Rejoice, Pray, Give Thanks -- Lent, week one

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

¹⁶Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Rejoice always, pray always, give thanks always—that’s what Jesus wants for you. Simple enough. Then again, this is one of those little Bible verses that, if we’re honest with ourselves, brings out our inner nine-year-olds. It’s just not fair!

            I mean, it’s great to rejoice and to give thanks when we get what we want, but rejoicing when things are just “meh” or giving thanks when the referees, who are always out to get us by the way, ruin another closely contested game for our favorite sports team. That’s just not right; it’s just not fair. Giving thanks requires justice. It’s hard to imagine rejoicing after a bad storm or a fire or a bad accident, giving thanks after a premature death or in the midst of poverty or a recession. It’s hard to imagine praying without ceasing when God seems completely absent.

             But, honestly, this kind of thinking also shows that no matter how old we get a part of us never quite grows out of that infantile, “Life is not fair!” mode that governs our early years. What do we tell kids when they say that? We tell them, “You’re right; life isn’t fair,” which is 100% true, even though we don’t act like it. All of us hold on to some belief in karma or that the good of our actions will come back to us eventually; all of us think that way sometimes, but it doesn’t always happen that way. In fact, some of the people with the greatest character endure the most suffering. It’s not fair, which is why Jesus puts no conditions on it.

            I firmly believe that the root of sin is in comparison. If I were the only person in the world I would have no reason to feel oppressed, no reason to think that life wasn’t fair, and no idea that I was being denied something that was my right, because I would have nothing with which to compare my life. When Adam and Eve took the bite from the fruit what they were really doing was inviting comparison into the world. This is naked, this is clothed; this is hungry, this is full; this is right, this is wrong. So, when Jesus tells us to pray without ceasing and to rejoice always what he’s really asking is for us to look back behind the veil that has obscured us with these comparisons to find who we are at our base: creatures created to be in communion with God and one another—communion, not competition.

            Think of how many times you compare a persons or situations in your daily lives. We compare people who are good at things and people who are better at things, people who are reliable and unreliable; people who we trust and people who we don’t. We have good days and bad days, sick days and healthy days, days when we feel alive and days when we feel dead. Rejoice always, give thanks always. If only it were that easy.

But here’s the thing: rejoicing is not about being happy. I’ve talked about this before and I’ll do it again. Happiness is fleeting and always in conflict with sadness. Happiness is something that can be compared; you can be happier now than you were yesterday or vice versa, but rejoicing is something different. Rejoicing is all about joy, and joy is not in conflict with sadness; instead, joy lives in sadness. Rejoicing takes both the good and the bad. You can rejoice when a loved one dies even though you are sad about the loss. You can rejoice because joy doesn’t require you to put on a strong face and it doesn’t allow you to compare your future with your past. This can happen in every facet of your life, but it requires you to leave behind the comparisons.

The church of tomorrow will look different than the church of yesterday. That might make you happy; it might make you sad. It shouldn’t matter: rejoice in it. Your life is temporary and fragile; you are dust that God has breathed into and to dust you will return. That might not make you happy; you might feel you are entitled to more, but that doesn’t matter: rejoice in it, give thanks for it. Life is not distributed equally, but why, may I ask, does that make it not worthy of rejoicing?

Finally, pray without ceasing. That seems hard, but really it’s the easiest of all. When I was in high school I didn’t have much of a prayer life—or so I thought—but I would often thank God for what I had been given, and at some point I had someone tell me, “Just don’t say amen.” That was a revelation for me. I just stopped saying “Amen” and suddenly I felt as if every moment of the day was prayer. Of course, I knew that “Amen” isn’t some magical end of communication with God, but reminding myself of that made all the difference. All of life is prayer. The only question is whether we’re going to treat it that way or not. God is not less absent in suffering or “bad” things that happen to us; in fact, if anything God is more present there, just as Christ was always most present in the place where pain was evident.

So, it’s simple really. Rejoice always, because joy does not require you to compare your lives to others. Give thanks always, because what you have is enough. And pray always, because God is present whether you acknowledge it or not. Simple enough, but worth a life-time of practice.