God’s grace, peace and mercy be with
you. My focus is 1st Thessalonians where we read: “Rejoice
always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.”
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the
psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the
Lord.’”[i]
Now that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we
listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply
as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
“Again!”
exclaimed my niece from the backseat of my brother’s white Volvo station wagon.
Having heard, “again,” followed by a
rewind of the cassette in order to play again, “The Wheels of the Bus,” my brother ingeniously created a special
cassette with a continual loop of Simone’s favorite songs.
As a teen, Simone watched “Pirates of the Caribbean” until she
memorized the entire dialogue. At my niece’s expense (by the way, she is now
20), we again revisit what we
heard only last month – Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. And since the
fruit falls not far from the tree, we again revisit three P’s: Paul’s passage, the
Advent wreath’s Pink candle and Prayer.
Paul’s passage was an exhortation that
appealed to the Thessalonians’ deep emotions. His last words dealt with their relationship
with God, lifting them from this world’s mundane matters to focus on their
conflict with supernatural powers. Paul knew if Thessalonian Christians were to
persevere despite pressure and persecution, they had to pray to God.
Paul encouraged prayer and prophecy,
which are interrelated. He saw prayer as God’s will and prophecy as God’s
answer to prayer. Paul opposed pagan oracles and soothsayers, but knew that prophecy
– or a word from God that comes through prayer – strengthened the Christian
community.
In verse 18, Paul instructed the
Thessalonians to give thanks in all
circumstances, but not necessarily for
all circumstances. Paul never instructed Christians to rejoice, pray
and give thanks for the evil that
confronts the church. That would have been akin to us giving thanks for
the smallest sin or a nuclear holocaust. Sin, as earlier chapters in Thessalonians
taught, is not God’s will.
However, if Christians in 1st
century Thessalonica gave thanks to God for salvation through Christ, He would
strengthen them to endure difficult circumstances.
A Simple first point: rejoice, pray, give
thanks. Our second point, the Advent wreath’s pink candle.
Gaudete!
Rejoice! Gaudete is Latin for rejoice
and refers to the importance of Christian joy in the midst of a penitential season,
the message of Paul’s letter. Like Lent, Advent is a penitential season.
The tradition of Advent candles originated
in Germany. A pink candle surrounded by 3 purplish ones symbolizes joy amidst
penance. Today, we light the pink candle based on our epistle.[ii]
We use different colors to teach and
symbolize various feasts and seasons, and to evoke emotions. For example, white
symbolizes light and purity. We use white during the seasons of Christmas and
Easter. Red expresses the fire of the Holy Spirit and the blood of the Passion
and martyrdom. We use red on Pentecost, Palm Sunday and Reformation Sunday. Green
is the symbolic color of hope and serenity. We use green on the Sundays after Epiphany
and Pentecost. Again, violet recalls penance. Black is the somber color used
for Good Friday and funerals, in some churches. Pink or rose, which has never
enjoyed frequent use, serves as a reminder, by using an unusual color, that we
are halfway through a penitential season.[iii]
Color effectively expresses the specific
character of the mysteries of our faith and gives a sense of the Christian's
passage through the course of the liturgical year. If that makes no sense,
imagine a white funeral suit, a black wedding gown or the Cardinals in black
and gold uni’s.
Lighting a pink candle during a
penitential season symbolizes Christian joy even when we do penance or suffer
persecution. We rejoice in the midst of penance or suffering because we know
that in spite of trouble or persecution, we prayerfully thank God for His gift of salvation. So, pink
reminds us to rejoice, pray and give thanks.
Our third point, prayer. There is a lot
to say about prayer. Martin Luther himself said much about it. In his Large Catechism, Luther wrote, “That we may know what and how to pray, our
Lord Christ himself taught us both the way and the words.”[iv]
Luther confessed praying was more
difficult than preaching. He offered advice on where to pray[v], how to deal with
distraction[vi], how to overcome the
temptation to skip prayer[vii], and how to deal with
feeling unworthy, which, he urged, we must overcome.
