In his first letter to the Christians in Thessaloniki, St. Paul tells them, and us today, to “pray without ceasing.” These three words have proven confusing ever since they were written. How are we supposed to do that, exactly? Pray…without ceasing? Surely we can’t spend all day, every day on bended knee, heads bowed, hands folded in prayer. There’s work to do. God even commands us to do that! And what about sleeping? How are we to keep going if we don’t sleep, even if we could pray constantly while we’re awake?
This is an example of the kind of biblical literalism that misses the point. Paul, of course, doesn’t mean to pray with folded hands at all times, but rather that our lives, our entire existence, ought to be one directed at pleasing God, aligned with his will for creation. Living that pleases God is a prayer, a lived prayer, a true display of our faith, of our religion, in deed and word. And such a display is not done solely as a solitary act, but in action. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father,” writes St. James, “is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” A lived prayer, then, is one that embodies the love God has shown us in loving those who are in need, and to remain steadfast in God’s promise that nothing can separate us from his love—no matter how much or how often we may doubt it. Remember that as we go forward today and as you leave this place into your daily lives outside these walls.
Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Any parent will tell you that raising a child to grow up into a halfway decent adult can be…a chore. Children can be rambunctious and rowdy, and they often are very selfish. It’s part of human nature, in fact. “We teach,” as our Lutheran foundational documents state in the second article of confession, “that since the fall of Adam all human beings who are propagated according to nature are born with sin, that is, without fear of God, without trust in God, and with concupiscence.”
Concupiscence…What a fun word!
What’s that mean?
Well, it’s evil lust and inclination, but more specifically it’s a proclivity, or predisposition to care about yourself before anything else. Concupiscence is the epitome of selfishness, the ultimate expression of egomania. This is original sin, in the strictest sense. Christians believe and confess that every person is born with this kind of selfishness. And it’s this kind of selfishness, among so many other things, that parents are saddled with taming in their kids if they’re to grow up to be halfway decent adults.
From an early age, one of the ways that parents attempt to instill some level of understanding and consideration for other people in their kids is by teaching them to use three simple words—although for many adults these three words sometimes seem not so terribly simple. What words? One, “please.” And two, “thank you.
Tomorrow my nephew Carl Franklin turns six, and my sister is still trying, as she has for years now, to get him to remember to say “please” and “thank you.” You’d think it’d be easy, simple even, yet it’s not. And like I said, for many an adult these words aren’t terribly simple. Easy to forget, to be sure, but seemingly difficult to remember.
The reason for that is simple, though— concupiscence, the proclivity, or predisposition to care about yourself before anything else. Yet it’s these three words, these two expressions, if you will, that are fundamental to living a decent life.
As Christians, we often will pray to God to ask for things. And in a roundabout sort of way we can think of that as us coming before God asking “please do something.” Sometimes our prayers will even include the word, but not always. But either way, when we pray to God, asking him to do something, we have been moved by the Holy Spirit to look outside of ourselves for what we need or what we want. This isn’t to say that all our prayers are selfless. No—in fact, many of our prayers might be misguided, but they nonetheless are movements of the Holy Spirit, directing us to find meaning, fulfillment, understanding, contentment, satisfaction, or even absolution, not from within ourselves, but outside ourselves—from God. When we pray, we truly live our confession at the beginning of worship—“we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.” We recognize that we can’t do everything, and so our praying is us reaching out for help. It’s us asking God, “Please…”
But often we pray to God asking for something far more than we acknowledge what God has done for us. That is to say, like kids who recognize their parents are the ones who take care of whatever they need, or perhaps more directly, want, and like kids learn the power of the pleading “please” early on, we are quick to come before God in prayer asking for something, but we forget to return to God and show our gratitude for all that he has done for us—particularly at times when our prayers are answered, either in ways that we like or in ways that, although we might not have foreseen the better outcome, are more aligned with God’s will. Yet saying “thank you” to God is just as much part of a decent discipled life as appealing to God. A prayer of thanksgiving is just as important as a prayer of beseeching—perhaps even more important. Thanksgiving prayers can be transformative—so transformative that our lives become “a living sacrifice,” as Paul writes to the Romans, “holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship.” Such prayers can be so transformative that instead of moments of thanksgiving, they become lifetimes of thanksliving.
But what does a disciple’s life marked by thanksliving look like? Well, the word “thank” itself already belies what this means. Let’s look at each of the letters, THANK.
Thanksliving is marked first by trust in grace. Grace is something given to us, bestowed upon us, something from outside ourselves. Thanksliving recognizes that we need others, that we aren’t wholly independent, no matter how much we might like the idea that we are self-sufficient. Grace is both earthly and divine. We need each other’s grace, and we need God’s grace. Thanksliving recognizes that we need grace.
Thanksliving is marked second by humility of heart. Instead of placing ourselves at the center of our world, when we humble ourselves, we put the needs, and sometimes the desires, of others before our own. And this doesn’t have to be just other people. This is also humility that recognizes that we are part of a much wider, far grander creation than simply the world of humanity. The birds of the air, the trees of the forest, the fish of the sea, animals, domesticated and wild, natural resources like water, air, and soil—all of these and more are held together with us in God’s harmonious design for creation. Our humility of heart understands our role in the grand scheme of things isn’t to dominate the world, but to care for it, steward it as a reflection of God’s image. It’s humility of the heart because such humility is motivated out of love—the reflection of God’s own love for us. Thanksliving recognizes the need for humility of heart.
Thanksliving is marked third by abundant blessings. “The eyes of all look to you, O Lord,” King David sings in the psalms, “and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.” Generous beyond imagination, God lavishes favor on all creatures. Everything and everyone who is in sync with God—their eyes are on God, expectant, and whenever it is right, God provides. All that we have, all that we could ever be, all things come from God’s providence. Whether we have a lot or we have a little, no matter our station in life, whatever we have comes from God—and all that we have is a blessing from God. Thanksliving recognizes our abundant blessings.
Thanksliving is marked fourth by nurturing kindness. Jesus, God’s greatest blessing to us, tells us on the night in which he was betrayed, that the world will know we are his disciples by our love. Love is the expression of selflessness—the very opposite of our in-born evil lust and inclination, our proclivity and predisposition to care about yourself before anything else. Love is the expression of God’s image within us come out into for the world to see, to witness, and ultimately to believe. Love manifested most simply is kindness. Love manifested in kindness is friendliness toward others, those we know and those we don’t. Love manifested in kindness is generosity, even when it’s sacrificial, or giving til it’s uncomfortable. Love manifested in kindness is compassion, the capacity to put yourself in someone else’s place and understand things from their perspective instead of your own. Thanksliving recognizes the need for nurturing kindness.
Thanksliving is marked fifth and finally, perhaps most importantly, by keep trying. “We confess that we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.” This is most certainly true, but we also believe, as he proclaimed to Moses, that God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love and forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. We don’t despair because we lapse or fail, but we rejoice that God is gracious, returning us to the very beginning, and reminding us that we are wholly, completely, and utterly reliant on his grace to lead decent lives as Jesus’ disciples. And in some ways, our limitedness, our inability to perfectly live without failing, our very nature is likewise a source of grace and blessing, not that it proceeds from God, but that God uses it to bring us into deeper relationship with him. For as he once said to Paul, he says to us as well—“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” The Holy Spirit is daily with us, conforming us to the mind of Jesus, and working within us that which is pleasing in God’s sight. And when we fail, she goes doesn’t give up, abandon us, forsake us to our facility or faculty, but goads us forward, urging us on, impelling us not to give up, but to trust in God’s abundant mercy, grace, and love, and to persevere. Thanksliving recognizes the need to keep trying.
And so it is that life as a disciple of Jesus is a life of thanksliving, a life marked by trust in grace, humility of heart, abundant blessings, nurturing kindness, and keep trying. We can and do live lives of thanksliving because the Holy Spirit calls us by love that knows no bounds, feeds us with the word of God’s truth, and sends us forth and drives us onward to care for all, everything and anyone God places in our own little part of the world. There is no better way as disciples of Jesus, no more halfway decent way as children of God, created in his image, to express our gratitude, to offer our thanksgiving to him for all he has done, than to dedicate ourselves to thanksliving.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev'd Daniel W. Spigelmyer, Jr. 