Thanks

Originally posted:

January 10, 2011

Today’s lectionary sees the beginning of two books at Morning Prayer, Amos and 1 Corinthians. St Paul gets some bad press for some of the things he said, or that we think he said, but one of the things which he gets just right, and which we often skip over, is where he is starting from in how correspondence with these young churches. He starts simply by saying he thanks God for them.

The church in Corinth sounds like it was in trouble. There seems to have been, at the least, confusion about what being a Christian meant. The ways of the Roman cults and the message of the Gospel had got a bit muddled in the Corinthian mind leaving them in a bit of an ethical and moral quagmire.

I can imagine Paul was a little frustrated and it would have been easy for him to start his letter furiously…what on earth do you think you are doing, Corinthians, haven’t I taught you better than this. Indeed it is not many verses before he does complain about sects which seem to be forming. But first he gives thanks, first he places them before God as gifts from God and therefore as valuable to God.

This saying thank-you for those who seek this path with Christ is something we would do well to emulate. There is so much vitriole and argument in the Church and we often find ourselves in opposition to one another that, perhaps, stopping and saying thank-you for our fellow pilgrims a little more often would be no bad thing.

I remember being taught a valuable lesson years ago and that was that it ire hard to remain enraged at people who we make the effort to pray for and pray for again. Offering people in prayer begins to give them the same worth which God gives them no matter how objectionable they might be.

Thanking God for people is not just words to be skipped over, it is a road to healing and restoration. I am not daft enough to think that there will not be times when we simply cannot bring a thank-you to our lips, but these are rare, for the most part we are able, like St. Paul, to thank God for those around us as part of our growing together into Christ.