Eucharisteo - A Word to Live By

In the midst of a week of trials and challenges unlike any I’ve experienced previously, God has given me hope and joy. His Word has been my strength; His presence my comfort.

I started reading the book One Thousand Gifts and found its artfully crafted words to resonate within my soul, meeting me right where I am, and renewing my spirit.

Let me share a few of the author’s beautiful passages with you.

“I remember once sitting at the hairdresser’s. The woman beside me reads, and I read her title in the reflection of the mirror: 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. Is that it? Are there physical places that simply must been seen before I stop breathing within tim, before I inhale eternity?

Why? To say that I’ve had reason to bow low? To say that I’ve seen beauty? To say that I’ve been arrested by wonder?

Isn’t it here? Can’t I find it here?...

Isn’t it here? The wonder? Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it? Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur? The very same surging magnificence that cascades over our every day here. Who has time or eyes to notice?

All my eyes can seem to fixate on are the splatters of disappointment across here and me.

I close the bathroom linen closet. Pick up a brush to swish toilets. I don’t need more time to breath so that I may experience more locales, posses more, accomplish more. Because wonder really could be here - for the seeing eyes.

So - more time for more what?

The face of Jesus flashes. Jesus, the God-Man with His own termination date. Jesus, the God-Man who came to save me from prisons of fear and guilt and depression and sadness. With an expiration of less than twelve hours, what does Jesus count as all most important?

“And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them...” (Luke 22:19)

In the original language, “he gave thanks” reads “eucharisteo.”

The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning “grace.” Jesus took the bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks. He took the bread and knew it to be gift and gave thanks.

But there is more, and I read it. Eucharisteo, thanksgiving, envelopes the Greek word for grace, charis. But it also holds its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning “joy.” Joy. Ah...yes. I might be needing me some of that.

But where can I seize this holy grail of joy? I look down to the page. Was this the clue to the quest of all most important? Deep chara joy is found only at the table of the euCHARisteo - the table of thanksgiving. I sit there long...wondering...is it that simple?

Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?

So then as long as thanks is possible...I think this through. As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible. Joy is always possible. Whenever, meaning - now; wherever, meaning - hear. The holy grail of joy is not in some exotic location or some emotional mountain peak experience. The joy wonder could be here! Here is the messy, piercing ache of now, joy might be - unbelievably - possible! The only place we need see before we die is this place of seeing God, here and now.

I whisper it out loud, let the tongue feel these sounds, the ear hear their truth.

Charis. Grace.

Eucharisteo. Thanksgiving.

Chara. Joy

A triplet of stars, a constellation in the black. A threefold cord that might hold a life? Offer a way up into the fullest life?

Grace, thanksgiving, joy. Eucharisteo.

A Greek word...that might make meaning of everything?

~~~~~~

I stand the next morning on planks of light lying down across the floor, and I bake bread, yeasty dough moist between my fingers, and that one word works me, again and again - eucharisteo. I won’t let it go this time. I’ll enter into the mystery.

I shape loaves and think how Jesus took the bread and gave thanks...and then the miracle of the multiplying of the loaves and fishes.

How Jesus took the bread and gave thanks..and then the miracle of Jesus enduring the cross for the joy set before Him.

How Jesus stood outside Lazarus’s tomb, the tears streaming down HIs face, and He looked up and prayed, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me...” (John 11:41) And then the miracle of a dead man rising! Thanksgiving raises the dead! .....

I read: “The only real fall of man is his noneucharistic life in a noneucharistic world.” That was the fall! Non-eucharisteo, ingratitude, was the fall - humanity’s discontent with all that God freely gives. That is what has scraped me raw: ungratefulness. Then to find Eden, the abundance of Paradise, I’d need to forsake my non-eucharisteo, my bruised and bloodied ungrateful life, and grab hold to eucharisteo, a lifestyle of thanksgiving....

~~~~~~

Luke’s Gospel, chapter 17....I think I know this one. Jesus restores ten lepers to wholeness. And only one returns to offer thanks. I remember the moral too... “How often do you remember to say thanks?” Yes I think I know this one.

I skim.

“One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him - and he was a Samaritan.” (Luke 17:15-16) Yes thankfulness, I know. Next verse.

“Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then He said to him, “Rsie and go; your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:17-19)

Wait. I trace back. Hadn’t Jesus already completely healed him? Exactly like the other nine who were cured who hadn’t bothered to return and thank HIm. So what does Jesus mean, “Your faith has made you well?” Hand I underinterpreted this passage, missed some hidden mystery? I slow down and dig. I read Jesus’ words in Young’s Literal Translation, “And [Jesus] said to him, ‘Having risen, be going on, thy faith has saved thee.” Saved thee? I dig deeper. It’s sozo in the Greek. Many translations render sozo as being made “well” or “whole,” but its literal meaning, I read it - “to save.” Sozo means salvation. It means true wellness, complete wholeness. To live sozo is to live the full life. Jesus came that we might live life to the full; He came to give us sozo. And when the leper receive sozo - the saving to the full, whole life? When He returned and gave thanks. I lay down my pen.

Our very saving is associated with our gratitude.

But...of course. If our fall was the non-eucharisteo, the ingratitude, then salvation must be intimately related to eucharisteo, the giving of thanks.

I look back to the text. That is what it says: “Thy faith has saved thee.” And the leper’s faith was a faith that said thank you. Is that it? Jesus counts thanksgiving as integral in a faith that saves.

We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks.

Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace.

Thanksgiving is inherent to a true salvation experience; thanksgiving is necessary to live the well, whole, fullest life.

- Excerpt from chapter two in One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp