In everything give thanks

I write today on the anniversary of my father’s sudden death, when I was just 21 years old.

I write amidst a declared ‘State of Emergency’, as the virus Cvid-19 wreaks havoc around the world.

I write conscious that I am so much more fortunate than millions of others in the world, and yet I write with deep sadness, confusion and anxiety.

I also write with profound gratitude and take as my theme a biblical text from the First Letter to the Thessalonians: ‘In everything give thanks’ (Chapter 5. V.18). It is preceded with similarly blunt urgings: Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing.

If ever there was a biblical text that invites confusion if not derision it is surely this one. How can anyone rejoice always, or pray constantly, and how can one give thanks in all circumstances—such as right now?

I have found myself thinking of this strange idea during these weeks and months of pandemic lock-down. In particular, I came to this as I have reflected on why we find it so hard to accept the acute limitations imposed by our current situation.

This is not to give any credence whatsoever to those who claim their ‘civil rights’ to shop whenever they wish, to refuse to wear a mask or to distance themselves from others when outdoors. I am simply reflecting on the sense we all have that this has already been too long. In some places it is more acute than others and for some of us the crisis has gone on for longer than others, but for us all the sense of a cloud hanging over us is there, all the time.

What can it mean to be grateful in this situation?

I turned to a sermon preached on this text and theme by one of my favourite theologians, Paul Tillich. I have gained so much from it over many years. It’s published in a volume of sermons called The Eternal Now.

Tillich began by noting that we are constantly expressing thanks, in the sense of everyday good manners. Generally we know whom to thank and so our gratitude is directed to that person or group. We may even be specific about what we thank them for and why.

How different is this idea: in everything give thanks. And while you are at it, rejoice always, and pray without ceasing.

Tillich observes first of all that this is not saying we should never feel sorrow, for example. To pretend so he suggests would be a perversion of religion. God is not impressed by such charades.

What then does it mean? He says it means we are asked ‘to rise to God always and in all things’. This is first of all an assertion about God, who is ‘creatively present in everyone in every moment whether we are aware of it or not.’

What this means is an invitation to know just that. It is illustrated by the idea of ‘praying without ceasing’. Tillich quotes a person who was asked if he prayed and answered, ‘’always and never’. That person was aware of the divine presence but only occasionally used words of prayer and thanks to express that awareness.

I think this is an immensely important insight, with which I identify and Tillich did as well. At the end of this sermon he offers a prayer, in which he refers to weeks and months when ‘we were not able to speak to Thee’. But it is not about words!

Such honesty is critical to this giving thanks: it is not a pretence or an escape into religiosity. We are set free from this, Tillich says, free for a genuine awareness of God’s presence in the world around us. There are ‘no limits to giving thanks in the whole creation’—except, of course, the reality of our own experience, ‘frustrations, accidents, and diseases’. In the moment, the time and experience of these things, when these things take hold of us, we cannot give thanks and should not pretend. To do so is a form of piety that degenerates into dishonesty. To tell the truth, we are often angry about these things, including towards God!

What, then, can it possibly mean to ‘give thanks’ in every circumstance? Tillich has much more to say in clearing the way of false attitudes than he offers as a positive justification of the idea. That may seem a failing, except that he draws our attention to one ‘consolation’ which outweighs all else:

‘we are not separated from the ever active presence of God, and we can become aware of it in every moment’.

That is what it might mean to pray and give thanks, even rejoice, constantly—not with words, not always consciously even. But to be available for that awareness, open to it, allowing that it may come to us, in spite of all.

We do not and cannot evoke the presence of God. That would be a sacrilege. We can only remove our conscious road-blocks, habits of mind and will, that close ourselves to it. This is a matter of theological and spiritual stance: to be open to the ‘rumour of angels’, the possibility of God present with us. We can do no more—but we can do that.

As I have reflected on this theme and this time, I have come to realise some of the habits of mind that cause us such angst in this deeply frustrating time.

• We are impatient for the future. We live with the presumption of a future. It is striking how people in many poorer countries are so much more patient. Spend just a little while in an African airport and you will see how impatient we are and the local people are not. We presume upon a future.
• We assume there is a cure or solution for everything. We therefore imagine that we are in control of the world, of life, the universe. It is all about us.

Only when we accept that this is not so, that there is no cure for many things, and in fact life is very precarious, do we begin to give thanks. We could die today. We might not live through this crisis. We have already lived to enjoy so much of the world, of life and its many wonders. Yet it is never enough. We must have more.

Now it is time to accept that it is all gift. We did not ask to be born. We do not deserve to live any more than anyone else. I am deeply grateful for the gift of life and (today) one year more of it than my father lived. But so much more!

I give thanks for the love, the struggles, the achievements, the trauma, the excitements and the fears: for in it all, I am alive, for this long and however much more there is. I give thanks and hope to live as one who is grateful. To give thanks, in everything, is to cease grasping, demanding, struggling to possess it all. It might even mean sharing some things, enabling others rather than myself, celebrating their growth and insight. Even more than I can imagine—the presence and gift of life, everywhere—all is gift.

In everything, let us learn to give thanks.