When Gratitude Becomes a Burden
Text: Matthew 6:25-33
It started out as an act of kindness when I roasted a turkey for the first time. My family and I invited our friends, international students like us, to a Thanksgiving dinner. Using the best ingredients I could find, I cooked from scratch. And it was a hit. Well, for many of us it was the first time to try turkey, so we couldn’t tell the difference anyway. The guests were happy, and they thanked me for the delicious food, and hospitality. I was happy too. The problem was that hosting thanksgiving dinner became my own tradition. For the next 14 years I’ve been roasting a Thanksgiving turkey for my family and friends. What started out as a joy turned out to be a burden. It became a labour or even sacrifice. Beware when people compliment you on the job you did. It can be addictive to the point that you can’t not do it even when you don’t want to anymore. I’m beginning to notice signs of an unhealthy relationship. I complain about the lack of support and participation, and that those who benefit from my work take it for granted.
Looking more deeply, I discovered that the problem I’m facing is much bigger than my own dilemma. Everywhere I look, I see a system that is made of unequal participants between beneficiaries and benefactors, the givers and receivers. In any community – whether it’s a family, workplace, society, nation, or the global community - It’s rare to see participants contributing equally. In most cases, there are people who provide, and there are people who receive. There are people who decide, and there are people who follow. You might be wondering, what’s wrong with that? Aren’t we all givers and receivers? In theory, yes, we are all givers and receivers. But in reality, we are more likely to be one or the other, because how a system is built. I’m talking about income inequality and the structure that maintains the gap between the poor and the rich. I’m talking about power imbalance based on gender, sexual orientation, age, language, skin colour, class, physical or mental ability. It is precisely in this context of injustice and inequity that we are called to rethink about gratitude.
Diana Butler Bass, author of Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks, talks about two different kinds of gratitude. Jesus lived in the intersection of two cultures – one was his own Jewish heritage and community and the second was Roman imperialism. These two cultures were constantly in conflict with one another, especially around their views of gratitude.
The Roman view of gratitude was not just a moral practice or feeling thankful on a personal level. It was a political, economic, and social practice based on a top-down structure like a pyramid. Most people - peasants, slaves, small farmers, and subjects of Roman Imperialism - are at the bottom, but most wealth is at the top. How did they keep this unfair social structure going? It was through a lot of violence and what’s known as the “patronage system.” The people at the top were considered to be the ones who held all the benefits. They were responsible to pass some of the benefits down to everyone else in the pyramid like feeding and making sure people were safe under the same oppressive structure. The people at the bottom then had a responsibility. Their job was to pass stuff back up as an act of appreciation to their benefactors, like giving taxes, tithes, tributes, worship, honour, loyalty, and obligation to the Empire. This was all held together by the force of law. Gifts flowed down and then thanks flowed up. This system of patronage was a system of gratitude!
It was in this context that Jesus’ very different view of gratitude came into play. It is radical because it questions the root cause of the problem and puts everything back to where it belongs. Jesus’ gratitude is not about replacing Caesar with God. Rather, it’s about setting people free – being free from debts, free from the bondage, free from the oppressive system. Matthew captures well the essence of such gratitude by including “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” The fundamental difference here is that everyone is the giver and receiver, participating in the work of liberation for all.
Throughout his life and ministry, we see how Jesus continues to build a new community around a meal. Jesus invites Zacchaeus to come down from the oppressive system he was benefiting from, and to share a meal with him. Sending the disciples two by two, he asks them to stay in the same house and to eat and drink whatever is provided. He sets the table even in the wilderness, demonstrating that a miracle can happen when people start sharing. A table community where everyone takes part in sharing equally and freely is the most tangible way of experiencing the Kingdom of God. It is where we can literally taste and see that God is good.
Sitting around the table, we can see how all things are connected. It’s the place where we can be most humble, for we know our place in the web of life. We find ourselves not at the top but at the bottom as the most dependant creature of all. Better still, we begin to realize that a pyramid model is just an illusion. It’s not stable. It’s not healthy. It is isolating us and killing us. As long as we stay in the pyramid model, we use gratitude to keep things as they are. A circle model, similar to the community Jesus demonstrated around the table, can save us and the whole creation. Gratitude in this model puts us back into a sacred relationship with everything else.
Gratitude is much more than a personal feeling or moral obligation. It’s a way of life. So, before we even attempt to practice gratitude, we must ask ourselves what kind of structure we follow. A pyramid? Or a circle? Only then, it becomes clear who or what we serve with our practice of gratitude.
“Look at the birds in the air; they neither sow nor gather into barns. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin.” Those birds and lilies, they are already living in the sacred relationship, whereas we, humans need some awakening to move back to where we always belong in the family of God. Gratitude is the pathway to belong and to stay in love. Gratitude tunes our hearts to the heart of God, who sees goodness in everything.
So, this Thanksgiving, I am celebrating differently. I want to bring about a positive change by changing the structure. Turns out, it was the unhealthy model that made me tired, while my guests didn’t get a chance to contribute. I will invite my family and friends to participate in sharing as the giver and receiver. Sitting around the table, we will practice gratitude together in our sacred relationship with each other and with everything else.