Give Thanks In All Circumstances
Nov. 19, 2006
Jay Bartow, Pastor
First Presbyterian Church of Monterey
Texts: Ps. 104:1-18; 27-30; 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18
Almost two years ago some friends gave me a CD of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. Not long after receiving that gift I had to intervene in a situation with my ninety-two year old father who was being taken advantage of by someone who was supposed to be taking care of him but was taking advantage of him and endangering him, though he could not see it at the time. It was one of the most difficult times in my life because at that point I was at odds with the father I loved, but who thought that I was butting in where I had no business. As I drove the almost thousand mile round trip to try to bring safety and order out of chaos I played that CD because it was full of black gospel songs of praise to and trust in God. I didn’t feel like praising God when I inserted the disk into the player, but after several songs my spirits began to lift. I began to sing along with the Brooklyn choir and the sadness and worry began to lift. I shifted my focus from the miserable situation to the mercy of God, and I found the strength to work through it. I am thankful to say that the situation for that family member is now safe and happy and my relationship with him is warm, appreciative and loving. Singing those songs of praise and thanks in a difficult time helped me to understand why the painful experience of injustice, diminished opportunity, and unrelenting hardship of Black Americans led them write and sing such songs. It was how they survived and kept faith in spite of the centuries of hardship and limited opportunities.
You can call what they did an escape, if you are so inclined, but I see it more as a strategy to survive, to persevere, and to confront evil and win out over it. The night before he was murdered Martin Luther King addressed a gathering in Memphis who had made precious little progress in their fight for better wages and working conditions for those who collected the city’s trash. Yet, Dr. King quoted Moses in saying that he had been to the mountain top and had seen the Promised Land. He led that gathering in praise and prayers of thanks for God’s promise of a day when justice would roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. Like Moses, he did not get to enter that earthly promised land of justice, but others did.
I remember speaking with Ira Sandperl, a Jew from New York who was one of the freedom riders who joined Dr. King in Birmingham and was thrown in jail with him. He said that in that jail cell Dr. King looked at him and said, “Ira, God means for us to be here.” To which Sandperl replied, “I wish God meant something else.” Dr. King chose to focus on what he did have and could do in his struggle for justice. From that Birmingham jail he wrote a letter that awakened the conscience of our nation. He appealed to all persons of good will to seek to deliver on America’s pledge of liberty and justice for all. Thank God that he did not give in to despair, that he found strength to persevere, because his example inspired others to join with him in the struggle.
Several of the Apostle Paul’s letters were likewise penned from jail, and almost all of them overflow with a spirit of thanksgiving in spite of the circumstances in which he found himself. This short letter to the Christians at Thessalonica may be the first of the New Testament books to have been written, around 50 A.D., while Paul was in Corinth. He had taken the Gospel message to Thessalonica, beginning at the synagogue there, and then when opposition from the leaders of the synagogue mounted he carried his message to Gentiles and many of them came to faith in Christ. Paul may have stayed there for a few months, but eventually the forces opposing him forced him to leave, and he went on to Athens and Corinth to the West, and it is likely from Corinth that he writes this letter.
He begins by saying, “We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers.” (1:2) He reminds them of the persecution he faced when with them, and yet they had courage to hear and embrace his message. That leads him to write, “We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers.” (2:13) In doing so, they also faced persecution, and Paul was concerned that they might abandon their new found faith because it had brought them hardship. So he sent Timothy, his co-worker, to visit them and Timothy returned and told Paul that the believers were standing firm in their faith in Jesus Christ. That knowledge prompted Paul to give thanks once more, as he wrote, “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?” (3:9) So when Paul urges them to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you ,(5:17-18) he is not asking them to do anything that he had not done. No doubt, he told those at Thessalonica what had happened to him when he first began his ministry on the Continent of Europe at Philippi. Paul and Silas gave a young woman who was being exploited as a fortune teller her independence, and that angered those who were exploiting her and they had Paul and Silas beaten with rods and thrown into jail and put in stocks. I had a chance to walk down the steps that led to the dungeon of the jail where he and Silas were held, and I remembered that they sang hymns of praise to God from that dungeon. Later that same night a severe earthquake broke them free, and rather than try to escape they assured the jailer that they were all present and accounted for. The jailer got a torch, went into the darkness and fell down at their feet and asked what he must do to be saved. “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household,” they told him. (Acts 16:31) And he did and he and his family were baptized that very night.
