Rejoice Always!

 

God’s grace, peace and mercy be with you. My sermon is entitled Paul, Pink and Prayer, and my focus is 1^st 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.’” 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, Simone, 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. My niece is now 25, and cassettes are no longer to be found, but the validity of my point remains.

And so, at my niece’s expense, 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 1^st 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.

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.

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 Steelers in orange and brown.

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.”

Luther confessed praying was more difficult than preaching. He offered advice on where to pray, how to deal with distraction, how to overcome the temptation to skip prayer, 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?’” To such people, Luther said, “We have God’s promise that He will hear us.”

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.”

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. When I surrender unconditionally to God and his incomprehensibility – which I can do only in faith, hope and love – all my petitions are answered. 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? 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.”?

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. 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.”

Of course, Armstrong was speaking of love. Love comes in every color 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.