Grace Descending; Gratitude Ascending" (part 3)

"Grace Descending; Gratitude Ascending"  (part 3)
1 Thessalonians 5:18 (KJV)


"In everything give thanks…"

Four words.  In.  Everything.  Give.  Thanks.  Let's look at them individually in order.

First, "In…"  Other words and phrases we could use instead of "in" might be, "during",  "while in the midst of…",  "immersed in".  The point is, that we are giving thanks while something is happening.  We aren't giving thanks while in some sort of life bubble or experience vacuum.  That's not possible.  And we aren't giving thanks after everything is over and we are looking back and saying, "Thank God that's over!"  Although that would be legitimate.

That's why "in" is so important.  We have to determine, in what?  In life, whether we be in panic mode, in procrastination mode, in multi-tasking mode.  We are in the middle of some kind of experience, good, bad, or ugly.  Because we're in the middle of it, we don't know how it will turn out.  Our circumstance could go this way or that.  Our circumstance could present us with an infinite number of life options.  That may be part of the panic.  We aren't in control.  We feel like the situation is taking us for a ride rather than us being at the steering wheel, which is the position we'd like to be in.

When we are in control, we are less willing to see, and therefore take a look at more options.  So while we are "in" some circumstance in which we aren't in control we may be open to other possibilities that we might otherwise not entertain.

Not only that, but while we are "in" some circumstance we may be more willing to rely on another.  That other may be God.  Or a fellow Christian.  Most of us would probably say we rely on God most of the time.  But there are times we really lean on God, when we are "in" some kind of circumstance we'd rather not be in.

When you think about it, we are always "in" some situation or another.  Usually many situations at once.  Life is a "being in" experience.  Think about the opposite.  What is a "not in" kind of life?  Uninvolved.  Unconnected, with no relationships.  Ungiving.  Ultimately, being "not in" life is a death spiral kind of living.

In.  Another way I like to look at "in" is adventure.  The disciples would be a good example here.  If you are reading along the 5 x 5 x 5 Bible reading plan, we just finished up the gospel of John not too long ago.  At the start of the gospel, (as it is at the start of each of the gospels) Jesus calls the disciples.  Before Jesus, their lives followed a daily routine: get up in the wee hours of the morning, climb in their boat with their brother or father, row out on Lake Galilee, cast the nets, pull them back in, pull any fish you caught out of the net, cast the nets again, pull them back in, hour after hour, row back to shore, sort the fish, salt the fish, carry some to market, mend the nets, go to bed, start it all over again the next day.

That is, until Jesus came and offered them to be part of an adventure.  To join him not in a life of ruts, but a life of adventures, one after the other.  Something new each day.  It may be a life changing conversation with someone.  Or it may be a healing.  Or it might be teaching others about God's ways, and seeing the lights go on in their faces.  You are helping them get it!

That's the kind of "in" that many of you are living.  In an adventure.  Living an adventure with God.  You are "in" life, not "out of life", out of synch with God and God's ways.

The next word is "everything."  Everything.  This may be the hardest word in the phrase, because when Paul says "everything," he means, everything.  The good and the bad.  The beautiful and the horrifying.  When we hear the word "everything", that's where we usually go—to the horrible side of everything.

We put all our experiences on a continuum.  On the far side are the experiences that fill us with ecstasy and wonder, amazement and total goodness.  On the other end of the spectrum is the gut-punching, life-sucking, endless emotional pain, kinds of experiences.  That's the end we think of first, because it is so difficult to marry gratitude with grief.

When I lived up in Nebraska, I went through a 12 week class called, "Grief Recovery."  I took the class for a couple of reasons.  One was, I wanted to lead such a group myself in the church I was at, so I wanted to see how this one was run.  And I took the class to work through, in a group setting, some of my own long held on to grief that I needed to find a way to let go of.  It met once a week for the 12 weeks.  There were about 50 people in the class.  I wasn't prepared for what happened.

For the first few weeks, at the opening, we all had to sit in a circle in a big room, and at the start, speak out loud why we were there.  We had to introduce ourselves with our name and then say what our loss was.  It wasn't so hard for me to speak my loss, but to hear everyone else's.  It was overwhelming.

