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The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
November 17, 2002

Reorienting Your Life
1 Thessalonians 5

This morning, I want to finish our five-weeks with First Letter to the Thessalonians. For the past four weeks we have taken a chapter-by-chapter look at this often neglected letter. We have taken the time to examine First Thessalonians closely, because this little letter from the year 51 offers our earliest glimpse at what it means to be a Christian. 

We have already seen the early Christians judged whether they were living well by their faith, love, and hope. Then we learned that Christianity at this time was a persecuted sect within Judaism driven by God to spread the good news to others. Next we found that the earliest Christians held out the seemingly impossible standard of becoming blameless, perfect. Last week we explored how God has not forgotten those we love who have died. In closing out this lengthy look at a short book of the Bible, we find a concise statement of how we are to reorient our lives toward God. 

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy conclude their letter saying we are to Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God.  

Rejoice always, but I am not always happy.
Pray without ceasing, but I’ve got other things to do, be realistic.
Give thanks in all circumstances, but there are a lot of things that I don’t feel particularly thankful for.  

I’ll look at that last item first. That’s a little easier. I’ve said thank you about a gazillion times in my life.  But more than just saying thank you, I also am thankful for things for which I never say thank you out loud. I am thankful when I get out on I-95 and there isn’t much traffic. I’m thankful when I go to the mall and find a parking space near the building. I am thankful when someone pays me a compliment.  

I’m also thankful at times that I am a little ashamed to talk about. For instance, I am thankful when I see a wreck on the highway that it isn’t me, or my family or my friends in the wrecked car. I think the same thing when a plane crashes or a terrorist bomb goes off.  

In 1990, Victoria and I were living in Alexandria, Virginia. I was working as an art director for a trade association magazine. I found a lot to be thankful about while I worked there. Victoria got pregnant and I was very thankful for the baby growing inside her. During the pregnancy, I was thankful when the alcoholic Executive Director of the company was finally removed from his job. He had embezzled money, they just could not ever pin down how much.  

Then the downsizing came in the wake of revelations that our trade association was on the verge of going under. I was one of 40 employees when I was hired. But while Victoria was pregnant with Griffin the company downsized to 21. It doesn’t sound like a big change, but losing just shy of half of your co-workers in a matter of months wears you down. The downsizing did not happen all at once, but week by week. Each week the boss would come in on Friday wearing his red tie. You never knew who was going next, you just knew it was someone’s day and prayed it wasn’t yours. Before the end of the day, I would be thankful once again that it was just a good friend who was fired this time and not me. I found nothing at work to rejoice about, but it did get me praying more frequently. 

Week after week more co-workers were fired. Week after week, I was thankful that I didn’t have to head out into the job hunt with a baby on the way. I did survive the firings and was there for the turnaround as the company began to improve.  

I was very thankful, but that’s not giving thanks in all circumstances. I was not rejoicing always or praying without ceasing either. Rejoicing always and giving thanks in all circumstances means giving thanks when you are the one in the wreck or your husband or wife is the one with cancer. Giving thanks in all circumstances means giving thanks even when you or your spouse are the one out of work due to the Durango closing and you don’t know what is going to happen to you yet. 

It makes you wonder if the person who wrote that we should be thankful in all circumstances ever went through the kind of tough times that you and I face. We know that a first century Palestinian never had to worry about car accidents or corporate layoffs.  

Paul was the man who wrote the letter to the Thessalonians, together with his church planting companions Silvanus and Timothy. Paul was familiar with all kinds of adverse circumstances. Paul came to start the church in Thessalonica because he had been run out of town in Philippi and now he is writing the Christians there from Athens because he was chased out of Thessalonica. During his ministry, Paul was jailed, beaten and left for dead more than once, and finally put to death for his beliefs. Yet, Paul was thankful in all of these circumstances.  

Paul often wrote of his thankfulness even when he was being persecuted. But Paul did not give thanks for the persecution. Paul gave thanks in his persecution. Paul would not blame God for the things that happened to him. Instead he saw the ways God could and did use these bad circumstances to make good things happen. Sure, I’m in jail, Paul would write, but now I have the best opportunity ever to share the Good News of Jesus with the Roman soldiers chained to me in shifts around the clock. 

Paul says to give thanks not for all things but in all things. The thankfulness of a believer does not depend upon the circumstances. The thankfulness of a believer goes beyond the current circumstances. Paul could be thankful in all circumstances because he had one thing that he was so thankful for that it overrode all of the circumstances in which he found himself. Do you buy that? Is it possible for you to give thanks in all circumstances?  

