
Because the owner of the vineyard was generous, all
the men were given what they needed
regardless of what they deserved.
Even so, says Jesus, people with ungrateful hearts murmur and mutter and
grumble at the vineyard owner inasmuch as they resent seeing others appear more
fortunate than they. Had they been
grateful themselves, they would also have rejoiced to see other needy people
given as much as those people needed.
A clergyman who had served in the prairies during
the Great Depression told me of the joy in his village the day a boxcar of
vegetables from the east was uncoupled from the train and left in the village.
People were given cabbages and turnips and carrots and corn and ever so
much more. It so happened that the
postmaster was the only man in the village with a permanent job.
Therefore he was extraordinarily privileged.
And when the vegetables were distributed, the old clergyman told me, this
postmaster denounced the fellow-villager who had been given a slightly larger
turnip. Ingratitude reveals
resentment and reinforces it.
Ingratitude
does something more: it cloaks a mean spirit.
Thankfulness publicises a generous spirit; unthankfulness cloaks a mean
spirit.
A woman fell at the feet of Jesus and poured out on
his feet the costliest bottle of cologne as she wiped his feet with her hair.
Why did she do this? She did
it out gratitude to him for all that he done for her.
Mark tells us that several bystanders, people who plainly were possessed
of no gratitude at all, carped and complained, muttered and murmured, groused
and grumbled, “This money could have been given to the poor.”
Since when were these grumblers concerned with the poor?
When have complainers ever been concerned with the poor?
Every time Jesus had eaten with the poor the murmurers had murmured.
They weren’t concerned with the poor.
They were ungrateful people whose mean spirits found them relishing every
opportunity to complain.
The price of the cologne indicated the depth of the
woman’s gratitude. Then how
grateful was she? She had spent 300
denarii on the bottle of cologne; 300 denarii, an entire year’s income.
Luke tells us that the woman was a harlot.
In those long-ago days of sweaty-hot
Palestine
when bathtubs and water were scarce, harlots used cologne as a tool of the
trade. In other words, her gratitude
moved her to a public renunciation of her sin and her sin-begotten employment.
Her gratitude moved her to a public penitence.
Her gratitude moved her to a costly sacrifice, for this woman had given
up her livelihood.
How grateful are you today?
And I? Grateful enough to
renounce sin and proffer penitence and gladly make that sacrifice whose cost we
count only to forget? Are we so
grateful that compared to our gratitude the sacrifice our Lord asks of us is
nothing?
Bystanders who watched the woman carped at her and
complained, ungrateful grumblers that they were.
Their inner ingratitude and their outer murmuring merely cloaked a mean
spirit.
Ingratitude
is lethal for yet another reason. Inner
ingratitude and outer murmuring blind us to God’s breaking in upon us in the
most ordinary moments and circumstances. It’s
just the opposite with the grateful heart. The
person whose heart is characteristically grateful recognises the incursion of
God in her life in the most ordinary circumstances and in the most undramatic
ways. The grateful person instantly,
gladly, gives thanks. Whereupon she
finds herself discerning more sensitively even more subtle incursions of God in
her life. Once again she instantly,
gladly, gives thanks. Whereupon she
finds herself discerning even more sensitively the even more subtle incursions
of God in her life. It all keeps
spiralling up as her gratitude is rewarded with discernment and her discernment
with greater gratitude and her greater gratitude with still greater discernment.
It’s just the opposite with the ungrateful
grumbler. Everything spirals down
for him. Jesus quietly announces
that he is the bread of life, that gift of God no less miraculous than the manna
which sustained God’s people day-by-day when they had no other resources.
Immediately the murmurers around Jesus begin to murmur.
“How can he be the bread of life? We
know his mother and father. He’s
nothing more than a carpenter’s son. He’s too ordinary to be God’s
visitation and God’s definitive blessing.”
