Today’s author is Prince of Peace’s Intentional Interim, Pr. Steve Sylvester.
Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer. [I Timothy 4:4-5]
Our first summer worship series is a focus on prayer using the acronym ACTS (prayers of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication). The prayer focus of our third week is Thanksgiving. Prayers of thanksgiving typically come when an ice cream cone has landed in our hand: “Wow, God! Rocky Road! And two scoops!” We get what we need or want and a Father Weejus prayer comes gushing out: “Father, we just want to thank you…” Or, conversely, we get the equivalent of the paper bag on fire on the front porch, but we smile and give thanks anyway because, you know, that’s what we’re supposed to do.
Thankfully our Lutheran theology doesn’t gild the lily, but “calls a thing what it is.” And that means we don’t stand on our heads to pretend everything is not just hunky dory, but fabulous! In the above two verses from 1 Timothy, the author does not ask that we naively look on the bright side, like the characters in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” who are whistling their way through crucifixion. That is why the author of the letter says not that “everything is good,” but rather that “everything created by God is good.” This is a fallen world, and there are things in our lives that God does not intend, that God actually opposes.
Prayers of thanksgiving are certainly about our gratitude for the good things we receive, but at a deeper level they are grounded in the goodness of the one doing the giving. When we give thanks for God’s goodness, we lay claim to God’s presence and care in a world that gives us things we would not choose, things that cause suffering and pain. We give thanks that God can wring goodness even from things that are not in themselves good.
When I consider God’s way of working in the world, I often think of the aftermath of the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus tells the disciples to “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” This is how God works in the world. The fish and bread of the feast are unadulterated goodness, but then goodness is wrung out of the leavings, the fragments, even the hurts and pains. This way of working we do indeed receive with prayers of thanksgiving.