Thessalonians
Thessalonians
Thessalonians 5:12-22
So, here’s a really fundamental question for you: do you think Jesus is coming back? In the earliest days of Christianity, one of the core beliefs was that there was more to come after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. There was going to be a day of judgment. There was going to be a point in which all of those who prospered in this world by doing what was wrong would pay a price. There was going to be a day when the trumpets blared and the skies parted and the risen Jesus returned. The faithful would be carried away. The rest of the world would suffer.
In Paul’s first letter to the church in Thessaloniki, this sense of an impending end moment of judgment is front and center: “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” “Sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a woman.” (This might well be Paul’s only feminine image that he ever presented!) Change is going to come. The suffering won’t last forever. Hold on. Hang on, my friends.
This may well be why Paul wasn’t an advocate for worldly change. As we have acknowledged, he tells slaves to remain slaves. He tells wives and husbands to stay in the roles they are already in. He says at another point, if you’re single, stay single. If you married, stay married. At times there are hints that, for Paul, such roles might be a part of God’s ordering of things. However, even more importantly to Paul, I would argue, these roles and this world are temporary. Change is coming soon. Change is immanent. Don’t waste your time trying to change the ways of this world. That will all be gone soon.
Of course, one of the most telling critiques of religion is the argument that religions get “coopted” and become the “opiate of the masses.” So, the argument goes, people who might otherwise rebel against their oppressors are told that this world’s order is ordained by God, that their eye should be on the next life and not this one, that one day they will be in heaven or one day, the world will become like heaven and all will be well. In the meantime, just stay in your lane, just keep doing your work, just keep biding your time. Change will come.
At least in my reading, Jesus, himself, spent very little time arguing for such an understanding. Hungry people were to be fed…now! Grieving people were to be comforted…today! The wrongs of this world were to be corrected…even at the cost of real personal sacrifice. There was a way that the world was meant to be. That “way” was what Jesus called the “Kingdom of God.” The seeds of that Kingdom were all around us, nurtured a little bit more each time a faithful person lived their faith. We’re not supposed to wait for some grand arrival day. We’re supposed to be a part of helping the Kingdom to grow.
It’s not surprising that our earliest ancestors in faith would be drawn to an apocalyptic vision. After all, these people were suffering in just about every way imaginable. Last week, we noted how this was true for Paul, himself. When all was said and done, the man suffered mightily. Suffering was a reality for many early Christians, too. They were an upstart, tiny faith in a world in which the “status quo,” politically, socially, and religiously, were at least as opposed to any threats as the “powers that be” are in our own world. If you are totally disempowered and you are being persecuted, it seems pretty natural that you would dream of the day when the world was made just, when things finally worked the way that you wanted them to work. Our ancestors would not be the first or the last people in this life to look to God as the one who would some day extract their revenge.
Who believed that Jesus was coming back? Paul and an awful lot of early Christians believed this was true. Who else has believed this? Many Christians throughout history have believed when they were being persecuted that Jesus was going to come back and make things right. Today, if you take a quick tour of many third world nations where human suffering is very real, you will find Christians with an apocalyptic vision. The shared reality among all those people in all those places and across all those times might well be the simple conviction that God could not possibly let this suffering go on endlessly. At some point, won’t God just have to take the wheel and steer this world in the direction of justice?
Do I believe that Jesus is coming back? I don’t. This may have to do with the fact that I have not led an oppressed life. I don’t see any way that I can argue personally that I have received anything other than more than my fare share of good breaks and love and second chances. I have been given every opportunity to prosper and have worked hard at some but there have been virtually no barriers. Maybe my life is just not fertile seed for such thinking to grow. I do have to say, though, that 2000 years later, no one would be more shocked that the world is still waiting than Paul.
What I could agree with Paul about is that the world is not what God would have it be. Even as someone who has suffered very little personally, I am not blind to the suffering of our world. Honestly, if it were not for faith, it might be a lot easier to turn a blind eye. However, I am haunted not by fears of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and judgment day, but by Jesus, himself, who looked at the hungry crowd and then looked his disciples in the eyes and said, “You do something!” I don’t think we were supposed to sit around and wait for God to do something. I think we were supposed to see the needs, pray for guidance, and then do something—God help us all! Is Jesus coming back? No…he’s been here all along saying, “You do something!”
