Pay attention, or you might miss something!
John 1:6-8,19-28; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; Psalm 126; Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11
There are a lot of similarities between the people who heard Isaiah’s prophecies and the people of Thessalonica to whom Paul wrote the letter. In Isaiah’s day, Judah was under persistent threat from the Assyrians and Babylonians, and Isaiah’s job was to tell the people of both God’s judgment on them for their sin, and bring show them that after the judgment, God is still there and has a plan, even if it seems hopeless. The church in Thessalonica had been under persecution since its founding, and Paul was encouraging them to persevere and trust in God.
First, let’s look at Isaiah. Chapter 61 opens with what will become Jesus’ “mission statement” in Luke’s gospel: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” The passage continues by saying that God will give them a crown instead of ashes, and rebuild the ruins of Jerusalem. This is just the kind of message of hope that the people of Judah, especially during the exile in Babylon, would need to maintain faith in God.
Similarly, in Thessalonians, Paul has been spending a good deal of the letting telling them to persevere in the face of persecution and to stand fast in faith, living out holy and pure lives. He reminds them that Jesus is coming soon, and to be ready. Then he ends with a few quick instructions, which is where we come to our lesson for today. The first few commands he gives are most telling: “Be joyful always pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
I almost feel bad referencing jokes, especially cause it’s not a very funny one, but it illustrates something related to our texts. Picture the old west, and a man who found himself tied to a railroad track, hearing the train’s horn in the distance. This man was rather dishonest, and not very religious at all, but figured it was worth a shot to start praying. So he prayed, “God, get me out of this and I’ll quit stealing.” He wriggled against the ropes for a while, heard the train getting closer, and then prayed again, “God, get me out of this and I’ll quit drinking!” Again, he struggled against the ropes, didn’t get any closer to freedom, and prayed again, “God, get me out of this and I’ll quit lying!” He looked and say the train getting quite close to him, struggled mightily against the ropes, and at the very last moment, the man was free of his ropes and jumped to safety. After overcoming the shock of his narrow escape, he prayed a final time, “Nevermind, God, I got it on my own.”
One of the constant struggles the Israelites had — a struggle that we share — is ignoring God when things are going well, and turning to Him only when we need bailed out of a situation. In fact, it’s that kind of attitude that, in part, led to the sack of Jerusalem under Babylonian rule. That’s where the man in the story found himself; he wanted nothing to do with God until he had a problem he couldn’t fix.
The other side of the joke is in the man not giving God credit for answering his prayer. How often do we pray for something, and then are either upset at God for not answering the way we wanted or ungrateful when the prayer is answered? This is what it means to “give thanks in all circumstances”. It implies a trust in God that we don’t often show, trusting him to know better than we do what is good for us, no matter if or not what we think is best is what we receive.
The other two commands, to be joyful always and to pray continually are ones that I think are linked with the command to give thanks. To me, being joyful and thankful are similar states of being — if we consider that God is always looking out for our good, it’s only natural to give him thanks and live our lives in the joy that we have a God who loves us.
On the other hand, when we hear things like “pray continually” we’re never quite sure what that means. We Lutherans often think of prayer as head-down-eyes-closed-hands-folded. “How do we pray like that all the time,” we might ask. “I’ll never get anything done!” In a way we’ve formalized prayer so much that we forget that prayer is simply talking to God, in the same way that we’d talk to any of our friends.
Remember two weeks ago, when I said that Advent is about watching for the ways God works in our lives? The more time we spend talking with God, the more readily we’ll begin to see him acting, which leads to living a life with more joy and thanksgiving in it.