Sunday,
September 13, 2015
I have no idea what my
cholesterol level is. I don’t know what
a healthy level is. I went to the doctor
last month and my cholesterol was checked and I don’t even know the result
was. I think if I had a real cholesterol
problem I would pay a lot more attention to it.
The Christians in Thessalonica were
thriving as a church, but they had a problem and it was not a cholesterol
problem. They were not worried about
levels that were too high, but rather too low.
Their hope was threatened.
We’ve been studying the Thessalonian
church and the letters Paul wrote to it in order to glean ideas for our
church’s spiritual health. We see the
two letters, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians as a prescription
for life. The doctor’s prescription is
to read 1st Thessalonians, 2nd Thessalonians, and Acts 17,
the account of Paul beginning the church in that city. Read and re-read these texts, making sure you
pray as you read and listen with a focused, receptive mind.
Along with the prescription is a
therapy plan. This is not physical
therapy, but it is analogous. It is a
spiritual exercise, a discipline. We come
to worship ever week, even when we don’t want to come. We come and are fully present in the family
of God, the church, when we gather for worship.
Make this time with your church family a top priority.
In addition to the prescription and the
spiritual exercise plan, last week, we received last week two diagnoses. First, enter into deep relationships in the
life of the church family, so deep that we take ownership of one another’s
hearts; and, second, be mindful of the lurking enemy, the devil, who wants to
snatch us out of God’s embrace. In a few
weeks, we’ll look a bit closer at this threat.
This morning, we’re going to hear about specific aspect of health that
is essential for all of us – hope.
One important feature of the earliest
Christians, those who came to follow Jesus in the first couple of decades after
the resurrection, is their expectation.
It is an expectation that’s profoundly different from what Christians
expect today. Those first believers in
the Jerusalem Church and the churches of Galatia and Antioch and in
Thessalonica thought they would live to see Jesus return. They literally did not expect to die.
We do.
We buy cemetery plots and we plan for our funerals. We have life insurance plans. We have wills – instructions for what to do
with our assets after we die. These are
means of preparation for something we absolutely expect to happen. I have yet to meet a person who lived as if
she thought Jesus would come back before she died. And nearly 2000 years of history have shown
the wisdom of this shift in expectation.
When Paul wrote 1st
Thessalonians, the shift was in the midst of happening. We see from his words how his own
expectations were adjusting to the reality that Jesus was indeed going to
return, but as an unknown future date that very well might be after he – Paul –
had died. He had to adjust his thinking
and so did the Thessalonians.
A paradigm shift is always a
crisis. Listen to this definition of crisis:
“stage in a sequence of events at which the trend of all future events,
especially for better or for worse, is determined; turning point.” A second definition is a “condition of
instability.”[i] The Thessalonians had lost their loved ones,
and they believed those who had died would miss the coming of Jesus. A beloved grandmother; a best friend; a
spouse of many years; a child who died of a disease: they would all miss the
kingdom of God when Jesus returned to reign as Lord over all the earth because
they were dead and buried. Reflecting
upon this, the Thessalonians’ hope was dangerously low.
Recall the key virtues of discipleship
Paul said Timothy had mentioned. From
chapter 1 verse 3, he remembers the Thessalonians work of faith, labor of love,
and steadfastness of hope. These same
virtues, ordered differently, come at the end of “the love chapter,” 1
Corinthians 13. “Faith, hope, and love
remain and the greatest of these is love.”
But, the other two, faith and hope, are extremely important for a
follower Jesus. From 1st
Thessalonians 1, we know the church had hope, but the glaring deficiency in
their witness was the way hope was in decline.
Paul addresses this directly and at the
same time gently. He tells the
Thessalonians he’s going to inform them so they won’t grieve in the way those
who have no hope grieve (4:13). He
doesn’t specify who he means when he says, ‘those who have no hope,’ and we
gain nothing by trying to identify them either then or now. The focus is on the Thessalonians and on
anyone who is in Christ. We who are in Christ have hope.
Paul goes on to talk about resurrection
with the promise that at Jesus’ return the dead in Christ will rise (end of
4:16) and meet him in the air and then we who are alive will also be part of
that meeting. The Thessalonians are free
to grieve. It is hard to see someone we
love die. Death is God’s ultimate enemy
and our Heavenly Father who loves us weeps with us when we mourn the passing of
our loved ones. God remembers God’s own
tears at the death of the Father’s Son, Jesus.
God identifies with us in our grief and allows space for that
grief. But it is not a hopeless grief.
In fact, Paul’s message to the
Thessalonians is hope producing. Jesus
is coming back! Your departed loved ones
will rise to be with him. If you are
alive at his return, you too will be at that meeting in the air. Paul concludes his thoughts by saying,
“Encourage one another with these words.”
As we have discussed in previous messages, his love for the
Thessalonians ran very deep. In this
teaching on resurrection, he wants their hope to match this wellspring of love
and tireless faith.
In the opening of chapter 5, Paul reiterates
a teaching that originated in the very first community around Jesus from the
days just before the crucifixion and then was circulated through the first
churches in the decade after the resurrection.
