Sermon Title: "Giving Thanks When Times Are Tough"
Date: November 23, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  1 Thessalonians 5:12-24

It was, to misquote Charles Dickens, not the best of times; it was the worst of times.  Early in the seventeenth century, Martin Rinkart (1586-1649), a newly ordained Lutheran minister, was assigned to serve the congregation in his hometown of Eilenberg, Germany.  A haven for refugees fleeing the violence of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), Eilenberg quickly became overcrowded and undersupplied with food, sanitary supplies, and medical care.  Before long, the walled city became a city of death.  Plagues and pestilence raced through the streets.  Other ministers and priests died or fled, leaving Rinkart to tend to his ever-dwindling and increasingly needy parishioners.  Faced with staggering losses, including members of his own family, there were months when the weary pastor conducted up to forty-five funerals . . . a day!  He buried more than 4,000 persons in all.

Disaster within the city was not his only concern.  Warring armies periodically stormed into Eilenberg demanding tribute and further depleting the city’s meager resources.  On one occasion, facing certain death because they could not meet the demands of an angry general, the desperate citizens gathered in the town square.  Under Pastor Rinkart’s direction, they knelt on the paving stones as he prayed aloud before their enemy:  “Come, my children, we can find no hearing, no mercy with man; let us take refuge with God.”  Then they sang a hymn.  Stunned by such courage and faith, the general withdrew, sparing the city.

Yet shortages of food and water continued to challenge Eilenberg’s citizens.  Still, Rinkart would not surrender to despair.  Bereft of almost every earthly resource, scarcely finding food and clothing for his own children, and having mortgaged his future income, this faithful pastor called upon his wealth of creativity and hope to compose over sixty hymns.  He tried to turn the eyes of his people from their own poverty to the power and love of God.  He encouraged them to see that their circumstances were temporary, while God’s blessings were eternal, transcending earth’s difficulties.

Perhaps his most famous and enduring hymn is our closing hymn today, Now Thank We All Our God.  Transcending three-and-a-half centuries, it declares that God has accomplished wondrous things, blessing each of us with countless gifts of love.  We have sung this hymn 35 times during my pastorate here, and I never sing it but what I admire and respect Pastor Martin Rinkart’s great faithfulness in the midst of the entire Thirty Years War during which he served his parish, and his God.

How easy it is for us to give thanks when life is going smoothly, when we experience answers to our prayers, and when our days are filled with sunshine.  The more difficult task is to express gratitude when we’re facing opposition, when God appears to be silent or absent, or storm clouds darken our skies.  How do we give thanks when times are tough?

In what is believed to be the earliest remaining writing of the Apostle Paul, just twenty years after Christ’s resurrection as the fledgling Christian church was beginning to spread, he wrote these words to the church at Thessalonica:  “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (5:16-18)  It mirrors the same devotion Martin Rinkart demonstrated in the midst of great adversity some sixteen hundred years later, at the same time our Pilgrim forebears were establishing a colony in this New Land. 

Did Paul really mean every circumstance?  For all things?  Most of us would want to adjust Paul’s words, to qualify his exhortation.  Perhaps we wish Paul to say “in some circumstances” or “in some things.”  Surely he didn’t mean homelessness, or abuse, or cancer, or a tragic death. 

Paul certainly does not qualify the circumstances.  He means “all.”  But underlying his command to the Thessalonians are at least two basic truths.  Because of them, it is possible to give thanks in everything.  The first truth is that worship of God is the context for all of life, not just the 75 minutes we devote to God each week here in the sanctuary.  If all of life is worship to those who seek to do God’s will, then thanks is a necessary and inevitable product.  Whether our life is going good or bad, a life of worship—seeking to please and honor God and doing God’s will—will mean perpetual thanksgiving.

The second truth Paul presupposes is that life’s depths, not just its surfaces, must arrest our attention.  Most of us judge our lives by the visible, surface, even superficial good things or bad things that happen to us.  Paul’s challenge is to move to a depth in which there are weightier truths that make it possible for us to give perpetual thanks.  We must realize that the reason we are here, to acknowledge Christ’s death and to celebrate his resurrection, have secured our salvation.  No matter what happens to us, the love of God in Christ will save us.

You say your investments have plummeted this fall, and you have no proof they’ll ever recover?  Be thankful you are in a position to have a portfolio, investments, a retirement package.  Recognize that many worked a lifetime without one, or don’t even have a job today.

You didn’t get into your number one college choice, the one you had all your hopes pinned on?  Many 2009 freshmen in California will be saying that this year.  Be thankful you were accepted to your second or third choice.  I know it sounds nice and feels good to say you’re from Harvard, or Stanford, or Cal Berkeley, or USC.  But many of us here received excellent educations during our first two years at our state’s and nation’s fine community colleges.  After your first job, it is your experience your next employer pays the most attention to, not your alma mater.

You say grocery costs are soaring?  At least we’re in the store shopping.  All of our Thanksgiving tables will have leftovers.  Yet the shelves of local food pantries are bare.  In today’s newspaper, Arlene Mercer at Food Finders says their phone is ringing off the hook.  Grocery chains are selling their overstocks to Big Lots and the 99 Cents store instead of donating them to pantries.  And people of means are not donating either.

You feel terribly alone this year?  Perhaps a person you dearly loved has died?  You don’t think you’ll ever recover from it?  I would never attempt to minimize your loss.  But be thankful for the years—however brief or lengthy—that you were able to share together.  Be thankful for the family and friends who came to your side and supported you through that heart-wrenching time.  And be thankful for our Christian faith that gives us hope and comfort, even in the midst of sorrow and death.

Last Sunday’s Stillspeaking Devotional some of us receive online was written by the Rev. Kenneth L. Samuel, pastor of Victory of the World United Church of Christ in Georgia.  I saved it all week, because it seemed to summarize the message I knew I would want to share with you on this Thanksgiving Sunday:

“Looking at life from a downcast perspective can only affirm the doubt, depression and despair that threaten to envelop each of us as we muddle through our valleys of difficulty and hardship.  We often forget that real changes in life do not begin with conditions but with consciousness.  Breakthroughs in life have a lot to do with the direction of our devotions.  And the direction of our devotions has a lot to do with the lifting of our heads and the focus our eyes.  How is it that some of us can actually see opportunity in adversity?  How is it that some of us actually experience peace in the midst of storms?  How is it that some of us remain positively hopeful even in the contexts of extreme volatility?  It is because despite all the trials of life, we keep our heads to the sky, and our eyes focused on the Lord.”

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”  Paul wrote it.  Martin Rinkart and the Pilgrims lived it.  And so too, my friends, I pray that you might find the courage, the faith and the devotion to give thanks, even in the midst of tough times.