Interestingly, I think Paul leaves the door open for this possibility, even in his earliest letter. Paul tells the Thessalonians that they should live a life that is pleasing to God. They are to grow in holiness. They are to be sanctified, that is, to grow in and through God’s grace. In short, they are to live a life that operates according to God’s priorities, not the priorities of the world, not the priorities of impulse or desire. In other words, they are supposed to life as if God has already reordered the world.
Think of this in this way. The Thessalonians didn’t have much worldly power. They couldn’t transform or overthrow the Roman Empire. They couldn’t rid the world of the religious folks who were persecuting them in God’s name or in the name of the gods. What they could do is make choices that were the kind of choices that people would make if the world, itself, was already the Kingdom of God. Essentially, Paul is telling them that even in a dominant culture, they can create a counter culture.
For Paul, this is far more concrete than it may seem. Christians should respect those who work hard. The dominant culture often takes those who work hard for granted. Don’t be like that! Christians should seek peace with one another. Of course, out in the world, people take advantage of each other all the time, to get a leg up or just to feel the thrill of seizing power. We shouldn’t treat anyone that way. However, especially within our own community, when we are presumably striving on the basis of shared principles, we should insist on finding peace with one another. Christians should work with the people whom we would rather ignore. Of course, there are going to be people who don’t pull their own weight. Work with them. Try to get them on board. Instead of giving up on those who are fearful, encourage them. Instead of taking advantage of the weak, help them find their strength. Don’t seek revenge. Anyone can do that. Seek to do good. Give thanks. Pray constantly. Rely on the Spirit. Keep your eye on what is worthwhile.
The bottom line—for Paul, while he’s waiting, for me, simply while I am acutely aware of the limits of my own power—is…do something. Even if you can’t change the world, change yourself. Make change in your community. Ask for God’s help, that you might be wiser or stronger or more persistent than you might otherwise be but then dare to actually do something.
The case that I would make with Paul today if we got to sit down and talk would be this: the most important vision that he offered the world was not his vision of sudden, cataclysmic change f but was instead his vision of a God-inspired, slowly-building, ripple effect of crescendoing change that Christ began and he helped to accelerate. Faithful people have done caring and compassionate things for centuries because they became convinced, through prayer and reflection and empathic tears, that someone has to do something to relieve my neighbor’s suffering and maybe, just maybe, God’s intention is that this someone should be me. People who act as if this world is already the Kingdom of God have come closer to making that Kingdom a little more real than all the people who have sat back and waited for the Kingdom and the blaring trumpets and the angels to arrive!
We all may be able to envision what the world would be if God just flipped the switch tonight and made things right. We may all be able to pinpoint who the people are who seem to prosper so unfairly in this life whom we are sure would be forced to face to the errors of their ways if that day came. However, I think we really need to ask ourselves, “When I read the Gospels and sit with the things which Jesus taught, is that really why we’re here—to sit and wait until time, itself, ends and then relish the great revenge we’ll feel when that day finally arrives?”
We can all wish that we had more power or more brains or more influence. In the meantime, people are suffering. What then should we do? We should carefully choose how to live, as individuals, as married people, as parents, as member of a church family and as a part of the larger community. Within each of those dimensions of our lives, there are people who are hurting, who feel hopeless and stuck, who feel powerless. In the everyday choices that we make, we have the chance to be a source of healing, inspired by the greatest healer of all. We have a chance to feed an empty stomach or do something to mend a broken heart. We have a chance perhaps not to change an unjust structure on our own but to be the person who was bothered enough by what we see to point it out and say to anyone within earshot, “That’s wrong!” We have the chance to take a moment to name someone as our brother or sister instead of our latest enemy. We have a chance to be a part of how God works in this world.
Paul and I might disagree vehemently about the end times. That wouldn’t be news. I’ve disagreed with plenty of other folks, too. However, I like to think we would be having that discussion while we were working to feed a crowd. I like to think we would be equally about the business of acting as if the Kingdom is already here. I like to think what the end times would be would take a backseat to facing today’s challenges.