Jesus gives this lesson
himself. Read Mark 13 or Matthew
24. After the resurrection, Jesus will
ascend and the age of the church will dawn and in God’s timing Jesus will
return to gather all who have worshiped him to God to live in the eternal
Kingdom of God in perfect fellowship with God and each other.
The key for today’s lesson and for Paul
in 1 Thessalonians 5 is the phrase “in God’s time.” Jesus said, we won’t know when. Jesus said that in the incarnation, when he
lived his earthly life, even he didn’t know the times of God’s restoration of
the earth (Matthew 24:36). But he did
know it would come. Paul’s primary
lesson in 1 Thessalonians 5 is “Keep awake” (vss 6-8). Live a spiritually alert life.
The good news is we have been given the
tools we need to do this. It is one
thing for the Bible to give an instruction.
But can we obey it? Are we
able? In verse 8 it says we have
spiritual armor to equip us – the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet
of the hope of salvation. There those
three essentials are together again: faith, love, and hope.
Something important to note in 1
Thessalonians 5:8 is an observation from noted New Testament Scholar Beverly
Roberts Gaventa. She writes the Greek,
the original language of Thessalonians, says in verse 8 “since we belong to the
day,” in other words, because we are in Christ, we are already clothed with the breastplate of love and faith and the helmet
of hope. My favorite English
version, the NRSV, misstates this verse.
When it says, “Put on” the armor it sounds like this is something we are
supposed to do.
The verse is not saying that at
all. In this verse Paul builds on 4:13
where he promised to inform the grieving Thessalonians whose hope was
fleeting. In essence he says, because of
Christ, you are already clothed in faith, love, and hope. We don’t have achieve
these things. We just live in what we’ve
been given. And the root of our hope is
that we and our loved ones will join Christ in resurrection.
So today, faith, hope, and love mark our
lives and mark our communal life. People
in the world desperately need these things so it is with faith, hope, and love
that we build one another up and encourage those from outside the church who
come in to see what’s happening here.
Paul concludes this section of chapter 5 the same way he ended chapter
4. “Encourage one another and build up
each other.”
A key to maintaining high levels of hope
is for us to remind each other. We’ve
had two deaths of long-time church members this summer: John Charles and Donna Allgood. These losses hit those members who were especially
to one or the other of these two particularly hard. In a patient, gentle way
that allows space for grief, we gather round those who are really hurting and
sit with them and remind them of who we are in Christ and encourage them. If today, I am the encourager, tomorrow, I
may be down, depressed, unable to see hope. I will need you to encourage
me. It is communal. Our hope is dependent upon the promises of
God and living in those promises within the community of faith. And this means of maintaining high levels of
hope by living in the armor God has already given and encouraging one another
applies in all areas of life, not only where there is grief over one who has
died.
To that situation there is a unique
question that always comes up. Is the
one who died asleep now? Is the one who
died with Jesus now? My own reading of
the New Testament does not give me definitive answers to these questions, but I
do see indicators that I find very helpful.
When Jesus was raised, that was not a
resuscitation. Resuscitated people are
in bodies that will eventually die. In
resurrection, we cannot die. As Paul
says in 1 Corinthians 15, we are changed.
Our bodies go through a transformation.
He says we put on immortality and imperishability (v.52-4).
That resurrected body is physical. When Jesus was raised, the women at the tomb
were able to grab him (Matthew 28:9).
With the Emmaus Road disciples, he took bread in his and broke it (Luke
24:30). He ate fish (Luke 24:42-43), and
invited Thomas to touch him (John 20:27).
The resurrected body is a physical body.
And those who followed Jesus recognized him and re-established
fellowship with him.
All these stories would have been known
in the first churches when Paul arrived in Thessalonica. This was part of his preaching. When he said, “Resurrection,” they knew what
he meant. They would be raised in bodies
that could not be harmed or killed and they would be reunited with those they
loved who preceded them death. That
promise holds for us.
Furthermore, Paul says in 1st
Thessalonians 4:14, “God will bring with him those who have died.” The actual way of saying it is “those who
have fallen asleep.” At this great
event, the second coming of Jesus at which time the New Heaven and the New
Earth will join together and the Kingdom of God will be fully inaugurated, the
dead will already be with God.
I think that means that right now Donna’s
soul, John Charles’ soul, Ellie Bevington’s soul, Vola Louder’s soul is with
God. In what form, I cannot say. But when I read “God will bring with him
those who have died,” to me it says those who have already died, and died in Christ, are with God. They are with the Lord – Father, Son, Holy
Spirit.
Paul comforted the Thessalonians by
assuring them their deceased loved ones would share in the resurrection. Paul comforts us by indicating our deceased
loved ones are with Jesus and will be reunited with us in the resurrection in
the eternal Kingdom of God. Living in
the hope this provides we are armed with faith, hope, and love to be a
community of encouragement where it is OK to grieve. But our grief is always soaked in joy because
we know God is with us in the Holy Spirit and our future is with the Lord and
with everyone we have loved who also follows Jesus. With our hope level high we are able to live
out the joy of the Kingdom even here and now.
AMEN
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