Murmuring shrivels our heart, dulls our understanding, numbs our
spiritual sensors. Murmuring
invariably blinds us to those moments, ordinary to be sure yet not ordinary,
when we know that God has spoken to us, whispered to us or shouted at us, nudged
us or shaken us, startled us or quieted us, convicted us and corrected us yet
also finally comforted us. We alone
are aware of it inasmuch as the public event surrounding it is so very ordinary
even as the private event within us is overwhelming.
Ungrateful grumbling blinds us to this.
Ungrateful grumblers find it all spiralling down as ingratitude is
punished by non-discernment or insensitivity, insensitivity by colder
ingratitude, colder ingratitude by still duller non-discernment.
It’s
plain that prophet and apostle weren’t exaggerating when they insisted that
inner ingratitude and outer grumbling were together a spiritual sickness severe
enough to find the ungrateful person soon on the critical list.
Neither were prophet and apostle exaggerating when they insisted that
gratitude, thankfulness, wasn’t merely a sign of spiritual health but even the
way to better health.
III: -- It’s
plain that prophet and apostle agree with the writer of Proverbs, “A cheerful
heart is a good medicine; a cheerful heart has a continual feast.”
Today is Thanksgiving Sunday.
Words like “continual feast” are therefore especially telling.
“Continual feast” suggests “continual thanksgiving.”
And continual thanksgiving is precisely what we find everywhere in
scripture. The thanksgiving we are
to render God, say prophet and apostle, is never grudging, never paltry, never
“once-in-a-lifetime.” The
apostle Paul says that the heart of the Christian “overflows
in many thanksgivings to God.” As
“grace extends to more and more,” he tells the Christians in
Corinth
, it will surely “increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.”
He tells the same congregation that God’s goodness enriches us “in
every way for great generosity” to others, and our “great” generosity in
turn moves these other people to great thanksgiving to God.
He tells the Christians in Colosse that they are to treasure Jesus
Christ, with the result that they “abound
in thanksgiving.” The psalmist
tells us he customarily joins fellow-worshippers at church in “glad shouts and
songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.”
Clearly the picture painted for us is a picture of
the heart throbbing with thanksgiving. It’s
the heart that “abounds” with thanksgiving, “overflows” with
thanksgiving, is “greatly” grateful. It
is this heart that is cheerful and has
a continual feast.
Then do we ever have grounds for grumbling?
Of course we have grounds for grumbling.
In everyone’s life there is a ceaseless undercurrent, an undertow even,
of stress, difficulty, suffering, disappointment, apprehension, uncertainty,
illness, grief. Therefore there are grounds for grumbling.
Then is grumbling finally permitted, even though
scripture insists, and we saw earlier, that grumbling is spiritually lethal?
No. Grumbling isn’t finally
permitted. It’s not permitted for
one reason: our grounds for grumbling are always less than our grounds for
gratitude. In a verse from John’s
gospel that I memorized when I was barely past infancy (and therefore the last
thing I’m going to remember when I’m a senile old man in the nursing home)
Jesus tells his followers, “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
Our Lord has overcome, has already overcome, everything that is grounds
for grumbling. In other words, our
grounds for grumbling have been eclipsed by our grounds for gratitude.
Several years ago my mother had a major heart
attack and was hospitalised for 75 consecutive days.
In the course of visiting her I noticed that she never complained about
her damaged heart or her restricted activity or her protracted
institutionalization. On the
contrary she always appeared grateful for the slightest service rendered her.
When I visited her on Thanksgiving weekend I noticed on her tabletop her
church bulletin, in which she had written fellow-parishioners thanking them for
their many kindnesses. At the
conclusion of her note she had written, “Psalm 59:16.”
I looked it up. Psalm 59:16 is an exclamation of thanksgiving to God.
“I will sing aloud of your [i.e., God’s] steadfast love, for you have
been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress.”
Since the fortress and refuge of God’s steadfast love were known and
dependable; since tribulation had already been overcome, her grounds for
gratitude would always be greater than her grounds for grumbling.
It is the ever-grateful heart that is
ever-cheerful, and this ever-cheerful
heart has a continual feast.
Blessings on you, every one, on this, the festival
of Thanksgiving.
Victor
Shepherd
Thanksgiving 2004
