Rejoice, pray, give thanks? Really?

December 17, 2023

Scriptures: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24, John 1:6-8, 19-28

        Our second reading, found at the end of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, was meant to remind the early church in Thessalonica of their call to follow his example, and to hold fast as witnesses to the Good News of Jesus Christ even though he himself was unable to be with them any longer. His final, closing words here are a summary then not only of his letter, but of the example he modeled for them since first sharing the gospel with them. In this letter he speaks of hope in the midst of trial, and of the need to remain close to God, in what were extremely difficult times. However, they were, and they remain very challenging words, seemingly asking something that is not easily possible. Paul’s words instructing his listeners to, ‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances’ strain the imagination given all that confronts us daily in the sphere of public information.

        And one has to wonder if this is one of those passages that we are not really understanding, that perhaps was meant more for those times than our own, prompting the question, is this really being asked of us? In fact, is it possible for anyone to really do these three things constantly…and to be truly honest?

I suppose if we tried, really tried, we could for a time pray without ceasing, although I am not sure how long that might last. But when it comes to ‘rejoicing always’ I have even more doubt. For it seems that ‘rejoicing’ in the face of all that we are confronted with would make ‘rejoicing’ strange, if not bizarre behavior. In fact, I have known Christians over the years who tried to live their lives in a state of constant happiness and ‘rejoicing’. And to some extent they seemed to succeed at least outwardly, in always having a smile on their face, and of having an attitude of, ‘What, me worry? All is fine, God is in charge of my life, and God is good!’  

However, at least for me, I struggled with that attitude, as it seemed contrived, as though they were consciously trying to fit their outward witness over onto a biblical command, rather than their ‘rejoicing’ being a natural reaction to circumstances or understandings of how God was actually working in their life.

        And that third instruction which Paul seems to be asking seems just as difficult and perhaps moreso. ‘Giving thanks in all circumstances’ seems to call for us to be even less honest. For every one of us here has issues we are dealing with, every one of us has personal and deep concerns that trouble us, that can even keep us awake at night…are we really supposed to give thanks for all of these? So much of life seems peppered with unexpected curve balls…confronting us with illness, death, tragedy of one form or another, loss, pain or injury. So much of what we run up against seems to make it very hard to live up to any of these three instructions, hard to rejoice, hard to pray, and so difficult to give thanks without ceasing.

        So, what is it that Paul was really asking?  Could he possibly have meant this to sound the way it does? Why does it seem so foreign to our ears and so far out of reach in the lives we lead each day? Were his times, and the issues those people faced somehow easier or less cluttered than ours? Not really, in fact the times in which Paul was writing were in many ways much more difficult and perilous for any who proclaimed to be followers of Jesus. These words of Paul and the call they represent is every bit as much a call for today as it was for those to whom the letter was first addressed. But how is this possible? How in the world can we do what Paul is asking of us and still be honest and authentic? How can we act in this way, and not find ourselves in some sort of warped behavior that is contrived and false, only masking our true inner selves, our real feelings of anger, of hurt, pain, or sorrow?

According to the Interpreter’s Bible Commentary there are at least two things that Paul saw as a part of life that were necessary in order to be able to truly fulfill his call. Two ways of looking at faith and life that were required, in order to make these three calls possible.

Interestingly, the first is one that has been a part of our church’s faith discussion and practice for some time now. For a number of years we have worked at being a church in which our ‘worship’ was not limited to just the time spent together in a Sunday church service. Paul saw all of life as the proper context for worship, all of life was worship, or at least needed to be understood as potentially being so. This is not saying that all of our time is supposed to be spent sitting in a pew listening to one long sermon after another, but rather that all of our lives, each moment and each place, is a good and proper place to be in a spirit of worship. A place in which we can be prayerful, in which we can give thanks, a place in which we can find things for which we can rejoice.

        Together we have sounded the call to worship with the whole of our lives. A call to make our worship, our time spent in community, as community, and for our greater community, the context of our life together. And by doing so, to enter everyday into a living, breathing relationship with our God of love…throughout the day. For prayer itself to be our ongoing conversation with God, and with one another, for our hearts to be filled with joy as a result of that fellowship, and to give thanks for each moment we are aware that we have a God who pursues us so relentlessly and earnestly.

        Paul asked for and expected that the church would remain in a state of life as worship…worship which was the natural reaction to the goodness of God as the framework of daily life and living. Worship being the foundation or the underpinning of the way we thought, dreamed, hoped…and ultimately, acted.

        And while that may begin to approach a way to understand how such a life is possible, even though the pathway may seem unfamiliar, does it really address Paul’s three requests? How can we truly give thanks for some of the most difficult things we face? How can we be thankful in times of persistent illness or struggle, in times of deep loss or even personal injury?  Living a ‘life of worship’ may be okay perhaps for rejoicing, or for praying to be sure…but giving of thanks in all circumstances?

         In the introduction to his wonderful book on the ancient practices or ‘disciplines’ of the faith titled Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster states, ‘Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people’.

This is the second truth that Paul was lifting up when he wrote these words to the church in Thessalonica. The truth that we need to learn to live deeper, more engaged lives. To refuse to be content with just living on the surface of what each day may throw our way. Paul assumed that Christians could and would live lives both expecting, and believing, that the deeper things of life were the ground of understanding the circumstances of life. Let me say that again because it is an important point, Paul assumed that Christians could and would live lives both expecting, and believing, that the deeper things of life were the ground of understanding the circumstances of life.

He felt that if we could just step back and see the handprint, the underlying mark of Christ on the overall pattern of our lives, then we could know that somewhere, somehow, Jesus was still there, even in the midst of tragedy, even in our most trying and difficult circumstances. For you see, with God, things truly are not always as they seem at first…somewhere there is a plan, and it is a good plan at that, a plan or pathway offered to guide us forward into being part of the goodness of God for all of humankind.

        Paul was shining a light on a deep truth facing contemporary life and society, and that is that we have become far too consumed with stuff, or by things, as well as a tendency to frantically rush about. And that as a result, we may have lost sight of our ability to actually live deeper. Instead, far too often and for far too much time residing on the shallow surface of our things and our emotions.  To quote Richard Foster again, he remarks that ‘in contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in “much-ness and many-ness,” he will rest satisfied. 

How does this ‘muchness and manyness’ affect our ability to give thanks? In truth it is not possible to ‘give thanks in all circumstances’ unless we are willing to shift our perspective. Unless we are willing to look deeper into our lives in order to see the hand of God at work there. Reversing the old maxim that holds that only ‘hindsight is 20/20’, and instead believing that we can see the path forward that is being laid out before us by the Lord…allowing us to clearly see at least a way to hope in times of shadow or darkness…a way to find and to offer comfort in the midst of great loss…and the courage to lift up words of thanksgiving to God as a result…a God who even then is drawing us into a place of joy and peace truly beyond our understanding.

        We cannot begin to honor Paul’s instructions if we choose to remain in lives filled only with busyness and shallowness, looking only at the surface of things and events from which to draw our understanding…

…if however we live even more deeply into prayer…if we continue to learn how to worship together with the whole of our lives…if we keep a daily conversation with our God alive by learning to talk plainly with our Lord throughout the day…

…if we trust that in the depths of our soul there abides a God of unending love and forgiveness, waiting there to gather us into his arms as he shows us the way forward…

…then we can know peace…then we can truly rejoice…then we shall truly live in prayer…then we shall know the grace that comes from the giving of thanks…without ceasing…

…rejoice, pray, give thanks? Really? Yes, really…

               …amen