Luther reminded pastors to encourage
people to pray as Christ and the apostles prayed. He wrote, “It is our duty to pray because of God’s
command.” They are delusional who say, ‘Why should I pray? Who knows whether God
pays attention to my prayer?’”[viii] To such people, Luther
said, “We have God’s promise that He will
hear us.”[ix]
To quote Luther, “People who are experienced in spiritual matters have said that no
labor is comparable to the labor of praying. To pray is not to recite a number
of psalms or to roar in churches…but to have serious thoughts by which the soul
establishes a fellowship between him who prays and him who hears the prayer and
determines with certainty that although we are miserable sinners, God will be
gracious, mitigate the punishments, and answer our petitions.”[x]
God answers our petitions. … Now, my
friends, tell me the difference between what Martin Luther believed in his
heart and what you believe in yours? Does God answer every petition? Do I have
the confidence to tell my children and grandchildren that God answers
petitions? What do I mean when I say God answers petitions?
To say, “God answers my petitions,” means
I reflect deeply on my relationship with God. In Luther’s words, it is to have serious thoughts by which the
soul establishes a fellowship between him who prays and him who hears the prayer.
I must reflect deeply on my relationship with God. Is my relationship
authentic?
Are my petitions as authentic as those
in the Psalms? Read Psalm 5, 43 or 51. Is my spirit like Jesus’ when he taught
us to ask for daily bread? Read Matthew 6 and Luke 11.
When I surrender absolutely to God and
His will – as Jesus did – not only at the hour of my impending death but
throughout my life, I know God will provide my daily bread and every other worldly
need.[xi] When I surrender
unconditionally to God and his incomprehensibility – which I can do only in
faith, hope and love – all my petitions are answered.[xii] On the other hand, if my
prayer is not imbued with the spirit of Jesus’ words – Let your will be done, not mine – then it is not prayer at all, but
a projection of a vital need into a void, or an attempt to influence God to
execute senseless magic.
An authentic relationship with God does
not mean I am free of needs and anxieties. However, when I place myself before
God in prayer, for what do I ask?[xiii] Daily bread? Health?
Love? Success? Strength? Trust? Gratitude? Protection from evil and abuse?
Whatever the outcome of my prayer, do I
give thanks to God in the circumstances I find myself? If I am pressured and
persecuted for my faith, do I still thank God for the gift of salvation through
Christ? …
Given the rancor that touches family and
community, do I pray in the spirit of the Psalmist who begged God, “Create
in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”?[xiv]
I close with the back-story of a song
that has affected people’s lives because it touches on rejoicing, prayer and
thanksgiving.
In 1967, Bob Thiele and George Weiss
wrote a political song to calm our fears from the violence of the race riots
that spread across a hundred cities from Newark to Los Angeles. They wrote it
with one man in mind, and hoped his grandfatherly image would convey the song's
message. In 1968, the song made it to #116 on the US pop chart, selling 1,000
records, but reached #1 in the UK, making Louis Armstrong the oldest male to
top the UK Singles Chart, at sixty-six years and ten months old.[xv] The song? What a Wonderful World.
Armstrong's appeal transcended race, but
since the ‘50s, he was accused of subserviently providing entertainment for
white America. Naturally, Armstrong disagreed.
As he introduced a live performance of
the song, Satchmo stated, “Some of you
young folks been saying to me: ‘Hey, Pops - what do you mean, What a Wonderful World?
How about all them wars, …, you call them wonderful?’”
“But
how about listening to old Pops for a minute? Seems to me it ain't the world
that's so bad but what we're doing to it, and all I'm saying is: see what a
wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance.”[xvi]
Of course, Armstrong was speaking of
love. Love comes in every color of the rainbow and fills the heart of every
person created by God.
As we await the
coming of Christ, take time today to reflect upon the joy that pink and all the
colors of the rainbow evoke. Think about Paul’s passage: “Rejoice always, pray without
ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances;” and finally, petition God
to create in you a clean heart and a right spirit. When you do, again may the
peace of God that surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus. Amen.[xvii]
[i] Psalm 122
[ii]
LCMS Website – FAQs – Worship/ Congregational Life – Church Year
[iii] http://www.ewtn.com/library/Liturgy/ZLITUR61.HTM
[iv]
Book of Concord, Page 441
[v]
Ewald M. Plass, What Luther Says: A Practical In-Home Anthology for the Active
Christian. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House (1959), 1082
[vi]
1083
[vii]
1084
[viii]
1084
[ix]
1075.
[x]
1088
[xi]
Karl Rahner, The Practice of Faith: A Handbook of Contemporary Spirituality.
New York: Crossroad (1986), 88
[xii]
88
[xiii]
89
[xiv]
Psalm 51:10
[xv] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_Wonderful_World
[xvi] Smashed
Hits: How political is What A Wonderful World? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16118157
[xvii]
Philippians 4:7
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