Message Delivered at Christ Church

The Weekend of November 17th & 18th

TEXT:  II Thessalonians 4:13-16

Delivered by Paul A. Johnson

 

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So here’s what’s happening; let’s do a little Bible today.

We read just a moment ago from Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians.  Now some of the relationships Paul had with the congregations to whom he wrote his letters were pretty complicated, and even contentious.  But the church in Thessalonica—to which the Apostle helped give birth—is a little bit different.  Read I and II Thessalonians, and compare it to his other letters, and you’ll see there’s something exceptionally gentle and sweet between Paul and the Thessalonians.

In his other letters, and Paul can be pretty combative.  But not with the Thessalonians.  With the Thessalonians, he is like a loving mother.  In fact, in I Thessalonians he describes himself as being like a nurse caring for her own children.

They were probably a small community; and they were experiencing some level of persecution and suffering.  Everything in the letters to them indicated they were very accepting of Paul’s authority—that they have great affection for him, and he for them.  They are eager; they want to do what’s asked of them, and what’s right, and they want to please the Apostle.  They seem a bit innocent and naïve.  Teachers will get this maybe better than others…but the Thessalonians are kind of like your favorite “B” student.  They’ll never quite make the headlines, but the class—and the life of the teacher—would be poorer were they not around.  They do their best, but they sort of stumble the way a puppy will slip and slide and tumble over…not out of malicious intent, but because they just don’t have their legs under them yet.

They’ve listened to everything the Apostle Paul has taught them, and apparently, one of the things he’s taught about is the second coming of Jesus.  During the earthly ministry of Jesus, the apocalyptic expectations of the Jewish people were high.  That’s a fancy way of saying that there were many among the Jews who fully believed that God was sending to them the one who would save them and bring history to completion.  This high apocalyptic expectation continued among the earliest Church.  In other words, there was a pretty strong belief among the first Christians that Jesus would be coming back soon; that the Second Coming, as we call it, was imminent; and that when Jesus returned the final conflict would begin and the world would come to an end.  It’s the whole “Left Behind” thing, and it’s a big part of the New Testament.  The whole book of Revelation is about it; Jesus talks about it in the gospels.  And apparently, Paul taught about it when he was with the Thessalonians, and just as apparently, they took his teaching very seriously.  They listened well.

But a problem arises…so we’re doing a little Bible here, and now we’re going to do a little history…two things that make this a really good day…

What we read today in worship is from Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians.  He wrote an earlier letter to them, and it’s called Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians.  Between the first and the second letter, something happened in Thessalonica.  Someone whose name we don’t know visited that church or wrote that church a letter…we aren’t quite sure which.  And it may be that there was some duplicity involved with this communication in that whoever it was who was in touch with the Thessalonians between Paul’s first and second letter to them seems to have claimed falsely that he was contacting them and teaching them under the authority of Paul.  There was some misrepresentation involved.  And what these imposters were teaching was that the Second Coming was already happening—that right now, the ending was going on; the Day of the Lord—in Old Testament language--was arriving, and the final chapter of all history, of all existence, had begun.  The chapter wasn’t finished; but it had begun.  It was, at that moment, in process.

Now what we don’t know is how the entire community responded to this teaching.  We only know how some of them responded.  And that’s what this passage is about today.  Because, you see, some of them responded in a problematic way.  Some of them decided to check out of this life, and to turn away from this world.

Here’s what seems to have happened.  Some of the Thessalonians…believing that the Day of the Lord was happening…responded by stopping their lives and abandoning their responsibilities.  Now there are a lot of different ways to abdicate one’s responsibility to one’s community.  In this case, they stopped working.  They quit their jobs.  The sense of the text is that they are also sponging off of those who have not quit working.  Apparently, they are demanding to be fed by the community even though they are doing nothing to provide for themselves.  They are capable of providing for themselves, and there are opportunities for them to do so.  But they are choosing not to.  And Paul calls them “the idle.”

Now, there are different kinds of idleness.  There is an idleness that is restorative; when we take time away from jobs, and work, and busyness, and make a space in our soul to let God do some work.  That’s a good kind of idleness.  It’s so good, God includes this kind of idleness in the Ten Commandments where we are instructed to keep the Sabbath holy; that once every seven days we are to be idle, and lie fallow.  Do no work on the Sabbath.  That’s one way to keep the Sabbath holy.

And there is a kind of idleness that is relatively neutral, and all of us are idle this way sometimes.  We’re at the end of a long day; we’ve worked hard; we’re tired, but not ready for sleep; so we read a cheap novel, or watch some television or a movie.  That’s a pretty harmless kind of idleness.

Sometimes, idleness can be imposed upon us.  I was talking with a friend this week who’s been recovering from surgery.  He’s used this time to do some things that are good for his soul, but he’s also had to do a lot of sitting around.  It’s not his choice.  It’s been imposed upon him.  And of course, there are people who lose their jobs for all sorts of reasons; who want to work, but whose idleness is most definitely imposed upon them by forces beyond themselves.

None of these things are what Paul is talking about.  He’s talking here about a kind of idleness that does no good.  The word that’s translated in this passage as “idleness” is the word “atakteo,” which actually means more literally “the disorderly.” It’s a word that was most commonly used to describe soldiers who had willfully broken ranks with their fellow soldiers…which obviously enough, makes a mess of the march.

It seems that in some way it is an aggressive kind of idleness that these persons have entered into.  They aren’t busy, Paul writes, but they sure are busybodies.  Taking care of everybody’s business but their own.  They’ll tell you what your problem is.  They know a lot about the speck in your eye.  In fact, maybe they would much rather spend time dealing with your speck rather than their log.  It is, after all, always easier to see what’s wrong with someone else than it is to deal with our own stuff; and every bit of worry dedicated to someone else’s salvation is energy taken away from working out our own.  That’s what they seem to be doing.