There is no denying that all of our lives are chaotic. My own life seems to spin out of control at times. I have certainly felt beyond God’s reach many times. I wonder if God notices me and my troubles or if God even cares. But God has already shown us how much he cares for us. God has already revealed through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection that no pain or hurt is beyond God’s care.  

The logo cross for King of Peace was designed to illustrate this very principle. There is a logo on the front of your bulletin. The swirls in the cross represent the very real chaos in the world, even in our own lives. If you were as small as a period at the end of a sentence in the bulletin and you were placed in the center of that cross, you would swear that everything was out of control. But looking at it from a distance, you see that none of that chaos extends beyond the outline of the cross.  

The design looks like that to show what I have found written in the Bible and proved through my own experience and the experience of others. No matter how bad it gets; your life will not get beyond God. In all situations and circumstances you are not too far gone for God. You are always in God’s easy reach. That is always cause for rejoicing and something for which you can be thankful. This is a thankfulness that goes beyond the circumstances. With this understanding of the love of God, it is possible to withstand the chaos that surrounds us.  

To be able to rejoice always, pray without ceasing and give thanks to God in all circumstances requires reorienting your life. From my days as a Boy Scout and backpacker, I know a thing or two about a map and compass. That’s where I learned orienteering, the skill of going from place to place with map and compass. The key to any map is not just to know how to read it, but to also know how to orient it to the objects you see on the ground. For example, while standing on a mountaintop, a map will not help you identify the other mountains you see unless the map is lined up properly.  

What you do to orient the map is to find north using a compass. Then you move the map around until it is oriented so that north on the map matches north on a compass. Then objects north of your location on the map will be north of you in the real world too. After orienting the map, you can find your way. 

Similarly, rejoicing always, praying without ceasing and giving thanks in all circumstances are impossible unless you reorient your life. If God is facing some other direction, then you have to orient your life toward God. Are you trying to move further away from God, wishing you could put this whole God thing out of your life? Then God is behind you. Are you aware of God, but God is just one thing among many in your life? Then God is off to the side for you.  

If you want to find a deeper peace and sense of wholeness that does not depend upon the circumstances, then you have to reorient your life to put God front and center. Make your relationship with Jesus the thing you are aiming, the target for your life and you will be oriented toward God. That’s when you’ll be able to rejoice always. You’ll be praying without ceasing because you’ll be living your life with the knowledge that everything you do or say is lived before God as a prayer. Giving thanks in all circumstances comes naturally in a life lived before God because God will always be able to show you the good that comes through even bad circumstances. 

That reorientation of life is the goal. To be honest, I’m not there yet. Every once in a while, I get it right and I can preach this sermon as true because I have experienced this very reorientation I am describing. But to be honest, I find myself resetting my own internal compass to pursue other things before God. I find myself in a constant struggle to keep God first. I need reorientation on a regular basis. 

The very first Christians deeply and profoundly understood being thankful for God’s love and they knew we all needed regular chances to reorient our lives toward that love. The first Christians knew that the problems they faced were nothing compared to the love of God and they developed a particular way of sharing and renewing their thanks.  

These Christians celebrated Jesus’ last meal with his disciples each time they gathered. They called the celebration the Eucharist, which was the Greek word for Thanksgiving. To this day Eucharist is sometimes called the Great Thanksgiving, for in communion, in Eucharist, we give thanks for Jesus life, death, and resurrection. Believers gather together to recall the old, old story and to renew that story in their lives. And then the same actions are repeated. The minister takes the bread and wine, blesses them, breaks the bread and then gives it to us.  

We don’t just remember the story. We join the story. We enter into the very narrative as we too take the bread into our hands and eat it. We take the wine and drink. This great thanksgiving can be part of how a believer can rejoice always, pray without ceasing and give thanks in all circumstances. Because rejoicing, praying and giving thanks is not just something to do. These are character traits which flow out of who we are.  

Renewing the old, old story is a way to reorient your life by remembering who you are and perhaps more importantly whose you are. Come to the communion service and remember that you are God’s beloved child and you have a unique place in God’s love story for creation. God loves you and nothing in your life is beyond God’s love. Then you can come forward to partake of the bread and wine, retake your own place in the story and rejoice.  

Amen.