Posts
Years ago, I was sitting in Beans and Bagels--the coffee shop when an older man carrying a donut on a plate and a mug of coffee settled himself near the window at the far end of my long dining table. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he took off his cap, briefly bowed his head, and thanked God—I’m presuming—for his donut and coffee. Then, he put his cap back on and ate them. I don’t know what his religious background was. I turned my eyes back to my own half eaten donut. Sheepishly. If you are familiar with donuts from Beans and Bagels, you know they truly are a gift—and I, neighborhood clergy-woman reporting for duty—mumbled a word of thanks to God.
This man and I did not have different donuts. Perhaps, other than the fact that he seemed like more of an old-fashioned donut type while I’m more of a pink sprinkles type--but aside from that: We both walked through the same door, ordered at the same counter, both paid fair and square, and then both sat at the very same long table. The difference was that he sat down, bowed his head and acknowledged what he received while the thought didn’t even cross my mind.
In today’s bible story, Moses is given this great, magnificent mission: to lead God’s people out of brutal slavery in Egypt (!!) After a lot of back and forth with God, Moses eventually agrees to do it but before he embarks on his epic adventure to Egypt, he goes to visit and sit at the table of another: Jethro, his father-in-law.
Now remember, Moses grew up in the palace in Egypt—he was rescued at birth by those midwives, Puah and Shiphrah, and then raised by Pharoah’s daughter who pulled him out of that basket in the Nile. As a young man, Moses is on the run from Pharoah (it’s a story for another time). He makes it to Midian when he meets Jethro who welcomes him into his home. Jethro gives Moses work as a shepherd. He gives him friends and family and neighbors, and Moses eventually marries Zipporah, one of Jethro’s daughters. It’s hard to overstate the impact that Jethro had on Moses’ life. And so it make sense that after Moses gets this great commission from God at the burning bush, and before he goes to Egypt, he remembers and returns and asks for Jethro’s blessing.
There had been a lot of people along the way who had supported Moses over the years. And Moses seems to understand that he didn’t arrive at that burning bush all on his own. Nope. It was the kindness of other people that got him there. It was the second chances people gave him it was all that love and support and grace and relationships that got him to that moment.
*****
What is it that helps us to see that our comfortable lives are built on more than our own effort?
***********
Imagine with me, for a moment, that you are standing in a busy coffee shop and that you are holding a very full, very hot mug coffee in your hands. Maybe the coffee is for you, maybe you’re carrying it to someone else. Your task, is to make through the crowded, busy room to the table over there by the window. How do you do it?
Well, you’re not going to just barrel across the room holding the hot cup in your one hand. You’re going pause, steady your arm, notice the coffee and where you’re stepping through those people and tables. You don’t want to spill. You pay attention to what is around you. You’re careful. You adjust yourself—even your posture--to the room. Gratitude doesn’t change what we happen to be holding in our hands; it just changes how we carry it.
******
Moses’ life is so full of so many gifts—the midwives, Pharaoh’s daughter, his father-in-law, Jethro, his wife, Zipporah, his work as a shepherd, his home in Midian, his community. He knows the grace of what he has received and it makes him show up in the world differently. The man in Beans and Bagels and I both had a donut and a cup of coffee. But his posture towards it was different from mine. He sat down with that food as a gift. I sat down with it as—meh—a donut.
Back in our bible story: Moses has just been given this big calling from God. And when he goes back into Egypt, he is about to walk into a very different sort of world—into Pharoah’s world. But he walks into it mindful of all the grace that has been present in his life. Pharoah doesn’t notice what his life has been built upon. He doesn’t see the hands and support and effort of anyone else. He doesn’t know the grace and goodness of what it means to depend on people or to be indebted to them. You’re never going find Pharoah pulling up his chair to thank anyone at the table in gratitude. In fact, the prophet Ezekiel later imagines Pharoah declaring in chapter 29 vs.3, “the Nile is mine; I made it for myself.” Pharoah is arrogant and brazen. Honestly he’s delusional, but you know--he thinks he’s a god, so…there you have it
Not many of us on this earth are this myopic and self-absorbed, although, as Shai Held, a Rabbi and theologian puts it, “you don’t need to be Pharaoh to struggle with gratitude—you just need be human,” he goes on to say that “almost none of us are [actually] brazen or delusional enough to think we’ve made ourselves or built the world that sustains us.”
