So, I've been idle in regards to the blog. Please accept my sincere apologies. This year has been even busier than last. The good news is that I preached today, so I have something to post. My first-ever sermon at my field ed site:

St. Christopher's Episcopal Church, Springfield, VA
Year C, Season after Pentecost, Proper 28, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

            So, I identify with the idle (and that’s the I-D-L-E of our epistle). And while we don’t know exactly what was going on that prompted this second letter to the church at Thessalonica, we do know that there were people there not doing what they were supposed to. Not carrying their weight. Not contributing to the community. Loafers. Slackers. Deadbeats.

            But why not, really? Why not loaf?

            I, for one, can understand that urge. Our reading from Isaiah this morning promises us a new heaven and a new earth. But when? In the Gospel lesson, we hear Jesus saying that in the end times there will be earthquakes and famines and plagues. But for how long? 2,000 years?

            I don’t know about you, but that seems excessive to me. And so in the midst of all the atrocious pain that we now witness day-to-day in the news—from shootings to typhoons—and not to mention the less-newsworthy suffering of our own lives—the urge for me at last is to sit back, to become idle, to pursue my own interests and ignore the world around me.

            While I worry about how long it might take for this new heaven and new earth to appear, this is sort of the opposite of what some scholars believe was going on in Thessalonica.

A little context may help. Paul had founded the church at Thessalonica a couple decades after Jesus. And being a busy guy and unable to return as quickly as the community there would’ve liked, Paul wrote the letter we now know as First Thessalonians. And in that letter (which was written around the year 50 and happens to be the earliest preserved Christian writing) Paul urges the Thessalonians to continue doing what they’re doing and to stay strong. Jesus would be right back, after all. They were living in the end times, Paul thought.

            And so fast forward (and, unfortunately, we don’t how much to fast forward, since scholars disagree on the date of Second Thessalonians). So fast forward maybe a year or maybe even some decades, but fast forward nonetheless, and what we have is perhaps Paul but maybe a follower of Paul writing in his name, sending another letter to the Thessalonians. And this time, we get this somewhat strange warning about idleness.

            But again, why not be idle? Perhaps Paul had been a little too convincing about the Second Coming in the first letter. If that event was in fact right around the corner, why not take a day off, or two, or twenty? Not to mention that the Christians at Thessalonica had seen their fair share of persecution because of their faith. That alone was enough to make any good Thessalonian Christian want to slack a little.

            And, for whatever reason, some did. And not only did some become idle, but they also became “busybodies,” meddlers, worried about others’ affairs while not tending to their own. And again, this is something I can relate to.

            I can assure you, that in living with a bunch of seminarians, it’s easy to meddle. I, for one, am really good at pointing out what everyone else ought to be doing. And it is generally not a good feeling when I discover that my only contribution to the betterment of the community has been sitting back and offering criticism.

            But back to the Thessalonians. Here, we get this passage in our lectionary that twice invokes the name of Jesus Christ and uses some pretty strong language.

            And I think maybe that’s because our writer understood just how much the Thessalonian Christians needed one another.  This message is really about community. We are, after all, called to do all sorts of really hard things when we accept the call to follow Christ. Things like seeking and serving Christ in all persons. And we can’t do those things alone—at least, I can’t. We need community. We need one another.

            German Lutheran theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonheoffer, writes in his book Life Together, his meditation on Christian community, that the Christian “needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure.”[1]

            So we need one another. And this morning’s epistle indicates further that we need to be able to hold one another accountable in love and mutual respect. That probably doesn’t mean that if you or I forget our potluck dish, we shouldn’t eat. But maybe it means that we do need to sit down at potlucks together occasionally, and of course to break bread together regularly, to worship together, to study together—to feed one another spiritually, and not just so that we may be fed, but much more so, so that we might be able to go outside these walls and feed a hurting world.

            And, just as a side note, let me be clear that this passage is not about people unable to work because of ability or the myriad systemic circumstances that prevent people from working today. Rather, it’s about unwillingness to take part in the life of the community. And for us here today, I think it speaks to our willingness to do the work that God has called on us to do. To do the work of ushering in the new heaven that we just heard about in Isaiah, to be the hands and feet of Christ in the here and now.  

            Are we living in the end times, as the Thessalonians believed they were? I don’t know. Will humans be waiting another 2,000 years or more for the Kingdom of God to finally and fully be realized? I don’t know. But I do know we are called to usher in that kingdom, to show forth the love of God through Christ as best we are able. This is true life, after all. This is the only life worth living, Scripture teaches us again and again. And it is a life we are able to achieve only through the help of God, whom I believe shows up most clearly in our relationships with one another in community.

            Nevertheless, I very much sympathize with the idle. And I can be a pretty good slacker. But I ask you to remind me, and I pray that we may all remind one another—through our words but more so through our actions—that as a community of brothers and sisters in Christ, we are to love another. And we are to celebrate and affirm God’s immeasurable love for us through Christ so that we might share that love in tangible ways outside the walls of this church.

            I can understand the idleness. But it’s the community that brings me back and allows me to hope in the love of God through Christ. It’s the community that holds on to hope when I can’t. And in so doing, it’s the community that helps me see—when I’m feeling particularly drawn to idleness—that God is in fact among us.

            The writer of Second Thessalonians urges that community two millenia removed from us  “not to be weary of doing what is right” (3:13). May we also not grow weary. 

Amen.         

                      

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[1]Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1954), 23.