What led that jailer to embrace the very dangerous faith that had gotten those men into trouble? I think it was their giving thanks in those horrible circumstances and their concern that he not take his life for having lost his prisoners that won that jailer to faith in Christ. Thanksgiving is powerful; it changes us because it points us to the deep realities of the love and purpose of God which are stronger than even death.
At the end of his second letter to Timothy Paul, who is under house arrest, pleads for Timothy to come to him soon because three of his colleagues had deserted him and gone elsewhere. One of them, named Demas, left Paul because fell in love with the present world, and that hurt Paul more than his mere absence. He asks Timothy to come soon to him, before winter, if possible, and to bring a cloak and also books and parchments. He realizes that his life is drawing to a close, and even though others may not have kept the faith, he has and looks forward to God’s affirmation and reward (2 Tim 4:6-8) Even though we detect sadness in Paul’s words he goes on to ask God to forgive those who did him harm, and gives glory to God who has stood by him, given him strength to proclaim God’s word fully and will rescue him from every evil (2 Tim 4.:15-18).
A few weeks back we read from the book of Job about how God allowed Job to be tested by Satan. He lost his wealth and his children and then his health. Would Paul have gone to Job and said, “Cheer up Job, it’s not so bad. You’ve lost your children, your wealth and health and good name, but that’s not so bad.”? I think not. Rather, I suspect that Paul would have followed his own counsel to rejoice with those who rejoice, and to weep with those who weep. He would have grieved with Job, prayed with and for him. We do well to remember that Job not only did Job cry out for an audience with God that he might plead his case, as we noted a few weeks back and curse the day he was born. Before those words of lament, Job tore his robe, shaved his head, fell upon the ground and worshiped. Then he said something extraordinary, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:20-21) Blessing God and thanking God are essentially the same. Even in the midst of his pain and sadness Job strikes a note of thanksgiving. I wonder if that isn’t the key to how Job persevered through a time of deep loss.
What about the example of Jesus? When he learned of the death of his dear friend Lazarus he went to the grave with Lazarus’ sisters and friends and wept there with them. The shortest verse in the Bible, for you Bible trivia fans, has two words: “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35) And when those present saw that they remarked how Jesus loved Lazarus and they might also have added, his sisters, Mary and Martha, because he grieved with them. After demonstrating loving empathy he affirmed that he was the resurrection and the life, and called Lazarus from the grave. He was with them in their grief, and he was with them in joy when his resurrection power was demonstrated in Lazarus.
To love others we need to be with them where they are, to empathize with them, and that means entering into their loss and sadness. Many well meaning Christians have forgotten that and said to those who have lost a family member or friend things like: “You can have another child” (as if children were interchangeable); or, “God needed your spouse or parent in heaven (as if you didn’t need him or her). We do well to recognize that when Paul says to give thanks in all circumstances, not for all circumstances.
Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday during a time of deep sadness for him and for the nation. Read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address written as the Civil War raged on, and you see deep empathy and pathos wed to deep trust that God’s ways are just, though we may not see just how. At the risk of trivializing a deep truth of our faith, I want to say that the calls to thanksgiving by Paul and others in the Bible, are for our benefit. Those urging us to give thanks almost always give us reasons why, and those reasons have to do with the grace and goodness of God seen in God’s creation and also in God’s work of redeeming us and creation, calling us back to harmony with God who created us. When the Psalmist says, “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever?” (Ps. 106:1), he is calling us to take stock of all the ways God’s steady love surrounds us. Paul and the Psalmist call us to see that under all circumstances, plenty and want, joy and sorrow, sickness and health. Since we are commanded to do this it must be something that we are capable of learning with God’s help. I think it is no mistake that the sacramental meal at the heart of our faith is called “Eucharist” taken from that Greek word which means “thanksgiving” because Jesus gave thanks to God at that meal which was a celebration of God’s providing food from the earth and freedom from slavery since it was during Passover, marking the Jewish release from Pharoah’s tyranny, that they ate it. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.