1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Thank you, Steve, for that compelling witness
about your stewardship journey. You know,
in seminary, when they teach you about talking with a congregation about the
annual pledge campaign, the experts typically wouldn’t suggest that you do that
on the Sunday following a horrifying church shooting. But you know, that’s the world in which we live
now. For many of us, especially those of
a certain age, we remember fondly a time when the church doors were left
unlocked 24 hours a day so that neighbors could come in and pray. In my church growing up, Christ Episcopal in
Springfield, I remember where I was standing, as an acolyte ready for the
procession to begin, when the service was delayed because of a problem in the
chapel, which you entered by an exterior door.
It turned out that one man had killed another there, and the priest had
to go administer last rites before presiding at the Eucharist. That was 40 years ago, and the doors have been
locked at night ever since – even in Springfield.
Nostalgia makes us long for the “good old
days,” whenever we might locate that time in our minds – a time when mass
shootings were something we couldn’t fathom rather than something we struggle to
prevent. But last Sunday’s shooting
during worship in Sutherland Springs, Texas, jolts us right back to the present
moment.
When we see violence like that, it’s
tempting to go down some dangerous roads.
We might begin to see threats everywhere we look and wonder whether we
should even walk down the Trolley Trail or take kids to the park. We might begin to believe we must take
matters into our own hands and be ready to drop an active shooter wherever we
might be … even at Jesus’ altar. We
might even begin to believe the two most pernicious lies the world tells us –
that we are hopeless and that we are alone.
When we begin to believe those lies, the powers and principalities of
darkness win.
I cast it in those terms intentionally
because, as we look back on our past as followers of Jesus Christ, we notice
that the apostle Paul found himself in a world just as threatening as ours,
albeit for very different reasons. Paul
lived as a Jew, an ethnic and religious minority surviving at the whim of the
Roman Empire, which taxed the living daylights out of its subjugated peoples
and executed their leaders, like a certain Jesus of Nazareth, when they began
saying challenging things. But the danger
came from the other side, too: Paul and his Christian communities also endured
persecution from the Jewish authorities, who saw this Jesus movement as a
threat to their authority and power.
In Paul’s world view, the conflicts he and
his communities faced were reflections of cosmic struggles taking place in a
realm we can’t see. Violence and
persecution were the consequence of standing on the side of God’s realm of
light and life, which Paul believed was battling and triumphing over the powers
of darkness and death. Jesus’
resurrection and his reign as Lord were the decisive blows against the powers that
wield “hardship or distress or persecution or … peril or sword” (Romans
8:35). From Paul’s perspective, the
struggles he and his communities faced were part of a mopping-up action that
would soon be brought to its fulfillment when Jesus returned in glory – which
Paul expected to happen any day.
So, writing to the Christians in
Thessalonica, Paul urges them to remember where they stand in this cosmic conflict. “We do not want you to … grieve as others do
who have no hope,” he writes. “For just
as Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him
those who have died. … For the Lord
himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and the sound of
God’s trumpet, [the Lord] will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will
rise. … Then we who are alive … will
meet the Lord … and be with the Lord forever.” (4:13-16) When Paul writes about the “coming of the
Lord” (4:15), he’s using a technical term in Greek for a state visit by the
emperor,1 so he’s making a very clear statement about who’s really
in charge – and it’s not the emperor. Despite the struggles of the moment, Paul
says, do not join those “who have no hope” (4:13). “Encourage one another” instead (4:18).
Of course, the “principalities” and “powers”
(Ephesians 6:12 KJV) look different in their presentation now. Today the “hardship and distress” comes to us
in a litany of shootings: Sutherland Springs and Las Vegas and Charleston and
Orlando and San Bernadino and Virginia Tech and Killeen and Aurora and
Columbine and Sandy Hook Elementary. And
we feel a growing sense of impotence to stop such madness, getting caught on
the horns of a dilemma between gun control and constitutional rights, rather
than seeing gun violence as a public-health crisis, one every bit as serious as
tuberculosis or polio were, and just as much within our capacity to
address. Instead, we see hardness of
heart defeating the common good. But if
the apostle Paul were standing in this pulpit today, I think he would tell us
the response of the Christian community remains the same. When the powers and principalities of the
world threaten us, choose against
them. Choose community and hope over isolation
and fear.
What does that look like? I read an interesting post from my seminary
this week. The writer was struggling with just these questions – when 26 people
die going to church, how in the world can people of faith respond in a
meaningful way? But the post noted that
“when violence intrudes into the places we thought were safe, one thing that
can make a huge difference is knowing we’re not alone,”2 a reality
we embody by reaching out rather than drawing in. We stand with Christians across the centuries,
and stand against the power of violence, when we make the choice to stand
together: when we grieve deep loss, when we gather to pray, when we visit
someone who’s sick, when we cook for a friend, when we work for social change, when
we act to help light overcome the darkness. The impact of these actions may seem tiny
compared with the impact of hundreds of bullets. But I think Paul would tell us to “encourage
one another with these words” and actions “so that you may not grieve as others
do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:18,13).
And though it may sound self-serving to
say this, I will say it anyway because I believe it to be true: We also take a stand for light overcoming
darkness when we build the capacity of a church family to be light in the
darkness. Yes, we are in an annual pledge
campaign, and I would want you to fill out a pledge card in any case. I would want you to be on that journey Steve
talked about, taking the next step in a spiritual practice of giving, seeing your
giving as a connecting point with God potentially just as strong as the prayers
you offer in bed each night or the meal you serve to a person who’s hungry. Those things would always be true. And,
in the midst of the darkness we see around us, I ask you to turn in a pledge
card as an act of solidarity and an emblem of hope. Making a pledge, you put on the “whole armor
of God” (Ephesians 6:13) – the belt of truth, the shield of faith, the
breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the
Spirit of love. Making a pledge, you
“equip the saints for the work of ministry [and build] up the body of Christ”
(Ephesians 4:12), within this church family and for the world. Making a pledge, you choose hope over
fear. And right now, there is nothing
your heart, or the world, needs more.
1.
HarperCollins
Study Bible. Note on 1 Thessalonians 4:15. 2223.
2.
Minnix,
Gina. “Refusing to Let Violence Take Us
Over.” Sowing Holy Questions, Seminary of the Southwest, Nov. 8,
2017. Available at: https://ssw.edu/blog/refusing-let-violence-take-us/. Accessed Nov. 10, 2017.
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