Paul, in prison awaiting trial on a capital charge, is writing to a small church that was facing difficulties, a church not so much different from us, a small group struggling to make our ways as Christians in the world. It is, at heart, a letter of encouragement, and so perhaps a timely letter for us as well.

How, I wonder, can he say this to that tiny, struggling church, and how can he say it in light of his situation, facing trial and likely execution. He must, I think, be just exaggerating to make his point. Isn’t this, if he is serious, just too much gratitude?

I think the Ephesians would have understood Paul’s message. They were, the letter tells us elsewhere, Gentiles, former pagans, non-believers, who had absolutely no claim upon the promises of God to Israel. And yet, by the unexpected and unlooked for and entirely gracious embrace of Jesus Christ, these Gentiles had been brought into the family of God, had become citizens with the saints, had been built into the household of God. Once they had nothing – now, through no doing of their own, they had everything. They had been transferred from black and white Kansas to the Technicolor Land of Oz and there was no going back and they would never again be the same. God, they realize, is good, and so they have faith that just as God has done the unimaginable for them through Jesus Christ, God will work through all human situations to bring them to God’s good purposes. And so when Paul says to them, “Give thanks always and everywhere for everything”, they can, and they do.

Maybe you know someone who has had a near-death experience – a terrible accident, an illness or injury, that they realize could have taken their life from them. Maybe they have told you that their life has changed, and now all they can do is be grateful, they cannot even imagine being anything but grateful for each day that is now so very precious to them. I’ve known several such people, some of them sit right there in the pews with you.

This is somewhat my story, and I remember to the moment when I finally got it. It was in church, back in the days before seminary, back in the time a relative was struggling mightily against a recurrence of cancer. I had managed to get away for an hour to come to worship, and sat alone in a pew towards the front, the better to be away from those well-wishers who I just needed to avoid. When the service was over, the last notes of the postlude fading away, the emotion swept over me. I think what brought it on was the presence, in the pew behind me, of three members of the church who remained seated as the rest of the congregation up and left, chatting, for coffee hour. They didn’t speak to me, didn’t say those well-meaning but useless things about it all being alright, didn’t do anything – except, by refusing to leave me, be the incarnation of the faithful God who promises to see us through all this life can hurl at us. To this day I think they thought my tears were tears of sorrow for the disaster my life had turned into. But all I felt was gratitude, that in these worst of times God so loved me and us all, and that we were part of such a supportive and caring church family.

I fear, sometimes, that this gratitude has wounded me, made me weaker, taken the edge off, made it harder to get angry. I was changed, you see, and now see grace everywhere. And worse, I think it makes me less able to understand those who are strangers to gratitude, who believe that what they have they deserved and the world owed to them. It is something I need to work on. Maybe I need to remember that gratitude is at heart a gift, a gift that I did not appreciate until in my fourth decade illness struck and I found myself in that pew with those church members who quite literally had my back.

And maybe that is one of the best reasons we have for gathering together here each week, so that we might hear that old, old story of God’s boundless and faithful love for us, so that we might remember. That we might remember that we didn’t get here because of anything we did, because we were successful at loving God, because we achieved anything spiritual. We got here for one reason, and one reason only – because of grace, as a gift. Because God tried everything to get through to us, and we didn’t get it, and so God finally put off all that distance and “almightiness” and power and came to us just as we are, as a baby born in a backyard stable, a baby who grew up to teach and to heal and to tell us about God’s kingdom and so got himself killed. All, for us. And still we are forgiven, and, more than that, invited to take up residence in a whole new world, where we can be transformed and made new, and embrace a life that is abundant and joyful beyond all previous imaginings. This is why Paul tells us, don’t just give thanks, give thanks “at all times and places in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”, so that we might remember how and why we can give thanks.

I don’t know what challenges and struggles await you out there in the coming week. I suspect the week will, for many of us, contain heartache and anxiety and worry enough. And I don’t know in what ways you might be asked by Christ to risk of yourself, or to give of yourself and what you have. But this I do know: no matter the situation you find yourself in this week, it is possible for you, as a follower of Jesus Christ, to at all times give and live “thanks.”