Years ago, during summer vacation, I took a whole pile of books out of the library and spent days and days just reading. Today I'd have trouble telling you what most of those books were, never mind what they were about. But there's one little snatch of dialogue from one of the books that has stuck with me all these years — the bit of dialogue, in fact, that gave the book, and later the movie, its name: a snippet of conversation about the color purple. Actually, it's a bit of conversation about appreciation. Shug Avery is talking to her friend Celie, and she says, "More than anything God loves admiration."
"You saying God is vain?" demands Celie.
"No, not vain," replies Shug, "just wanting to share a good thing. I think it [ticks] God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice it."
Celie considers this. "You saying it just wanna be loved like it say in the Bible?"
"Yeah, Celie," says Shug. "Everything wanna be loved. Us sing and dance and holla just wanting to be loved. Look at them trees. Notice how the trees do everything people do to get attention ... except walk?" The two of them laugh ... and then Shug looks around and exclaims, "Oh, yeah, this field feels like singing!"1
When was the last time you took a good enough look around to recognize that, "Oh, yeah, this field feels like singing!"?
I love that bit of dialogue, because it so effectively captures the essence of gratitude, which is noticing. How could you walk past a field in glorious bloom and fail to notice? But we do it all the time. I'll never forget the day I came home from work and noticed that the manse committee had fixed the hole in the fence that I'd mentioned to them. I walked into the house, set my things down, and happily announced, "The fence got fixed!"
The children looked up and said, "Mom ... it's been like that for two weeks!"
How did I manage to walk past that fence every day for two weeks and not notice that the hole had been fixed? Easy. I had other things on my mind. We do it all the time. And even when we do notice, we don't always remember to appreciate.
Imagine you've come home from a long day at work, and you find that your spouse has gotten home ahead of you and cooked a wonderful tasty dinner so that all you have to do is sit down and enjoy it. Now, there are several things you can do. One — and I'm sure we've all done it — is to sit down with your briefcase still in your head, shovel the food down mechanically, hardly tasting it, while you continue to mull over the problems at work. Or perhaps you turn the television on to distract you from your thoughts, but it's also distracting you from the food. Either way, you've got a full belly but not much else.
Or, you can leave the briefcase and all it represents at the door, and sit down and really pay attention to the meal. It is good — the steak is just so, the baked potato is hot and fluffy, the salad crisp and delicious with your favorite dressing on top. Now, isn't that a much more satisfying meal than the one wolfed down with your mind elsewhere?
But it can get better yet. Early in my relationship with Tom, I learned one of the best life lessons there is: he inducted me into his family's expectation that "you always kiss the chef." When the plate lands on the table, before you dig in, you stop and you turn to the person who took the trouble to do this for you, and you thank them with a big hug and a kiss. You make a point, in other words, of noticing and of appreciating both the dinner and the person. And that does wonderful things for the meal ... and for the marriage, and for the soul.
Kissing the chef is what today's gospel lesson is about. Ten lepers recognize Jesus as someone who may be able to give them their lives back, and so they hail him from a distance and ask for his help. He agrees. "Go to the priests," he says, "and show them that you are ready to re-enter society." And as they go, lo and behold, they are ready to re-enter society: Their leprosy is cleansed. Wow! I bet they ran the rest of the way there, pell-mell — quick, before it turns out to be an illusion, quick, so we can get on with our lives, quick, so we can dance the night away! Oh, I'm sure they were all thrilled. But only one came back to kiss the chef. And he received the best benefit of all.
All ten of the lepers were healed, they were "cleansed," as the people of that time said when speaking of leprosy. But only the one who came back was said to be made well, or as the underlying Greek can also be translated, "saved." Something deeper, more encompassing came into his life than just the end of an isolating illness. Something to do with faith and gratitude toward God. Something that opened life up in a new way.
Like the difference between scarfing down a meal with your mind still on the job, or even eating and enjoying the meal without thinking beyond it — the difference between that, and kissing the chef: when you notice, and appreciate, the effort that has been made on your behalf, and the love that this person has for you, and you enter into that loving relationship with your participation: you reach out, and you smile, and your eyes soften, your heart lights, and your lips touch and you do so much more than kiss the chef. You renew the relationship, and you refresh your own soul. That's the kind of difference there is between being "cleansed" and being "made well," being saved, being whole. That's the difference gratitude can make.
When we talk about the importance of giving thanks to God — and the Jewish and Christian scriptures alike are full of this — we are not talking about a God who is a megalomaniac, who must be praised or his vanity is injured. Oh, no. We're talking about our own need to recognize the gift in order to fully receive it. As Shug said to Celie, it's not that God is vain, but rather is "wanting to share a good thing."
The Bible makes over 200 references to thanksgiving, and more than twice that many to praise.2 This is such a core Judeo-Christian value: We need to remember and to recognize the abundance that surrounds us, the love that enfolds us, the providence that guides us. In a very real sense, gratitude is the key to a functioning faith.
"I did not make the air I breathe," says Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser, "nor the sun that warms me ... I did not endow the muscles of hand and brain with the strength to plough and plant and harvest ... I know I am not a self-made man."3 I know that I have received benefits I could not have provided for myself. I also know that I do not have to carry the world upon my shoulders, or to struggle alone through the trials of life. I know that I can trust in one who is greater than I to provide what is needed; and I know that most days I am surrounded by so much more than I could ask or imagine, such an embarrassment of riches, that if I only notice I will realize that my times are safe and well in God's great hand. I am not a self-made man.
What a gift it is to realize that! What a relief to have the weight of the world rolled off of one's shoulders, to recognize that not everything depends on you; and what a wonder it is to soak in the awareness of blessings already received! Not just once a year, but once a week, once a day, once in every painful hour, we need to stop and recognize just how much we have to be thankful for.
One family I know of has built this right into their weekly routine. Once each week, at the beginning of the meal, the mother asks family members and guests to share something good or memorable that happened to them during the week. "Usually everyone," says the father, "even those who have had difficult weeks, can think of at least one pleasurable moment that occurred during the preceding week. In the rare instance when someone cannot summon up even one positive recollection, family members or friends generally remember something good that the other person has forgotten."4 And what a gift that practice is, especially when life is difficult! It shines a light into daily life, it warms and encourages the heart, and it gives us an opportunity to kiss the chef, as it were, to recognize that God is still there and "wanting to share a good thing."
When you go home today, when you gather with those you love around the Thanksgiving table, take a few minutes to kiss the chef. Look at each of those precious people who has gathered with you around the table, and thank each one for being there. Admire the food that has been laid out, and thank each person who helped to get it there. Invite each person present to share one thing in the past week for which they are thankful. And then join hands and together offer thanks to God for all these good things that have been shared, for all you have received. On Thanksgiving Day and every day, never pass up an opportunity to kiss the chef. Amen.
1. From The Color Purple by Alice Walker (movie 1985), as quoted at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088939/quotes. Language slightly altered for pulpit use.
2. The New Revised Standard Version counts 213 uses of "thank" and its derivatives (64 in the New Testament of which 35 are in the letters of Paul, and 149 in the Old Testament), and 436 of "praise" and derived terms (402 of these in the Old Testament), according to BibleWorks for Windows 6.0.012d (2003).
3. Cited in The Book of Jewish Values by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin (New York: Bell Tower, 2000), p. 303 f.
4. Ibid, p. 99.