By Rev. Russell Daye
St. Andrew's United Church, Halifax

The Politics of Gratitude

Deuteronomy 8:7-20

Growing up, summer camp was for me an invaluable school for life. It is such an intense little microcosm in which time and feeling are condensed. One learns quickly about the good and the bad, the grace and the guile in oneself and in others. People who have shared their coming of age at camp tend to stay in touch and are able to follow the trajectory of each other's lives. With the advent of Facebook, I have been able to revisit a good number of those trajectories.

I'd like to share with you glimpses of two young men I knew at camp. The first I'll call Damian. When I met him he was 15-years-old, from an established and wealthy family, quite likeable and eager to please. He had a hearing impairment which led him to talk in a slightly odd way. Due to this, and to a difficult relationship with a father who was not easy to please, he carried a certain insecurity, a lack of confidence.

Camp was good for Damian. He excelled at canoeing and the physical challenges of the outdoor life. His eagerness to please was appreciated and he joined a community of young people who treated his vulnerability with care. He received a lot of positive feedback. Over several summers Damian's confidence grew and he moved through the ranks of camp staff from junior to senior counsellor, then to programme staff. His talents and self assurance spilled over into the nine months spent yearly in the 'real world.'

I knew Damian for three summers. I admired him much less in the third than the first. His confidence was hardening into cockiness. He treated younger staff with much less care than he had been treated. He had a good-looking, popular girlfriend, a fast car given by his father, and all the toys a young outdoorsman could ask for. Life was good and he firmly believed that he had earned and deserved every blessing. I ran into him a few years later, at university. He had become one of those insufferable frat boys who exude arrogance, cynicism, and a predatory nature. Now moving into middle-age, Damian has left behind him a trail of bitter former wives, lovers, friends, and business partners. He's still rich, cocky, and damn sure that he deserves his wealth and sway. There is not an ounce of gratitude in his being. The suffering that lies before him is not small.

The second story I want to share is about a very different fellow, named Steve. Steve was born in a poor, rural community in South Colchester. When he was a small child he was run over by a car and left with a twisted body and a wounded brain. I met him first not at camp, but in school, and knew him for several years despite the fact that he was in another class - the class for the 'slow kids.' His laboured walk, in which he dragged his bad leg behind him, and his bright smile were familiar sights in the hallway.

In my second year as a counsellor at church camp I was surprised to see Steve arrive to join the staff. He was always helpful, always smiling, but never quick. He was not able to lead hikes, lifeguard, or design programmes. He contributed in another way. In a very real sense, he became our heart that summer - uncanny and joyous.

One clear evening, when August had brought its golds and dry greens, we held vespers on a clearing looking over the Northumberland Strait. Steve spoke. He was very moved by the depth of community he had found at camp. He had grasped the beauty of our summer more deeply than most of the rest of us. To express his feelings, he turned to the country music that he had grown up listening to and sang for us a Johnny Cash song ...

"Why Me Lord"
Why me Lord, what have I ever done
To deserve even one
Of the pleasures I've known
Tell me Lord, what did I ever do
That was worth loving you
Or the kindness you've shown.

Lord help me Jesus, I've wasted it so
Help me Jesus I know what I am
Now that I know that I've need you so
Help me Jesus, my soul's in your hand.

Tell me Lord, if you think there's a way
I can try to repay
All I've taken from you
Maybe Lord, I can show someone else
What I've been through myself
On my way back to you.

Lord help me Jesus, I've wasted it so
Help me Jesus I know what I am
Now that I know that I've need you so
Help me Jesus, my soul's in your hand.

Steve sang in a voice about as smooth and pretty as Johnny's - and he carried a tune even worse, but I may never have seen a gathering of people more affected by a song than we were that night. It sure wasn't the beauty of the presentation that got us. Rather it was the depth of gratitude being expressed by a young man who had lost so much, had been treated so badly by fate ... or had he?

