Today’s passage of Luke’s account of Jesus’ last meal might be a great scripture for today, or perhaps it’s even a terrible one for today, given where we are as a community, a state, a nation and a world in dealing with the coronavirus. Perhaps it’s good because it sort of encapsulates the darkness of that night and the unknown future, at least for the disciples. And perhaps it’s not good because Jesus seems to indicate that he knew how things would turn out. But regardless of which it is, it is an important piece of scripture because it is part of what we still practice liturgically in communion as part of worship even today, although there were lots of conversations going on in the wider church this week about whether to serve communion or not and how to serve it because of fears of touch and contamination and the unknown. I truly wish there were some easy answers to these questions, because it would make this job a lot easier, but there are not, and what we are really focusing on for today is not communion itself, or at least not all of it, but the prayer that Jesus gives, as part of our series in traveling the prayer paths of Jesus, and looking at where, when and how Jesus prays.
But before that a quick recap and correction. We began with the idea and need of going off to a quiet place to pray by ourselves, just as Jesus did, in order to reconnect with God and recharge ourselves spiritually and even physically in order to do the ministry in the world that we are called to do. This time can be a short period of time or even days, depending on what’s happening and what we have to dedicate to this time. Then last week we moved onto the prayers that we offer as part of our ordinary life, and it’s here that I want to add a correction. As I was thinking about the message, which was based on Jesus’ healing of a boy with what appears to be epilepsy, and he said that the reason the disciples couldn’t heal the boy was because it could only be done through prayer. And so I talked about the necessity of prayer for the impossible things in our lives. And that could have given the impression to some that bad things in our lives could, or perhaps did happen simply because we didn’t pray, or didn’t say the right words, or that we might not have prayed hard enough. And if only you had done that, then the outcome would have been different. And that was not what I intended at all, or what I meant to say, and so I apologize for that potential misunderstanding. This is a message for a different day, and perhaps as part of next week, but I don’t believe that prayer works that way, or that God works that way. Instead, my point was about the need for prayer in our lives and that we should be praying for others, and that those could be just short burst prayers or arrow prayers, short prayers given to others, like those trapped in endless lines at Smith’s, and especially for the employees. But that we also need to be praying for God’s help in all situations, especially those that we think are impossible. That should be part of our prayer practice.
Which then leads us to the third prayer that we see from Jesus, not just in the passage from Luke, but which we see throughout Jesus’ ministry, and that is the prayer of thanksgiving. But, I think the prayer for today is even more important because of the situation in which it is given, and again why it may be important for us today and our situation. It’s really easy to give praise and thanksgiving when things are going well. To give thanks to God in the brightness of the day when we’re surrounded by sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, as Leslie Gore once sang. And it’s important to give thanks in the situation, and we should give thanks in that situation. But it’s something entirely different to give thanks in darkness and despair. Because while the story doesn’t give us Jesus’ feelings here, other than his eagerness, we will get them soon, which we cover next week, but knowing about his coming suffering, which he says to the disciples, I am sure that Jesus is at least a little troubled. Plus the fact that he knows that he is going to be betrayed, and the reality that the disciples wonder who it could be, lends even greater weight to this meal.
This cannot be the happiest meal that Jesus has ever had, and yet what does he do? He gives thanks to God. And not just once, but at least twice, and perhaps reading a little more into Luke’s account, he may give thanks three times. In the midst of all that is going on around him, and what he knows is going to happen, including the events that will lead to his own death just a few hours later, he gives thanks to God. Is that something you could do? To know that you are about to be betrayed and denied by your closest friends, and then suffer the pain of crucifixion? I might be saying a few choice words, but I don’t think they would be words of thanks, and certainly not to God. I might go straight to the prayer in the garden, of God get me out of this thing. And yet the prayer Jesus offers that night is one of thanksgiving, of giving praise to God. And I don’t think that prayer is just a sort of grace, of thanking God for the bread and the wine, but of praise to God for everything, perhaps even for the disciples, remembering that the disciples, all of them, were the answer to a prayer that Jesus prayed when he went off to a quiet place.
In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he says, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” When we looked at that passage in the fall when we were talking about practicing and living in gratitude, I said that we should pay attention to the fact that Paul does not say give thanks FOR all circumstances, but in all circumstances. And why? Because we give praise and glory to God, because God is the rock of our salvation, as David says in the Psalm we heard this morning. If we are going to give thanks to God in the best of times, we also have to give thanks in the worst of times, at least for knowing that God is with us. Or as we read in the 121st Psalm “from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” And that Psalm is labeled as a song of ascent, which were a series of psalms that were sung as people made their pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. And so it is a song that Jesus and the disciples probably had sung just a few days before. And so this prayer of thanksgiving in the midst of this night is a reminder that he is not alone, that he is not abandoned, even with his cry of lament from the cross, but that he knows to give thanks in all circumstances for what the Lord has done for him. In a way what this pray does, what our prayers of thanksgiving do, is also mark the time as holy. That when we invite God into a situation, which is not really for God, but for us to recognize God’s presence we name it as sacred space and time.
And so the lesson for us, what we learn from this prayer, is to give thanks to God regardless of the situation. To praise God from the highest mountaintops, and in the darkest valleys, even in the valley of the shadow of death, even in times of quarantine, for God is with us and worthy to be praised. Now does that make it easy? Absolutely not, but if it was easy then everyone would do it. And these prayers of thanksgiving are not to assuage God’s ego, but they are to help us to remember. To remember the blessings we have received, even if they seem small in the moment, to remember the love God has for us, and that we are never alone, and to remember that God hears our cries, our cries of joy, our cries of despair, and our cries of what’s going on? And so in this moment and this time, when every hour seems to bring change and new ways for us to be anxious and fearful, we see in Jesus’ example that we are to stop, to pause in the moment, and to give thanks to God for all that God has done for us, to give thanks to God for the blessings we have in our lives, food, shelter, friends, family, and those helping, and when we do that, when we express gratitude, we can learn to see not just the negative things, but also the blessings and to remember that we are blessed in order to be a blessing, and that can happen at any time and in any place. So may our lives be filled with prayers of thanksgiving and to give thanks not for every circumstance but in every circumstance. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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