A sermon shared with
First Presbyterian Church, November 5, 2017, Spring City, TN.
The Revised Common
Lectionary offers Micah 3:5-12,
a passage that castigates the priesthood as he discussed the coming day of
the Lord in addition to the passages in Matthew and 1 Thessalonians. It is worth
reading that passage in Micah, and the similar passage in Isaiah 1:10- 17, before you
read Matthew 23:1-12 that captures
the essence of the message in Isaiah and Micah. Things haven’t changed much
since the time of Isaiah.
Jesus takes the priests
to task for being more concerned with their status among the community, the financial
benefits from operating the temple, placing heavy financial burdens on their
parishioners by demanding more offering, and pointing out their sins but
ignoring their own. Their focus is inward, self-centered.
Does it sound familiar? Aren’t
these favorite tactics of many modern-day media preachers, and for that matter,
politicians - to get you all worked up so you give them money or their vote but
in the end, they just line their pockets with your money?
Jesus says, you only have
one spiritual instructor, one real preacher, and for that matter, only one
father, and that is the father in Heaven. God loves you and puts even the
loneliest orphan in the seat of honor. As
I mentioned a couple weeks ago, an important part of Reformed belief is
that conscience is the supreme authority to understand scripture, not a pastor
like me, or your own. We may offer insight into the original language of the
scripture and our own ideas of interpretation but in the end the
most valuable “theology” is the theology you work out on your own.
Another essential point
of Reformed Christian belief to decide what behavior scripture advocates is that
God is with us in the Holy Spirit. God was with humanity in person, after all
God created everything, but God and humanity became alienated and separated by
sin. Jesus was among us walking the Earth in the act of reconciliation with God,
but he now is in heaven at the right hand of God and absent in person. Now, we
have the Holy Spirit as our advocate - our defender and our teacher. The
Holy Spirit is the path to understand God’s call for living for us. When we say
righteousness is written in our hearts, we are recalling the passage in Leviticus that Jade read last
week, “You shall be holy because I am holy.” That means God is calling us to
hold God in our heart. But it is more than that. I think of the Holy Spirit as our
being present in God’s heart. If God
says, “You shall be holy because I am holy,” it must mean we are in God’s heart.
Think about it.
Paul shared this idea to
the Thessalonians. Paul reminds them of his care and affection for them. He laments
that he is prevented from returning to them no matter how hard he tries. He
says, “Satan blocks him.” Perhaps he is in jail, or he is facing other hostile
difficulties, but he tells them that he holds them dearly in his heart. He
expresses his happiness over their joy and their persistence in
proclaiming the good news even though their neighbors and fellow Jewish
congregants harass them and do everything they can to stop their proclamation
of the Word. They accepted the gospel not as human words but as God’s, their
teacher’s word.
Listen
to Paul’s words. In this case the Pew bible (New International Version) has a
more accurate Greek translation of some language than the New Revised Standard
Version I often use. The NRSV says “As for us, brothers and sisters, when, for
a short time, we were made orphans by being separated from you” But the pew
bible translates the Greek to say, “But brothers (and sisters) when we were
torn away from you for a short time” which is more accurate description
of his violent separation by the mobs from the Thessalonians. But the NIV continues with the less dramatic
“in person, not in thought”), while the NRSV uses the more accurate, or
elegant, image “separated from you—in person, not in heart,” to describe this
emotional but not spiritual separation.
You can
see the reason some translators use “orphan” but I think the alternative
translation does a better job of describing the emotional pain of a forceful
separation as “when we were torn away from you…”
Paul had
to send a message sent under hardship that he surely would have rather shared directly
from his mouth, were possible to stand before them. He is doing what he would
have done had he been there in person!
I think
it might be worthwhile to imagine Paul’s lament in the way it might have been
received by the Thessalonians. “I regret that I am forced to send my praise and
love for you by letter and not by voice. Brothers (and sisters) it grieves us
that we were torn away from you after so short time after we first met, but you
know we were torn away only in person not in our heart. We want so desperately
to see you face to face rather than send this letter, oh so dearly, we wanted
to come to you so much—certainly I can speak for myself, Paul, that I wanted to
again and again—but Satan blocked our way. Do you know for whom we have a great
hope, you know for whom we have a great joy to brag victoriously to our Lord
Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? Yes, you are our glory and joy!
Think
about the power of these words. Has anyone ever said something like this to
you?