Parents whose teenagers were friends killed in an auto accident on graduation night.  One man's daughter was raped and murdered.  There were at least two families whose family member had taken their own lives.  One man's adult daughter died of AIDS, that she had gotten from her husband because he was cheating on her.  One young woman's husband, a few days after they were married, was killed in an auto accident.  And on and on it went around this circle of 50 people.

The collective grief filled the room with tears until the level was up to the ceiling and I thought I might drown in that liquid grief.  When I think back to that class, and then try to speak out loud these words of Paul, "In everything give thanks," it's like my mouth and throat can't do it.

But I know the Paul, who wrote these words, didn't just put them out there as some kind of Joel Osteen platitude.  Paul had been beaten several times to within an inch of his life, had been stoned nearly to death, imprisoned several times, shipwrecked, all simply for preaching the gospel.  And at the end of his life he realized he was going to be beheaded.  If someone like that can write, "In everything give thanks," then I can certainly listen.

Remember, I just said our life experiences are on an everything continuum, which means there are some really great things that happen to us.  That "everything" means "everything"—which means all the great stuff too, as well as everything in between.  And even then, in response to the great things on the everything spectrum, we aren't very good about saying thanks.

It's like the story of the 10 people who were healed by Jesus of their leprosy and only one returned to Jesus to say "Thank you."  Think how the lives of the other 9 had been changed for the better!  What an amazing thing to be released from that death sentence of an awful disease where body parts rotted and fell off.  Now they were whole and cured and able to see their family and friends.  They got their lives back.  That was an opposite end of the spectrum experience from the bad stuff that can happen to a person, and still they were thankless.  So on either end of the everything experience spectrum, we aren't very good at being grateful people.

In everything.

In everything GIVE…  Not receive; give.  Throughout the history of the Dear Abby column in the newspaper, one of the main themes of the letters she'd receive, was about this very issue.  Somebody did something for someone else (gave them a gift, did a good deed) but no thanks was given back.  The person writing in to Abby ended up being resentful and angry.  How dare someone not give thanks!  To us!  It's a sign of our ever deepening narcissism that we are more concerned about getting thanks, than giving thanks.  We would rather put someone in our debt, than being indebted to someone else.

It's part of what's wrong with our relationship with God.  To "give" thanks means you are giving thanks to some one else.  You have been given to, and so you are responding to the giver with thanks.  So, in order to give thanks, you have to acknowledge that you've been given something, by someone.

That is the understood, but invisible object of Paul's statement:  In everything give thanks.  But to whom?  To whom do we give thanks?  For Paul, of course, the answer is God.  In everything give thanks (to God).  If we are to give thanks to God in everything, that means everything is a gift from God.  All that we have, all that we experience, all that we are, is a gift from God, deserving our thanks.  So give God what is his due, for everything that comes our way.  Don't wait to read God's letter to Dear Abby, before you give God that gratitude.

Lastly, is the word, thanks.  In everything give thanks.  Now this will be the hardest part.  I've already said, at the start of the message that giving thanks for the most awful experiences seems nigh impossible.  But what I want to try and explain now is going to seem really counter intuitive, and equally impossible.  So you're going to have to listen well to this part.

Remember the continuum of great things on one end and really awful experiences on the other?  What we all hope will happen with our lives is that we will end up with more good experiences on that end of the continuum than bad things on the other end.  We think life is about collecting more thankful memories than grief-filled, resentful memories.  If life doesn't end up that way, we are sure we will not come to the end of our lives with much of a thankful heart.  No one wants to end up feeling that way.

Now comes the hard part.  Gratitude in everything is a way to reclaim your past.  It doesn't make sense, does it?  But what if gratitude is a way to redefine your past, including rejections, abandonment, loss, and failures?  Can we be grateful to God in everything, and through that thankfulness, celebrate how we gained a heart for deeper love, stronger hope, and broader faith?  Can we trust, and therefore thank, God no matter what?

When our gratitude for the past is only partial, or we are grateful for only part of our past, our hope for a new future can never be full.  If we are not grateful for everything, then we will miss how God can make even the worst of our experiences into something good.

Another way to look at being a totally converted person—as I believe Paul was— is to gather up all of your past, and to express your gratitude to God for it all.  It is seeing how God has taken all of your experiences and by God's hand, transformed them all into ways that makes you grateful.  Everything becomes wrapped up into an expression of God's grace, and thereby something for which we may express our gratitude to God.

In everything give thanks.