1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Proper 24 (29) - Year A
In his introduction to 1st & 2nd Thessalonians, Eugene Peterson writes:
"The way we conceive the future sculpts the present, gives contour and tone to nearly every action and thought through the day. If our sense of future is weak, we live listlessly....
"The Christian faith has always been characterized by a strong and focused sense of future....
"The practical effect of this belief is to charge each moment of the present with hope.... It takes the clutter out of our lives. We're far more free to respond spontaneously to the freedom of God.
"All the same, the belief can be misconceived so that it results in paralyzing fear for some, shiftless indolence in others. Paul's two letters to the Christians in Thessalonica, among much else, correct such debilitating misconceptions, prodding us to continue to live forward in taut and joyful expectancy for what God will do next in Jesus."
..............
So it is that he translates verse 8, "The news of your faith in God is out. We don't even have to say anything more -- you're the message!"
Are you taut and joyful that what God in Christ has done is shift the opportunity for ministry to your life, and mine?
On the top of the Wisconsin state capital in Madison is a depiction of Miss Forward (state motto since 1851 - "Forward"). We need to be just that visible as we Live Forward. To drive home the point, the newest state symbol (1993) is the Wisconsin state dance -- the polka -- so, Polka Forward.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/october2002.html
Being an imitator can bring rote repetition of outward behavior. It can also bring a standing on the shoulders of the imitated to take things further. Are we reproducing or resembling when we imitate? This is an important distinction to make. Are we headed back to some ideal time of orthodoxy or building on that which has come down to us and moving its spirit forward in the realities of this time?
Paul understands that he has proved to be faithful in responding to his conversion. In thus setting his example, he has encouraged folks to follow further on his path but acknowledges that through their picking up on his example and carrying it on in their way that they have supported and expanded that on which had modeled himself. The implication is that those who imitate the Thessalonians imitating Paul's imitation of a risen Christ revealing the image of one whose nature and whose name is Love, add to the support and expansion Paul continued.
So, today, support and expansion of Love goes on through our adding to this tradition in our own time and space. This is not simply a waiting for things to play out but an active participation in the salvation process that saves from wrath right now and lets the future care for itself. A living and true God deals with the choices before us now, not those made by our ancestors in the faith or those who may fail tomorrow.
Expect a choice again today that will allow us to reveal the inner dynamic of past choices and anticipate a congruent, yet outwardly different, choice tomorrow. This expectation is not based on the number of points that are absolute in location, but that trace a similar arc of compassion and mercy.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/october2005.html
Your living as an understudy of Jesus shows wherever you are - Healing and feeding and partying and challenging ossified rules. It is clear what part you are studying to play - Herod, Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist, Peter, Thessalonian congregation member, Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea, Anna, tax collector, Pharisee, Syrophoenician woman, etc. etc.
Is the part you are studying clear to you? Did you choose it? Has it chosen you? Is it type-casting or a real stretch for you?
Enjoy your part.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/october2005.html
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Exodus 32:12-23 or Isaiah 45:1-7
Psalm 99 or Psalm 96:1-9, (10-13)
Matthew 22:15-22
Here's the deal G*D .... "Let me know who's with me"; "Show me your glory."
To which G*D says, "Nope." G*D claims all corners -- to make "weal and woe," to be "forgiving and avenging." There will be no bargains struck.
Here's the deal Jesus .... "Do we pay taxes?"
To which Jesus says, "Good try, but nope. Your perception that a question can be composed to both prove your own worth and to diminish your own responsibility will never come 'round right. It will fall of its own weight."
In spending so much time in trying to trap a perceived opponent, there is not sufficient time to get ourselves out of effectively colluding with the oppressors we are in bed with. In this day and age American religious find themselves battling each other and thus avoiding the realities that they are colluding with their own elected oppressors who balk not at preemptive war and keeping insurance from children and everything in between. For another look at this, check out Frank Rich's column, The 'Good Germans' Among Us.
- - -
to set out to trap another
is the surest way to be caught
steering god the way of our ammunition
in thus getting caught
in our own attempt to trap another
we are set up for Jesus' jujitsu theology
when our trap's premise
is exposed we fly head over heels
bowing before our previous blind spot
now comes the revelation
malice's short-run effectiveness
will ever reveal its long-run fallacy
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html
In days gone by early Methodists were engaged by a question: What must I do to escape the wrath to come?
Many responses had to do with lowering one's tax (sin) burden. On the love G*D end was camp meeting praise, emotional and awakening. On the love neighbor pole were issues of simplicity to be able to give more charity and all manner of mercy acts around healthcare, education, and mission.
In a full-bore capitalist society, instead of being at its industrial revolution beginning, with a focus on present profit, concern about a wrath to come, a significant credit crunch, seems to hold no traction. If there is going to be a rescue it won't be from a prophetic moralist like Jesus. Rather, there will be any number of bailouts tried on the basis of capitalism's idol – Mammon. If we can just infuse enough cash into a roiling economy, its invisible hands will pull itself up by its own bootstraps. [Imagine that position, if you will, and you will soon see why one should never trust a fart and how messy things can and will get.]
A question worth struggling with in our day is: what will engage people's lives in the same way the old question about escaping from wrath did in the early days of Methodism as a reflection of an older time in Thessalonica? What would that be in your own life?
What organizing principle is needed in your life and the life of the world around that would lead to your taking "great joy from the Holy Spirit! – taking the trouble with the joy, the joy with the trouble"? [The Message] This present-oriented perspective may well be connected with escaping a more troubled future?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html
Want to be saved from a coming wrath? Unfortunately, there are no free passes. Fortunately, there are resources to aid us in not responding to wrath wrathfully.
Find a living and true G*D. That ought to be easy, except such tends to toss salvation back to you. Since the future is not just an in-breaking of a quantum leap surprising to behold, but an outgrowth of investments we make in it by the way we operate today, we again hear those ancient words, “Choose this day . . . .”
All the encouraging words patting us on the back for having moved in the direction Paul was headed, will eventually lead us to a key issue in the whole book of 1 Thessalonians - persistence in the face of difficulty that we be ready to receive a present paradise in what appears to be a dark and dismal day to come.
Let's say Jesus saves us from a coming wrath. OK. How?
Not by snapping fingers or impecable calendaring or a past act of integrity that rolls on of its own accord. No.
Modeling a persistent drive for a preferred future through intentional present action. Yes.
In following Moses' way of following G*D, following Jesus' way of following Moses and G*D, encourages others in following us following Jesus following Moses following G*D - not unsimilar to the house that Jack built. Such persistence does not allow a passive waiting for an apocalyptic moment, but insists on active investment, willingly risked, anticipating a way through a next self-caused crash based on what we do today.
persistence of trust
of something better
in the face of great persistence
claiming only more of the same
is our way through
to paradise
while wading deep
in unnecessary wrath
[You might be interested in an economic paper that talks about persistence in dealing with the wrath to come from the latest burst bubble pipe-dream of an ever upward economy. The authors speak of persistence in this fashion,
Rather than lurching from one futile mini-stimulus and quantitative easing to another, we must build consensus around a five-to-seven-year plan that matches the likely duration of the de-levering with which we now live, as well as that of the time it will take for emerging markets to transition to patterns of economic growth driven by domestic demand rather than exports.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/10/1-thessalonians-11-10.html