So it ends up that the instructions he gives in his letter here are two-fold.  The first is to the community at large, to whom he says “stay away from these jokers.” But you’re not quite sure he means it as sternly as he sounds, because he then goes on to instruct the idlers, themselves, as to how they are to be.  Apparently, they are reading this letter, also.  And his instruction to them is get back to work.

Which means “get back to work; start supporting yourself; that’s what we modeled for you,” he says, “when we were there.  And for heaven’s sake, mind your own business!”

It means that.  But as it always is, there’s a deeper truth at play here.  He tells them to get back to work because as long as we’re here, there’s work to be done.  Paul is telling his friends that the work here on earth isn’t finished.  It ain’t quittin’ time.  It’s “nose to the grindstone time.”  Whether Jesus is coming back tonight, or some time well beyond our earthly lives, we’re not done; there’s work to do; and this is no time to grow weary of doing right.  Until the bell actually tolls…until it’s done tolling…we’re still in it, and we’re in it together.

Y’all, I’m one who is completely in favor of heaven.  I don’t know what it’s going to be like, exactly, but I know it’s going to be good.  I look forward to seeing you there.  We’re going to have a good time.  It’s going to be a big party.  Bring your dancing shoes.

But the first job of the Church isn’t that of sitting around idle, waiting for heaven.  That does no good, and sometimes it even creates disorder.  The first job of the Church is to get at it, and do everything we possibly can to bring heaven to earth.  No sitting around, daydreaming about heaven.  We’re here to help Jesus save the world, and bring a little bit of the kingdom of God to right here.  Lord knows, the world still needs it.

Around here, here’s how we do that.  We minister to one another through ministries like Befrienders, and through the relationships we build through small groups and the work we do together.  We teach, and we assist in the Christian formation of children, youth, and adults.  We don’t do Kidsquest or Youth Group or Vacation Bible School or our children’s choirs just to keep our kids occupied.  We do these things to help form saints who are workers for the salvation of the world.  We don’t teach adults on Sunday mornings, or do DOCC or EFM or any of our other studies because they’re good intellectual exercises.  We do them because they help form saints who are workers for the salvation of the world.

As a church we give to groups outside of ourselves that are doing right things…helping with Katrina relief; and Comfort Zone Camp; and Crossover Ministries.  We send people and money to Rebuilding Richmond, and Habitat for Humanity, and CARITAS.  We support about a dozen other groups doing good work.  We help build schools in Sudan; medical clinics in Peru; give a camp experience to inner city children.  We have a relationship with Mt. Olivet because racial misunderstanding is still a problem.  Our youth and middle schoolers do service Saturdays once a month; each group again will go on mission next summer; and we’re also planning a mission journey for college students.

And because God is good, and because a life lived in relationship with Jesus is a good life, we invite our friends to worship and to be part of this community.  We move over, and make a space, and then we extend a hand in friendship.  We keep this space open all the time for anyone who’s in need for emergency prayer.  There’ll be a banner going up this week out front letting people know this space is always open.  There are a lot of locked doors in Short Pump.  These doors of God’s house are never locked.

All these are ways we dig in and get at it.

And remember back in September, when we talked about some possibilities for our future?  We talked about how Abraham was blessed to be a blessing unto others, and then we put forth some ideas of how we might be an even greater blessing to the world.  It was an ambitious vision that was put before this congregation; one that would ask a lot of us should we choose to live into it.  It was a vision that involved taking some risks, doing new things, creating new spaces to do some of these new things, and giving the money to make it happen.  It asked of us our very best on a lot of different levels.

It is a vision of new ministries of service to the world; new ways of building up the broader Church; new ways of serving this community.  It’s a vision of digging even deeper into the world in which Jesus has placed us, and for which he came and died.  It’s a vision for living into the charge issued by Jesus to help bring a little bit of the kingdom to right here.

Over the last month we’ve had some opportunities to come together and talk some about these ideas, and over the next couple months there’ll be more opportunities to do so…to come together to share information, and to listen to one another face-to-face.  Because the work isn’t done.  It’s still very much in process.  So as the chance comes to get together, I hope we’ll jump in.  As these ideas are refined—and there is still refining to do—coming together like this, and listening to one another, is one of the ways this vision becomes ours.  And that’s pretty important.

We’re never called away from this life.  The path of discipleship is one deeper into the realm of more…more joy, more peace, more mercy, more responsibility, more challenge…and that’s a “more” that’s right here.  So it is that figuring out when Jesus is coming back, and how he might do so, is well beyond my pay grade.  And trying to figure out the details of heaven is a little bit like trying to understand infinity.  But what I know for us, and what the Apostle teaches, is that until it happens, we keep at it.  We don’t step out, we dig in.  We don’t abandon the future on this earth as did the Thessalonian idlers.  We imagine it, and embrace it, and work towards it.  We seek together what is right, and grow not weary in the effort.  On a deeper level than simply “get back to work,” that’s what the Apostle is saying to the Thessalonians in this Bible passage we just read.  On a deeper level, it’s also what he says to us.

So I’ll see you in heaven…I’ll see you on Thanksgiving and next weekend, too; I am planning on being here—but eventually, we’ll see one another there.  That’s the truth.  But until then, together we envision a powerful future here, do what’s before us, and keep working towards that kingdom.  It’s what God honors, and my hunch is that being faithful that way, a good God takes care of everything else.