November 11, 2009
by Jerry L. Van Marter

MINNEAPOLIS — Choosing 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 — "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances" — as the theme for the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC)/Church World Service (CWS) 2009 General Assembly is "utterly absurd, patently illogical and Pollyannish," Presbyterian theologian Margaret Aymer told the ecumenical grouping's opening plenary here Nov. 10.

"Common sense would say, in the face of the world today, rejoicing is naïve," Aymer, professor of New Testament at the Interdenominational Theological Center, which includes PC(USA)-related Johnson C. Smith Seminary, told the 300 delegates from 28 of the NCC's 35 member-churches gathered here for the annual Assembly.

"Common sense would say, in the face of the world today, prayer is ineffectual. Common sense would say, in the face of the world today, giving thanks is learned powerlessness," Aymer thundered. "Common sense would ask: what kind of theme is this anyway? Come on, people of God, face reality."

Common sense would dictate that the theme of this Assembly be something like "mourn, keep silent, lament," Aymer said, adding that the Christians of Thessalonica certainly would have been prone to feel the same way under the oppressive Roman empire.

"What must they have thought of Paul's call to rejoice always when they lived in a slaveocracy, dominated by the political, economic and military might of the Roman elite and its clients?" Aymer asked. "How were they to pray constantly when every prayer they made to the God who raised Jesus from the dead put those who were Gentiles at odds with the gods of their family and their city?"

And, she continued, "for what should they give thanks? Only one chapter previously Paul has to bolster their faith because some among them are dying. Of course they are dying!" Life expectance at that time was about 30 and the standard diet was barley bread, wine, salt and perhaps some onions, she said.

"Give thanks? For slavery and poverty? For the constant, grinding presence of premature death?" Aymer asked. "Rejoice? Pray? Give Thanks? Yes, some in Thessaloniki must also have shaken their heads, thinking, ‘Come on Paul, face reality. This makes no common sense.'"

But, Aymer said, "as children of a living God, redeemed by the Christ, inspired by the Spirit, I am here to remind you that we are not called to be a people of common sense. We are called to be a people of uncommon sense; and as a people of uncommon sense, Paul charges us: rejoice, pray, give thanks."

Paul was no Pollyanna, Aymer said. He was well aware of the suffering of the Thessalonians and that he, too, would suffer greatly for the Gospel. "Paul is not calling us to some milquetoast, ‘I'm okay, you're okay,' everything is fine bogus Christian witness," she insisted. "Joy is based upon the sure affirmation that even when we mourn, we do not mourn as those who have no hope."

Christians have hope "not because we know how to fix what is broken, to heal what is diseased, to mend what is torn or to resurrect what has died," Aymer said, "but because we know the one who does."

And Christians' joy, she said, "rests not in our human ability to change the grief of the present, but in our steadfast hope in the One who holds the future."

True rejoicing is a spiritual discipline, Aymer said. "We are called to bear witness to a world in need of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But, if our witness is a hopeless happiness, we will be seen for what we are: charlatans selling so much snake oil that leaves the dying world no better, she said.

"However, if we dare," she said, "we may bear witness not to our ability but to joy borne out of our common hope in the power and presence of the Triune God, past, future and even today."

Such spiritual discipline requires constant prayer, Aymer said, but not "unconsidered liturgical sameness or bumptious love talk punctuated with the word Jesus … "Prayer is not about what God must do or whom God must stop," she said.

"When we understand this, we begin to realize that the uncommon sense of unceasing prayer is the discipline of relinquishing control, of opening our clenched fists from around all of our dearly held fundamentalisms and traditions, whether we are progressive or conservative," Aymer said. The uncommon sense of unceasing prayer is the discipline of relinquishing our vision of what should be and waiting expectantly for the revelation of what will be … of giving over what we want to say and listening for how God might be trying to speak."

Giving thanks, the third aspect of Paul's uncommon sense, is perhaps the most difficult, Aymer said. "We twenty-first century western Christians know very little about gratitude. We not only take for granted that we will we have food on the table, but we create reality TV shows about eating less and losing weight," she said.

"The truth," she continued, "is that when we claim we are giving thanks to God for all of God's benefits, we are really giving thanks to God for all of our privilege, all of our power, all of our access to the things that we have." — an attitude she called "the power of the prosperity gospel."

But perhaps, Aymer said, "we only learn gratitude when we know what it is to want. Perhaps we only learn gratitude when we know what it is not to be able to fix things by ourselves." She recounted her work for an AIDS ministry in Atlanta, Common Ground, which she said provides "a place of spiritual community" for persons with AIDS, most of whom are living marginally.

They know what all Christians should know, Aymer said: "Gratitude is an acknowledgement that someone, that some power, has provided for them far more exceeding abundantly above all they could ask or think — in family, in community, in support, and yes, in food."

The common sense of the world, she said, argues that "once we get big enough, rich enough, powerful enough, organized enough, strong enough, sure enough, real enough, tough enough — we can let go of God like a set of glorified training wheels and do it all by ourselves."

On the contrary, Christian uncommon sense understands, Aymer said, "that we give thanks because we know that we do not have all the answers, but we know a God who does."

Uncommon sense, she concluded, says: "Rejoice constantly, not because there is not reason to mourn but because we have reason to hope … Pray unceasingly, not out of a childish fantasy of who God must be, but out of loyal decision to follow the God who will be …. Give thanks in all things, not because of what we can do, but out of an honest assessment of all of the things that we cannot do without the Triune God."

Presbyterian News Service