Mine, Yours, Ours

Ruth 1:1-19a       1 Timothy 2:3-15      Luke 17:11-19

All things come of thee, O Lord,
 And of thine own have we given thee.

Often used as a doxology, these familiar words lie at the heart of our offerings to God.  Through them, we acknowledge our dependence on God, not just for some things, but for all things.  Our offerings are then lifted up in praise and thanksgiving for all that we have been given through God’s abundant grace.

Yet trapped in the web or our own need to prosper and be rewarded, it can be seductively easy to forget our dependence upon God.  We live in a society which encourages the consumption of material goods that presumably result from our own ingenuity and hard work.  Immediate gratification is the goal.  A recent soft drink commercial espouses this viewpoint: “I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now.”  As if we are somehow entitled.

In an ultimate irony, we describe one who is successful in these glowing terms: He or she, we say, is a “self-made” man or woman.  Where, we must ask, is the Creator in such a boast?

Our arrogance in assuming credit for our well-being must disappoint God just as surely as the nine lepers in today’s story from Luke disappointed Jesus.  Freed from isolation, intolerable living conditions, and the utter scorn of their fellow human beings, the lepers were, quite literally, restored to life.
 
Jesus showered mercy upon the ten outcasts, healing them and telling them to show themselves to the priest.  In those days, only the priests had the authority to pronounce a leper fit for return to society.   Now, they could, at last, move freely in the community, reunite with their families, return to meaningful work. 

We are dumbstruck, then, by the news that only one of the ten turned back to praise God and then to thank Jesus, the agent of his healing.

In vain, we search for an adequate explanation for the other nine.

* Were they so caught up in the moment that in their celebration they lost sight of giving thanks?
* Did they regard their healing as a result of some action on their part, thereby taking credit for the transformation?
* Had they been so psychologically scarred by ostracism that they couldn’t face returning to the site of unpleasant associations?
* Maybe they were sidetracked by other issues such as employment, family reactions, fear of the unknown?
* Or perhaps they had a sense of entitlement–as if healing were their due.  After all, they had suffered long and mightily.

Whatever their reasons, the bottom line is that nine failed to acknowledge that their healing was not a matter of human control or worthiness, but of God’s mercy and grace.  Which leper am I?  Which are you?

We are in a season of exploring gratitude and stewardship. Gratitude, like that of the tenth leper, is a natural, spontaneous expression of praise and thanksgiving in response to a blessing. 
 
As for stewardship, too often, in churches, the word is misunderstood as pertaining only to the preservation of the church as an institution and to the responsible use and accounting of funds.   In truth, however, stewardship is the spiritual discipline of praising and thanking God for all that we have been given through grace.

This question, worthy of reflection, appears in The New Interpreter’s Bible as part of the commentary on today’s Gospel reading: “Are we self-made individuals beholden to no one, or are we blessed daily in ways we seldom perceive, cannot repay, and for which we often fail to be grateful?” [p.328]

Perhaps this little story entitled “Mine, Too” by United Methodist pastor David M. Griebner will enhance our understanding of gratitude and stewardship.

“Mine,” he thought with the kind of confidence gained through familiarity and practice.  “Mine, mine, mine.”  This was the first thing he did every morning and the last thing he did every night.  He wasn’t thinking about his possessions.  He wasn’t thinking about his money or his business.  He wasn’t thinking about his family.  He was thinking about his thoughts.  Several years before, he had decided that most things in life were too public, too temporary, or too much outside his control to be safe or secure.  So he decided to look for something he could truly possess and control.  He discovered that his own thoughts were the perfect answer to the problem.  Unless he chose to share them, they were both private and secure.  They were no more temporary than he was, and he decided that he could control his thoughts as much as he ever expected to control anything.

“Mine, mine, mine.”  It was such a comforting litany.  He smiled.  Things were going well with his reverie this morning.  It was going to be a good day.  He paused, and then decided one more time ought to be enough.

“Mine, mine, mine.”

“Mine too!”

What was that?  He thought he heard something.  He started again.  This time he resolved to be as deliberate as possible and attend even more carefully to each thought.

“Mine . . . mine . . . mine,” he thought slowly.

“Mine too!”

There it was again!  This was not some rogue, uncontrolled thought of his.  He knew what his own thoughts felt like, and this most certainly was not one of them!  It had to be an intruder!  A trespasser!  He didn’t stop to think who or what might be capable of such an uninvited visit.  Instead he decided to run the invader off as quickly as possible.

He took a deep breath and then thought defiantly: “Mine!  Mine!  Mine!”  In the silence that followed, he enjoyed a brief moment of triumph.

“Mine too!”
 
Despite his increasing uneasiness, he noted that the tone of the intruding thought wasn’t threatening or demanding, and if it wasn’t such a violation of everything he had worked so hard for, he might have been attracted by its gentleness.  However, the fact that it wasn’t his shook him up terribly, and he decided to withdraw for the time being.  He didn’t say his litany all day, but by evening he missed it so much he decided to try again before he went to bed.

“Mine, mine, mine.”   He noted how tentative he was.

“Mine too!”

He took some aspirin and tried to sleep.

Over the next few days, he became more and more distraught, but every time he tried to comfort himself with his old litany, he would only be reminded that the world he had so carefully cultivated was no longer the same.  Nothing felt safe and secure, private, or remotely controllable anymore.

Finally he decided this had to come to an end.  He launched into his old litany, remembering fondly how comforting it had once been to him.  “Mine, mine, mine,’ he thought quietly.  Then he waited.

“Mine too!”

There it was.  He hesitated for a moment, noting again how innocent and disarming the thought felt.  Still, it was uninvited, and he had his reply ready.

“Yours,” he thought with a sense of despair, defeat, surrender, and loss.  But what he heard next changed these feelings, and everything else, forever.
 
“OURS!”

“Ours?”  This was a thought he’d never even considered before.  “Ours, ours, ours,” he mused.  He liked the sound it made inside him.  He also liked the warm and welcoming silence that followed.*

Indeed.  “All things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.”

AMEN.

Laura Shoffner
October 14, 2007

*Griebner, David M.  “ Mine, Too.”  Weavings, Vol. XX, No. 6, Nov/Dec 2005.

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