Steak and chips: a lesson in gratitude
A sermon for the twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, by Fr Russell Goulbourne
I wonder if you’re as excited as I am that next week sees the opening of a new restaurant here in Melbourne’s CBD – yes, of course we need another one. Called 7 Alfred – located, you’ve guessed it, at 7 Alfred Place, just off Collins St at the Paris end of town – it will serve just one dish: steak and chips.
It’s a format that really appeals to me because the idea of a restaurant serving just steak and chips – or steak frites – is based on the famous Relais de l’Entrecôte restaurants in Paris – one of the places at which I like to eat when I’m there.
And it was in one of those restaurants in Paris that I once overheard a glorious exchange between a savvy French waiter and a middle-aged Englishman who very obviously didn’t speak French.
When the Englishman’s steak arrived – cooked medium-rare, as standard – he angrily shouted at the waiter: “Didn’t you hear me say well done?” And, quick as a flash, the waiter replied – in perfect English: “Thank you, sir; we don’t often get compliments in here.”
Something was apparently lost in translation – but my fellow Englishman certainly gained a lesson in gratitude.
Today’s Gospel, too, seems to offer a simple lesson in gratitude: it seems, on the surface, to be all about basic good manners.
Ten men suffering from leprosy approach Jesus. Social outcasts because of their infectious disease, they know to keep their distance. And they call out to him: ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ And he tells them to go and show themselves to the priests – which was, according to the book of Leviticus, the process Jews had to follow to certify that they were clean and could return to society. And while they’re making their way to the priests, the men find that they are indeed well – that Jesus has healed them. But only one of them comes back to thank Jesus. And that thankfulness makes all the difference: “Your faith has made you well”, Jesus tells the man.
And yet…
What if there’s more going on in today’s Gospel than first meets the eye? What if today’s Gospel – which seems on the surface to be about basic good manners – actually offers us a blueprint for the kind of Church we’re called to be?
The first clue that there’s more going on here is the word Luke uses in the original when he says that the healed man went and ‘thanked’ Jesus: it’s eucharistéo. It’s the first time Luke uses that word – but he’ll use it again in chapter 22, when he describes what Jesus does at the Last Supper, taking bread and wine and giving thanks to God. Eucharistéo – to give thanks – from which, of course, we get our word ‘Eucharist’.
In other words, today’s Gospel points to the centrality of what we’re doing right now as a community of faith: celebrating the Eucharist.
In the Eucharist, we return to God to give him thanks for all that he has given us. At the liturgy we pray: “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God… It is right to give him thanks and praise.” And it is indeed right that we should thank and praise the Lord with our hearts, our lives, our very being.
We’re called to be a community of faith that has at its centre the offering of the Eucharist, because such a community is one that is learning to be more thankful day by day. For the Eucharist draws us into nothing less than the eternal offering of Jesus to the Father – and in that offering we find life and joy and hope.
That’s what we find in that offering – and, what’s more, that’s what we’re called to enable others to find too.
Because there’s still more to what today’s Gospel says to us about the kind of Church we’re called to be – and the clue comes in the word that Jesus uses to describe the healed man who comes back to thank him: Jesus calls him a foreigner.
Nine of the men – faithful Jews – do what Christ told them to: they go and show themselves to the priests. Often seen as poster boys for ingratitude, they’re actually focused on doing what was right in the eyes of their religious tradition.
But the tenth man couldn’t do that, because he’s a Samaritan, and Samaritans were despised by the Jews: Jews regarded Samaritans as heretics, because they had rejected Jerusalem in favour of their temple on Mount Gerizim; and they regarded Samaritans as impure, suspecting them of being the result of intermarriage between Jewish and non-Jewish populations.
So the Samaritan we hear about in today’s Gospel was, in effect, doubly an outsider: both a Samaritan and suffering from leprosy. When ill, he was united with the other men in their need and misfortune – but, once cleansed of his leprosy, he, unlike them, remains an outsider. He is defined by his otherness.
Jesus calls him a foreigner: the word in the original is allogenés – literally ‘of another race’ – and this is the only time in the whole New Testament that the word is used. But it’s a powerfully resonant word, because we know that that word was used in an inscription posted outside the Temple in Jerusalem: “No foreigner [allogenés] is to enter.”
Barred from the Temple, the foreigner – the Samaritan – is the one who comes back and thanks Jesus – and in doing so he recognises that Jesus has been priest to him. He recognises that God’s presence in the world is no longer identified with a static place – the Temple – but with a living person, Jesus Christ, through whom divine love pours forth into all the world.
Did you notice: Jesus asks after the other nine – “Where are they?” – but he doesn’t revoke their healing just because they don’t say thank you. There’s nothing transactional here. Thankfulness isn’t a requirement of or a prerequisite for God’s grace: our faith isn’t about saying thank you or else. God’s love is freely offered.
And our offering of thanksgiving is freely accepted too. The Samaritan’s offering, which would not be acceptable in the Temple in Jerusalem, is accepted by Jesus here, on the road to Jerusalem.
And there’s the rub for us: for today’s Gospel is a reminder that we as a Church are called to follow Christ in being open to those who might believe their thanksgiving is unacceptable or unwanted.
Throughout her history, shamefully, the Church has made some people believe – because of aspects of their identity, for instance – that their thanksgiving is unacceptable in the temples of the Lord. Right now, in this city, there are people who are seeking to be in relationship with God but who fear – who know because they’ve experienced it first-hand – that the Church won’t accept them.
But today’s Gospel shows us, quite clearly, that that is not of Christ. That that kind of judgementalism on the part of the Church – seeking to limit the wideness of God’s love – is not of Christ.
Instead, we’re called to be a community of faith that is open to all people who seek to be in relationship with God and who long to make their thanksgiving – to offer their Eucharist – to God. We’re called to be a eucharistic community where all are welcome at the altar – where nobody is excluded – because the Eucharist is the very sacrament of God’s steadfast love, abiding mercy and continuing grace.
We’re called to be a church that draws all people to encounter the Christ who stands in the road with open arms and an open heart, who offers dignity and wholeness and hope to each and every one of us – even people who like their steak cooked well-done.