I
remember some advice my Dad gave my brother and me years ago. His Dad died when
he was three years old and his mother remarried. My dad was very close to his step-dad who was
an electrician and traveled to where he could find the jobs. My dad told us
something about his stepfather that obviously touched him deeply and shaped his
own ideas.
He told
us why he always made a point of being sure we knew he loved us, not only by
the way he treated us, but by telling us in word on almost every
occasion he could. My dad said his
stepdad was close to him and treated him well, but he never remembered his
stepdad saying he loved him, or heard his stepdad brag about him, not even when
he went into the army in WWII. Much later I decided part of the reason was that
men of my dad’s and granddad’s generation and place generally were not very
open about their feelings. I have always felt my Dad made an effort most men of
his time did not make. He told my brother and I that not hearing “I love you” from
his dad convinced him to be certain that we would always be sure we knew we
were loved in his heart.
This is
the special message Paul shares with the Thessalonians. His words show his great
strength of character and faith, and his admiration for the faith and love of
the Thessalonians. Paul’s true feelings are a deeply intimate expression of
care. How many of you would blush to
hear someone talk about you that way?
Paul
also seems to have a good feel for the fact that sometimes we do things that
reflect what we feel without knowing it.
This is why he was so happy over the faith of the Thessalonians, they
persisted in faith and proclamation in the face of attack by their fellow
citizens without even thinking about it.
You may
remember that
I explained last week, Paul constantly encourages his congregations to find
examples of good behavior in his actions and to adopt them to shape the way
they interact with each other and with the community. What greater way to proclaim
the heartfelt love and compassion of the Good News than by showing what is in
your heart?
So, I invite you to think
about Paul’s affection, that he so loved the Thessalonians that they were in
his heart even though he had been physically torn from them by the disturbances
in Thessalonica, and to ask, “What is our perspective on this passage today?”
On one hand, I know by
human nature that there is a lot of estrangement or separation between family
members and friends. People say something, or post something on Facebook that
hurts someone else’s feelings, sometimes unintended, at other times, we just don’t
think out beforehand the consequence of what we say very well. Some of us hear something second-hand and
conclude it is a problem, though it might not be true. We have members of the congregation who are
estranged or separated from the rest of us and this is a harmful situation.
I know that it is easy to
get so involved in our day-to-day worries that we do not stay in tune with
people around us. It isn’t necessarily
that people are mean or insensitive, they just let everything distract them so
that they miss, or forget, the good things others have or are doing in our
congregation.
There are all sorts of
“theology” and teaching about good and bad behavior in Paul’s writing, but when
Paul is boiled down to his essence, this is the message he gives us. The God News
is all about holding and treasuring others in our heart. It is unbelievably difficult, I think
impossible, to truly hold someone dear in your heart and hold a grudge or stay
angry with them. Paul knows Christian fellowship depends upon that.
In my own life, my Dad’s
story about his stepdad often comes back as a really powerful lesson. His story
goes to my heart. I didn’t always realize how important regularly expressing
one’s love for another can be until my two boys, now grown young adults, came
along. Just like our own young people here, they are precious to me in my
heart. I try so hard to be sure my boys get the message I love them, even today,
though they are not near enough to hug right now. They are in my heart. Our
young people are in my heart because they are part of this congregation and its
call to ministry (and, of course, so are the rest of you!).
The question before us as
a congregation is not just how we care for the community, with our Helping
Hands Food Pantry, with our Halloween biblical enactments, with our Gift of
Giving pre-Advent program, but how we care for each other. What is important is how we brag on their
spiritual gifts, how a congregant always seem to be here to help, how our
congregation shows up at almost every congregational event with their children
or grandchildren, and how much we love them as fellow Christians.
I think the things that
bothers me the most with regard to my sons are the times I got mad at them for
something, or so engrossed in my job I might have overlooked them. I worried
then that I would not be there when they might have had an important question,
and I worry today that I might have missed some of the times when I should have
been there. So, I never stop telling them I love them, and hopefully act like
it.
There were two sets of
generations involved in my story, my dad and granddad’s with my brother and me,
and my sons with my dad and me. Because of that lesson, I plan to be sure always
that our young people here in our congregation know that they are in my heart
and encourage you, young and old, to do the same. We will always encourage them
to remember this for their own sake and for the sake of the people they will touch
with their lives.
Paul challenges us to keep
our fellow members of this congregation in our hearts and brag on them,
especially the ones we have crossed swords. Be sure you do your best to imitate
Paul and glorify God. People will notice and remember your love, even decades
of years later.
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