II
Thessalonians 1:1-12
The first Christians in
Thessalonica, the ones who came to faith as a result of Paul’s preaching, had a
fixation on how to think about the end of days.
At least that’s what it seems like from the letters that he wrote to
them. They especially wanted to know
about the ultimate destiny of people among them who had died. Considering that these letters indicate that
they themselves were undergoing persecution, it was probably also a question
that they were asking about what would happen to themselves if their trials
took a fatal turn.
It was all very well to have Paul’s
congratulatory words telling them,
“we
ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and
faith during all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring,” [II
Thessalonians 1:4]
but
it wasn’t really any human approval that they were looking for. What they wanted was God’s approval. What they really, really, really wanted,
though, was God’s vindication. That’s a
very human, understandable desire.
“This American Life” is a show on
National Public Radio that focuses on people’s day-to-day experiences. Last week’s show included a segment on the
drama in a pre-kindergarten classroom. A
lot of a teacher’s time is absorbed by kids’ tattling on one another and trying
to sort out all kinds of disputes. David
Kirstenbaum, whose sons had gone to that nursery school, reported on one
teacher’s great idea.
“She took a tissue box, hung it on the
wall, and then took this plastic phone receiver and hung it in it and said
something like, that's the tattle-phone. Tell it to the phone.”[1]
With the permission of the entire class’s
parents, he installed a real phone that would record what was said throughout
the day, and that provided the meat of his story.
The
tattle phone was very popular for awhile, and the teacher definitely liked
it. As time went on, though, he noticed
that there were less calls, which made sense to him. Before he ran the experiment in the
classroom, he had set a tattle phone up at home for his sons, Max and Auggie. He said,
“My kids used it a
couple of times. And then our younger son Max was complaining that his brother,
Auggie, who's a year older, had pinched him.
Tell it to the
tattle-phone, I said. It's not working, he told me. I picked the phone up
worried that there was some technical glitch. But it was fine. It's working,
Max. No, he said, it's not.
Max
It did not do anything.
It doesn't even work to me. It doesn't even do anything.
David Kestenbaum
It listened to your
tattle.
Max
No, it doesn't.
David Kestenbaum
What do you mean? It
listened.
Max
It didn't. It didn't
stop Auggie pinching me.
David Kestenbaum
It didn't stop Auggie
pinching me. I know, Max. I know. Sometimes you want more than just to speak.
You want actual justice.”
Actual justice
is what the persecuted church in Thessalonica was after. I have no doubt that there were those who
savored the vision of the end-times that is found in this letter from Paul.
“For it is indeed just of God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to the afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord.” [II Thessalonians 1:6-9]
It’s true that justice means that actions have consequences and
nobody just gets away with anything.
Without that, all that anyone who is wronged can do is tattle away on
deaf ears.
Yet the vision of Jesus “inflicting
vengeance on those who do not know God” is a two-edged sword. To those who are persecuted, it is a comfort
to know that they have a protector and a defender who stands up against the
persecutors. But the other side is his
judgment “on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus”, which
to my recollection includes the demand to “love your enemies and pray for
those who persecute you.” [Matthew 5:44]
Here is where we are asked to be more mature than a preschooler. It may be that the failure of earthly justice
teaches us to be careful about asking for divine justice. As someone grows up, they learn to let things
go sometimes. They learn that there are
injustices worth pursuing and others that are not worth the time or
effort. There are wrongs that need to be
put right, but there are also wrongs that are better left to God. And in all of it, there is the important caution:
“Be angry but do not
sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the
devil.” [Ephesians
4:26-27]
My own way of looking at it – take it or leave it as it helps
you – is that standing up on someone else’s behalf is part of loving my
neighbor but that when it comes to myself, I do best to forgive as I would have
God forgive me, and that means to tread very, very lightly.
We have to move
away from the understandable focus on what God is going to do to “them”,
whoever that is, when the day comes; and move toward a focus on what God would
want to do right here and right now, in you and me.
Saints are not
born. They are made. God makes people holy through how they live
out whatever life brings them. Holiness
may be when someone with artistic talent puts it to work to lift up the beauty
of God’s creation. It may be when
someone with a gift for gab tells a story that teaches what is right and wrong,
or brings people joy. Holiness may mean
when someone who is quiet turns their stillness into listening or into
prayer. Holiness may come about when
someone who has been hurt goes from blaming to asking how the persecutor has so
lost their own humanity and sees the hurt in them.
None of that
can ever come about on our own, and none of it can ever come about if we decide
to block out God’s Holy Spirit.
“To this end we always
pray for you, asking that our God will make you worthy of his call and will
fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith, so that the name of
Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our
God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” [II Thessalonians 1:11-13]
No comments:
Post a Comment