This is part 2 of 2 posts on gratitude, that will conclude on Thanksgiving eve. If you miss part 1 click here. My hope is for this series to serve a similar purpose for Thanksgiving that advent serves for Christmas. May it provide time to reflect on what it means to walk in the way of gratitude. It should be noted that these posts were primarily inspired by my reading of the book “Living into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us” by Christine Pohl.
Swiss theologian Karl Barth, makes a deep connection between our experience of grace and our expression of gratitude. “Grace and gratitude,” says Barth, "belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice of an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder follows lightning.” The latin word gratia, which means grace, is where we derive our word gratitude. It is impossible to separate the connection between grace and gratitude.
Our Individual Experience of Grace and Gratitude
To identify as a Christian is to understand that we have been transformed by our experience of God’s grace. And if grace and gratitude are deeply intertwined, at the very core of our Christian identity is gratitude. Gratitude becomes the essence of our new identity. Gratitude, therefore, is no longer an attitude we take up, but an outpouring of who we are. This is the transformative work of gratitude; it repositions the way we view the world through a lens of the abundant grace we have been shown. Gratitude not only shifts our personal identities, but it also shapes our communities as well.
Our Communal Experience of Grace and Gratitude
A community centered on gratitude frees people to be themselves as grace flows openly between members. A position of gratitude is built on communal experiences of grace, as we recognize that not only have I been the recipient of grace, but we all have been recipients of grace as well. We have all been loved by God when we were at our best and our worst, and now we too can love others when they are at their best and worst. Communities centered on gratitude assume the best in others, understanding we are all “in process” and sustained by grace alone. “A posture of thankfulness and gratitude,” writes Christine Pohl, "roots persons in love and trust, and enables them to remember that the difficulties and injustices of the present time do not have the final word.” Communal gratitude is the active pursuit of the Gospel regardless of circumstances and it is walking alongside other sinful broken people in gratitude of the love of God.
The Poison of Community: Ingratitude
If grace and gratitude are the foundation the bond of community, ingratitude is the poison which slowly kills community. Each community, because it is comprised of people, faces the challenge of messiness. Because one thing we can all agree on is that people will fail us, they will fail the community, we will fail others, we will mistreat and disappoint one another. At some point we bought into a romanticized fantasy of the church being a perfect community. But the church is broken because it’s members are broken. We find this brokenness in its' attendees, leadership teams, ministries, systems, and more. Even while we strive to do our best, we cannot avoid the effects of brokenness.
But this brokenness isn’t what erodes the community, it is our response to the brokenness which either strengthens or further erodes communal vitality. When we are faced with this brokenness and respond with grumbling and negativity, we are expressing our unbelief that our community is capable of hope and reconciliation. Does this invalidate the original concern? Does this enable the church to continue in destructive ways? Of course not. But a community built on grace and gratitude must handle concerns in a loving manner, and a discerning eye to ensure our discontent is not rooted in the elevation of our preferences above the good of the whole.
In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, Life Together, he writes,
“we pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts. How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things? If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ."
Failing to walk in gratitude is to focus on the “paltry and petty,” it is to believe the fantasy of a perfect community of believers. And if we buy that myth, we will never find ourselves in deep community because we will live transient lives in search of something that doesn’t exist. The way of the grateful is messy and riddled with stories of failure, but the grateful push through those deformations of community. The way of the grateful assumes the best of people and is guided by grace into deeper life. May we grow in our trust and love of one another as we grow in gratitude for the communities God has placed us in.
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances...” - 1st Thessalonians 5:16-18