I don't know the recent trajectory of Steve's life. The last time I saw him, he was in his twenties, booting down Prince St. in Truro on an adult tricycle, smiling from ear to ear and being greeted by shouts of 'Hey Steve!' from the sidewalks.

Now, some of you are may be silently accusing me of sentimentality. I can hear someone thinking, 'God, I can't believe he just played a Johnny Cash song!' Well, if I am turning to sentimentality, it is to help you feel the difference between a life lived in Steve's heartspace and a life lived in Damien's heartspace. In Deuteronomy 8, it is just this distinction that God is making for the people of Israel as they are about to enter the Promised Land:

When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied ... Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.

Israel's God understands the temptations that will come with success. He knows the tendency for those who have much to adopt a smugness that tells them that they deserve what they have, tells them that they have prospered because of an innate superiority of skill, or will, or effort, or morality. And he knows just how deathly this attitude is: If you forget the LORD your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.

Over the years I have been fortunate enough to break bread with rich people and poor people around the world: with indentured workers (slaves really) in North India, and at five star hotels in Bombay and Madras; in tin shacks in the poorest parts of Cape Town and Mexico City; in the gated, exclusive, opulent neighbourhoods of Johannesburg; with the Prime Minister of Fiji, and with Fijian villagers living on less than a dollar a day. As these experiences accumulated, I have become firmly convinced of a paradoxical human reality: there is a negative correlation between good fortune and gratitude. Let me say this again, there is a negative correlation between good fortune and gratitude. There are exceptions to the rule - both ways - but, in general, those who have little are more disposed to thanksgiving than those who have much.

This lack of gratitude is deathly - individually and collectively. For individuals it is deathly because they become Damians. We become Damians. We lose the capacity to be grateful, we lose the capacity to see grace; and a life devoid of grace - no matter how marked by riches or success - is a life of torment. The Damians of the world may not even be aware of their torment, which is torment all the more. (As the Buddhists say, 'ignorance of dukkha is dukkha.')

The second way this is deathly flows from the first. Remember the warning of Israel's God: If you forget the LORD your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. When we live without gratitude toward the Creator from whom all wealth comes, we turn to other gods. We turn to the god of avarice, who whispers into our ears incessantly 'more!...more!...more!' We turn to the god of success, who whispers, 'do more!...do more!...do more!...you have not proven yourself...' We turn to the god of envy, who whispers, 'he has more!...she has more!...they have more!'

Soon these gods have us. Soon we have built an economy that is run by these gods. Soon we are diverting more and more of our productivity into luxury items and luxury services while a billion people live on less than a dollar a day. Soon, in pursuit of ever larger profits, we are making foolish loans and selling the debt in complex investment schemes that nobody - the buyers, the sellers, the regulators - understand. Soon the house of cards is falling around us.

The hope that we must hold for ourselves is the same hope that I hold for Damian, my old partner in work, mischief, and outdoor adventures: a fundamental turn to gratitude. This is the hope that we must hold for our society, our civilisation, even our economy: a fundamental turn to gratitude. A few minutes ago you thought me sentimental, now you're thinking I'm just plain naive. 'Can a sentiment, an attitude, a disposition alter this profoundly complex and gravely ill economy of ours?' you ask. That's not naive. The manifestation of our economic sickness is complex, but its inception is simple. The solution to our sickness will be complex in its application - but simple in its inception.

As a society, our fundamental attitude has to shift from entitlement to gratitude. Our economy has to be built on gratitude. Our economic actors must act from a place of gratitude. I'm not suggesting that all have to become Christian, but I am suggesting that all have to accept the reality that we possess nothing because we deserve it. No matter how smart, hardworking, or diligent we are, our wealth, our success is built on the blessings of the Earth, of community, and of the labour of many, many other people. As Christians, we acknowledge that the ultimate source of these blessings is our Creator.

Let us begin the turning. Let us make Steve our example. Let us cast out the gods who whisper, 'more! more! more!' Let us live and move and act from a place of thanksgiving. Lord help us Jesus, our soul is in your hand.