Unceasing Prayer for Life

Ann Beaty
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

July 12, 2009

I Thessalonians 5:12-22

Our scripture today is part of the first letter Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica.  Paul planted this church on his second missionary journey about 50 years after the time of Jesus.  As was his custom, Paul immediately located the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews for three Sabbaths to teach about Jesus Christ. 

While some of them were persuaded, including a great number of devout Greeks and leading women, the unbelieving Jews became jealous and created an uproar in the city. Therefore, it became necessary to send Paul and his companions away secretly by night.    Despite such ominous beginnings, a strong church was established in Thessalonica.  It’s members were mostly Gentiles – meaning they were new to this way. His abrupt departure from Thessalonica so soon after beginning the church and his concern for their spiritual welfare left Paul anxious about the condition of the new disciples there. So, Paul sent Timothy back to Thessalonica to check on them, to support them in the faith, and to encourage them to hold fast as they continued to endure persecution.

Upon hearing Timothy’s report, Paul writes the letter to encourage, instruct, and equip them in their relationships with Christ and their growing community of faith. The part of the letter we are looking at today comes at the very end and it is packed full of final words of instruction and encouragement from Paul.  In addition to giving them some words about holding fast to the faith, being patient, and staying together in difficult times, he writes this:  “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

It seems to me these words take on particular significance when we know they were written to a group of early Christians who were going through a particularly difficult and trying time.  They were “young” in this new church; their leader of less than one month has abruptly left them in the dark of the night; and they are experiencing persecution from those around them who are threatened by this new way of discipleship. And now Paul is telling them that THIS is the will of God for them:  to “rejoice always – pray without ceasing – and give thanks in all circumstances”.  This would have been a lot for them to take in. So, the question comes up for me…What did Paul mean when he encouraged them to “pray without ceasing”?  Does he mean that they are to do nothing but kneel in prayer in the synagogue in every moment of every day and continually pray? I suspect not – that was not realistic for them and it isn’t realistic for us.  Maybe Paul is talking about “knowing” God more intimately by developing an “attitude of prayer” through all of their living so that they will be sustained in relationship with God in all of their hopes and fears.

In the English language we use one verb “to know” to mean many things.  It can mean everything from the casual relationship we have with the neighbor we “know” from the homeowners association to the deep, intimate “knowing” a mother has for her child.  Whereas in German, for example, there are 2 words to describe these different relationships:  “visen” is the word that is used when one is describing facts they know – like their phone number or an address and “kennen” describes the kind of knowing you have when you really deeply know someone or something and feel a deep understanding and connection to it – like the connection a person might feel to “knowing” their ancestral land or a spouse knowing their partner after 50 years of marriage.

Thinking about these different kinds of “knowing” in relationship to God makes me consider how often my prayer life consists mostly of petitions and requests of God – sort of like a shopping list of my wants and desires at any particular moment.   This type of prayer is usually my mode of operation when I want some “outward” change to occur.  It’s a little bit like the remote control that comes with the TV.  If we don’t like what channel is playing, we just press the button and the channel changes.  If we don’t like what’s playing in our life, we pray, and hopefully that channel changes too.   (Remen)

Now, I’m not saying it is wrong to pray in this way because we are told in other places in scripture to bring our needs before God in prayer and to be specific in our requests.  But, if our prayer life consists ONLY of knowing God by calling on him when we want to change the remote control, it seems to me we miss out on this other deeper kind of “knowing” we can have in relationship with God who loves us.

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen is a popular author and medical doctor.  She wrote the books “Kitchen Table Wisdom” and “My Grandfather’s Blessing”.  I’d like to share with you some excerpts from an article she wrote entitled:  Pray Without Ceasing; Some personal thoughts on the nature of prayer.

“Perhaps when we pray we don’t always change what’s outside of ourselves – but rather in some way we change what’s inside of ourselves.  We don’t change life, we change our experience of life.  We move from an individual, isolated making-things happen consciousness to a connection on the deepest level with the largest possible reality.

She goes on to say:  I think prayer is about relinquishing attachments in some way.  Prayer helps us to go beyond fears that can paralyze us, and also beyond what we hope or desire will happen. We acknowledge a larger reality when we pray, however we pray.  Prayer opens us to the possibility of unknowable purpose.  Prayer also opens us to realms of unknowable meaning.  Both are sources of comfort to me in my life and the work I do in the medical community. In praying, we stop trying to control life and recognize that we belong to life.  In prayer we recognize that we are moved and there is That which moves us.

Remen is pointing to the same idea Paul is expressing to the Thessalonians:  Prayer is our experience of living in unceasing relationship to God.  It is “knowing” God in the most intimate way and being “known” by God.   And it is that relationship that informs our response to suffering in ways that give us a grounding when we have to go through it ourselves and also make us useful to others when they are suffering.  I can’t prove that, but I feel it.  It is part of my knowing.

Let me tell a story from Remen’s “My Grandfather’s Blessing” that might help illustrate this: My grandfather was an orthodox rabbi. He and I used to have this special relationship with God in which I was encouraged to speak directly from my heart to God and to listen in my heart for God's response. When I was small, about five or six, they were still teaching religion in the public schools. Every week there was an assembly in which the entire school was gathered, and the principal stood up and did a fire-and-brimstone kind of preaching. During one of these assemblies she said it was important that we get on our knees and pray three times a day because we needed to remind God that we were there. She may not have actually said this, but this is what I took away. You had to make Him look at you! Because if God turned His face from you, you would wither up and die, like an autumn leaf... and then she actually held up this large dried brown autumn leaf. As I looked at it I felt such fear, such enormous terror, because it seemed to me, even as a five-year-old, that God had a lot of things on His mind, a lot of other people.  And in-between the times I was praying, He might blink and then what would happen to me? I became very insecure, depressed, anxious, and was unable to sleep.

After several days, my grandfather came to visit. When we were alone I told him what had happened, and I asked him a question, "What if God blinks?" It was the only time that I've ever seen him angry.

What he said was, "Nischuma-la" - it means "Little Beloved Soul". He said, "Nischuma-la, if you wake up at night, would you know if you were alone in the house? Would you know if Mom and Dad had gone out to the movies if you wake up in the dark at night?"

And I said, "Sure!" Then he said, "How would you know that you weren't alone in the house? Would you see them and look at them?" I said, "No." He said, "Would you hear them? Is that how you'd know?" I said, "No." He said, "Would they talk to you?

Is that how you would know?" I said, "No," and I remember thinking, "How odd. He's asking stupid questions like a grown-up," because my grandfather never did that. I said with irritation, "No - I would just know. I would just know that I wasn't alone in the house." My grandfather smiled at me with great love and said, "Good. That's how God knows you're there. He doesn't need to look at you. And that's how you know that God is there. You just know." In remembering this, I realized for the first time that perhaps this was what prayer was - that knowing. That's how you pray, by that knowing. You know that God is there and you're not alone in the house.” It seems to me that recognizing that we are not alone in the house is practicing the presence of God in our everyday life and we are then indeed “praying without ceasing.”   And then… just as Paul encouraged the Thessalonians, we can “rejoice” and give God thanks IN all things – in all times – in all ways.