And yet. And yet, in smaller, less dramatic ways, a lot of us don’t want to admit or don’t think to admit just how dependent and vulnerable we really are. How much we owe. Not “owe” in the sense of owing God—grace doesn’t ask or expect something of us, but it can shape us. even Martin Luther was clear about that (1) and in a sense, we do train our posture (like balancing a full cup over and over) to notice grace.
I think the truth is that when we have had things in our lives like stable housing, or maybe a retirement account, or a loving family—when we’ve had a certain level of education or even professional success in our career, or maybe even a little cushion of money, it can kind of buffer us from remembering that we depend on others. Not all of us in here have the most comfortable lives, but many of us here right now do have some comforts. And in that, sometimes, we sort of forget that our lives are still sustained by all these gifts we didn’t create for ourselves. Gifts like the people who cheered us on, the opportunities we were given, our health, our network, maybe even just—good luck? Even the hardest worker in the room right now still depends on this whole web of educators, and opportunities and certain people in our lives. Our effort has never been the only thing in the room that got us to where we are. So much of life just arrives as a gift.
******
Last week, Dolly Parton died. Her story has been all over the place, and I’m guessing that more than a handful of us in here have heard it: that she had a real humble upbringing. That she was quick to call out the gifts in the way she was raised—love, kindness and understanding she understood them as treasures that her life rested on. She said that, while yes she was a hard worker, her voice and her songwriting talent were gifts, gifts from God, gifts nurtured by her family. She carried her success the way you might carry that hot cup coffee across the room: thoughtful, noticing, careful, aware that what she held in that cup wasn’t hers alone. She was attentive with it. She used it to bless other people. In a way, I think her life was animated by gratitude.
****
What does it mean to walk through life with that kind of posture—this posture of acknowledgement? Of gratitude? The posture of the coffee cup, this posture of Moses returning to Jethro’s table before turning to Egypt. This posture that holds in gratitude and reverence all the gifts we’ve been given? It ymeans that gratitude is a stance we hold, come what may.
Pharaoh’s self-absorbed posture puffs out his chest and self-congratulates: I made this. I did this. But… if you made it all yourself, you don’t have anyone to thank. You don’t owe anyone anything…You’re disconnected. Gratitude says that the story (my story) is bigger than just me. Gratitude changes our perspective. And sometimes changes even our actions.
From: I’m so angry with everything wrong in the world. To: There is so much good all around me and holding me up, I’m going to use it to help me respond.
From: nothing I do matters, it won’t make a difference, why bother, To…this life is a gift and there is something I can do--something I can give back.
From: I’m afraid things are doomed, everything seems so uncertain right now…To: I can’t ysee how this is all going to work out, but I believe things can be differentl.
I’m not saying this is always so easy. The cup is still hot, the world is crowded and unpredictable and it’s hard to move through it sometimes. But gratitude coaxes us to carry our gifts carefully. To not spill them but share them. And carrying it like that? Helps us resist being like Pharaoh who thinks of no one but himself.
*******
After Moses is called by God at the burning bush, he goes home to sit at Jethro’s table and thank him. And then Moses heads into Egypt where he walks with his two hands full, carrying that gift of life and goodness into Pharaoh’s court with the knowledge that none of us are self made; and with message that this way of living is empty, let my people go.
Moses walks into those halls of power remembering the warmth and love of Jethro’s table. And that’s what makes Pharaoh’s endless, golden table—the one next to the Nile that belongs only to him—look awfully empty.
As you sit here today, feeling the warmth and love of these pews under you where so many saints before you have sat…as you walk later down these streets, built by generations long past…and as you clasp hands when you share the peace, as you pull your chair up to your own table tonight to break bread, what do you carry with you? What do you hold in your hands as you walk into the days ahead?
Let it move you.
(1) Martin Luther: “Freedom of a Christian, 1520”
